There are many ways that you can monetize your blog. As an affiliate marketer, you can take advantage of these different programs and use them to make more money with very little effort other than promoting your blog.

The goal here is to do the work one time and get paid over and over. Thus, you are leveraging your time to earn more money.

The best thing about using most of these systems is that once you set it up, you don't have to hassle with it anymore except to make a few tweaks to get more from your ads.

To properly monetize your blog, you need to know a little HTML. Don't let this scare you though; it's really a little more than cut and paste.

Also, once you've added your ads to your blog, make sure you preview your blog in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. About 35 percent of users online now use Firefox, and if your blog is hard to read, these readers will click away.

Finally, read the guidelines for each ad program to see what you can and can't do. You don't want to violate the terms of service and lose that stream of revenue.

Now, here is a list of my favorite ways to monetize your blog:

1. Contextual Ads.

This can include Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher, Amazon or any other type of ad program that use the content of the site to decide what kind of ads to display. These ads are pay per click, which means that whenever anyone clicks the ad, you get paid.

Remember two things here: placement of your ads, and context. If your blog is displaying ads unrelated to your content, then you need to find out why. It's no good to display these kinds of ads on your blog if they're the wrong ads.

(Wordpress offers a plugin for integrating these types of ads into your site. There are also tons of themes available on the internet that are contextual ad friendly, and you can use these themes instead of the basic themes sites like Blogger and Wordpress.com offer.)

2. Affiliate Program Ads.

These ads are usually non contextual ads, and you can use them to complement your contextual ad program. Also, ads displayed can be pay per lead, pay per click, or pay per sale.

Pay per lead usually means that the person has to successfully sign up for something. Pay per sale means the person has to buy something for you to get a commission.

You can find ad programs that display Clickbank, Ebay, $7 Ebooks, Chitika, and just about any program you can imagine.

If you host your own Wordpress blog, then you can find tons of plugins to help you add both contextual and non contextual ads. Plugins include: Kolimbo, Google Adsense, Chitika, A Links, Ebay, Bidvertiser, and PrestoGifto, which allows you to add Cafe Press ads.

I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones I've tried.

3. Write reviews.

You can write reviews on affiliate program products and services related to your blog.

What's important about writing a good review is that you tell the reader something about the product he/she might not know. Also, it's a good idea to have some experience with the product.

Tell the reader about the results from using the product. It also doesn't hurt to mention anything bad about the product. This makes your review sound more genuine than if you simply write a glowing review.

You don't want to write a product review on a bad product and then have it come back on you.

4. Build an affiliate program.

Scripts like Viral Profit Machine allow you to share some of your revenues with your readers who refer others to your site.

Although you may lose a little upfront in commissions, you'll gain a lot more money on the backend, you'll raise your search engine rankings, and you'll make more money from the referrals.

Again, this is a situation where you'll need to host your own blog, but it's definitely worth it.

If the thought of building your own blog makes you cringe, you have a couple of choices.

First, you can buy web hosting that offers Fantastico. This system will install content management scripts for you like Drupal and Wordpress with the click of a button.

You can also outsource your blog setup. Just go to a site like Elance and post a proposal.

Ultimately, it's better to spend a little money getting the work done than pulling your hair out.

Another solution is to sign up with an account with Blogger and remotely host your blog.

Understand that you'll earn a lot more money from your blog if you host it yourself. By owning your own domain and having paid hosting, visitors will take you more seriously and consider you to be more of a professional.