Blogging is all the rage at the moment, and its popularity will continue to surge. Its free, easy and fun to do. But suddenly theres an even better reason to start your own blog - making money blogging is now possible. Its not difficult to make money from blogging, and this article will give you a few pointers to help you get started.

Firstly you want to sign up to a good blogging host. Blogspot (http://www.blogspot.com) is a Google-run host, and wonderful for beginners. Wordpress (http://www.Wordpress.com) is another free host, and because of its design flexibility is considered preferable to blogspot by many advanced marketers. Typepad (http://www.typepad.com) is a paid service which offers a very slick product.

Secondly, you have to decide what your blog will be about. You have two main choices here. The first is to write about a subject youre passionate about and generate a cult reading audience. The second is to be somewhat calculating and pick a niche subject you know would be lucrative for advertisers (e.g. the latest games console).

The advantage to the first method is that you can post passionately, regularly and with great ease. You wont have to contrive your prose. The downside is that it could take a while to build your audience, but if you do succeed in this, then youll have a set fan base for the life of the blog.

The advantage to the second method is that it is easier to target a niche group of people and drive traffic to your blog by frequenting their likely hangout (e.g. if your blog is on flower arranging, then you could hit the appropriate forums with a link to your blog in your signature). The downside to this method is that you will have to write good posts on the subject, so if youre not familiar with it, then it will require research and perseverance.

Now you have a blog and youve chosen what to write about. The third step is to monetise your blog. Making money blogging is dependent on incorporating two main monetisation methods into your blog. The first method is to use affiliate links, advertising products relative to your niche (e.g. an ebook on flower arranging). The second is to insert Google Adsense text advertising onto the template of your blog.

Affiliate products can be sourced at popular sites such as Clickbank (http://www.Clickbank.net) or Commission Junction (http://www.cj.com). By inserting a simple link to the product you are affiliating for, you will be entitled to a healthy commission any time someone purchases the product after being directed to it through your link.

Google Adsense is Googles own advertising programme. After signing up for a free account (http://www.google.com/adsense), you will be given a snippet of code. If you go to your blog account and open up the Source page, you can paste in the code in the relevant spot and Google adverts will start running on the page. Every time a visitor clicks on a Google advert, you will get paid a sum of money, based on what advertisers value the click to be worth.

Making money blogging really is easy in technical execution, so much so that even a relative technophobe could do it. The real key is to attract enough targeted traffic to your blog on a regular basis to ensure that youre getting the hits on your affiliate links and Google Adsense advertising. Youll find plenty of advice on how to charge traffic to blogs through internet forum searches. Just be persistent and display a willingness to learn.

Finally, ensure you dont lose potential visitors by short-changing them with your blogs content. Content truly is king, and if you want to develop a solid fan base of visitors to solidly monetise your blog, then you have to give them good material.

Making money blogging is the best way to dip your toe in the internet marketing waters. It is absolutely free to do, and if you become proficient at it, then there is no reason why you cant be making many hundreds of dollars a month, if not four figures. And if youve successfully done it once, you can successfully do it again with another blog. Rinse, repeat and watch your online income double.