Private Advertising

So many bloggers rely on Adsense for their earnings that they get discouraged and give up. Like I say all the time, Adsense will not pay as much as you think it will. Until you are getting like 10,000 hits a week Adsense is probably not worth getting your hopes up about.
Private advertising is definitely the way to go. You can offer text links for just $0.50 or a dollar a month when you are just starting out. If you can get 10-20 advertisers you are looking at $20 a month above what you are bringing in from Adsense. Once you are getting a lot of traffic you can charge a lot more. Like you could offer advertising for $10 a month, or a hundred dollars a year. Or if you have a spot for banners, find some other sites that may want to put those on your blog. You will find that this is by far the easiest way to make money when you are just starting out.
Where do you advertise your advertising space? I do it mostly at blog forums like Bloggeries or Bloggst. I will give you a list of blog forums to bring in traffic, and to bring in advertisers in a later post.