I set up Google Analytics for my blog, and I was pleasantly surprised by the results. I'm getting roughly 140 unique visitors per week these days.

The small number of comments one sometimes gets can be a bit discouraging, but this blog is fitting the general pattern of "lurkers" outnumbering people who participate more actively.

According to usability expert Jacob Neilsen:

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

...

Blogs have even worse participation inequality than is evident in the 90-9-1 rule that characterizes most online communities. With blogs, the rule is more like 95-5-0.1.

Neilsen says some rather harsh things about people who comment a lot, but I don't share his views, especially for blogs. People who comment often are a terribly important part of blog communication.

However, I would recommend Google Analytics or some other non-obtrusive web statistics setup so you can see that people really are reading what you have to say.

Update: Blue Gal has some great tips for new bloggers. She really is a force in promoting progressive ideas on the Web.