Personally, I honestly do not see a way for a 'personal' blog to compete with anything on the Internet these days with respect to monetization. Except for an extremely few it is not going be worth the time and effort.

Without much effort on my part, I was able to live off comfortably from my blog in the 2000-2010. But it was a different environment then. These days, have you tried browsing the web without a blocker? The Internet has become a minefield.