Thinking of starting a blog? Already started one and wondering when you'll rake in the Big Bucks?

I'm going to lay it out for you....

Here's some advice I gave to a journalist who wanted to start a parenting blog, but since people ask me the same questions all the time, I thought I'd back up from relative esoterica - like how business communicators should respond to negative blog reviews - and give you my standard answer to two common questions:

1. How do I decide what to write about, and then get started?
2. Can you actually make money blogging?

My basic advice for beginning bloggers is this - go to Aussie Darren Rowse's ProBlogger site, and read everything. That's not meant to be a cop-out, but seriously, you can't do any better than Darren for great starter advice. At the bottom of the front page of his site is a box, Best of Problogger, so click the tab For Beginners and just start reading. That's exactly what I did when I started.

After that, read Liz Strauss' Successful Blog and Chris Brogan's blog for how to nurture your blog's community and grow visibility and readership.

In between reading the three sites above....

• Write good content
• Post reasonably frequently (2-4 times a week)
• Keep at it for at least 4-6 months, which is about how much time a blog usually needs to gain traffic and attention traction.

That's it, really. But do you see the problem? Anyone toting a keyboard can start a blog - it's keeping one going month after month, year after year that's the hard part.

Key for my journalist questioner: there are thousands of parenting blogs out there, and that's probably underestimating. What's her special angle?

What's your special angle? What will make yours particularly unique? What is your blog's "elevator speech?" Hone in on that and work the bejeebus out of it to bring value to your readers. I assure you, there's no simpler answer.

Now, on to the money round....

I know very few people who make much money directly from blogging (myself included.) Most people's blogs are simply part of their writing portfolio, or a storefront to/demonstration of their expertise. You have to have a really specific, lucrative niche (or a big presence) to have enough traffic to live off of blog-generated ad revenue.

Two examples of success -

1. Heather Armstrong's dooce (longevity, quality and HUGE traffic) and
2. Darren Rowse's other site, his Digital Photography School (longevity, quality and camera equipment-related affiliate sales plus ads.)

Right now, I do get paid a combined US$100-$200 a month for my work on the BootsnAll Family Travel Logue and for the Perceptive Travel Blog. They are largely ad-supported.

I used to be paid for my Fast Machines drag racing posts, but the editor can't afford it anymore, so I'm wrestling with whether I can continue that, although I certainly want to. As a benchmark, I've been paid US $20-$50 per post when I'm paid by the post on that site and others.

I'm not paid directly for my Every Dot Connects posts, but Connie Reece, Jennifer Navarrete and I make money doing consulting, corporate training and workshops about social media, so the EDC blog is simply another entry into that work for our prospective customers.

If I didn't have a military pension and wasn't married to someone with a steady income (my husband is a high school math teacher) I'd never make it, frankly. I still do print work that pays much better (Texas Highways is one of my favorite clients, and so is National Geographic Traveler) but I haven't pitched article ideas to them lately because I'm busy with online work. I'd kill to blog for them at per-word print rates, but their business models won't support that yet.

Bottom line - the vast majority of us won't make much money any time soon from blogging. Where we CAN make money is having the critical skill set of being able to create good online content and understand how the online ecosystem works (including eventually mobile content, which will be huge, in my opinion.)

WHEN will that make you money? As soon as more value shifts from dying print work to burgeoning online/mobile work.

And when will that be? Well, if I knew that, I'd be rich myself by now! We simply don't know yet, but sitting around waiting for magic answers is not a good idea. Content is shifting to the Web and to mobile; just because a good pay structure isn't there yet doesn't mean you can ignore it.

You'll have competition - there are a ton of writers and journalists finally figuring out that they'd better know this stuff. I thought I was late to the game when I started my family travel blog in Feb 2006, on the advice of this smart journalist. Now, I have a three-year head start, and don't you think I'm not very grateful for that.

For writers and journalists, in the end, the winners will be the ones who can deliver quality content anywhere, including online.

Congratulations to those of you who are starting a blog, and it's OK if your purpose is simply to teach yourself how the social Web works, not necessarily to make income.

It's still a smart move.