Yes, believe it or not, as skeptical as you may be, you can earn money online. And you can start doing it without paying a cent. This hub is sort of an offshoot from my post on my personal blog about earning money online. If you read it, you will see that I am in fact not a "money making guru." I'm a 22-year old internet marketer. I have seen some success, but for the most part I am in the same struggle you are. The only difference is that I have some experience under my belt.

I see two problems facing people who haven't even started in this business. The first is that there are so many ways to earn money online! It can and will get confusing for those who don't know where to start. The other problem is that for each method of earning money online, there are dozens of other people trying to sell you something that "guarantees" you'll make bank. Usually these are e-book peddlers, and their sites usually look something like that atrocity in the upper-right corner. They have lots of highlighting, big bold red letters, and (usually) fake screenshots showing their earnings online. The motto of the e-book peddler is "overpromise and underdeliver."

I'm sick and tired of it. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to spend a single red cent until I actually started earning money online. Unfortunately, I didn't do that at first. I own a few domains, bought a couple products, and here I am, still struggling to earn some decent money online. But the damn title of this hub is how to start earning money if you don't have any. So let's get started.

Blogs. Blogging has exploded on the internet in the last few years. And what was once simply an online diary is now a way for developers to log their progress on new projects, companies to communicate with their employees and customers, people to discuss a variety of topics from politics to video games (and the politics of video games!), and people like you to earn money online.

Why blogging?

You have no money to pay for a domain and hosting for your website, right? You have to rely on free hosted websites. Unfortunately, if you're trying to pitch a product or run a review website and it says, "Hosted by LifeConquestPages.com" at the top of your page or your URL is dvdreviews.freehostedwebsites.com, it doesn't look like the professional image you're trying to portray. With blogs, you don't need to keep a professional image. Blogs have this informality about them that makes them appealing to visitors. You can write like a human being. Two great free blogging services are Blogger and WordPress. Both use different blogging software. I prefer WordPress but Blogger is easier to use.

What do I blog about?

This is the most crucial part you need to work out before starting any online venture. What you need to do is select a niche to blog about. Why is this important? Because you want your blog to cover as much of one topic as possible, because you want to have a set of keywords you can use throughout your blog which will help you rank well on the search engines, and because you want to know how much competition is out there!

An example...

Let's say you want to make a blog about video games. Okay, video gaming is a niche. Let's see how much competition there is out there. I did a search on Google for "video games" (no quotes) and got about 510,000,000 results. When you build your blog, one of the highest quality sources of traffic is search engine traffic. But the keyword "video games" pulls up over half a billion websites. This is where you do some keyword research.

I use SEO Book, which utilizes Yahoo! Search Marketing's keyword tool (giving actual numbers of how many searches were made for specific keywords) and estimates the number of searches on Google and MSN Live Search. I did a search for "video games" and "computer games" (no quotes) and found some interesting information.

Over 1.7 million people searched for video games, and almost 300,000 searched for computer games in January 2007. If you scroll down, you can see other keywords which were searched for fewer times. With good search engine optimization (SEO) of your blog or website, you can get the top results for some of these keywords which are less in demand. Within some of these keywords are subniches or microniches as well. Less than 12,000 searches were made for "kid computer game" (no quotes) and even fewer for similar keywords. Maybe you could blog about computer games for children. I did a Google search for "kid computer game" (no quotes) and found 131,000,000 results. I found 29,300,000 results for "child computer game" (no quotes) and it gets less than 7000 searches a month.

See what I'm doing? I'm looking for keywords I can use and a niche I can blog about that will increase my chances of getting search engine traffic. In general, the smaller the niche, the less competition.

So at what point do I actually make money here?

The easiest thing to do is just place contextual PPC (pay-per-click) ads on your blog. Depending on content of your blog, different ads will be show, and will generate revenue when someone clicks on them. Google AdSense is the most popular PPC service. The Yahoo! Publishing Network is another one. And there are dozens of smaller PPC services out there. These are free to sign up for, but be careful not to confuse AdSense with AdWords and the Yahoo! Publishing Network with Yahoo! Search Marketing's Sponsored Search. These are for advertisers, not publishers. If you ever want to start using paid advertising to promote a website, then check them out. Microsoft adCenter is another PPC service for advertisers.

Another great way to earn money online is by promoting products, referring them to your sponsor, and earning a commission on sales. Where do you find products to promote? ANYWHERE. ClickBank is great if you want to sell digital products. It's easy to set up and there are thousands of products to promote. PayDotCom is another marketplace for affiliates. Commission Junction has a huge selection of products and services from major companies. Amazon runs its own affiliate program if you're interested in promoting physical products. Keep in mind that promoting physical products like those at Amazon will earn you less money per sale because of the associated costs of production, shipping, etc.

In a nutshell...

1. Setup a free hosted blog that's focused on a particular niche. Do some research to see how much competition there is out there and what keywords you will be commonly using in your blog. It's also a good idea to blog about something that interests you since you will have to keep writing about it.

2. Write frequently, especially at first.

3. Place contextual PPC ads on your blog. If you're using Blogger, go with AdSense since they're both owned and run by Google. Google makes it very easy to setup.

