Can You Really Earn a Living Online

With the economy in the tank, and college graduates facing a future of low wages that may last a decade, some are turning to the Internet to see if the cyberword has more to offer financially than the physical world.

Well, obviously the Internet's potential for making money is limitless. However, so is the potential for being scammed, as well as becoming so overwhelmed with opportunities that you develop Internet Marketing ADD.

After graduating from college, and not being able to find inspiring work in my line of study, I turned to the Internet. After all, searching for methods to make money online had been a hobby for me for years. What did I have to lose when it came to making it a career.

Yes, I myself have proven you can earn money on the Internet. I have received paychecks from Internet survey sites, auction sites, and sites that pay for articles. It hasn't been a lot of money, but the key is that there is so many different ways that pay a little bit of money that all you have to do is do enough of them to make a living.

One thing to be aware of is that once you start searching around for money making opportunities online, your inbox will be besieged with get rich quick schemes from Google adwords opportunities to site after site displaying photos of fancy cars and houses with beautiful people saying if you pay $47 you will receive the secret that cracks the code to making thousands with no work. You can easily get sucked in to doing them since they prey on the desperate. Not to say that they don't work, but getting overly excited and jumping from one to another is not the path to success.

After years of trial and error, I have boiled my Internet day job into three things and dismiss everything else in terms of making money online:

I sell products on Ebay by creating instructional CD's with useful tutorials on achieving goals and selling unique gifts.

I also write articles for sites that pay anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred for good content. A simple google search can bring these up - usually the ones that appear at the top are good sites.

I sell books on Amazon.com, including ebooks on their kindle self publish site which gives me a residual income.

That's it. By putting all my efforts into those things, I can pay the bills working about 30 hours a week. Mind you, any dreams of taking it easy and being completely free to do what you want in terms of self employment is a novelty that wears off quick as you still have to work hard. These have to be a quality 30 hours. However, I can only fire myself, and I have some fun doing it and I can work less than I would in a prison cubicle.

When I'm in the middle of he work day and my mind is just not working right, I might take a break here and there, listen to music, go for a walk, or maybe do some surveys for a few bucks a pop.

One final rule I have is that I usually don't pay for opportunities to work. When you're looking for a job, you are looking for money in exchange for services. You are not looking to pay. Now, there are probably a lot of sites that require payment for services and information and are legitimate with good information, but you could get the information for free if you have the research time. However, researching on the Internet is a highly paid profession and sometimes it's worth to spend money rather than time (the most valuable commodity) since there is sea of money out there and and a sea of opportunities.

So if you feel like you're wasting your time polishing your resume for jobs that don't exist, you can get online, do your research, and create an imaginary drill sargeant or boss making you do your thirty hours.

Believe me, the satisfaction of making your own money is well worth it, as well as the security of knowing that you control whether you make money or not, not somebody else who may not care one whit about you.