As one can infer from the title, there are very many legitimate ways to earn an income online. However, this article will focus on some very powerful ones that a beginner and indeed anyone can use to earn a decent internet income as a full time job.

A new comer who takes an interest to the world of internet business while looking for additional or full time income would usually be amazed at the number of opportunities available.

For those who do give a try to some of these opportunities, one of the challenges they face is how to succeed since at the beginning this was what they were promised.

After a number of trials without success, they leave that opportunity, join the next big thing, get frustrated, leave that to join the next one until they eventually give up trying. Even at that, they continue to see more and more stories of successes others tell especially on the testimonial pages of income opportunities.

This usually makes them wonder just when their own story would be told and some even wonder if those success stories they read are indeed true.

Now I have taken time to write all these to enable those who fall into this category know that I understand their situation and this is what prompted me to write this article in the first place – so that such people and new comers can get valuable information to help them succeed online.

What you require to succeed online is no different in some cases from what is required to succeed offline:

(1) You will need the right mental attitude required for success just like renowned book publisher Michael Korda says, “in order to succeed, we must first believe we can”. This is very important or else you will give up at the slightest challenge.

(2) You will have to invest some money either at the beginning or at some point to grow your business. Never let anyone tell you anything else because that would be incorrect.

(3) You will need valuable information because that is what most of the people who do not succeed online are in need of. With valuable information, you will definitely succeed online and see how easy it is to earn income there.

(4) You will need a system in place most of the time to succeed. I will explain this later on.

The beauty of the online world is such that the market place is bigger than any one place. Now, depending on the nature of business you choose, you will need to get your product or service in front of the right audience to succeed.

In other cases, this will not be necessary, as you would see shortly.

As I said at the beginning, this article focuses on some powerful ways for a new comer to the internet to earn income. It also provides information for those who face challenges in succeeding online to be able to do so. Let us therefore consider some of these ways:

(1) : this is one method some people are using to quietly rake in thousands, hundreds of thousands and even millions of U.S. dollars, Euros, British pounds, Swiss francs, Japanese Yen, Australian dollars, Canadian and New Zealand dollars in daily, weekly, monthly and yearly incomes.

Foreign currency or Forex trading is the buying and selling of a particular country’s currency in exchange for another country’s currency at a profit. Though the offline currency trading has been in existence since the early 1970s, it was largely then controlled by governments and the banks. The online Forex trading started in 1994 because of the internet and its importance has continued to grow ever since.

The internet has also given rise to the use of margin accounts that provide what is called leverage whereby a forex trader can use small amounts in his margin account provided by a forex broker to trade larger volumes of forex transactions. This is why the ability to make good money in online forex trading is possible and it is also the reason why individuals are now able to trade forex and earn a decent living from it.

However, because most people do not have system in place, they are simply unable to make money from forex trading. Recall I mentioned earlier that one of the requirements to succeed online is to have a system in place for your business transactions.

The online forex market is no different. Basically, there are 4 ways individuals benefit from trading forex online. The first is by doing it themselves – majority do not succeed here because of a lack of a system and usually end up losing some and sometimes all their initial investments.

They lose because they approach forex trading like gambling and this is usually a suicidal move financially. You cannot make more winning trades in the forex market if you enter a trade and then hope it swings in your favour.

Those who succeed using this method have a system they follow to make more winning trades than losing trades and so have a net profit always. They use a system of fundamental analysis (usually driven by government policies and major world events like U.S. monthly unemployment data released every first Friday of every month) and technical analysis (usually charts that give a signal to enter a trade), trailing stops, stop loss and take profit settings on their accounts to guide when to enter a trade and when to exit a trade.

You can trade the forex market this way with amounts as little as depending on the broker of your choice.

The second way is by using managed accounts. By this, I mean allowing the forex brokers to trade for you. You will be required in this case to invest a minimum amount usually dependent on whether you are a conservative or an aggressive trader. You are usually warned about the risk of forex trading and that you can lose a substantial sum of money.

The third way individuals trade forex is by signals or alerts given by a broker to their subscribers. Some give these free but some others require you to make an investment to receive these signals. These are the same signals the brokers themselves use to enter a trade and when they exit a trade having reviewed all the conditions necessary to make the trade.

