Even a blog that makes sense may only make cents.

Write a blog, sign up for Google AdWords, sell a few banner ads and watch the money roll in, right? Wrong. Bringing hundreds of thousands of visitors to your site doesn’t mean that you’ll be depositing hundreds of thousands of dollars into your bank account. There’s more to it than great content.

In his post “Blog Money: The Income Outlook for 2009,” Brian Clark, Executive Editor of Copyblogger (a must-read blog), share ways to make your blog make more money.

1. Direct Sales. As I’ve said many times, having something to sell directly to your audience is ideal. Even more ideal is to sell something your audience has told you—directly or indirectly—that they want to buy. E-books, booklets and videos may be just what your readers want.

2. Affiliate Marketing. The next best thing to having your own product or service is to sell someone else’s stuff on commission. In fact, it’s smart to see what your audience will buy via affiliate marketing before you commit to developing your own product or offering your own service. Great advice.  Why waste money developing and packaging a product that no one will buy?

3. Network Marketing. Applied online, it’s really just a tiered version of affiliate marketing. And as with affiliate marketing, you’d better genuinely believe in the product or service if you’re going to become an advocate for it. This reminds me of Amway and how I finally started questioning why friends I hadn’t heard from in years were interested in having me over for dinner.  Little did I know that they were serving a sales pitch for dessert.