While using Adsense to monetize your blog is an easy and no-brainer option, it won't earn you huge amounts of money compared to other revenue streams.  Glancing at the money that is brought in by selling advertising space on premium websites can make any blogger drool, but this is one area of income that you will have to work for.

You can sell almost any space on your website.  The most common type of space sold on blogs is currently the 125 pixel box, which tends to fit nicely into most blog template sidebars and looks neat and attractive.

You can choose to sell your advertising space independently, by deciding how much you want to charge for each location (e.g. homepage header, sidebar box, or footer).  The advantages to running your own advertising sales include:

• you get to decide what you site space is worth
• you have complete control over every aspect of implementation and appearance
• you get to choose your advertisers
• you get to keep 100% of all revenue

The disadvantages are:

• you have to work hard to find and attract suitable advertisers
• you have to convince potential advertisers that it is worth paying your rate
• You may have to keep and supply detailed statistics about your site
• You will need to sort out invoicing for each advertiser
• you will have to manually add and remove adverts

The second option is to sign up with an advertising network such as Project Wonderful or BuySellAds that can manage your available advertising real estate for you.  You get to keep most of the advantages mentioned above, without the hassle of the disadvantages.

In most cases, the service is free to sign up for, and they take a small percentage of your earnings.  In return, they will manage almost every aspect of your advertising space sales, letting you concentrate on blogging.  You add a code to your site, complete a profile of your blog for advertisers to view and sit back and let the company do the rest.

Depending on which company you choose to work with,  you may be able to set a price for each advertising location, or advertisers might tell you what they are willing to pay.  Some sites also run a bidding war on ad placements, so that as long as your site grows in popularity so should your income from your advertising space.

If this sounds too good to be true to the new blogger, here is the catch:  your blog must have a significant level of traffic before you can leverage money by selling your advertising space.  Why would a company pay to appear on a page that no-one visits? 

Design a nice looking and fast loading blog, fill it with great content, promote it, and then consider selling ad space.

Some companies are pickier than others when it comes to accepting your blog into their program, and most encourage you to re-apply at a later date if you are turned down, so don't despair if you get a few rejections.

Top Tip for this money maker:

• Take a genuine interest in how well your ads are performing and go the extra mile to promote your advertisers.

A Word of Caution:

• Don't even attempt to sell adspace on your site until you have finalized a design you are happy with, and have a good level of traffic to offer advertisers.