The fourth way is by use of robots. Robots usually are softwares created by their owners based on historical data of the forex market to determine automatically when to enter and exit trades.

The major disadvantage with this method is that robots are not able to predict when a major event has taken place and so they can enter a wrong trade based on historical data when a major event has already changed the direction of the market.

This is why many of these robots fail and only very few are able to make winning trades consistently.

By and large, some people continue to make substantial sums of money from the forex market because they have a system.

(2) : just like the forex market, some people are quietly making a lot of money from online soccer betting. Even though the program is called soccer betting and appears to be like gambling, those who succeed with this have a system in place as I have repeatedly said, that gives them more winning than losing bets and lots of income in the process.

(3) : this has to do with trading in the financial markets (stocks, options, futures, etc). Trading pattern here is somewhat like trading the forex market but again, those who succeed do so largely because they operate using a system.

You will therefore need the guidance of experts to succeed in these markets so you can avoid getting your fingers burnt financially.

Fortunately, there are programs on the internet that provide useful guide on trading all these markets. They take you by the hand and show you how to trade successfully. In some cases, they tell you via alerts to place the same trades they are placing so you can succeed together.

(4) : this is one of the most common ways of earning income online for most people and this is why I call it traditional home business.

Just like the aforementioned online income opportunities, it gives you the opportunity to earn income from the comfort of your home thereby allowing you freedom to attend to issues like caring for your kids/other needy persons as well as attending to household chores.

This type is very common with work at home mums and it falls into 2 categories where you either work for a company or you work for yourself.

(a) : Where you work for a company, you will first need to apply and once approved, you will need an e-mail address to which a notification of the jobs to be done would be sent to you.

You then log onto the company’s website and execute the job. Thereafter, you will be paid as agreed when you signed up for the work at home job.

Examples of such jobs are work at home surveys and data entry. Some of them like the survey companies also give other opportunities for you to earn additional income when you refer others.

(b) : I separate this income opportunity so people don’t confuse it with article writing and submission as a means of advertising your business, which I will explain later on.

In this method, there are article submission directories that also have a service where they pay you to write for them.

You will have to apply to be considered and once approved, you can earn some good money from this. Some sites pay as much as between ,000 to ,000 monthly to their writers.

Usually what they look for is a writer that has good command of the English Language, has unique and valuable content to offer as the sole copyright owner. The company usually retains the right to the written material and have conditions for their writers to follow if such writers want to use these materials on other article submission sites.

(c) : A blog is a website or mini directory you own where you write your own articles of value to readers and also have total control over all of the content on the site.

You can also use articles of similar message written by others but you must as a professional and ethically give due credit to the original writer in the resource box, which I will explain later on.

People make money from blogging by advertising their links to affiliate programs on the blog where visitors can click to see and join. Another way they make money is by placing adverts people placed with companies like google, kontera, etc on their blogs and when people click on these adverts to take a certain action as agreed, the blog owner is paid. Payment to the blog owner for visitors clicking and taking action on such adverts is called Cost Per Action (CPA).

There are free blog sites and there are those you need a personal website for, which means you will need to pay for a domain name and hosting of the site. I will explain this further down this article.

(d) : in affiliate programs, you work from home either for a company or you work for yourself as the affiliate program owner. When you work for a company, you will be given either products or service to get people to see and take some action. You are also given marketing tools and a sales page similar to that of other affiliates but with your own personalised affiliate number to promote to earn income to be sure it was you who brought the customer.

The company usually pays you for people you refer who take some action as agreed that qualifies for payment, e.g. a sale, providing contact details or clicking any of your marketing tools like banners and text links.

In some cases, you are expected to own your own website to place the marketing tools so that you are paid for the agreed action taken by the people you refer.

Where a sale is required through your affiliate link to enable you earn a commission, the company handles the customers’ orders, payment, inventory, shipping and commission payments to you and other affiliates. Your job is to drive customers or traffic to be able to see the product or service through your membership link.

There are affiliate programs that require payment of a monthly subscription by members to benefit from products or a service or services within the program at a discounted rate.

