Blogging is not a way to make a living. Only a very few people have successfully done this (you can read about them here). You can, however, make very small amounts that get slightly bigger as time goes by.
There are two tools I would like to share with you that can help you make a few bucks here and there with minimal effort:
SocialSpark – Social media advertising. (Blogs, tweets, etc). SocialSpark has made a few changes over the last few months that have made me happier with the service. You can check them out at www.socialspark.com . SocialSpark is owned by Izea.
The other service is PayPerPost. PayPerPost works by giving you a lead for ads, you apply for the lead. If the advertiser approves of your blog, they may decide to “invite” you to write an ad. You write the ad, submit the page you wrote it on, and you get paid (pending approval from the advertiser, and pending a 30 day wait period that the ad must stay somewhere on the site.) You can check out PayPerPost at www.payperpost.com PayPerPost is also from Izea.
Why I like these services:
Despite the fact that both PayPerPost and SocialSpark have extremely high demand, they have a very good ethics policy. Full disclosure of advertising, for example. Or allowance of an honest opinion, where the publishers are free to write whatever they want. Or no-follow links, to protect the search-engine reputation of publishers.
If you are already receiving thousands of visitors a month, try Google Adwords. Adwords is only a slightly effective money making tool when you are receiving extremely high traffic. Even I do not receive the traffic or the target groups nessasary to generate money off of automated text-advertisements. My blog targets “high-tech” people who are highly into computers, and thus (by common sense) none of them click the ads — most of them use ad-blocking programs.
I've used PayPerPost before, I'll have to try out Socialspark now.