Beginning an Online Career: Ways to Make Money Online

It may seem difficult or even impossible to make money online if you've never done it before. But it's actually not. The hard part is figuring out where to start - and it's made even harder by the scammers and predators out there who prey on unwitting novices. Recognizing those scams is important, and when it comes right down to it, you don't really need to buy much of anything to get started making money online.

What you do need is to decide which avenue you want to use to start making money online. There are 5 major ways of becoming a home money maker through the internet. You'll be able to decide which of these you want to start with by figuring out your own interests and areas of expertise.

There are 5 major ways to begin your internet career.

1. Affiliate marketing

The internet makes affiliate marketing (promoting physical or digital products online) very easy, and it has boomed because of this ease of promotion. Commission Junction matches affiliates to physical product vendors like Best Buy, while Clickbank is the premier network of digital products. Affiliate marketing costs nothing for the actual affiliate signup. It's promoting where you actually run into cost factors. You can promote affiliate goods through free methods (blogs, forums, social networking) or paid (pay-per-click advertising, paid websites). The benefits of affiliate marketing can be huge; Clickbank commissions range from $10-$100+ depending on the products you choose to promote.

2. Freelancing

Guru.com, Elance, and Getafreelancer.com are three popular freelancing sites. Companies go to these sites looking for freelancers to pick up odd jobs for them; freelancers go there to find work. If you have a special skill set or knowledge of any kind, chances are someone out there needs it and will pay you for it. The downside of freelancing is that it is hugely competitive and often you have to pay a subscription fee to continue posting your information on these sites.

3. Write your own ebook

If you're knowledgeable about a particular subject (anything at all, since there are blogs about EVERYTHING on the web these days), you can write an ebook about it. An informative ebook that helps people solve problems (how to lose weight, how to keep a marriage intact, how to build websites, how to make extra money, how to fix a leaky faucet, etc.) can be distributed through email or over forums, or you can signup as a vendor on Clickbank and sell it there. If you want to avoid the costs associated with maintaining your own ebook website and affiliate program, you can include affiliate links to other peoples' products in your own ebook. Or you can promote it on a blog, which leads us to the fourth method of online moneymaking.

4. Blogging

Blogging about a subject you know something about can potentially earn a lot of money. There are successful bloggers making thousands of dollars a year from blogs (the really successful ones can earn that much in a month). You can buy a domain name and hosting for your blog to personalize it and have more freedom in what you put on it, or you can sign up for a free blog with Blogspot. Even if one blog doesn't make you much money at first, enough quality content can start driving major traffic to your blog. Start earning $20 a month from one blog, then make another blog that earns that much and you have an extra $40 a month coming in. Then keep doing it until you have 5 successful blogs: extra $100 a month.

5. Data entry/typing/transcription

You'll see job advertisements for medical billing, transcriptionists, typists, and data entry all over the web. Some of these are legitimate; some aren't. It's getting harder and harder to distinguish which are legitimate. On top of that, many of these types of jobs are very competitive. If you do see an advertisement that looks legitimate and you would like to pursue it, be sure to research the company's background and make sure they're established. Also, you should put together a resume before trying to apply for one of these jobs; most of them will require a history of your previous employment and work experience.