The topic of monterazing blogs has created a frenzy on the Internet. There's webinars, ebooks, audio guides, blog seminars, and consultants who specialize in showing you how to rake in the big bucks. As a result, people are singing up for free blogs and throwing up ads awaiting fistfulls of money.

The typical return? $.10 here and there. Because of the slow pay-outs and frustrating ability to generate any real revenue, many blogs are fly by night and simply expire out of boredom and not being able to rake up a dollar.

But there are real and innovative ways to monetarize a travel blog without waiting for your dimes to add up to a $100 pay-out fee. But it takes more than just signing up for affiliate programs and hoping for the best.

Blogging

First and foremost, you have to blog. That seems like a dumb suggestion, but if you're not interested in blogging and only have hopes of people clicking on your google ads, then you're not going to get very far. You need fresh, interesting content that people will actually want to read about.

Start a niche. Anyone can write about hotel deals or travel trends but few tap into a specialized market for what they're writing about. Instead of just writing about hotel deals, write about hotel deals for families with toddlers, paranormal haunts, swingers, best hotels under $70, just divorced... the list goes on.

Register your own url. I've read that many people dislike Blogger because it limits design and layout abilities. I can understand that school of thought, but I personally like Blogger because it's simple to post, I like its interface, and you don't have to pay hosting. You can also register your own url and have it point to Blogger.

Design your blog. I admit Blogger's pre-designed templates leave something to be desired, but they certainly work. However, I wanted something more. I wanted people to come back to my blog and recognize my banner and overall look and create a certain brand identify for my work. I didn't want it getting lost in a sea of generic blogs. After a few minutes of googling, I discovered a company called Blogs Gone Wild that create blog skins. For an extremely reasonable fee, I had my template designed and installed into Blogger in less than a week. They also patiently helped me figure out a few things since I was relatively new to blogging.

Mind the blog. You need to be creating content 3-6 times a week to make people actually want to read it. Most people's style is to post short entries and put up several entries a day so it's new not just a few times a week, but a few times each day. Others like to post long, investigative entries that cover an exhaustive list of resources. That's okay too. Just create your own personal style and stick with it.

Submit Your Blog

Make sure and submit your blog to all the search engines you can, post on other people's blogs to spread the word, and send out emails to all your friends and family to get a buzz going. You can also submit individual posts to Blog Carnivals which is very effective in generating interest.

Adsense

Adsense is probably one of the easiest ad systems to set up and it seems just about 99.99% of blogs run them. (Chances are you're sick of reading about how to use Adsense because everyone covers it -- but there might be something new you've never considered here). Here's how it works: You need a google account, you give them your info, and install. Blogger actually has a widget to put ads on your blog with a simple click and even lets you customize the size and color. For a few days, Adsense will run PSA ads on your blog while you're getting approved. So if anyone were to click on those ads, you wouldn't receive any revenue from it. After your blog is approved, Adsense 'reads' your posts and runs relevant ads. Keep in mind it's against the rules to give incentives to your readers to click. For example, you can't request that your readers click, and likewise Adsense has some fancy software so it knows what's going on. So if your Mom is trying to help out by clicking on your ads 1,000 times in a row, chances are your account will get suspended.

Adsense now allows you to create your own unique video players through YouTube. You can design your own players to run right on your site and enter keywords so the video content matches what you write about. If you enter "cheap travel" into their keyword box, it will generate likeminded material. However, you don't earn money when people click to watch the videos, instead, you do earn when people click on the ads running on the players.

Tripadvisor.com

I've been using Tripadvisor for years, it's a great way to read real reviews of hotels and lodging before you go, along with suggestions on what to do while there. It's saved me a lot of headache, skipping on places that were cheap and cheap for a reason. Other accommodations I would have missed out but tried because of stellar reviews at Tripadvisor. And best of all, their affiliate program lets you search for specific cities, attractions, and hotels on their site and then generate html right for your blog. When someone clicks, you earn. I like their system because you can choose from a variety of banners reflecting your interests: Hotel deals, Honest reviews, Rates, and more. They can even generate plain text for email campaigns. You can read more information about TripAdvisor and get the latest through the button right below this paragraph:

Get Paid to Blog

In the early days of blogging, advertisers didn't seem to take the cute little online diaries too seriously but kept a watchful eye on the trend to see what might happen. These days, advertisers will pay you to post, even if you have a poor Google ranking (though you can make much more with a higher ranking). Many bloggers are up in arms about the idea of getting paid to post and feel it compromises the integrity of their blogs. I think this is true within reason. If you have a travel blog and are accepting assignments to blog about something completely irrelevant to your site like tech software, then your readers are going to notice and think you're a hack. But if you accept an assignment to post about digital cameras and work it into an interesting and worthwhile entry that relates to a travel topic, then why not?

