Short answer: Yes, you can. Longer answer: Yes, you can, but don't necessarily expect it to cover your house payment.

Calacanis paid me $500/month to blog for Weblogs, Inc. two years ago. I ultimately decided that it was just not worth my time or effort to write for someone else on a topic he knew absolutely nothing about. I didn't like feeling like an advertising shill, either.)

I cannot take the WSJ article seriously. Two people engaging in a public fit of congratulatory mutual masturbation? Bleh.

I kept tripping over this:

Alan Meckler gets 300,000 page views a month?

well, we should Ask Philipp ?
Of course, it pays.

You should just build the right Business model, right subject and cooperate with PR companies.

I'd say it's very hard to make money unless you have a product blog, but with more companies like Federated Media or The Deck coming along, I think there will be more and more business models for full-time bloggers. I might know in about half a year if it works out for this blog (German living standars are quite high), because I hope I can continue doing it full-time – it's a lot of fun.

"congratulatory mutual masturbation"- yes thats quite an analogy for the wsj article :)_

As for making $$ bloggin.. it depends on what the root cause is..

1) Bloggers who just blog (heres randy's take on the $102K he makes!!)http://www.kbcafe.com/adwords/?guid=20060412072009

2) Companys that need a human face. They are making $$ off their Blog in terms of Customer relationships.. its a whole new ball of wax.

3) FM and Deck is changing the way Ads / revenue being shared. Blogs are a new media. Not yest Main Stream ... but getting there!!

All In all, bloggers can make money, its not only about Ad's its about content. Good Content helps promote products and services and a knowledge SME/Blogger is a good resource in the talent pool.

its another way of asking
CAN U MAKE THE ISSUE WORSE?