Making money from your blog

I don't see a link to your blog so it's hard to put your questions into context, but I'll give some general comments. My own experience is of running a small travel-related site rather than a blog.

If you are thinking of something like the Google Adsense you see on lots of sites, remember that many of them pay only a few cents for a click. And perhaps one visitor in a hundred will click on an ad. Just for illustration, let's say you get a hundred visitors a day and the average ad pays 20 cents. You'd be making well under a 100 dollars (US) a year - not quite enough to retire on! Obviously you can ramp that up by getting lots more visitors. To do that obviously have to create a really interesting blog that people will want to read. But even that is unlikely to do much on its own - the most brilliant creative writing is likely to languish in obscurity unless you promote it. Which takes time, money, or both.

If as you say you don't currently have steady income, perhaps that means you have enough time to treat the blog as something close to a full-time or at least half-time job, spending time on both writing and promoting. That could make a big difference, compared to someone trying to fit it in a few spare evenings a week.

On the plus side, adding Adsense is pretty easy. From the aesthetic point of view, it probably works better if you adjust the colour a bit to fit your site - of course you then have the risk they will blend in so well no-one will click on them!

Another issue with Adsense is whether it can serve relevant ads. If you are blogging on a specific subject, that might not be a problem, but if it is a general blog the ads that show up may be of no interest to readers. Similar points apply to affiliate links, for example to Amazon - unless your blog relates directly to the product advertised, the chances of people clicking through and buying anything is quite low.

I know that some contributors to this forum have done this kind of thing at a more serious level than I have, so I'm sure they will chip in with their own comments.

This guy did it. But he already had a background in IT, and I think he also makes money by telling other people how to make money and actually setting up the web site.

I chose not to put adds in my blog simply because I wanted no doubt as to my intentions. I blog just to share my opinionated thoughts.

Just spying in and I enjoyed your thorough response Alan1972, thanks. GG

Yes you can. Lots of people do it - you don't have to be the guru of a subject. There are numerous people who are Pro Bloggers - and I'm sure not all of them have a Ph.D. in what they are blogging about.

Google AdSense is both good and bad. It's good in the sense that it's free, but bad in the sense that sometimes the ads are highly irrelevant. And most people don't bother clicking on the ads. There are other things like Text Link Ads, Pay Per Post, etc. However, you have to be wary not to have so many ads, because splogs (spam blogs) rank lower on search engines. Another important thing to note is how many visitors do you get to your blog currently?

For the question about is it worth continually typing in the blog: Only blog about a subject that you truly enjoy and love to talk about. For example, you might love cats and dogs, but could you really blog about cats and dogs regularly? You should do it for fun. If you do make money out of it, it should just be a bonus.

You don't mention what your blog is, what you blog about, nor mention what country you are from. If you are an Asian blogger, you may want to check out Nuffnang or Advertlets