Earning from the Internet - Myth or Reality?

Anyone who has launched a web site knows the pain of waiting for that steady income like the internet "gurus" talk about. Everybody wants to earn a decent living. Everyone has a right to it. Earning from the internet is definitely not as easy as it is projected by some of the online advertisements, and it is generally impossible to earn from day one. You will have to put in the same amount of effort as you would when starting an off line business. In recent times though, the net has provided some good options to begin earning that first dollar.

There are various ways which will help you start earning from your web site. Those who start their web site purely as a passion find it rewarding when their sites start paying them back with the revenues in online advertising.

To begin with, you can always look for your share of online revenues via Google Adsense. Google has started a revolution in the world of online advertising with their Adsense program. Adsense helps the users searching for information by providing them links to sites related to the information they are seeking. It also helps web sites owners earn revenue.

You need to qualify for the Adsense program before putting the Adsense blocks on your web site. Ideally you should launch your web site without any advertising and pure content in any of the niche areas. Once you have some good content on the site you can apply for the Adsense program. The approval usually is done within 24 hours and once approved you can then place the script blocks provided by Google on your site.

These blocks display the advertisements related to the content on your web page. You can also look for the Adsense optimization tips by Google which tell you the best positions for putting the script blocks on your web site, thus improving the total number of clicks by users on these advertisements. If your web site is dedicated to some niche area and you make sure to follow the Search Engine Optimization guidelines to get that traffic, you can be rest assured of earning some decent amount from Adsense. Yahoo also provides similar programs for web sites owners. But just because you want to make money, you are not entitled to place both yahoo and Google ads on your web pages. Reports are that Yahoo pays more for the advertisements than Google. But the choice is yours.

You can also earn using Affiliate Marketing. In Affiliate marketing, you do not sell any products on your web site, you send your web site visitors to some of the merchant sites. Some of the affiliate programs pay you when a user fills in a form on the merchant site, while some pay you when the user you forwarded to their site makes a purchase. These commissions usually are paid out as a percentage of the purchase, so if you have forwarded a user who purchases a high price item from the merchant site, you are entitled to get a good commission. Some merchant sites track the users via cookies. Thus making sure that even if the user buys at a later date you still get the commission. Though this may sound very easy, you must be sure to read through the merchant's terms before promoting that merchant. You do not want to end up doing business with some fraud.

Commission Junction and PayDotCom are two of the affiliate program sites who take care of the payments made to the web site owners. You have to be a member of these sites and get the links to products you want to promote on your web site. These affiliate programs sites take care of the rest.

You can also earn a good living from the auction sites by selling either physical or info products. Info products are e-books filled with lots of information that the user might be seeking. If writing an e-book is an area where you have no expertise, you can always register with the resell rights web sites. Such web sites provide you with many info products that you can sell as your own. Selling on auction sites requires a bit of research since you should always try to find what the user wants rather than what you want to sell them. If you can provide the users what they are looking for, at reasonable rates, you get yourself a repeat customer.

Online data entry or filling out surveys are also some of the options which give you ways to earn that side income. There are a couple of legitimate sites providing such business, but you must be very careful with sites which demand money from you to start the work.

Whichever way you look at it, there are unlimited options of earning a decent living from the internet.

So, happy earning!

Here's one of my favorite affiliate programs. A great company who pays on time every 2 weeks and NEVER CHARGES BACK! It's true. I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that. Best program by far, easy to use as an affiliate. Free to sign up.