How to Make Money with a Blog?

A blog is a web logo or journal, edited online, which has the objective to post useful or relevant information related to specific topics. A Blog can include the author´s thoughts and opinions or it can advertise products and services. Having a blog is a good way to promote a business, to post announcements to costumers or updates about your products or services.
Nowadays, there are many entrepreneurs that have a Site or a Business Blog, while many others are trying to make money with their blogs.
There are a few ways to earn some extra income with a blog, they are: Advertising and Content.
Advertising is a huge market, you can earn money selling advertising space in your Blog, for example, with text link adds, with a Google Adsense account or selling advertising space directly to advertisers. Most successful Blogs make a big share of their revenue selling advertising space. To make a good income out of advertising you will need a good Google Page Rank, and most important of all, traffic, often measured by Alexa Toolbar.
Another way to monetize your Blog that I like to include in Advertising is trough Affiliate Marketing. You can sell products or services in your Blog. The most known Affiliate Programs online are Amazon and Clickbank. You can sell products trough your Blog and earn a percentage of it´s price. You can also refer new members to the company and earn money each time they buy or refer new Affiliates. Affiliate Marketing is also a vast field, there are many companies offering this type of programs. You can find Affiliate Programs for books, software, cameras, PCs, clothes, etc.
To make money with your Blog´s content you will need to have some writing skills. If you like writing articles, reviewing Sites, services or products, you can make some extra income with your blog´s content. To achieve this you´ll need to write good content and be able to make good reviews. If you think you´ve got what it takes to follow this path, there are some Sites that pay you to post sponsored reviews or to blog, like Pay Per Post, Review me, Sponsored Reviews, etc. If you have writing skills don´t forget to submit your articles to Article Directories, like Article Alley, to get some more exposure and traffic.
To be really successful with a Blog you will need traffic.
The best way to get it is having search engine´s traffic. The basic step is to submit your blog to the main search engines. To get a big amount of traffic you´ll need to post about hot topics, things people want to know or are searching for. It´s not easy to post on hot topics, to find them first you´ll need to do some research.
One good way to get some more traffic is to join Blog Communities and Blog Directories. It´s also useful to post in Forums, specially related to your blog´s theme or niche. They´ll be a big help in bringing some traffic to your blog.