Don't get me wrong. It is not impossible to make money with a blog - just very much harder to do so in the money niche.

Why is that so?

Firstly there is just too much competition. Unless you are a prolific writer who can research stellar articles other bloggers in your niche cannot match up to, it will be nearly impossible to get a slice of the money pie.

Secondly, readers of make money blogs are internet savvy people who are blind to ads and won't click on your affiliate link unless you are a top blogger with thousands of regular readers.

Most importantly, getting to the front of search engine results page will be an uphill climb. When your article appears on the first page of SERPs, it means an explosion of traffic as more people are exposed to your article. As a result, your blog becomes more well known.

There are over 50 million pages on making money online. What are your chances of overtaking these millions of pages, many of which are highly popular sites with tens of thousands of daily readers?

But that's not to say you can't make money blogging. Just choose a less competitive niche. If you take a look at the top money making niches, you can see there are many other possibilities you can tap into.

The most profitable niches at the moment are:

Making Money Online

Weight Loss

Quit Smoking

Credit and Credit Repair

Weight Gain and Building Muscles

Running a Home Business

Training Pets

Learning Techniques such as Memory, Speed Reading

Learning a Language

Relationships and Divorce

Gaming eg. Runescape, World of Warcraft

These will be very competitive since they are high earners. How about going even more niche? For example, instead of focussing on training pets, go more specific - training dogs. Or even more specific - training chihuahuas.

How do you know if there is a market for this niche? Use a free online keyword service such as Wordtracker or AdWords Keyword Tool and see how many searches a month there are for related keywords.

Then do a search in Google and see if there are any ads on the side of the search results. If there are many advertisers, then there must be a market.

Sometimes, the most mundane topic can be the top money earner. Guess what are some of the top paying keywords? They are loan consolidation, insurance quotes and structured settlement.

Hardly exciting topics to write about. In any case, these will be too competitive unless you manage to discover a sub niche of these profitable topics.

The ideal scenario would be to find a niche topic that you are passionate about so that writing won't become a chore. However, you will find that it may not be possible.

So ultimately, you have to decide what you want from your blog. Is it merely an online journal to document a hobby or do you want to make money with it?