There is no shortage of people trying to earn a living using the Internet. As a technology the world wide web is still in its infancy and as a result we have yet to define its boundaries and shape it into a predictable source of revenue. In fact while the world has come to realize that you have to develop a presence online it is another thing to turn that presence into a viable source of earnings. Many sites have established large audiences but have failed to turn a profit while other sites profit from specialized niches with far less audience. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the web is still ahead of its practitioners in so much as there is no set revenue model to base your online presence on.

To date the most successful sites in terms of niche have been those that cater to an audience that is willing to part with their money either because it is more convenient to buy online – think Travel sites, Ticket promotors – or because the site offers something that is hard to find offline but is in much demand – think Adult sites and Dating sites. Banks, Accounting firms, IT, home improvement lenders and tech companies are just some of the industries that have an easy time adapting the web to suit their needs while profiting from it. The vast majority of old school Corporate America is not in this situation and are finding it hard to turn a profit through online endeavors. Think traditional media – they are slowly dying offline as advertising revenue is steadily moving away from TV and newspapers/magazines and being put to use online. Google is now the largest advertising network on Earth and they are supposed to be a search engine. The New York Times was a titan of old and Google is the titan of new.

The simple thing to do is just invent the next facebook or twitter if you want traffic. If you want to make money then you have to find a way to monetize your audience and this is what Google has led the field in doing. The thing is you don’t have to create a facebook empire in order to profit from the Google business model. In simple terms you just have to provide space for advertisers to push their wares and collect income for sending your audience to the advertiser. This same model can be accomplished with a site that has 1,000,000 visitors a day or a site that has just 100. Obviously the more visitors you have the more money you will make. You can accomplish a million visitors by building more sites – you don’t just have to have 1 hit website.

The work at home market is booming these days partly due to the recession and partly due to curiosity. The Internet is new and there are frequent stories of people who have become rich seemingly overnight from something they did associated with the Internet. This has not gone unnoticed by the population at large. Every day more and more people sit down at their computer and follow the trail of advice offered regarding how to build a home business online. There is no shortage of advice and a multitude of systems designed to teach you how to make money online. The problem for the average novice is knowing where to start and more importantly knowing whose advice is worth listening to. A simple word of advice – is the expert selling you something? If they are you are best to search elsewhere. Virtually everything you need to know about the Internet Marketing niche can be found online for free and more importantly several sources provide legit information that doesn’t have a sales pitch attached to it. These sources are the hardest to find as most Internet marketers tend to keep their secrets to themselves.

In a nutshell there are two trains of thought when it comes to making money online. One involves using the vast social media infrastructure that has been built up over the past two years – commonly known as web 2.0 and using applications like Twitter and Facebook and bookmarking directories and peer to peer review sites like Digg and Stumbleupon to publicize your brand – your site – in order to become a well known presence online or at least in regards to your niche. The belief being that if you can establish a large audience then advertisers will be drawn to your site offering large sums of money. Does this work? Yes it does but only for the sites that draw a buying audience. Many sites like twitter have millions of visitors but very few of those visitors is there because they are looking to buy anything. As a result Twitter has yet to find a way to monetize all those millions of users. Other sites like Plenty of Fish (a free Dating Site) make a lot of money from advertisers (first using Adsense and later 1st Tier advertisers like the auto industry.) The difference is in the type of traffic the two sites attract. The latter has an audience of buyers or at the very least they click on the ads – twitter users are ad blind.

The second avenue of thought regarding how to earn money online deals with Search Engine marketing or SEO (search engine optimization). The belief is to create sites targeted to a particular niche and optimize the site for prime search engine placement. The idea being that if you rank number 1 for highly searched for terms then the search engines will supply you with free, steady traffic that is not just browsing – the searcher is actively looking for something and hence much more likely to buy if you present them with what they are looking for.

PPC or Pay per Click advertising ties in with the search optimization method but rather than optimizing your own site to rank high in the search rankings you simply buy ads right on top of the search engine results pages and bypass the free listings altogether. This is how the bulk of experienced marketers make their money online but be warned that it takes a lot of money and experience to become successful using Pay per Click advertising. It is not something novices should consider. On the other hand SEO is their best bet if they want to make a reliable and sustained income online. They can try the social media route but if they don’t have a popular niche and suitable talent/skill/expertise in it they may find that becoming famous online is not as easy as they first think. SEO however allows everyone to participate on a level playing field and slowly build up an online presence by concentrating on small niches to start and larger ones as your network of sites ages and matures.

In any event – more and more people will be joining the ranks of those looking to operate a home business using the Internet. If you are considering this then learn SEO before anything else. You can begin with Griz who writes a make money online blog that doesn’t sell you anything and explains how he himself has built up a network of blogs and websites that earn him a nice monthly income – mostly passively. He uses a number of sites to demonstrate his system and has thousands of readers who leave a lot of comments on his blogs. Read the comments – they contain so much useful information if you want to learn the ins and outs of Internet marketing.

Having your own small business and being your own boss — a potent aphrodisiac to most people who need to make a living but do not want to live and die an employee.

Many are raring to be freed from nine-to-five jobs that drain the energy but never really pays enough to compensate the efforts. Only one solution comes to mind: set up your own business.

Why venture into a small business?

Why not? Records show that small businesses do account for a big chunk of most countries’ economies, especially during crises. As unemployment woes continue, more and more people will look into building their own businesses to earn a living. We can expect the mushrooming of small businesses, particularly personal businesses, particularly those that will entail manageable capitalization.

Can a small business thrive during a recession?

A crisis brings out the creativity and entrepreneurial skills of people. As the economy slows down, the micro business sector gets to challenge itself to keep afloat. This is a time to create, to innovate and to come up with a fresh approach to doing business.

There were many small business entrepreneurs that took the plunge in the middle of a recession and have since then grew to be corporate giants today. FedEx, Burger King, IHOP Corp, Wikipedia Foundation Inc., GE, Hewlett-Packard, CNN and even Microsoft Corp. are just some of the recession startups.

The secret? The brains behind these companies had the eye to zero in on market demands that were being satisfied by no one. They were astute enough to identify the areas where there are unfulfilled needs. And there lies another secret…unfulfilled NEEDS. When there is a need, there is a demand. And if you can respond to that demand, then you’re more than halfway there.

How Can One Find The Right Business To Get Into?

Your choices should be within your skills or expertise, and your passion. It is very difficult to venture into something you know nothing and much less care about. The stakes are high and there may just be little room for failure but with hard work and lots of knowledge and experience, there is little reason not to succeed. And with the emergence of the Internet, small businesses need not spend as much to market their companies. The information superhighway has roads wide enough to let everyone in. Web presence has never been taken advantage of as much as it is being done so now.

Indeed there is no business like a small business if you put your heart and your mind into it. The challenge of the recession is no match to the determination of someone who sees the light at the end of the tunnel.