With the economy doing poorly and unemployment very high people are now more than ever looking for ways to earn money online. The problem with looking for ways to make money online is the internet is full of bad people who will attempt to scam you at any cost. These scammers are amazing marketers and the only way to avoid them entirely is refusing to pay for anything. It is entirely possible to build an online income without paying. How you make money online will be determined by the amount of time you have and your needs. For those who need to earn a full time income the best option would be creating an online business and marketing the business making sure you monetize with either affiliate marketing or ppc publishing. If you are only wanting to earn a few hundred dollars monthly then the best option would be going with paid to websites. Some of these include get paid to take surveys, get paid to read email, get paid to write articles, and get paid to click. One thing you must remember is if you are wanting to earn money with any of these methods is they all require actual work. You will not get paid for doing nothing and they are real programs so no get rich quick schemes.
Online business will be difficult in the beginning and you will not see much of an income. Usually it will take around one year before you are able to catch up with the rest of your niche. When you begin do not quit your real job or not look for a job if you don’t have one. Your online business will take quite a while before you will make enough to support yourself. To begin set up a simple website using free hosting such as blogger or wordpress. You can monetize it with simple programs such as Google Adsense or Etology both an be found by searching Google. You may also want to consider some affiliate marketing which can be done using websites such as amazon or walmart.
One of the biggest challenges for any business online will be getting traffic to your presence. This may not seem difficult, but during the first year online it will seem nearly impossible. The hardest part about marketing a new presence is you must start at the very bottom of your niche. This means there will be thousands if not millions of websites which you must out market if you want to reach the top of google and other major search engines. During this time learning everything you can about search engine optimization and social marketing will be extremely important. If you decided to start a blog you may want to consider heading over to digg.com, stumbleupon.com, and the other major social bookmarking websites and submitting posts as you write them. If the community enjoys your post they will give you a vote and these votes will help you rise in the social bookmarking site. For search engine optimization you will want to focus on keyword implementation and link building. To build links you should check out linkmarket.net or directorycritic.com.