Making money online is the new American Dream. Think about it no school required and within days make thousands instantly. Well this may be what you see on TV, but believe me when I tell you I have been online for years and have not created a six figure income. After researching the amount of internet business’s that fail which is 97% and the reasons why I have decided to write an article describing what you should be prepared for and what to realistically expect when it comes to working from home.

First and foremost don’t expect to begin making money through affiliate marketing within the first six months whether through blogging or being a webmaster. After reading Google’s official blog they have recently posted that they reached a new bench mark and the number of unique URL’s online today has passed one trillion. What does this mean for someone new that has hopes for making it online? Competition of course! Not a couple of websites or even a couple hundred; if you’re lucky you will only be dealing with a hundred thousand or so. Do you still believe that if you spend a couple of hundred dollars on ten or twenty per built websites your traffic will explode? Anyways now that you understand the competition it is easy to see why it will take at the very least six months to really develop a web presence that has the ability to earn you an income.

You may be asking yourself if it is even possible to make money online with the amount of competition online; the short answer is yes as long as you’re dedicated. First you need to decide on what niche (category of website/blog you create) you are passionate about. This is a key step because if you are not completely dedicated to your website and/or blog you will lose interest before you have the chance to make any money. Second will be creation and for those that do not know HTML, CSS, and java script I would recommend building a blog which you can do easily at WordPress.com or Blogger.com for free. Now that you have your web presence the next step will be promotion and the best way to learn about promotion is on Digital Point Forums which you can find doing a Google search. Now you have a stream of traffic to your website or blog it is time to decide how you will monetize. Affiliate marketing is the choice by most and is by far the easiest to earn money from.

To begin making money from affiliate marketing you need to understand the concept behind it. Becoming an affiliate means you are agreeing to send a website traffic and in return the website will pay you either for a click on their link, purchase of their products, or signing up for their program. If you decided to create a blog with blogger.com I have found the easiest watt to monetize traffic is by using Google AdSense. If you would like to do this after the creation of your blog sign up for an AdSense account which you can do here google.com/adsense/login/en_US/ and then click on your blogger account and under the title of your blog there is the option to monetize.

I recommend developing your blog and to gain a readership before you begin with placing ads on it. The second option if you would prefer to not use AdSense is to use major websites in your niche. For example if you have a website on books then using amazon.com affiliates program would be the best. To find it go to amazon.com and on the bottom there is a link that says join associates sign up for their associates program and they will give you plenty of options on making money by advertising for them.