Search the web for terms like blogging for money and you will find hundreds of websites, blogs and money making schemes to chose advice from. But the reality is that it is hard to make money from a blog. If you are just now considering it then you arrived several years too late!

I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying that it is a crowded an competitive place to be and you had better have a great plan to build traffic, a good strategy around developing unique quality content and a really good idea of who your target audience is. If you don't then please read this first.

OK. You cannot be convinced otherwise and you still want to give it a try?

Google Adsense

To start with you need to set up a Google Adsense account - you can do that here. I still think that Google Adsense is the best starting point to monetize your blog but don't expect to be making mega bucks. It takes traffic to get sufficient click throughs on those Google ads to make any money.

Let me give you two examples.

This site was created just about 1 month ago. It gets some traffic - not much - but some and it's growing slowly. Total revenue from Google ads - $0 to date.

Another site I co-own is the Energy Hedge Fund Center. It's been around for more than 5 years and we have actively promoted it. It's a niche site but it gets great traffic. Total monthly Adsense revenue is only around $200.

Maybe I am doing something wrong? If I am - let me know because I have been using Adsense for many years on a number of sites and I have never seen that much revenue from it. However, it is a must in my opinion if you want to start making a little pocket money.

Sponsored Articles
If your blog is older than 3-months and can qualify, you can make a little more from writing paid articles. See other posts on this site about Smorty and Sponsored Reviews for more details on how that works.

However, unless you have a high ranking site, don't expect to make much more than $100 per month at least initially.

Alternatives
There are other ways to make money with other ad providers such as Bidvertiser and several others. Again, it depends on your traffic and click throughs as to whether you make much money though.

So How Do I Make Money?
In the end, the best way to make money from your blog is to develop a product that can be sold from the site. At the Energy Hedge Fund Center, most of our revenue comes from sales of a Directory of Energy Hedge Funds.

Another source of good revenue is advertising on your site - not through Google or some other provider - but advertising you sold to interested parties. Again, that means you must have a strategy, traffic, a target audience and you need to know who would be interested in buying space on your site. If you can do this, you can really start monetizing your site....