Read this if you have a blog and want to squeeze more out of it.
If you’re still new to the blogging community start off with this guide from Supernoobice.

1. Search Engine Optimization:
Titles and URLS:
The more relevant the URL, the more easier it is to read both by visitors and the search engine crawlers. Change your permalink structure from the default value of strings and numbers (say index.html=?123asya32) to something more search engine friendly like: /%postname%/%year%/%day%/%month%/

Links:
Linking is a good way of increasing your page rank. The more links you have, the better. You can ask friends to link to your site. If you have the time, going to forums is a good way to increase your site rank. So long as you keep a link to your blog in your signature and you stay active people are going to divert to your site every so often. Another path would be to spread your links with other bloggers.

Use TAGS for META keywords to help crawlers to your site?s content and add them to the appropriate category using plugins like Ultimate Tag Warror and All in One SEO

2. Optimize landarea for Ads:
Download a theme with sufficient area for your content and the advertisements you are planning to put in. It?s good to decide, at this point which you?ll want to prioritize in terms of attention. Would you want your ads to stand out, squeezing the most profit possible (risky)? Or would you provide more site mass for your content?

As a check list when looking for a theme, refer to these items:
A color and font theme that reflects what your site is and stands for:
This one that you should really pay attention to since it?s more than an aesthetic thing.

Widget ready:
Widgets are a must. They provide so much interactivity that they make blogging fun.

Adsense ready (Optional):
Optional because the layout of the ads will depend on your personal preference; would you like ads to be visible within your posts? Or just the sidebars and extremities of the page?

Sidebars (Optional):
Optional because you can opt for a short and concise site and do away with site navigation on the sidebars all together or add more links and widgets to display contents.

Choose where ads are placed. Just like real estate, location is everything. Here?s a few tips from google to help you in ad placement and formatting them: Adsense tips

To sum up all these here is a good example of one that is optimized for SEO: Prosense

3. Choose primary advertising:
Adsense:
Google?s advertising machine. It?s probably the best one available to us but you have to make it work.

YPN:
Yahoo?s bid is VERY similar to Adsense and provides and option for RSS advertising. YPN however isn?t the same contextual system that google has because of yahoo?s ties with other major companies.

AdBrite:
unlike the other major advertising agents, adbrite sells links. Instead of having the linking exchanged with another link, you get cash

Kanoodle:
It?s uncontextualized like YPN but I guess it?s best selling point is it?s longer experience with RSS advertising.

In conjunction with these major providers you can also use:

Kontera:
Kontrera highlights particular keywords and shows a textbox ad instead of Googles ad units. If you haven?t customized the look of your site (ergo links still have their underlines), Kontrera?s ads will still stand out because they have an additional dotted line. The adbox is fully customizable. What I like about Kontrera is that the ads are relevant to the keyword and it?s unobtrusive, not like a huge banner blinking at the top of a page. A disclaimer though, in order to sign up, your site needs about 150,000 page views a month.

Chitika:
Chitika works similar to Kontera although instead of an adbox, you get an eye-catching ?eMiniMall? with items up for sale. The eMiniMall has a brief description of the product and a listing of Best Deals. By default, the links are contextualized, although you can turn it off to abide Adsense?s TOS.

Context Cash:
Again highlighted keywords but the links they bring up directly to affiliated sites.

Text Link Ads: Text Link Ads work a bit differently in the sense that you don?t get PPC but rather a fixed amount of cash per month. You can set the price on your account and TLA will serve as the middleman and sell it to advertisers.

4. Choose secondary source of income:

PayperPost:
PPP is a good way to enter the realms of posts to money business why? Because you need only to post a review, one that?s asked for in the market place, and you get cash. The price ranges from $5.00 to $500 depending on the requirements and the topic. An advisory precaution though, some people are complaining about the quality of the works posted for PPP. Because the requirements can be quite low (100 words = $5.00 mostly), most of the time the articles around you aren?t as good as you?d expect. For a beginner it?s a good way to earn money but please try to refrain from copying bad habits.

ReviewMe:
Works like PPP but the posts passes through stricter quality control. I like the service simply because it?s not just about the money. If wanted to read about a review you before try something out and don?t know where to look, ReviewMe is the best choice.

Squidoo: From the description on their site it looks like the same with ReviewMe and PPP although I was seeing some posts that say it wasn?t. Well anyway, for me, the good selling point for squidoo is that you can divert your earnings to charity.

5. Getting Traffic to your site:
Advertising:
The saying ?You need money to earn money? goes well with this method. You can advertise with the providers on the section above to divert traffic to your site. I don?t know exactly how much you should spend on this since I haven?t (and probably won?t for a LONG time)tried it but it?s a recurring advise from sites with ?Getting traffic? as their topics.

Reciprocal Linking:
(read Links in 1.)

Offline marketing:
Word of mouth, flyers, newspaper ads (does anyone still read newspapers?)

The blogsphere:
Making lots of friends seems a bit childish but it?s an easy way of directing people to your site. ?Blog-hopping? and posting comments that link back to your site is sure to attract attention. You can also try Social Networking services but you need the next item:

Content:
Write quality content. There?s nothing that?s going to beat a well-thought out series of posts like reviews, tips and whatnot. Even if you get readers trickling to your site, sooner or later, their numbers will increase because they will keep coming back for more and spread the word.

Thanks to Joel Comm for his wonderful books about earning cash online.