You've created yourself a blog and type away into it every day or two. People visit it and it's going very nicely, thank you. But did you know it can make you money?

Making money from blogs doesn't need a great amount of time and effort to get going and could soon be earning a fair few bucks. Here are a few ideas to get the cash flowing:

Google AdSense

Google AdSense uses advertisements set up by Google AdWords users to place ads relevant to your site content. Each time one of these links is clicked by a visitor, you earn a few cents. Money comes from the advertiser paying their Pay Per Click fees, after Google takes their cut and rates vary according to how high a bid the advertiser has placed on the keyword that activates the ad display.

These ads can be columned down the side of the page or put in a row at the top or bottom, but they are always fairly unobtrusive text ads, labeled by Google, so they are trusted ads and do tend to generate a lot of clicks.

Your ever-changing content can mean the ads can be relevant to whatever you are discussing on your blog that day.

Blog advertising services

This is a similar concept to Google AdSense only aimed directly at bloggers. AdSense is for all website owners.

At Blogads, the ads feature a picture and some text. Some of the advertisers are pretty high profile and you receive 70% of the fee paid by the advertiser for a successful click from your site. Unfortunately, Blogads now require you to have a sponsor (someone who will advertise with you) to sign up – but they will pair you up on request.

Crispads and TAGwords are a similar set-up. Crispads offer both text and graphical ads. TAGwords offer customizable or dynamic, keyword based text ads.

These all work by way of placing a block of code on the page where the ads are to be displayed. These pay like Google AdSense on Pay Per Click basis where they choose the ads to display, or, if an advertiser wants your ad space, they pay what you ask.

Amazon ads

The Amazon Associate scheme allows you to display small ads for items relevant to your blog. These ads can contain a small picture of the item and are branded with the Amazon logo. Any click resulting in a sale earns you commission. You can change the ads as often as you like, so keeping them relevant to the latest blog topics.

Pay-Per-Blog

The alternative to having advertisements on your website is to sign up to a paying blog service, like Blogit. You may have to pay a monthly fee to be a member, but if your blog is kept up-to-date and has a lot of readers, you earn cash based on the amount of reads you get over the month.

Most people blog because they enjoy it and it wasn't meant to be a money spinner, but why not take a few minutes to set up one of these services and get a little return for your time, even if making money blogging only pays for the hosting. 

This content was provided by one of our users, Jamos