Are you blogging for fun or for money? Do you want to do both? I have blogs that are in place for many reasons.

I have a couple of blogs that are filled with tales of some of my outlandish activities and are my release. They are very entertaining for my readers (mostly my friends). These sites don’t make me much money… Maybe a few cents each month from the ads on them, but they are my “fun” blogs.

I have several blogs that are there to provide information to support a web property and drive traffic to it in hopes that the readers will join the site. These blogs not only provide me with a way to generate traffic, but are also full of great content that is beneficial to the reader.

The traffic for these blogs is considerably higher than my personal sites. The ad revenue amounts to a several dollars per month on each, but the number of subscribers I receive and the number of sales that I make from those readers make blogging on them very worthwhile.

The third type of blog that can be used is a review site blog. In these, the blog author writes articles that endorse a product that they are an affiliate for. These can be tricky, because you want your reader to genuinely believe that you are reviewing the product, not trying to sell them something.

Many people believe that since blogging is fun and easy, that making money from their blog is a slam dunk! All they have to do is set up the site and add some good content and the money will start rolling in. Although this is true, to a certain extent, many bloggers fail to make a decent living doing it.

Many people who are starting out in internet marketing think that to make a lot of mone through blogging, all they need to do is set it up and add content regularly. You may make a few bucks a month doing this but you will need to do more than that to make a living from your blog(s).

When setting up your blog here are a few tips to get them making you money:

1. Place ads on them. Google’s Adsense program works fine for some, but there are other ad networks that give you different options and, although paying less per click than Google, can make you more money. You can also use cost per action (CPA) ads, where you don’t make revenue from impressions or clicks but only when the reader takes a certain action like signing up for a new credit card or buying a product.
2. Creat your own products or services that you can offer for sale through your blog. I mentioned earlier about the blogs that I use to support some of my other sites.  I post regularly to them and keep them being indexed in the search engines which drives traffic to them. The traffic increases my ad revenue. If they buy my product or sign-up for my mailing list, I make even more money from them.
3. Selling affiliate products through a blog is another way to make a decent amount of cash. Setting the site up as a review for products from Clickbank or PayDotCom or other affiliate programs (eBay, Amazon, etc.) can be a cash cow that keeps paying you for years to come off very few posts. Or you can just place banners for affiliate products that are related to your niche on your site. Many of these affiliate products will pay 50% or more from any sale that you generate from your link.

In conclusion, blogging can be a fun and easy way to make money online. It may take a little work to get things set up the first time around, but soon you’ll be turning out sites that start making you money from the first day.

Check back soon. I’ll be covering ideas to make your blog-life more simple and how to drive tons of traffic to them through social marketing sites like Twitter and Facebook.