Today it seems that everybody has a blog and spends part of their day and week blogging away. Many people have more than one blog, and some even have dozens. But the truth is that few people really have mastered the concept of making money from their blog. If you want to learn how to earn money from your own blogging, you need to be aware of all of your options and the best routes that you can take.

The first way that you can make money from blogging is if you are running the blog to promote another website, or to promote your primary business. In this case, the blog itself isn’t really a money maker. Instead, it’s driving traffic to your other online presence. Whether you provide a service, sell products or are merely trying to find new prospects, the blog is being used as a promotional tool.

In this case, you want to make sure that your blog is driving a good deal of traffic to your website, and the traffic that it provides is as highly targeted as possible. Write about the latest trends and news in your industry, honest comparisons of product and service options, tips and best practices and more. Don’t forget to use keyword rich anchor text in links back to your own site, to help boost its rankings.

If you’re blog is a standalone presence not meant to promote another website or business, then you have to consider monetization strategies for it directly. One of the most popular remains the quick and easy to use Google Adsense. With Adsense, you will be displaying relevant text, image and video ads based either around the content that you display, or the user’s browsing history, depending on the options you select for your account.

While click through rate and earnings are supposed to be higher when they are based on user’s browsing history, many individuals prefer content relevant ads based on what they are talking about. If they are bringing in highly targeted traffic, then the ads will be matched to the interests of that traffic regardless of their previous browsing patterns.

In addition to Adsense though, there are a variety of other tools and services that you can use to help monetize your presence. With a program like Chitika, you can display very targeted and interactive ads to your search engine traffic. The ads are designed to produce much higher click through rates than Adsense, as they highlight the user’s actual search phrase on the ad itself.

You can also directly display either Amazon or eBay products on your blog pages. This is very useful for product review blogs, or blogs dealing with specific kinds of products that can be purchased. Both of these affiliate programs have widgets and tools you can use, and there is a wide range of interactive programs you can purchase to work with these to have more feature-rich capabilities.

There are of course other ways you can monetize your web traffic. There are affiliate programs such as Commission Junction, information products on Click Bank, pay per view or impression ad services and more. Be sure to consider your options and don’t forget to distinguish between a blog that promotes another website or business, and a standalone blog that only exists for itself.