First off, should you start a blog? That depends on what you want to do and what you want to achieve. If you want to write a personal blog to keep your family updated on your life in general and that is your only objective - then by all means do it. If you want to make mountains of money from your blog right now- then maybe you should re-evaluate, I am not saying you cant make money from a blog, in fact there are many that do, check out this make money online site for beginners, this site is where you should start out! 

So I am going to assume that any of you who are reading this hub want to learn how to make money with a blog. In my opinion if that is your reason then you should start a blog because it is possible and once you are willing to work at it then it is also a realistic prospect.

Anyway, if you are looking to make money from a blog then there are a few things you need to know, this information is from my personal experience and thoughts on blogging and what I have learned so far, I started out with very little knowledge about starting a blog, and like many I started because I hoped to make money online. I started with a free wordpress blog and quickly moved to blogspot when I discovered that you can not use your free hosted wordpress blog to display adsense. (there are other options for using wordpress but I like blogspot)

This is what I have learned so far (mistakes and all!)

I am by no means an expert blogger and I have no intentions to become one, I want to make money online, period. I, like many others did a little research into "what is a blog" and came up with the following conclusions, which were wrong for my goal.

1. You post to your blog regularly and people who like what you write become your readers, which will eventually make you money
2. You make money from your blog by getting thousands of readers.
3. People will want to advertise on your successful blog and that will be your biggest source of income
4. The popularity of your blog will make you money long term
5. You can stop writing to your blog and you will still earn from it.

These ideas are what most people come up with when they research blogging. For making money with your blog they are difficult goals to achieve.
So that is exactly what I did, I started a blog, put in a huge amount of time and effort and promoted it on social sites and it worked, I got 100 readers in two weeks and yes they were real readers, they commented often and visited regularly, what they did not do was make me any money. They didn't click my ads.

I started doing more research, I started reading about pro bloggers, I subscribed to their feeds and I came to a conclusion - they work like crazy, posting every day, day in day out and they cant stop because they will not keep earning if they stop. Their blogs popularity is made up of readers, they make their money from advertisers and they work really hard to get there and eventually they do. 

This was not what I was after, I am not that good a writer, I am also flighty, I can write about something that interests me for as long as it interests me then I stop writing about it. What I wanted was to write about something and be able to leave it for a while and maybe go back and update it every now and again when I felt a bit inspired or found out something new about my topic. I wanted people to find my blog without me having to constantly promote it on social sites and without having to email out regular newsletters.

I didnt want to chase my traffic (and just as an example, my first blog is still running, I dont earn any money from it, and I post infrequently now and my traffic has all but dissappeared, but when I do post my traffic increases for a day or two - then it is gone again) I keep my blog going for a reason, because it serves a purpose to the people who have remained readers,.

These were my mistakes and from reading a little more I have found out there is a way to make your blog profitable, but you need to think a little differently from traditional blogging, it is about creating a blog that will gain targeted traffic from search engines, the type of traffic that will arrive constantly if you do it right and the type of traffic that will earn you money.

I am not going to tell you! not because I dont want to, but because this is something that I am only beginning and there are others out there that are much more qualified to show you how, people who want to help you succeed, so I am going to send you to them instead, that was the purpose of this hub, to lead you in the right direction, I do not know this guy personally  but I will recommend them for his honesty, he dosen't want your money like so many others and his information is free so check it out, maybe it will help you.

This site teaches you how to make money with adsense and is a great place to start

Oh and just so you know, I have been experimenting with one of my older blogs, about blogging as a matter of fact, using the advice from the links in this hub, I published two new posts a few weeks ago as an experiment in keyword optomized posts for a related term (not a particularly traffic heavy term though) and not only were they listed straight away, they are on page 1 for the term (for a month now), second position though, first position is Darren Rowse - problogger. Not bad for a first attempt at keyword targeting for a newbie