1: Google AdSense

One of the oldest ways of making money online is to allow Google to place small ads on your website. Originally they were just text ads but now can be quite sophisticated with images. If you’ve visited any website, on your computer, or even on your mobile device, you would have seen Google ads. These ads are everywhere and for good reason. Not only are they easy to set up on any basic website, but they can be lucrative once your website starts bringing in a steady amount of traffic.

One of the cool things about Google AdSense is that it’s so easy to get set up. Once you start your website or blog you can sign up for a free Google AdSense Account. From there, Google will give you a unique code that you will paste onto your website. Google takes it from there, tracking your page views, traffic, and earnings on your behalf. There is no upkeep or maintenance to get this thing going, which makes it a no-brainer if you have a website already.

How much will you make? In a word nothing! Forget about income in the beginning. You simply won’t have the level of traffic of people visiting your website in order to generate income. BUT as you keep going, as you keep developing out your content, traffic goes up. By also providing links back to previous articles (another word for a blog post) they will then start to generate ad clicks that lead to income.

It’s like a new author trying to get their first book published. If J.K. Rowling gave up when publishers rejected her Harry Potter manuscripts then you wouldn’t even know who I am talking about. But the 20^th publisher took the chance with her work and guess who is now laughing all the way to the bank?

Your first blog post may not be seen by more than a dozen people in the first few months after you publish it. But as you add more, related posts, and keep referring back to your original work (as appropriate to the topic at hand) they will gain traffic too.

The secret is to START, and then KEEP GOING! Keep adding new content on a regular schedule.

2: Affiliate Marketing

At the beginning of your online journey, you may not have much to offer for sale. So it makes sense to team up with others to supply products or services of interest to your own customers. Making these sales will result in you receiving commission payments from a few dollars to many thousands, depending on the nature of what you are offering.

Also, these are products available today. Especially these days people have no patience, they want their desires met instantly. Also over time, you will get to know your customer base better. You will learn what they desire most. This gives you time to develop your own offerings that you know will sell to a hungry market.

To find vendors offering their products to affiliates just use Google. Type in your niche name followed by an affiliate program. i.e. weight loss affiliate programs.

There are also platforms that offer information products in multiple niches. Clickbank is one such company. Create a free account and look in their Marketplace. You will find dozens of vendors offering a range of products costing from a few dollars to hundreds.  These are generally digital download products so the customer gets instant gratification. For the make money online niche there is JV Zoo.

Your blog posts can be reviews of these products. Identify your customer’s needs (especially their pain points) and show how these products fill their needs. Try to give a balanced, impartial review else you will come off as selling, and no one likes to be sold to. The most powerful products are those you use yourself. Describe how these products help your business or solve your personal issues.

With affiliate marketing, you need to decide which branch you are interested in. There is the eCommerce side where you set up say an Amazon Store, Teesprings Store, Shopify, or any of dozens of other physical product sales outlets. Or there is the other branch where you provide information products that your customers download instantly to their device.

3: Consulting

Another way to make money online is via consulting. If you’re an expert in any field, you could potentially find people willing to pay you to counsel them on their personal or business goals. You might think you’re not important enough to consult for big companies, but you could be surprised at the types of expertise people will pay for.

You may not consider yourself to be an expert as you may not have fancy qualifications or letters behind your name. But in reality, you are an expert if you just know more than the person asking the question.

You might be surprised how many people would be willing to pay you consulting fees to help them solve just the next part of whatever problem they are facing.

Whatever your field of interest it doesn’t need to be at a high level to begin your consulting business. Say you are experienced at graphic design; you could begin to offer your services on ‘gig’ sites such as fiverr.com, elance.com, or any of the other freelance sites. In fact, there is a vast array of topics that there are experts in on these websites.

These are just 3 ideas for making money online. You can be an absolute beginner or already have some skills. But step by step you can gain income from your online activities that can supplement or even replace a normal wage or salary.

For 12 Ways You Can Absolutely Make Money Online just check out the fuller article at FORBES.