How would blogging for money compare to other "traditional" forms of generating income?

For example:

- Getting a second job
- Learning a new marketable skill
- Getting promoted in your current job
- Getting a new, higher paying job
- Changing you career
- Starting your own business

The truth is, blogging for money is not unlike getting a second job, investing resources to learn how to blog for money, and starting your own business.

Why Blogging Revenues Are Hard to Make

When a website format or category appears successful, it becomes saturated very quickly. People start copying the website idea with similar content articles and even similar blog appearance. Separating wheat from chaff is not difficult, but it drains time. I find myself tuning into how I "feel" about a website content within seconds of looking at the material, and assess whether there is an original thought behind the writing. Blog readers have learned this, as well. Sometimes it doesn't feel like a blogger cares very much about the writing itself, only that it needed to be written so that the blog smells fresh. Other times a blogger has taken an idea seen elsewhere and duplicated it, with a paraphrase here or a new example there.

It is in this vein that I'm examining why I blog, and if blogging is part of your long term revenue strategy, you will want to periodically reassess why you blog.

I have given enough time in this blogging experiment to know where my preferences are, including how I want to earn money. Truthfully, blogging can only be a minuscule supplement to my household income, for what feels like a heck of a lot of work.

I think blogging as self expression is a great idea, and one I've come to love and will continue to use for years to come. I also would rather have too many blogs to choose from than not enough blogs to wade through. For the time being, I've got many other interests (comedy improv, public speaking, integral philosophy, art) in addition to my businesses competing for my time, and I prefer to spend my time experiencing and enjoying life - not blogging for blogging's sake.

You can monetize all kinds of blogs. Whether you do monetize a blog, and how you monetize your blog, depends on your comfort level with displaying ad codes on your websites. This get us into the "psychology of blogging."

There are bloggers who are very uncomfortable displaying advertisements on their blogs.

These bloggers come from one or more of these positions:

• They are already making a lot of money elsewhere
• They view monetizing blogs as "selling out" or degrading the quality of their work
• They don't see a need or interest in monetizing their blogs
• They are concerned about annoying blog visitors with ads

These are all very legitimate reasons.

I don't have a problem with blogs that remain staunchly ad-free, or with blogs that are clearly formatted to generate revenue for the blogger. I do have a problem with people who openly criticize all who monetize blogs because they chose not do to so. A popular marketing consultant thumbs his nose at ad-displaying blogs, yet uses his blog to promote all of his books. He gets away with it because he is linked throughout the blogosphere, and makes a lot of money from books and speaking engagements. Monetizing his blog would end up diluting his book-marketing efforts - not to mention display of competitive ads on his website.

Just because monetizing blogs isn't his strategy doesn't mean you need to buy into the idea that monetizing your blog somehow "cheapens" your content. When I'm adding value to the blogosphere, I expect to add value to my life as well. I don't need to apologize for or feel bad about getting a return for my laborious time and resource investment to share information.

Blogs can be a nice source of supplemental income for many of us.

I started monetizing my blogs for a practical purpose: I wanted enough to cover our monthly utilities. If my blogs generated at least enough to cover our gas, electricity, water, and telephone expenses, I can free up that part of my mind for other creative pursuits.

Whether you choose to make money from your blogs - or through any other means - should be entirely up to your own motivation. If you already love to write and blog, then putting ad codes on your website will not bother most people. We are already used to seeing ads on most websites.

What about the notion that putting ads on your blog degrades the quality of your blog?

Here's the cold truth: the quality of your blog deteriorates when you publish crap content, not only because you've put up an ad on your blog.

If you deduce that monetizing your blog with ads had eroded your site traffic, then you want to examine all the potential causes of this happening.

Is your content lukewarm to begin with, and your ads have increased the readability barrier of your posts?

Are your ads so intrusive that readers click off because it takes too long to get to your content? (I've done this for major news content websites that force me to wait through video ads)

Are your ads so confusing that readers leave because they are confused by how to get to your content?

The concern about "annoying visitors" with ads is valid; some text ads are less intrusive than others. I find pop-up ads or ads that take up entire pages and ads that prompt you to "click here to skip this ad" the most annoying. This is why you won't see me choosing AdBrite's "interstitial ad" option: interstitial ads are splashed across the entire site before readers can access content.

The bottom line:Don't apologize about how you choose to generate value for yourself from sharing value with the rest of the world. While we're at it, stop hanging out with people who make you feel bad about asking for value when you give value.

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