I want to start my first blog and I was wondering if you can actually make any money through Adsense with your blogs? Also, what is some good blog software to use for custom design etc.? Derek
It is possible to make money, though you probably won't get anything significant (I've heard about one person who's made a $million from a blog, but that's about as rare as making it as a rock star). Good blog software really depends on your level of technical expertise. Since this is your first blog, you might want to start with blogger. It's about as simple as you can get. I know a lot of people who are completely addicted to blogging on LiveJournal. I never really "got it." MSN has some sort of home page/blog. I see a lot of blog entries from there. I really dislike some of their features, so I never looked into what's behind an account. If you're more technically inclined (which you might be, since you mention custom design), you might look into Movable Type. I used to see a lot more blogs from there, then they had some technical (security) problems, and I don't see much from them any more, though I think they got those problems fixed. My current favorite's Word Press. I outgrew blogger a few months back and switched over to them. If you're a hardcore geek, you might look into something like pyblosxom. I haven't checked in the past couple of months, but that project was starting to look really interesting. Or were you talking about client options? For the most part, you can just send an email and the blog will publish it automatically. Although I've heard about tons of clients out there, they've never made any sense to me.
Yea, you can make money, but that should not be your first focus. If it is, you will never get there. Focus on what you are offering the world and your content first. A blog is like any other website. I only use WordPress these days and use a text editor for my designing mostly (thanks CSS). I also use Photoshop CS2 and DW when needed.