Recently in Monetising Category

Ken mentioned a new adsense optimised theme for Wordpress - Ads Minded It looks pretty interesting:

* Wordpress 1.5 & 2.0+ compatible * XHTML compatible codes * W3C CSS compatible codes * 3 columns with an optional square advertisement (Shows on main page) on top of the sidebars * Search engine friendly and easy advertisement placement * Comes with a few useful plugins written by me and others

The fact that it works with both WP 1.5 and 2.0 is a bonus for bloggers still running the 1.5 series

Making a bit of money from your blog doesn't have to just be adsense. While adsense may work very well for some bloggers it is not the only possible source of revenue. Amazon Amazon offers one of the most advanced affilate programs on the planet and allows publishers to display links and adverts without any real restrictions. AllPosters
Webmasters Make $$$ If your site deals with films, music, popular culture or art, then maybe the allposters.com program could be of interest. Not only do they offer a wide variety of standard links, but they also offer web services (ie. xml) Text Link Ads Text Link Ads seems to be quite a new service and offers quite attractive payouts for referring publishers to them. You can sell static links on your blog with the price varying on the level of traffic, Alexa rank and other factors. Chitika If you are tired of static adverts, the Chitika could be the answer. Worth a look, but beware of the geographical restrictions.

Google has added more products to the range of referral products for adsense publishers. According to the official adsense blog they have released Picasa and Google Pack. For some odd reason I can only see picasa... Thanks to Darren for pointing it out! (as usual you get more options if you set your language to English US)

If your blog gets a reasonable level of traffic, both from regular visitors and search engine referrals to your archives, then adsense optimisation may not be such a bad idea. This blog, for example, uses a theme which is designed from the ground up to be search engine friendly and adsense optimised. Unfortunately the link is probably still dead and the theme is not overly compatible with the latest versions of wordpress. However there are plenty of other Wordpress themes that can help you make the most out of your archives and posts. One I recently discovered is the MW theme This theme comes with "building blocks" for adsense users. All you have to do is add your adsense or other advertising code into a number of template files that will then display your adverts neatly on your blog. The theme also offers support for several other plugins and features, so it's quite a nice product overall. Another theme which you may want to check out is Adsense Ready While it may not be as complex as other themes it is aimed at serving contextual ads.