I did it for http://www.StatusCrap.com when I was just getting started with it. Definitely helped on the SEO side with dynamic content and also with creating the sense of community effect. There's no shame in it :)
I never used a service, I usually just got some sort of conversations started with different profiles and eventually real people started pitching in. Just can take a bit of time and depends on your traffic.
Status Crap took about a year to make some income (currently gets about 250,000 page views a month and growing between 10-40% each month). I've been trying to launch side projects since I was 17 though haha!
