If you have been thinking about making money online then you have probably been wading your way through the tons of ads and promises that are out there. Because most of those ads seem so hyped up and full of promises it can seem like making money online is a completely made up idea, but that's not true! There are legitimate ways to make money online, you just have to figure out what works best for you.

A few different ways that may appeal to you are:

Affiliate marketing - This is marketing others people's products and earning a commission if someone buys from your efforts. You receive a link to send people through and that link is unique to you. Almost every company and product out there uses affiliate marketers which means that you can market almost any type of product you can think of!

There is a lot of work that goes into affiliate marketing and if you do it in a cheap and annoying way you can be shut down quite quickly. For instance if you go into yahoo answers and blatantly advertise yourself over and over then you may receive a lot of resistance and have your account shut down.

Affiliate marketing can be done with or without a website but your best bet is to have a website of your own that points people to the products you are promoting. The reason for this is that article marketing and other forms of marketing do not always allow you to point to an affiliate link. It makes for an easier business strategy and easier marketing efforts with your own website at hand.

Writing an EBook - If you enjoy writing and have some knowledge about something that other people would be interested in then writing an eBook may be for you.

Online books are becoming more and more popular and for good reason. They offer immediate download, which means you don't have to leave your computer to start reading your book! It doesn't matter whether it's 3am or 2pm, you can still buy and download an eBook. Plus it's environmentally friendly with the non-existent use of paper and gas saved on delivering your book to book stores. They are generally cheaper than their hardcover counterparts and they almost always come with bonus eBooks which gives you a bang for your buck.

Once you write your eBook you can sell it online through your website and either market it yourself or have affiliate marketers help you get the word out.

Be prepared to deal with customers on some level as you want to let people feel free to contact you about your book and knowledge.

Write and sell articles - If you are good at writing and have lots of knowledge in a certain niche then you may want to write and sell some articles.

You should have some knowledge of SEO and keywords before you begin to write as most people are looking for certain types of articles to use on their websites and blogs to drive natural traffic to them.

I've personally seen articles sell from $10-$175 depending on length of article, niche topic, keywords used, and more.

There are different sites online that will post your articles for sale and charge a commission for doing so from you.