The idea of making money online is certainly a very appealing concept to most people. It allows you to work from the comfort of your own home and also allows you to decide your working hours. It is in fact what most of us dream of.

However, working from home and setting up an online business may actually become more of a necessity than an option for some of us. With the economy in such a terrible state, none of us is really sure whether we’ll have a job next month or the month after that. It forces us to consider alternatives; other means of making money.

The great thing about an online business is that in many cases the start-up capital required is quite small. It is also reasonable easy to ramp up the scale of your online business endeavour slowly and steadily.

The reality of interacting with customers from all over the world also gives an online business a positive edge over many types of offline businesses.

So, what are sine if the methods that can be used to generate income online?

Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing is when you sell products and/or services for a company and receive commissions for your sales. He good thing about affiliate marketing is that it is extremely quick (and cheap) to set up. And the company that offer the affiliate program usually also offers advertising tools and/or training.

Selling Your Own Product – If you have a product or offer a service that you believe people would be interested in, then by all means sell that product on the internet. It’s the largest audience of buyers that you can possibly reach at a small budget.

Pay to join Programs – There are a ton of income generating programs out there that you can join for a free (usually monthly) and they give you tools and training necessary for you recruit other paying members. The idea is that for each member you recruit, you get a percentage of that person’s monthly fee. So getting many people to join in your ‘down-line’ as it’s called will mean you’ll make some good money.

The afore-mentioned are certainly the most popular money making methods being pursued online.

Stay tuned because I will be posting follow-up articles that will discuss Affiliate Programs, Selling Your Own Product and Pay to join Programs in detail.