An article by the Wall Street Journal looks at ways popular blogs can start to 'monetize' - make some income - from their blogs, in ways that go beyond the usual affiliate links and AdSense options. Many of the more established advertising tools are now adding extra features to allow publishers to customize the appearance and placement of adverts on their sites, whereas some are also introducing new options, such as audio or video ads.

The article states that Internet advertising experts believe that the vast majority of blog publishers make less than $10 or $20 a month through advertising and the scale of any revenue from a blog is related to the volumes of traffic that a blog receives (due to marketing, popularity and relevancy), the trustworthiness of the content and how relevant the ads are to the visitors.

The piece also includes details of a new audio advertising service which the providers say has already attracted sign-ups from 25,000 publishers, who can get a 25% commission from the advertisers' charges. However, publishers also need to monitor the potential negative impact of an audio advert playing automatically to their readers and whether this will become an annoyance.

Ads within RSS feeds, or through the use of 'widgets' are also now being offered and tested by publishers who want to make the most from the effort they are putting into their blogs and the traffic that is being generated. Creativity in this field looks set to increase and bloggers are set to benefit, with those publishers who also use advertising options creatively getting a head start of their competitors.