So I started a Ruby news blog back in 2004-2005 to help build a platform to promote my Ruby book. No sponsors for a year or two but then Geoffrey Grosenbach of

So I started a Ruby news blog back in 2004-2005 to help build a platform to promote my Ruby book. No sponsors for a year or two but then Geoffrey Grosenbach of Peepcode reached out and offered me $100/month if I put a banner link to Peepcode in the side bar. So I took it.. and the next month I had about 10 companies reach out wanting to do the same thing! First lesson.. if you start running sponsors even before you're getting paid for them, people will come out of the woodwork. Eventually I had the aforementioned blog up to several thousand $ per month, but gave it up to focus on email newsletters instead and now there are 9 of us doing it full time, still all funded by sponsorships. FWIW, I would sponsor developer related blogs if they would help us reach more potential subscribers (or even pay $ per signup), so I think there's a ton of potential out there for both blogs and open source projects.