Three essential components are required to be paid to blog. Content. Traffic. Monetization Plans.

In general terms is not a great idea to signup for a shared revenue blogging network or to start a blog at a free blogging network. Invest a few dollars in a good domain and web hosting service and start a professional blog in a matter of hours instead.

Once signed up for web hosting it's quite simple to set up a professional looking blog through the control panel. Most web hosting companies offer "one click installers" to get a blog up and running in a matter of minutes. You should be able to enquire about how to do this through support.

The next step is making the blog look unique. In the WordPress (blog software) control panel select themes and browse through the different looksto choose one that suits the overall atmosphere of the blog. Most of the time to change to a new theme all we have to do is select it in the control panel and activate it.

You will also find a "plug-ins" navigation panel in WordPress. Plug-ins are special additions to the blog that all our unique features without technical knowledge. These special features can include automatic advertisement placement -- much like on Hub Pages and thousands of other additions. Don't get too caught up in this section. It's best to keep the blog looking as simple as possible to make it as accessible as possible to users and search engines. 

Content

Now that you've got your blog up and running it's time to create some content. You'll need to create a lot of content at first. It takes 60 or more unique articles before a blog begins receiving significant search engine traffic.

Traffic

The secret of obtaining traffic is creating more content. This is the most important SEO tactic there is. I also recommend doing some research on:

• Submitting a Google site map
• Submitting the blog to the most popular search engines
• Submitting the RSS feed to news sites
• Installing a free automatic SEO plug-in from the WordPress plug-ins menu
• Joining and using social networking sites such as StumbleUpon

I have about 200 articles at one of the blogs I write atand this blog receives about 2000-3000 unique visitors from search engines each month. However it receives about 6000-8000 unique visitors from the social network called StumbleUpon.

Remembered that a percentage of those visitors become repeat readers and subscribers. So don't be too concerned about the actual number of new unique visitors. The number of repeating visitors is just as important.

Monetisation plans

Once the blog has at least a few hundred unique visitors per week it's time to create a monetisation plan.

Google adsense

Google adsense works in much the same set up as here on Hub Pages. You'll be able to have full control of the placement and format that advertisements appear in however. Even in keeping that in mind I still find I make around the same amount from blogging that I do from Hub Pages.

So don't be under the impression that it's possible to make much more from blogging than on Hub Pages. It is possible to make more if we write hubs and blog posts at the same time. The cumulative profits become higher. But the bottom line is that it all comes back to content and how could that content is -- irrespective of where it is published. Of course traffic is also important. The more traffic a hub or a blog post receives -- the higher the revenue from advertising.

Using Referral programs

Referral programs on the other hand tend to do better on blogs than on paid-to-write sites like Hub Pages. The reason for this is that we have more space on a blog to place theme-relevant affiliate links on the sidebar. For example if the entire blog is about cars then an affiliate link to do with selling cars can be placed on the sidebar of all pages across the entire blog. Each time a car is sold affiliates might be paid a few percent of the sale.

In the experience I've had we do not need to refer more than a few dozen people a month to be paid a decent amount of cash. There are a number of referral programmes offering hundreds of dollars per referral -- the profits stack up as traffic and content grows. To find referrals I recommend using a commission networks such as CommissionJunction or ClickBank -- when choosing a good referral program from these networks keep in mind that the product being referral should be --

• Related to the entire content of the blog
• Profitable per referral
• Good product
• Not difficult to promote
• Doesn't come across as "spam"

Selling a Service

One other good option for bloggers is selling a personalised service or freelancing. Most individuals who start a blog to do so with extensive knowledge in a particular field. It's not difficult to begin offering consulting services to readers depending on what the topic of the blog is. Most consultants in the modern world get paid $80 per hour and a higher -- sometimes a lot higher. So obtaining even half a dozen clients per week still accumulates to a few thousand dollars in revenue each month.

Of course some topic areas are much easier to cater to than others. Some topics will just not be suited towards selling a service -- while others will be perfect for it. Consider the context and whether it's something readers would be interested in.