Making money online is not easy. My thoughts of even getting into the niche are dwindling by the day. But then again on second thought, it is possible to make money online even if you don’t sell things. Google is actually moving towards capturing a huge market share in the online advertisements arena, and Google Adsense is the key. There is one thing I did notice while doing research on earning money online: Paid blogging is lucrative.

Imagine owning your own site selling links in the online market. PayPerPost has over 40,000 publishers on their database. Probably 30% are active – imagine how much money you could make by just selling sponsored posts? SponsoredReviews on the other hand charges a 35% commission on each sponsored post – meaning that when you complete a post at $100, $35 goes to them. Google dislikes all these sites selling links – their excuse is that it infringes their Terms of Service when it comes to Page Rank .

When there’s a will, there’s always a way to make money online. What ways do you make money online?

Since I started blogging in September 2007, I’ve seen people pushing Google Adsense saying how much money they have made using this very simplistic way of monetization. However, I notice many A-list bloggers have begun to throw Adsense out the window and start selling their own ads.

For example, John Chow from JohnChow.com now makes about $7,000 on his private ads sale which is 12 times more than what he was earning from Adsense years ago. Darren Rowse from Problogger.net, apparently a “pro” Adsense blogger, had ditched Adsense for his own private ads sale. TechCrunch.com is the champion of them all. Their private ad sales have surpasses many A-list bloggers. Each 125×125 box is selling for $10,000 per month.

What is your preference when it comes to advertising?