Heather Armstrong’s “Dooce” has become a household name in the blogosphere, and in fact has become part of the English language it seems. You know you have made it big in this world when people use your blog name as a verb. Dooce was one of my first introductions into the blogosphere. She was even an icon then as one of, if not the first, people to be fired for blogging. Since that time, she has soared in popularity.With everyone looking to increase their blog’s worth, you would think Dooce would be making money hand over fist with the amount of links and traffic. After all, links to your website is the gold standard of all bloggers, and the currency we all strive to acquire. I try to use Dooce’s site as the end of the spectrum for personal blog sites, personal blog sites being those sites that talk about themselves, their kids, and everyday life. Basically it is a journal of a personal nature. This would be much different than a site dedicated to discussing politics, news, business or any other non-personal writing. She basically is one of the most popular of the personal weblogs in the blogosphere. This is not to say other celebrity sites such as Wil Wheaton or the like are not personal in nature, but by virtue of their celebrity status I think the numbers are skewed.At last look, Technorati.com has 6,389 links to Dooce’s site, and Blogrolling.com shows she appears on 1,646 blog rolls on various blogs across the blogosphere. According to Bloglines.com, Dooce has a whopping 1,351 subscribers. These numbers are astronomical compared to the everyday average blogger. You would think with numbers like these Dooce is making more money than she can count as a result of the Google ads that appear on her site.Apparently, this is not the case. According to this blogger she has complained lately that she only makes approximately $200 a month as a result of Google AdSense on her site. These numbers seem peculiar given the amount of money that is being made from these tools by other bloggers.Darren Rowse recently reported earnings in excess of 10,000 per month related to his use of the Google AdSense application. Although Darren does not reveal which of his blogs is the big money generator, I can only assume that it is an aggregate amount of his entire stable. The moral of the story here is not exactly clear. I have been writing a personal blog, Genuine, for over a year, and I thought my road to fame and fortune was to hop on the train with the likes of Dooce, gather a very large audience of readers and links, and make my fortune as a professional blogger. I had chugged my glass of the Dooce Koolaid. My personal blog site however does not fall within the shadow of the numbers produced by Heather’s. One could imagine that the best of the best should be our guide as bloggers. Unfortunately to the contrary, I can only hope that I can follow in the footsteps of Darren and begin to pay for my blog addiction through other means other than fame and recognition. Blogs can be a rewarding experience but not always monetarily.