I tried searching today the phrase "make money online" using the Google Search Engine. It returned with 180 million webpage hits. That's a tremendous wealth of information about making money on the Internet.

Even if we assume that the majority of those webpages are simply useless garbage, duplicate and out-dated contents, say, only one percent (1%) are useful information, that still leaves us with 1.8 million of pages.

Now, if you are a beginner and want to try earning money online, you're in for a lot of reading. Since this article is about "make money online", I hope you don't get another page of garbage!

There are many ways of making money online but I will be writing about the two most popular methods, Google Adsense and Affiliate Marketing. These two methods use the same tool: a website writing platform.

You need a website where you can write blogs or articles and insert Google Adsense ads and Affiliate Marketing links or widgets.

Here are some of the ways of making money online from writing articles or blogs:

• Writing articles for other websites as a copywriter. You get paid a fixed amount of money for every article that you write.
• Writing articles at hubpages.com - HubPages inserts Google Adsense ads on your published articles and you earn money from these ads when visitors to your page click on the ads.
• Writing blogs at blogger.com - Similar to HubPages but you do the actual insertion of Google Adsense ads.
• Setup your very own website - You register your own domain, for example "myownblogsite.com", get a web hosting site to host your domain, and install a blogging software or any Content Management System (CMS) software. You are also responsible for placing ads on your website.

See details about this by reading, Make Money Online by Mark Knowles.

HubPages is one of the easiest writing platform for making money online. In HubPages, you can start writing at once as soon as you sign up. You won't have to go thru all the hassles of setting up a website, with its accompanying technical dificulties.

Writing at HubPages simply means typing your textual content on a text capsule. If you need to include a picture relevant to the topic you're writing, you upload the picture using a photo capsule. If you want to include a video clip, you use a video capsule. There's a lot of other capsules you can include on your content like the news capsule, the poll capsule, etc.

The main source of online money with HubPages is the Google Adsense ads. When someone clicks on the ads, you get a revenue share. And here is the most important difference between HubPages and with other writing platforms: you don't have to worry about copying and pasting HTML code into your webpage. HubPages takes care of it. You simply provide HubPages with your Google Adsense Publisher ID.

Another source of income with HubPages is thru affiliate marketing. If you join Amazon Affiliate and eBay Affiliate programs you may include Amazon capsules and eBay capsules into your content. When someone buys a product from Amazon or eBay thru your page, you get a commission.

A word of caution though: Making money online is very challenging and sometimes very frustrating, especially when you're a beginner. Simply writing articles (hubs, as they call it in HubPages) or blogs haphazardly will not lead to a very much needed website traffic, which is the most important part of making money online.

You need plenty of visitors to your site so that there will be a higher chance of someone clicking on your Google Adsense ads. The money you get from your writing is definitely directly proportional to the amount of traffic your page gets.

This means you need to understand how search engines work and how people use them. You need to tailor your articles to specific keywords so that your articles hit the first page of the search engine results page (SERP). The main target is to be listed as the first entry of the first page of the SERP. And this is what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about. For a starter, you may want to read, 3000 Words on Maximizing AdSense Revenue with Hub Pages, by alexd181.

Besides knowing SEO techniques, your might want to follow the guidelines on writing flagship hubs, then you should read, How I got my hub to be on Google's first page, by Mark Knowles.

Sites that Will Pay for Articles - There other sites where you can write articles and earn money besides HubPages. You can write at AssociatedContent, Helium, HowTodoThings, etc.

Make Money Writing for eHow - eHow is another popular writing platform for making money online. This articles shows you how to write and earn money with eHow.

How To Build A Website That Makes $100+ Per Month - This is a comprehensive guide on earning money online by building your own website. Shows you how to choose a niche market and explains how to setup your own website.

Make Money Online - HubPages in a Nutshell - A quick guide on joining HubPages and starting making money online.

Make Money Online with HubPages and Squidoo - A comparison of the two popular websites for making online money.

HubPages and Google Analytics : Know Where Your Money Is Coming From - A guide on how to properly set up Google Analytics for tracking HubPages articles.

LVM at HubPages - A complete list of articles written by LVM at HubPages.