4. You can also plug products on your blog as an affiliate, earning a cut of the sales you bring to your sponsor. In my video game example, you could review computer games for children and place affiliate links on your blog.

5. Promote your blog for traffic. I'll cover this in a little bit.

6. ...

7. Profit!

Setting up a blog is easy and free. Putting ads on your blog is easy and free. Taking that single blog and making a living out of it is difficult. You might have to make several blogs. Maybe you chose a niche that's too broad and too competitive. Or perhaps you chose a niche that's so narrow, nobody cares about it. But you haven't lost any money. You didn't spend money on a website only to have your project flop and abandoned. You didn't waste hundreds of dollars on AdWords or other paid traffic that only burned a deeper hole in your pocket.

Internet marketing is so easy to get into without paying a single red cent. Hell, you can even earn money online promoting adult content with no investment, which I'll briefly discuss later on.

But don't expect to make a thousand or even a hundred dollars in your very first month. And it is harder to earn money online without any monetary investment, but not impossible.

I mentioned promoting your blog a bit earlier. Once you setup your blog, nobody knows about it. A good idea is to submit it to blog directories. Some of these directories restrict the submission of newly created blogs. There are also plenty of free website directories. Many have paid listings, which generally means a faster listing and a better rank among other websites on the directory. You could also submit to search engines, but search engine spiders do a good job of eventually finding your site and listing it.

An interesting way of promoting your blog is through social bookmarking websites like Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, or Netscape. It's a good idea to do this when you have something interesting to say. If your blog is about computer games for children, perhaps you could compile a list of top 10 children's computer games for the holiday season or something and review each game. The more controversial and recent the subject, the more likely your submissions will get more views and your blog will get more traffic (see: buzz marketing). You can also submit your own press releases via PRWeb.

If you frequent any message boards or forums, place a link to your blog in your signature. Just be wary of the rules because on some forums this isn't allowed. The more you contribute to the forum overall, the better this technique works.

You can do link trades with other blogs. This arrangement is usually approached directly and informally, but there are some places on the web dedicated to connecting webmasters and bloggers together so they can do link trades.

There are many other ways you can promote your blog. Build Hubs or Squidoo lenses about similar content and link back to your blog. Answer questions related to your blog's content and include a link to your blog for more information (i.e. "What gift should I get my child this Christmas?" and include a link to your blog post on the top 10 chidren's computer games). Be creative.

(Underlined websites aren't linked because they could contain mature content. But they can be easily searched for.)

I won't spend too much time on this, as the recommended resources are more than enough to get your started, but yes, you can earn money online in the adult industry.

Some things you should understand while considering this sort of business. First, you should be okay with the fact that possibly somewhere down the line someone will find out that you peddled adult content. Second, realize the potential legal ramifications of this line of work in your area. Ask around on webmaster forums about these sorts of things, but ultimately you should consult a lawyer to be 100% sure what you're doing is okay.

So, you are okay with peddling adult content, and the legal issues have been dealt with. Now what?

This is about earning money online with no money to start, so we have few options. Galleries, freesites, and free hosted blogs. Galleries are single webpages that have anywhere from 12-20+ thumbnails linked to larger photos. Galleries will almost always have some links or banners to sponsors. These galleries are submitted to thumbnail gallery posts (TGPs) which are then perused through by surfers. You will need a free adult host like King Host to host your galleries. Unfortunately, not many TGPs accept free hosted galleries, but thankfully the biggest one, the Hun, does.

Freesites are essentially a small website with two galleries and links to your sponsors. You would submit these to linkdumps.

You can use free hosted blogs to promote adult content. Do not use WordPress or Blogger's free hosted services. Use Thumblogger or Sensual Writer instead, which are dedicated free adult blogging services. You can also add some contextual PPC ads, but they often pay less than their mainstream cousins. Do not use AdSense, and be sure that you find a PPC ad program that accepts adult websites. What do you write in an adult blog? Generally you'll have a picture linking to a gallery or a movie or something, and in your post you'd have a keyword-rich description.

In all cases, you're basically an affiliate for adult websites. And as with mainstream, porn has several niches you can promote. Below are some resources, unlinked because they may contain some mature content.

Useful Adult Industry Resources

YNOT - A great adult webmaster resource site with a message board.

Cozy Academy - Tons of information on adult webmastering. Also part of a "Cozy" network of sites, all of which you should check out.

Cozy Campus - Friendly message board but very small.

Greenguy and Jim - Adult webmaster site run by two guys in the adult business. Has stats for adult sponsors and hosts a message board.

Netpond - Overall a great message board with a very friendly atmosphere. Also has a subforum dedicated to earning money online with mainstream (non-pornographic) sites.

GFY Webmaster Board - A very popular adult webmaster board. Not the greatest place for newbies and those without a thick skin, but home to a lot of very talented webmasters and others in the adult industry.

You toiled away at your blogs for weeks, months even. You finally get that first check from Google or ClickBank. Now what? Perhaps it would be a good idea to get your own domain and hosting. Or perhaps pay for some traffic. Using solely free hosted blogs and such limits what you can do online, and there's always the danger that your blogs could be pulled.

Once you earn that money, I'd highly recommend you reinvest it into your online business. Because that's what it is: a business. And you should treat it as such. Reinvest in it so you can make it grow.