If you've ever dreamed of making money as a blogger, look no further. While it's not rocket science to make money from a blog, it certainly doesn't seem easy in the beginning, mostly due to all the misinformation out there. Keep these 5 simple points in mind if you want get started now making money with your blog.

1. Create a Big, Popular Blog

Creating a blog that is very big and popular in its niche is certainly the most rewarding way to make money as a blogger but it's also the most difficult. Creating a big blog requires marketing, networking, and niche knowledge. It's a good route to take if you have the skills and know-how it requires. Most big bloggers make money from direct advertising and a variety of other monetization options. Promotion becomes practically unnecessary once a big blog achieves a certain level of fame. However, creating a big blog is very time-consuming and it's never certain that your efforts to build a blog will be fruitful.

2. Sell Advertising

If you build a blog in a profitable niche such as mortgage, real estate, or credit and then utilize SEO to achieve a good page rank, you can sell advertising spaces to webmasters and businesses. Webmasters and businesses are interested in buying text links from blogs with good rankings in order to improve their own site rankings. To get started in this biz, all you have to do is buy a domain with an existing page rank or build your own blog with sponsored posts. It is easy to find advertising buyers at webmaster forums like Digital Point and Warrior. Keep in mind that Google doesn't like websites selling do follow links. You should always use the no follow tag in all your advertising spaces to comply with Google Webmaster Guidelines.

3. Create a Niche Blog Made for Adsense or Affiliate Programs

In order to go this route, you simply have to set up a free blog with approximately 25-30 keyword-rich articles in your niche to start and then monetize it with affiliate programs or Google Adsense. Of course it's also important to work on your blog's SEO to improve its ranking so people searching for your target keyword terms can find it. You will only need to update the blog on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. However, profitable niches are usually saturated with blogs of this nature so in order to make a worthwhile profit you may have to make a dozen or so of these blogs across various niches.

4. Become a Contract Blogger

Rather than starting your own blog, you can also join a blog network and create content for these blogs. Some blog networks pay a base fee while others may only pay per page-view. There are also blog networks that pay a base fee in addition to revenue share. The payment methods vary from network to network. Being a contract blogger can provide you with a steady income but it is generally more lucrative in the long run to start your own blog and monetize it so you can keep all of the profits.

5. Submitting Your Blogs to "Get Paid to Blog" Websites

This method involves creating a number of niche blogs, adding content to them for a while to improve their ranking, and then submitting them to "get paid to blog" websites, which will pay you a flat fee per post. One of the perks of this method is that you aren't even required to have large amounts of traffic coming to your blog posts to make money. However, you will receive no passive income and will have to put a lot of work into updating your blogs.

As you can see, there are numerous ways to make money as a blogger. Whether you decide to focus on just one of these methods or you want to test out each one, remember that success only comes when you invest a substantial amount of time and effort into your blogs. The bloggers who are most successful at making money also have to adapt to the changing internet landscape on a constant basis in order to continue monetizing their blogs effectively.