By Sheryl Smolkin

My beat is pensions, benefits, personal finance and workplace issues. I enjoy writing for my blog retirementredux.com and posting to my archive website sherylsmolkin.com, but I haven’t put much effort into turning them into a source of income. However, I do write for a living and the exposure certainly helps.

However, I was fascinated by Robb Engen’s presentation at Canadian Personal Finance Conference on how he turned his blog into a profitable online business. He says one general rule of blogging is that those who get into it strictly to make money tend to fail. A blog needs to be compelling enough not just for people to want to read and share your content but to keep you motivated to continue writing. But he says blogging can be fairly lucrative if you stick with it long enough, and the truth is there are lots of bloggers who make a pretty good living online.

After reading Robb’s story, I decided to see what other bloggers had to say about ways they have parlayed their personal interest blogs into a source of income.

Canadian Opportunity is a website geared to Canada’s work at home online community. The post How to make money blogging in Canada notes that it is important to blog about something that interests you. If you’re a stay at home mom blog about parenting, provide tips to new parents or about an illness one of your children experienced. If you’re a golfer, fisherman or runner you may want to provide interesting content on these subjects. One of the most popular ways to make money on any blog is with Google Adsense. It’s free and by joining you will allow Google to place various types of advertising on your blog that will be automatically targeted to your specific audience.

How Mommy Bloggers Make Money on Canadian Family reports that some of the best (and most addictive) bloggers gain recognition by pouring their hearts out on the screen. They report from the trenches of motherhood, with humour, unabashed honesty and style. Over time, with hard work, talent and perseverance, they hone their craft and build a sizeable audience. Some bloggers decide to sell merchandise to their fans through sites such as etsy.com and cafépress.com. You can buy your favourite blogger’s artwork and crafts or get their best quotes on a mug or T-shirt to help support them (so they can continue to bring you free content).

How To Create A Profitable Blog on Retire@21 focuses more on the technical side of getting a blog up and running like selecting a domain name and installing WordPress, using Google tools and setting up RSS, email subscriptions and a sitemap. If you are still intimidated, there are many small businesses that will help you set up your blog for a nominal amount or better still, your kid or your grandkids can probably wade through the technical details in a flash.

Can you make money without selling your soul? Jeff Goins says if selling stuff makes your skin crawl, you can use a blog to build an online presence and brand and then use it to land consulting or freelance writing jobs.. He has had several people contact him about things like writing an eBook, SEO, and other topics he has blogged about.

Do you follow blogs with terrific ideas for saving money that haven’t been mentioned in our weekly “Best from the blogosphere?” Share the information with us on http://wp.me/P1YR2T-JR and your name will be entered in a quarterly draw for a gift card.