The number of blogs has risen from a few thousand in 2004 to hundreds of thousands today. And when anything grows at this pace there has to be a reason. And just in case if you are still guessing the reasons, then you have probably denied yourself the opportunity of making thousands of dollars with a least minimum effort.

Income Sources for bloggers:

1. Ads: This is the most common way that blogs make money. But blogs have come a long way from Adsense and BlogAds. That was a time when these were the only available options but now there are many other ways getting ads for your blogs and one of the most favored is Chitika's eMiniMalls. Others include Adgenta, Adbrite, AVN etc.

2. Sponsorships: Not many people had explored this avenue of revenue generation for blogs until recently when suddenly both, the bloggers as well as the companies realized that blogs could be an excellent way to advertise and sell their products. The sponsorships are generally on per-post basis.

3. Affiliate Programs: You can tie-up with various affiliate programs like Amazon.com, Clickbank.com, Linkshare.com etc. But these are not just the affiliates but they are just a few amongst the thousands that exist ranging from very small to very large.

4. Services: Bloggers can also make money by selling different types of stuff on their blogs or by providing services like eBooks or some courses or tele-seminars etc.

5. Writing blogs: There are people who need someone to write and post new material on their blogs regularly. If you have enough time then you can make money by writing for someone else's blog. And if you have the proper knowledge of SEO then you can make a really cool amount of money doing so.

6. Though I won't suggest you to take up this kind of earning method but recently I came across a couple of blogs that were actually making money from whatever people donated to them. They were offering eBooks and mp3s for free respectively. And well the option of how much to pay was open for visitors. You could even download stuff without paying even a penny.

7. Retailing: Of late there have been blogs that have been trying to sell merchandise too. You can find on sale objects like t-shirts, pottery, designer glassware and other stuffs like that. Though they have not seen much success, but with more publicity and better software support they are bound to become a huge success.

8. Consultancy: It is quite common for experts to start their own blogs for their own promotion but the trend has nowadays spilled over to bloggers with absolutely no background in consultancy making huge amounts of money by charging their visitors and clients in consulting business. This is more so because of the kind of reputation that they have built with their blogs. Blogs have the kind of power that can make you an expert on a certain topic overnight. Being an expert in a certain field can surely make you an overnight celebrity and quite rich too.

So guys happy blogging and money making. Hope even you now don't miss out on all these numerous money making opportunities that blogs have thrown upon us.