Making money online is not hard, nor should it be overwhelming; not even to the absolute beginner. I know I was overwhelmed when I first started, but looking back now, and knowing what I know, I have to admit it is a very simple thing to do when you narrow it down into smaller tasks or categories.

In this hub I will go over some of the basic strategies which I use to make money online.

First lets break things down into 4 main categories of making money online: Research, Finding Products, Writing, and Marketing. That's it, those are the only 4 main categories you need to know about if you want to make money online.

The most important step in internet marketing is to do your research. Find out what people want to buy, what they want to read about and so on. Google has an excellent tool to help you determine which market or niche to get into, and it is called the "Google Keyword Research Tool". It's free to use and it allows you to see exactly how many searches are coming in each month for any particular keyword, or keyword phrase.

Here is a more in depth article on Keyword Research.

I recommend that you get into a market that you are familiar with, and most importantly one that you enjoy. If you decide to enter into a market that you are not familiar with, then you need to thoroughly research that particular market, so that you will be knowledgeable.

Doing your research is an ongoing activity, especially online where things can change in a blink of an eye, and staying on top of your market is crucial.

Read other people's blogs or websites, and subscribe to them. Make sure that you subscribe to Google and other major websites so that you always know what is going on in the online world, and especially in your market.

There are many affiliate programs in just about every market to help you find the exact product which you are interested in promoting. Your best bet is to start off with one or two programs and then work you way up to as many as you want.

Amazon, EBay and Commission Junction are a great place to start. Amazon has made it tremendously easy to add banners, product links and direct page links, making it perfect for any internet marketer to work with them. Amazon even allows you to set up your very own store...as a matter of fact you can set up as many as 100 stores with amazon. Just think about all the products that you could promote.

Some other affiliate programs are Share-A-Sale, Pay Dot Com, LinkShare and ClickBank.

One important thing to keep in mind is that whatever products you promote, make sure that they really are what they say they are, or what you are describing them as. ClickBank has a lot of products which are not legitimate, so when you promote a product from them, make sure you buy it first and then write an honest review.

If you are serious about making money online, then it is essential that you learn how to write. You need to know your punctuation, and how to structure your sentences and paragraphs. You should be able to write at least one article a day.

This means that you will need to learn to type as well. The faster you can type, the more you will get accomplished. I bought the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing course several years back, and the pay off has been amazing. It takes a lot of practice, but you know what they say...practice makes perfect.

You will need to learn how to write one article on a topic and then take the exact same article and re-write it only about 10, 20, or even 30 times to be placed on different sites at different times. Now this may seem daunting, but really it's actually interesting to see how many different ways you can phrase one paragraph, or one sentence. It is a great way to improve your writing and typing skills. Plus it helps you to remember the information, and by the time you get to the fifth re-write you can do it by heart, and comes more natural.

There is an alternative to writing your own content; it is called outsourcing your work, but it will cost you, and is not something that I do, or recommend, unless you just don't like to write and have the money to do so. Elance.com is a great place to go to get great articles on just about any topic, written to your specifications.

You can create the most fabulous website, with excellent product reviews that will have people buying on impulse, but if you don't market your site, you won't have any traffic, which means you won't make any money.

You will have to learn how to market, market again, and then market some more till the cows come home. This is where people throw in the towel because of the tremendous amount of work involved. It's not hard...just time consuming with all the writing that has to be done.

You will need to set up a main blog, or website, whichever you prefer, and then you will need to create other mini sites, or pages that link back to your main site. These are called back links, and the more you can create, the more traffic you will create. 
So for every blog entry, or webpage you create, you need to take that entry and re-write it and place it on another site and link it back to your original entry.

The sites that you want to link back to your main site are Squidoo, HubPages, HowHub, RedGage, Tumblr, and eHow, just to name a few. These sites are ranked high within the search engines, so any links coming from them will automatically give your site a boost in the rankings.

You should also use sites like MySpace, Facebook, Yuwie, Friendster, StumbleUpon, and Twitter. These are all great sites to help you to get free traffic coming to your site.

Article marketing is another strategy to get more traffic. How this works is that you write an article and then submit it to an article directory, along with a link back to your site. When you submit these articles to the directories, they become free for anyone online to use on their sites, provided they include a link back to your site. This is one of the fastest ways to build backlinks to your main site, or even to your other sites like Squidoo or HubPages.

Ezinearticles, goarticles, and ideamarketers are currently my favorites to submit to.

Your ultimate goal of course is to make lots of money online, but in order to achieve that you need to build your credibility first. By following the above steps you will do just that over a period of time.

You should try to make at least 2-3 entries a week on your main blog or main web-site. This is more important than re-writing your content 30 times, and posting it on different sites, because Google is watching and if you don't upload new content to your main site on a regular basis, Google will push you to the back of the engine, and that is not where you want to be; you want to be as close to the front as possible to ensure high rankings and lots of free traffic.

You need to move forward at your own pace, so that you're not overwhelmed, and as long as you continue to upload new content, and build several backlinks each week, then in the end, you will be okay. Google will love you, and so will the rest of the online community.

For more information on how to make money online with affiliate marketing visit: http://www.internetaffiliateinfo.com