Before you proceed further…
If you already know something about online money making programs such as ad networks, affiliate programs or get paid for browsing etc, please skip this post as I am talking about very basic things here.

What’s online money making all about?

There are a number of ways to make money on the Internet. Let me broadly categorise them into two. The first category is where you sell your own products and services directly (ebay.com, perfumeshop.com etc) online. In this case your primary business is to sell the products where as the web is only a channel to sell.

The second category is where you do not own any business but you are primarily an Internet user who could potentially promote others’ business without spending any money or a lot of time. Now, this is our area of interest where you don’t need to set up an office, store or warehouse but help others to sell their products.

What I mentioned above is just one of the mechanisms of making money. If you are willing to spend more time, have the habit of blogging/providing Internet content or addicted to reading stuff online you could find a lot more ways of making money.

Who can make money?

Anybody who knows how to use a PC to browse the web can start making money. On the other hand if you are little bit more experienced or already blogging/providing content you can make a lot more money. If you are a professional like a technical writer, you could work from home and make a lot of money - probably as much as or even better than what you could make if worked for a company. So any of the following categories of people have enough potential of making money.

1) Internet Dummies: Who knows just how to browse the net, send an e-mail etc.
2) Experienced Users: Who knows how to search content well, can blog or provide content, answer to online queries in forums etc.
3) Very Advanced Users: Who could write scripts, manage the page contents well and optimize their web pages.
4) Content Professionals: Editors, Proofreaders, Technical writers, content creators etc.

What does it take?

In most cases what it takes to start making money is access to a computer that has Internet connectivity. You may need an email address of your own and should be able to spend a few minutes or couple of hours in front of your PC.

Please read Different ways of making money now where I will talk about a number of options through which an online user can start making money.