Examples are those where you are allowed to buy everyday/regular items like household goods (toiletries, cosmetics, etc) as well as clothing and accessories, DVDs, electronics, etc at discounted rates as long as you remain a member.

When you refer other members to join such programs to enjoy similar benefits, the company pays you also for as long as your referral remains a paying member.

There are other such monthly membership programs where you benefit from exclusive services of a nature that would help you earn substantial additional income and you are paid for referring new members to join also and you are also paid when they join to benefit from the additional income opportunities within the program.

I want to state a very important point here for you dear reader to note. One major reason most people do not succeed with affiliate programs is because they do not understand what constitutes a good affiliate program. In essence, a good affiliate program is one that would provide you with tools and resources to succeed.

Now by tools, I refer to banners and text links containing your affiliate information; more importantly by resources I mean the program owners will support and provide you with adequate information on effective ways to drive customers or traffic to your affiliate sales pages.

Some of these ways are free while others would require an investment. These are meant to ensure that you are able to make sales or get customers to take the agreed action for you to earn commissions.

If you do not get these kinds of support from an affiliate program, then as a new comer it will be most challenging achieving online success with them. This is the number one reason most people stop being members of affiliate programs.

Another salient feature of good affiliate programs is that they pay you not only on sales you make directly but on sales made by those you refer directly (called downlines), sometimes up to 3 – 5 levels deep.

But take note that what is very important is the support provided to help you succeed.

Now where you work for yourself as the affiliate owner, the process is more or less the same with you as the company handling all the other work while your affiliates handle getting customers to visit their affiliate sites to earn a commission.

Some companies have made the work easier for affiliate owners by handling the customers’ orders, payment, inventory, shipping as well as paying the affiliates of the program. So, all the affiliate program owner has to do is create a powerful product and register with such companies and an agreed amount is shared between the affiliate program owner and the company.

I have to state here that what is usually accepted for this type are digital or electronic products where the customer can have instant access to the product upon payment, e.g. software, e-books, music, ringtones, etc. That is indeed the power of the internet!

(e) : in this case you usually provide a product or service from a personalised website. Such product or service is something in which you have an expertise and could be anything from gardening to cooking to home improvement to music to games, etc.

A website is your address on the internet like we have for google.com, yahoo.com, etc. You will need a registrar to register a domain name of your choice that is available for use (e.g. google.com) at an annual fee and you will also need a web host to hold your web pages that will contain information on your product or service. The web pages are hosted at a monthly fee depending on the web hosting company.

Some companies handle both services for you but the choice of hosting company is usually determined by the kind of service they provide, e.g. bandwidth available to host your pages particularly when a lot of customers come visiting at the same time.

Others issues to consider include the type of software and other simple scripts available to the user. Some provide website templates and others provide the What You See Is What You Get or WYSIWYG type website builders to help you build your web pages easily if you have little or no experience.

Some programs help you to build your website FREE once you join them while in other cases, you will have to build it yourself or get a professional to do it at a cost depending on what you want on the site and the number of pages.

You will also need to have a payment processor with which to receive payment for your products or services. There are a number of such processors and the one to choose will depend on the payment type(s) you wish to receive and whether the processor’s customer service is responsive to your needs when they arise.

As the site owner you will be responsible for advertising the site to get customers. The mode of advertising is similar for affiliate programs and this is where most people are unable to make headway to online success because they are unaware of the methods and manner of advertising available to get customers.

I want you to note here that you must have to make the advertising as targeted as possible to the customer you have in mind if you are to earn income from this method or from affiliate programs. For instance, you cannot be marketing information on sale of dog food to customers who are interested in software.

You cannot also be marketing information on sale of real estate to a group of people whose main interest is music equipment. The more targeted your advertising, the greater the chance of reaching the right audience to make a sale.

Some advertising methods are free while some require an investment to get results. Examples are:

i. : e.g. google, yahoo, bing, lycos, exact seek, entire web, alexa, etc. Some of these submissions to search engines are free to do while some require some payment for inclusion in their directories.

