Still Strugglin'

I have always wondered how to make real money from blogs, now that I have been confined to my home for almost a year (yeah yeah, severe case of Atopic Dermatitis, God damned disease).

I guess you just have to find a niche and blog about it. Or make a really popular site. One of the few guys who live off (very well, I should add) a single blog here in Brazil has one stupid, stupid blog with tutorials like 'how to make an account at blogger', 'how to add music to your website (urgh! WTF?)', a section of wallpapers, animated gifs, and all he blogs about are funny links like 'Make your custom South Park character' and stuff like that. And he earns money because everybody goes to the guy’s site, so he put a script for Mercadolivre (Brazil’s eBay) that shows products from his site. And he lives off comissions that he earns from the sales within his affiliate link.

But, as far as useful content for anyone who is remotely familiar to blogging, it’s close to zero. But since he has a GPR (Google PageRank) of 7, you search Google for, let's say, Digital Camera (in Portuguese, of course, our language here) and you get results from his website MORE than from the official Mercadolivre site (which is the most popular auction site here - http://mercadolivre.com.br).

I guess luck is a factor too. I was never able to generate more than USD 200 in a month (not from Google Adsense) and never got much traffic, but I’ve had blogs (in Portuguese and English) that, for no apparent reason, got PRs of 4,5 in a matter of months. But my content is not 'for the masses' like this guy’s, and the niche thingie is not that hot here yet (that’s the reason Orkut is so popular among Brazilians, most people here like sites that they can find all kinds of stuff like in Orkut communities instead of going to a specific forum about, for example, Playstation 2. they prefer to use the Orkut communities (which are half-assed forums, with no search functions, no mail notificications, et cetera) for this subject and all others they are interested. And meeting people of course, I've had several great experiences from meeting people I found in Orkut or who found me via my Brazilian blog (though I take care, I never met a friend, male or female, or a girl exclusively for making out without at least two or three months of long MSN chatting and phone conacts as well).

Have you had success from making money from blogs? If so, how (not asking for specific details) and which country are you from?