There are more ways to make money on the Internet than Carter has liver pills. Some methods will make you more money than others, but obviously will take more work. What follows is an objective look at the very many ways to make money online without using the "this is good or bad" approach. Everyone is different. One person's perfect Internet marketing or money making business is another person's nightmare. But the results of each are going to fall within certain parameters, and nothing you do is going to change those parameters much. In other words, you're not going to make a six figure income out of something that on average only has a potential of earning you a few hundred dollars a month at best. That doesn't mean that the 6 figure potential of a certain business will make you anything at all.
So let's start off with that much.
Unless you are working a JOB where you get either a salary, hourly rate pay or pay per assignment, you have NO guarantee of making even one DIME on the Internet. Any site that promises you an income UNLESS it is for doing a job, is lying to you. There are NO guarantees as far as making money online.
So what are the various ways to make money on the Internet? What you will find listed below are in no special order. They are just in the order of how they popped into my head as there is a lot out there.
1. Paid To Read Emails or Other Paid To Read Programs - Let's get these out of the way. This is where a company pays you a certain amount per email or ad read. Every company has different pay rates. Some are pennies per email read. Others are hundreds of dollars per email read. As I said, I am not going to knock any program here but you need to use a little common sense when it comes to these. Who is going to pay you hundreds of dollars for reading an email? Read the fine print of the contract. You will see in most cases there is a catch. If you want the whole scoop in the Paid To Read thing, there are plenty of threads on the Internet. You will find that many of these programs either shut themselves down or were shut down because they didn't pay. However, if you find a program like this that is legit, your earning potential is about a couple hundred dollars a month, if you include recruiting into the mix, which you can do. You will never get rich off of Paid To Read programs.
2. Survey Sites - These are sites that send you surveys which you take. If you qualify for the survey you can earn as much as $25 to $50 for one survey. Most surveys though are for points and discounts. If you spent a whole day doing these it is conceivable that you can make a few hundred dollars a month doing these. You won't ever get rich from them. Also, never pay for a list of sites that give surveys. This info is available for free.
3. Randomizers - These are programs where you join, pay your fee, whatever it is and then every time somebody joins a random payment is made to one of its members. One thing you need to be careful of these. PayPal is cracking down on them because they violate their TOS. So if a randomizer uses PayPal as a payment source you may want to think twice about joining. You can lose your PayPal account. Unless you do an awful amount of promoting for these things and get your own members, you potential monthly income is about $20 a month. Randomizers are pretty much dropping like flies so you won't run into as many of these as you did a year or so ago.
4. Doublers - This is where you put in say, $20 on January 1 and in 90 days, or whatever the term is, you get $40 back. You've doubled your money. These are also not as common as years ago but they are still around. The problem with these sites is that they are also against TOS of PayPal and other payment processors. However, if you get into one of these early and put in a lot of money, you can make a bundle real fast. But you are taking a gamble because all of these eventually fold up because the structure can't support itself. Think about it. If you keep doubling your money every 90 days and never take it out you have this progression.
20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640, 1280, 2560, 5120, 10,240, 20,480, 40,960, 81,920...etc...
Eventually after a few years they end up having to pay you millions of dollars. Unfortunately, none of these doublers have lasted that long. So be careful with these.
5. Paid Typing Companies - These actually fall into 2 types. The real paid typing companies where you have to actually have typing skills to get a job and the ones that are nothing more than typing ads on the Internet and getting paid if people buy things. You can actually make a lot of money doing this, if you use the standard Google Adwords as your advertising medium. Your average person, with a limited budget, only makes about 2 or 3 hundred dollars a month. You do have to pay for Google Ads. They're not free. The legit typing companies will pay a standard wage for the work you do, whatever the market will bare at the time. Never pay to get one of these jobs.
6. Selling Advertising - This is actually a very big thing on the Internet. This is where you work for a company that sells people advertising packages or programs that they claim will effectively promote your business. This is another one of those things where you have to use a little common sense. If these advertising methods are so good, why is everybody using them to promote the company itself and try to get people to buy the advertising package or the tools themselves? Why doesn't ANYBODY use these tools to promote their OWN business? I'm going to let you answer that question for yourself. Like I said, I'm not going to knock anything in this review. The earning potential with these can be quite great depending on how much the packages sell for. Some are very cheap, a few hundred dollars, and some are very expensive, in the thousands. If you're going to promote one of these, think about how easy or hard you think it's going to be for you to get somebody to spend $3,000 on an advertising program.
7. MLM - Stands for Multi Level Marketing. These are programs where you get people to sign up and hope that they do the same. Some of these programs can be 10 or more levels deep. You need to be careful with these. The ones that have no product or service and are simply pyramids are illegal and will eventually get shut down. What most of these companies do is include things like ebooks, auto responders, etc. so that they give the appearance of being legit. Some actually are. Most of the stuff given away by these are worthless. It's hard to know what has value and what doesn't unless you're a seasoned marketer. Earning potential with these programs can literally be millions of dollars a year. But 95% of all people who join these fail. That is a statistical fact. You can look it up. The 5% who have some success range in income from a few hundred dollars a month to $10,000 or more. Only about 1% make more than $10,000 per month. Plus, the expense of some of these programs can be quite large. MLM programs have been the cause of many a family ending up in bankruptcy. So please be cautious with these.
8. Freelance Writing - This falls kind of in the job category as you get paid for the work you do. The problem with this is that it's hard to find these jobs and they don't pay much. If you worked 8 hours a day doing this you'll probably make about $2500 a month. Most people do this in their spare time and maybe make a couple hundred dollars monthly. The trick is finding companies that offer this service or people who will pay you to write for them.
9. Internet Researcher - This is very similar to freelance writing and also very hard to find these jobs. The pay varies greatly depending on the job itself. If you can do this full time, you'll make a little bit more than a freelance writer since research requires a lot more work. You're looking at about $3500 a month for 8 hours a day. But this is a tough gig and not easy to find.
10. Mystery Shopping - Actually, this isn't really an Internet based job. You need to have a car and be able to travel to where they send you. Depending on where you live you can either get a ton of jobs or very few. Geography plays a big role in this. This is something that you can make about $1000 a month doing if you did it full time and got that much work, but most people make a couple hundred bucks a month at most. With the rising gas prices this isn't as attractive as it used to be.
11. HYIP - Stands for High Yield Investment Program. 99% of these are illegal and the feds are cracking down on them. The list of HYIPs that have fallen is a mile long, including the big fiasco with 12 Daily Pro. Yes, if you get in early, you can make an amazing amount of money with these if you put in a lot. Even if they do pay 12%, 12% on $20 isn't going to pay you much money. To earn big you must invest big. If you can afford the risk of losing all your money, which many people have done, then you may w