As of early-mid 2009, the United States is facing a serious economic crisis with people losing their homes, their jobs and finding it hard just to survive.  Money is tight and gas prices fluctuate like crazy.  Even food seems expensive to many people these days.  Because of the serious amounts of job losses and people looking for work, many individuals are turning to the internet so they can attempt to make money online.  Many people have false hopes that they will stumble upon some secret product that will help them get rick quick, but quickly learn making money online is not what it seems.

Let's face it, just like in the real world, unless you've inherited a lump sum windfall, are the relative or wife of a very rich individual or strike it rich in the lottery, there's rarely any shortcuts to internet millions.  Making money online will take effort, devotion and hard work just like a real job, but it is possible to build up some nice passive and low-maintenance profitable online projects.  While I can't prevent you from buying other people's information about how to do internet marketing, paid surveys or finding treasure to sell on eBay, I can caution you.  Most of the info that people pay for is really just a collection of free information or info that was arrived at via someone doing their own experimentation making money online.

While making money online does involve a good bit of effort and work in the early stages, you can't go wrong if you target legitimate opportunities that are based on things you enjoy doing. If you like marketing surveys, participating in paid surveys can be for you. Keep in mind these will be time consuming and sometimes monotonous. However, if you're the type who can stomach that work, it's possible to get involved in paid survey taking and work at home. Again, avoid the scams which require you to pay a ton of money to get started.

Another idea as mentioned above is selling items on eBay. Once again, expect to put in work or your own money for this opportunity. You'll need to find products to sell, list them, respond to customer inquiries/complaints and handle shipping. eBay and Paypal make sure they profit from this auction system, so it can be challenging to find profitable items. Once you do, you'll definitely start to build confidence making money online, but you will still be putting in work. If you choose to do something like wholesale product drop shipping that can be a complex and costly investment, but has a good potential for profit. Again the work is in doing your homework, finding a good drop shipper and finding the right product to profit from on eBay.

One of the most popular ways to make money online these days is to set up a monetized blog on a topic you love. You may want to write down a list of about 5-10 topics you really enjoy and can blog about before getting started, and then do some keyword research on which topics will be least competitve, yet most profitable. Then the fun starts, blogging, writing, researching and figuring out how to monetize it all. Again, this is work, but if you build a blog property online with 100's to 1000's of entries, you may find yourself with a future passive income source that will generate daily income as you go about your daily routine. See some of the recommended ways to make money online that you can benefit from whether you have a blog or website, or even if you don't.

Of course if you're reading this page, you may or may not know about Hubpages. Hubpages is a free site you can sign up for and then write pages about any topic you choose. You can also monetize those pages much like a blog, with Google Adsense, eBay and Amazon advertisements. You'll share in the profits your page makes based on popularity, getting at least 60% share of any profit Hubpages makes.

There's no question that getting money can take effort, dedication and hard work whether it's via a real world 9-5 job or if you are making money online.  The difference is that when you start your online venture, you can possibly become your own boss, maybe quite your 9-5, and feel rewarded as you build a successful business on your own.  It's also possible with enough hard work, dedication and time spent to build some very nice passive income sources requiring less of your time, work and effort.  Before you begin any campaign to make money on the web, take into consideration exactly how much blood, sweat and tears you'll be expending to make a profit.  And always try your best to learn for free, rather than paying money before you even make your first dollar online.