Although I am a geeky techy, I'm not a web developer, so I'm sure there are other ways to do what I do that would be easier for someone who was. I just have a basic blog and newsletter with signups, and an audience far, far smaller than the number of characters in this comment. :D (That's OK though, I'm on an intentional slow growth curve.)

I don't even go out of my way to drive people to it because in some ways I'm still deciding what I want to do with the space. The "premium" plugins I pay for are to help handle spambots and signups/newsletter stuff. (and there are free plugins to help with those if I really needed to stay free) Wordpress.com sends me "30% off ACT NOW" emails every so often for their hosted packages and it doesn't even come close to competing. They want you to pony up $$ to get access to any worthwhile plugins at all from what I can tell, and I'm too much of a dyed in the wool Linuxy "you aren't going to tell me what I can and can't do" kind of guy to have any tolerance for that.

Edit: Just looked again now - $300/year to reach a tier that allows use of plugins. Nah.