While this could be a free source of good traffic to your site, you are advised not to spam the free submission directories. By spam, I mean submitting your site several times within a short period. If you engage in this, your website would be blacklisted from search engines and you lose the opportunity for free traffic to your site to market your product or service.

The ideal re-submission period is usually monthly or every 30 days.

ii. : in this method, you usually write content of value to readers and submit articles to article directories.

As the article author, there is usually a resource box at the end of the article where you are allowed a link back to your website for visitors who read your article to click to see what is on offer.

Please note however that it is important that you read the rules of article submission for each directory you submit to so you are not accused of spamming. Spamming here would mean deliberately and continuously advertising your site or affiliate link directly in the article body without giving any useful information to readers.

It would also mean submitting the same article more than once and could get you banned from the site. To get your readers to be interested in clicking your link in the resource box, ensure to give them valuable information that does sound overly advertising.

The resource box could contain information on free software, e-book or some other gift of value that is linked to your site.

I would also advise against plagiarism, and by this I mean going to other article directories to take someone else’s article and posting on another site with you as the author in the resource box. This will certainly get you banned once it is discovered. You do not have to take advantage of people to succeed online.

iii. : you can advertise your website or affiliate links on classified sites. Some are free while others require a little investment. What is important again is to be targeted in your advertising to ensure the right people get to see your site or affiliate link.

iv. : this method would work if you are a website owner. You can exchange links with sites of similar content (e.g. work at home programs) for higher search engine ranking and increased visibility for your site. By this I mean you place a link to another site with similar content on your webpage while the other site owner also places a link to your site on their website. Usually, a links page is created to keep a record of all outbound links placed on your site.

You are advised to focus on exchanging links with sites with similar content as yours since search engines would not rank your site higher for content of any kind.

v. : this has to be a forum with members looking for the kind of information you want to advertise. Usually, the advert that has a link to your site is placed in the signature and not in the main body of your posts in the forum, which would be considered as spamming.

You have to read the forum rules before posting and ensure what you post is of value to readers because when they begin to see you as an expert from your posts, that would make them look at your signature and then click on your link to your affiliate program or website.

So, giving valuable information is the keyword here to succeed in this type of advertising. Some forum also offer paid advertising services to their members.

vi. : this is very popular nowadays because advertising on some of the social sites is effective because the advert is targeted at the right audience by various demographics (country, age, sex, interests, etc). Some of the advertising methods are free while some require an investment but it is a good advertising source for online marketers.

However, ensure to read the terms of the site owners before placing your adverts.

vii. : in this method, what you do is offer a FREE and valuable resource (e-book, software, report) to users in exchange to sign up for your newsletter.

Thereafter, you then begin to send them valuable information on tools and resources to help them succeed online. At the end of your newsletter, you provide them a chance to sign up for your offer on your site or affiliate program.

This method requires a bit of automation and by this, I mean having an autoresponder e-mail software with which you prepare your messages of value in advance to send to subscribers to your newsletter on days you have scheduled.

While this method works for new comers to the internet who sign up for your newsletter, it may not work for experienced marketers who will need a lot more convincing to do business with you.

You will usually need to provide a way for subscribers to opt out of your newsletter at the bottom of each mail so that you look professional always. There should also be a link from your autoresponder to your personal e-mail so you can respond promptly to those who want to ask questions on your offer or information.

There are many other interesting ways people use online to advertise and market their affiliate programs and websites.

These are some of the ways people earn very good income nowadays on the internet and any one can do it. Fortunately, there are programs on the internet that have all these powerful ways of making money online all in one program.

Now let me recap. As I said at the beginning of this article and if you have taken time to follow and understand all I have said here, you will see that you will succeed online if you pay attention to the under listed:

(1) You must have the right mental attitude required for success. This is very important or else you will give up at the slightest challenge.

(2) You will have to invest some money either at the beginning or at some point to grow your business. Again, never let anyone tell you anything else because that would be incorrect.

(3) You must have valuable information because that is what most of the people who do not succeed online are in need of. With valuable information, you will definitely succeed online and see how easy it is to earn income there.

(4) You will definitely need a system in place most of the time to succeed. As writer and poet Oscar Wilde put it, “Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you will get the result”.

(c) copyright Gabriel Ama

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