Advertising in your CF Blog

There was an interesting discussion in a private group (check it out if you blog) regrarding blogging and CF and making money from it all.  I posted this there, but felt that I wanted broader feedback from the community.  The text below is slightly modified from its original form.

I know some of you are not interested in advertising and some
are.  Some find the advertising a conflict of interest, and while I don't completely agree I find it reasonable to feel that way.  This is mostly for those wanting to make some money on
their blog though I welcome everyones input.

Direct Advertising - My feedback as an advertiser:
We have been experimenting with direct advertising our CMS in a few CF
blogs.  Both paid and free ads.  The results have us interested in
more.  I have privately contacted a few bloggers and we will be
reviewing our marketing budget later this year. The point here though,
is that virtually none of the CF bloggers I have looked at have any
good way to automate or communicate direct advertising on their site.
What do you charge, what areas are available, etc.  Many sites do this
by having an 'advertising' section (example of $10k/month site advertising page), or a 'your ad here' link holder. Something like that. We could all perhaps gain some $$ by making it
easier for advertisers to contact us and know what it would cost.

Why do we have direct ads instead of adsense?  Adsense is expensive, doesn't work well and isn't really made for branding.  Our direct ads are mostly for branding/exposure.  Not worth $5 a click which is what CMS click throughs costed last time I was doing it.

Best Money Makers for Blogs:
This is only my personal experience and that of some research.

I find text-link-ads makes me the most money for my main blog.  TIP: make sure you have good description and keywords in your profile and put the links near the top of the page.  Disclaimer, this one link is an affiliate link, if you sign up I get money.  Doesn't make it less true though. :-)

Adsense does next to nothing for my blog.  I find adsense only does
well for me on my niche topic specific sites that are not blogs.

I have played with Kontera, but it didn't pay much and was too
visually distracting.  Granted advertising is very distracting in
general, but Kontera is over the top!

I have yet to try to sell direct ads.

Value of Subscribers:
Lots of chatter in the 'make money online' community right now about
how its less about page views now and more about how many subscribers
you have.  Your subscribers are your clan and can be pretty powerful.
Good example is how quickly the CF community knows about a new project
from Ray by his one blog posting.  Lots of people follow his blog and
find out right away.  Much better than say Stumble Upon, google
searches, etc.

What do you think?  What are your money makers right now?