[RegulatorCountry]

I'd go so far as to opine that massive click-through fraud might very well doom automatic ad placement programs, that have made blogging at least moderately profitable for so many.

[billybudd]

You might be right, but I've been predicting that for two and a half years now and still the pay-per-click industry is growing. There's simply too much demand and it's still much more cost effective than the alternatives. Until that changes, it will continue to grow in spite of the fraud.

I don't think any bloggers are making a profit off blogging, except maybe the really big ones with enough traffic to really matter. The problem is that to make any real money you need to be a full-time blogger, but since you probably will not break $30k annual, for most people intelligent enough to run such a blog, it would be much worse pay than a job.

It's kind of a conundrum of the Web 2.0 age. There's so much benefit to be had from large numbers of people contributing information; but the question is: how do you incentivize people to keep producing? I don't think direct financial incentives like advertising or pay-per-post blogging will work simply because the rewards are too tiny. Oversupply / underdemand. I think the social networks like Myspace and Digg are on the right track though, with social, rather than financial rewards.