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Have I convinced you yet that you can make money online? Great! So now you just need to know where to begin. There are literally thousands of opportunities available to you, from affiliate programs, membership sites, selling products, e-books or advertising. I couldn’t begin to list them all, but I can highlight a few of the most common.

1. Advertising – Almost everyone who has a site online, whether it’s a commercial site or family blog displays ads. Adsense is Google’s version and they dominate the PPC (pay per click) market. So if you’re a merchant interested in placing ads on other’s websites or a website owner interested in displaying ads, chances are you’ll use Adsense. To earn money from ads, your visitors must click on a link to be directed to the merchant’s site. You want your visitors to find relevant ads when they visit your site, so they’re more likely to click on a link. If you select a niche market with sufficient traffic you can make a tidy sum from Adsense. Most of my ads pay pennies per click so it takes a ton of traffic to pay for a cup of Starbucks.

2. Affiliates – Amazon is built on the backs of its affiliates and no one does it better. That’s not to say they’re perfect, but they have tons of options and support for their associates. You can set up an entire bookstore on your site with a few lines of code or you can link from individual products. Linkshare and ClickBank offer a wide range of affiliate programs. You sign up at either one (or both) and then pick merchants with your audience in mind. Signing up is free: don’t ever pay to sell someone’s product. Remember: just because you have a link or banner on your site does not mean anyone will click on it or buy anything. You may link to Amazon from your site, but most people will just type in Amazon and fill their cart. The only way to make money from affiliates is to promote the products as though they are your own. It’s not a work-free zone so make sure the commission you get paid is worth the effort you put in.

3. Selling Products, Services or Memberships – You can design a new product, retool an existing one or market your services and make money. The key is to know your Unique Selling Perspective. Why is your product better than your competitor’s? A perfect example of USP is Netflix. I remember when it was just a start up company and I wondered how it would work to rent a movie online and receive DVDs in the mail. Come to find out, it works quite well and Blockbuster never even saw it coming. Netflix didn’t invent movie rentals, but they did market a unique service which carved a nice little niche ($7.03M 3Q07) for them.

No matter what option you select to make money online, you have to generate traffic to your site. Article marketing is the most effective and affordable option to increase your credibility and relevancy with search engines. Your site should be content rich, with plenty of inbound high quality links. You can write supplemental articles with links to your site and place them on sites such as Peoplefuel.com or Wordpress. Either of these sites will host your article or blog for free. The more articles you write, the more traffic you can generate. Sounds like a topic for another article.