There is no one magic way to monetize your blog. You should diversify and use several different options to make money. This will tell you which options work and which ones don't. By doing this you will be able to cut out the programs that don't work and focus more heavily on the ones that do.
Every self respecting blog needs a full serving of Google Adsense to help them turn a decent profit. Sure there are plenty of alternatives to Adsense out there, but none of them pays quite as well as Google does. By doing enough research you will be quick to learn that Adsense is the main breadwinner for most of your favorite blogs.
Learn how to effectively use affiliate marketing and you will be sitting pretty for a long time. Unlike Adsense you won't make money instantly, but when you do it will come in big chunks. If your blog is the right niche, you could end up selling products that earn you $500 a pop. That is a decent amount of pocket change.
After you monetize your blog with Adsense (a content based ad system) you should team up with Kontera or Infolinks. These are both text based advertising programs. They will add a couple extra dollars to your end of the month total. These programs won't make you rich, but you might be able to buy some groceries with them.
Search based ads like Chitika are nice because you know your audience will be targeted. They have, at one time, searched for the advertisement that they are seeing. To top this off, Chitika has pictures within their ads. This draws the reader's attention to the ad and encourages a click.
Finally you can host banners on your site for monthly pay. Unfortunately this will only be profitable if you are able to draw in massive amounts of traffic. Then you can sign up with a site like BuySellAds.com and make a monthly amount from a customer.
I totally suck at monetizing my blogs but I'm trying to get more knowledge and this list helped me do just that. Thanks.
This is a great list. I use most of these already, but I'm still working on driving quality traffic in so I'll wait until I am getting more hits daily before I do anything else I think. When I'm ready, I'll know where to look for resources though. ;)
select one here...