Most of pay-per-post companies even encourage you to give an honest review. The idea is the advertisers get links and an Internet buzz from higher bloggers. Most companies require you to link to the advertiser at least 3x, have 3 paragraphs and a minimum of about 300 words. Keep in mind your assignments can be few and far in between and its more successful 'posties' have several blogs going at once. However, if you're just uncomfortable with the assignments or don't want to blog for $5 - $15, you can always post an affiliate ad and earn as much as $15 when someone signs up. Here are some companies to get you started:

Pay-Per-Post - pays bloggers to post, more difficult process of getting accepted in the program. You need a blog at least 90 days old.

Blogvertise - Easy interface

Smorty - Usually required a higher Google page ranking than most blogs generate.

Hubpages - Easy to use, fun, automated revenue capsules for even more earning potential.

Hotels By City - This company is about hotels and a great way to blog strictly about travel. They also have a separate affiliate program where you can earn $10 everytime someone books a hotel through their site as a result of clicking through from your site.

Sell Ebooks

You can write and sell your own travel ebooks or sell someone elses for profit. Clickbank.com offers plenty of ebook resources in every category. First, sign up for Clickbank, then search the marketplace for ebooks you'd like to sell. Clickbank allows you to create a "hoplink" which you paste onto your site for customers to click on to access information on the ebook. This hoplink is embedded with a special code to track your sales. When someone clicks on that link and purchases the ebook, you receive a commission. The author of each ebook offers varying commissions, but usually offer competitive rates to entice bloggers to promote their books -- you can earn as much as 90% of the retail price.

AIG

AIG is an established insurance company which also sells travel insurance. Most travel related sites and blogs address travel insurance at some point and if you have a decent readership who values what you say, you can easily earn up to $16 everytime someone buys a policy through your site. Travel insurance is also a must-have for any traveler to stay protected, so you're doing your audience a favor by encouraging everyone to use it.

Travel Search Engines

Virtually every travel site has an affiliate program. Each pays-out an average of $10 per booking, sometimes more depending on the company. There's an exhaustive list floating around on the Internet that will make you dizzy and would turn this entry into a rather boring book, so start googling travel affiliates and pick and choose what represents your interests.

Outside Advertising

You don't have to wait for online advertisers to approve your affiliate programs to generate revenue. If you're blogging about travel gadgets, head down to the travel store in your neighborhood and ask if they would be interested in renting 'space' on your blog. They can give you a jpeg and you in turn can add it to your site. For blogger, I use their 'add html' widget. This is found in the Template section under Add a Page Element. I then upload the jpeg of the advertiser I want to use to photobucket.com. Photobucket takes that jpeg and generates html for me to add the picture or video to my site. So if I wanted to host a picture, I can add their html to my 'add html' widget and the jpeg magically appears on my blog.

However, if someone clicked on that image, it would send them to photobucket.com. My way around that is to change the html that photobucket generated for me myself. I find where the photobucket.com link is within the text and change it to mytravelstore.com or whatever the advertiser's link may be. After I've accomplished this, I can click on the image and am then taken to mytravelstore.com instead of photobucket.

Barter

Who says you can't barter for travel? Consider contacting a B&B or privately owned Inn, tours, galleries, and travel gadget makers. Find out if you can barter ad space and reviews for discounted or free accommodations and products. If a room is lying empty, why wouldn't they want the free advertising in exchange?

Offer Other Services

You can make money doing more than just running ads. Don't forget to offer your own services, too. Create itineraries, advice, consult to travel professionals, write an ebook, sell your goods, offer tours, and more. Set a reasonable fee keeping in mind that the public at large doesn't really know you. So offer testimonials, giveaway offers, and build a relationship with repeat clients.

Create an Audio Guide

Even if you don't have the gift of gab, you can easily create your own audio guides, turn them into mp3's and sell them right on your site. You can even offer a few minutes of audio as introductory teasers for free. So if you're an expert on finding the best deals on Tuscan villas, tours of underground New York, or family travel -- offer a guide for purchase. You can even create recurring podcasts for free where you then advertise your subscription based guides for sale at the end.

Be Selective

If you're going to try to sell hotels, you don't really need to sign up with 50 different affiliate programs. Try sticking with a few that have the highest payouts and concentrate on promoting them instead of overwhelming yourself and fragmenting your attention. You also want your readers to recognize what you're selling. While I do think it's fine to have a few ads that may not specifically relate to your site for your own personal and professional reasons, remember to consider your audience. Because if you bombard them with everything from books to cameras to hotels to airfare to 100 different affiliate programs, they're going to lose the ability to see what it is you're really selling. Instead, concentrate not just what will make you money, but what your readers need. You don't want your blog looking like the ad inserts in the Sunday paper.

Final Thoughts

My overall philosophy is start small and think big. Do your research and start trying different programs and placement on your blog and see what happens. Remember that blogging is a job, you can't make money just by setting up ads, you have to experiment and keep writing and thinking of new ideas. At the end of the day, just make sure your content is interesting and innovative enough to attract readers and hopefully clicks on your ads.