* Update #2 - Darren Rowse chimes in!

* Update #1 - Shoemoney provides his valuable insight.  

I thought I would put a little spin on your typical "Interview with a Blogger". Instead of asking one blogger a bunch of irrelevant questions, I thought it would be fun ask a BUNCH of high-profile bloggers ONE good question. In this first post of my new Ask A Pro feature, I reached out to some well known bloggers and asked them the following question:

What generates the most revenue from your blog?

I am still waiting for Shoemoney, Darren Rowse, Maki, and a few others to get back to me. I am sure I will be hearing from them at any moment. John Chow called me personally and gave me his insightful remarks. Ok...that's not totally true. John Chow's comments are from a recent post about his Blog Income Strategy (I hope he doesn't mind me quoting him). The remaining comments, however, truly are from the lips (keyboards) of some names you might recognize.

* Darren Rowse - "In terms of income stream it's private advertising/sponsorships. In the bigger picture - it's only possible to generate significant private advertising deals if you have a significant level of traffic and a brand that people want to align their brands with. In order to get this you need to offer your readers something that is unique and useful to them. This will mean something different for each blog - but for ProBlogger what I offer is daily posts on how to improve their blogs mixed with a little inspiration and news that is relevant to bloggers."

* Shoemoney - "I would say readers generate the most revenue from my blog." D'oh! I guess I should not have been so vague in my question. Luckily, he was kind enough to follow up with the these comments. "I have done some individual posts that have made thousands (and continue to make good money) in affiliate commissions.  As far as a average over the course of a year direct ad sales are by far the biggest form of revenue."

John Chow - "Today, private advertising accounts for half of the blog income. The future growth of the blog will come from its second biggest money maker; affiliate commissions. As times goes by, affiliate income should overtake direct advertising as the number one money maker. While there are limits on how much ad space I can sell on this blog, there are no limits on how many sites I can refer to other ad networks."

Carl "Kidblogger" Ocab - "Private advertising hits the top - And I'm happy about it. Less risky, no middleman, no chance of getting banned."

Dane Morgan - "ChainDrop.com has not been monetized YET. We will be monetizing it, but we are building a following and a membership first. Soon, we will start rolling out select affiliate campaigns from the blog, and then later we will be developing our own product line for it. From my little niche blogs scattered all over the place the primary earner is affiliate products followed by resale rights products. I've always sucked with adsense. I've had it on sites here and there, but never made any money with it. The MOST money I've made from any given single source would probably be click bank."

Dean Hunt - "My answer will be very different to most other people, but my blog is also very different to most others. My biggest revenue generator is actually my brand. I use the blog to build my brand (my name) and I provide services due to that reputation. I have no adverts on my blog, no adsense, no affiliate links etc... I make 6 figures from my services, so $10,000 a year from adsense has zero appeal to me, I prefer to keep my integrity.

To summarize, it seems like Private Ad placement is the most profitable initially. Once your blog grows large enough (and all of ours certainly will, right?) then Affiliate Marketing might become the big bread winner. The most important thing, of course, is building up your membership with good content. Thanks for your answers guys!! 

What questions would you like to see answered by the top bloggers? Leave them in a comment and I will use them in future Ask A Pro features. Is there anyone else you'd like to hear from? If so...I'll keep bugging them until they respond.

Jeff