Recently, I pointed out that blogging can be an excellent way for people to start earning with AdSense. It takes no effort at all to get a blog up and running on Blogger and you pretty much start with one ad well blended at the top of the page.

But there's a difference between starting with AdSense and making a good income from it, and that's really the goal, right? I'm sure that most bloggers who put ads on their sites would really like to see their entries making so much money that they can kick the day job and make their living as a professional blogger. They'd be getting paid to talk about their favorite topics, and what could be better than that?

There are some people online who do exactly that. But you've got to do a lot more than put one ad at the top of your Blogger site -- however well-blended it might be -- to become a professional blogger.

First, most professional bloggers run more than one blog. They often run several. They also talk about a lot more than their families and their points of view. They give valuable information that people can use in their own lives or their businesses, and best of all, they become the center of a community in which other people swap tips and ideas. So if they're travel agents, they can write blogs that reveal how to find bargains. If they're accountants, they can warn about hidden tax liabilities.

That's valuable content aimed at a market that wants it.

And then there are the ad

You could tell readers how to choose next week's winning lottery numbers but if you don't have ad units in the best places on the page and showing the sorts of ads your users will want to click, you won't get a penny from the winnings. You'll have to know how to make sure AdSense is serving the ads you want to receive. You'll have to know how to make those ads stand out while still blending in. And you'll have to know how to follow your stats so that you can leap on a drop in earnings as soon as it happens.

It's a combination of creating valuable content, smart AdSense strategy and a good knowledge of Internet marketing too. Just get that -- and it's really not too hard -- and you can be a professional blogger too.