I just finished reading your post about how one is unlikely to earn significant money from a blog (http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/04/21/8-reasons-why-you-wont-make-money-from-your-blog/).  I generally agree with what you say, but I’ve also noticed that you’ve mentioned in other posts that you now make a substantial amount (maybe most?) of your income from your blog.

I understand that you’ve built the blog, its readership base, and your professional reputation up over the years to get to the point you’re at now, and I know you have other businesses as well, but my questions is: how do you actually make money from your blog?  What is the mechanism through which you earn?

I’d like to set up a blog or two, mostly for my own creative outlet, but it wouldn’t hurt if I was able to eventually earn a small side income from it.  How does one go about doing it?  Just enabling Google Ads or going out and courting ad companies to get them to plaster their sponsorship all over your page?

I don’t like the idea of ads on my blog (or at least “over-commercializing” it) and would rather not put too many on there, but I don’t understand the underlying business dynamics of how one makes money with a blog otherwise.  You don’t appear to have any ads on your blog, and in the above article you’ve even mentioned how you dislike them, as well; so how does one go about generating (even the tiniest) income from a blog, website, or writing/media platform if not with ads?  I don’t think I understand the underlying business model here or the revenue-generating alternatives that exist in the internet world.