How to make money online

There are many people who are out to make a quick buck off of the internet.  Most of these people will invest time, money, or both into something that will not pay off.  If you include yourself as one of these unlucky individuals there is no need to be ashamed.  Bernie Madoff tricked millionaire investors into participating in his ponzi scheme and people lost an estimate $50 billion.  That’s billion with a B.

There are ways to make money off of the internet and the average person can do it with a bit of training and dedication.  You need to have an understanding of the internet and how things work in order to become one of the people who is actually making money.

There are three ways to make money online.  Sell your own product, sell someone else’s product, get paid for advertising.  That’s pretty much the extent of your money making abilities.  Don’t believe for a second that you’re going to make a fortune by filling out 10-20 minute surveys that pay 50 cents.  Don’t believe that you can get paid to read email or visit websites.  Odds are that you’ll never see a dime because the payout thresholds are so high you’ll never reach them.  If you do, you’ll have spent far more time doing so than if you have worked a real job.

So that brings us back to the three main ways to make money. 

If you are smart or crafty enough to have your own product to sell, this is a great way to make money.  It’s no different than setting up shop in a downtown store except you have far greater reach and you have lower investment costs.  You can use sites such as eBay or Amazon.com to set up a storefront to sell your merchandise.  The best thing about selling your own stuff is that you get to keep most of what you make.  You’ll pay a listing fee or a commission to the selling site.  If you can run your own website you won’t even have to pay this.  Most of the money that is made is yours to keep.

There are tons of affiliate programs available on the internet.  People will pay you to sell their products for them by giving you a commission.  This can be as high as 75% of the actual sale.  Some people will do this by advertising the specific production.  The obvious goal is to spend less in advertising than would be made from the sale.  An even better way is to link to the product through a website.  You can post the link in a forum or mention it in a blog.  You can even do a review of the product and speak of its pros and cons.  A major benefit to affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to do anything with the product.  There’s nothing to ship and no liability if something goes wrong.  You can make money while you’re watching tv because the internet is doing all of the work for you.

You don’t have to have a big website to make advertising revenue.  Coke or McDonalds isn’t going to approach you to put ads on your site but there are many programs that you can join that will provide relevant ads for your website.  You get paid every time someone clicks on an ad (or even every time an ad shows.)  There are many ways that you can draw people to see your ads.  You may monetize your blog.  You can post videos.  You can even use publicly available content.  However you get people to view your ads, they’re your customers and they will pay every time they click on ad from you.