The first thing I can tell you is that making money online is not going to be easy. I have already learned this much on the endless amount of blogs and websites I have already read on the subject. I will share the best info I have read about but I want to concentrate more on the stuff I have actually tried.

The most important thing I think people need to understand is that there are no get rich quick schemes online, or at least none that I am aware of. Are there original ideas that make people millions? Sure lots of them, but the ad that says you can make $5000 a day working for an hour while staying in bed and watching Oprah are not really plausible. From what I have learned so far the key to actually making money online is to do multiple things that bring in a stream of income, possibly the reason you joined Squidoo in the first place. I'm not going to lie, that's why I joined, well I like writing too.

So on to the first experiment:

Since you are looking at Squidoo right now and I have only just joined Hubpages, I will begin with discussing Squidoo. These are places where people sign up for free and then create their own kind of mini-website about any topic they wish. The writers then get a share of the profits made from the ads on their mini-website (Squidoo calls them lens).

Now I am by no means an expert on this, that's why I am calling this whole thing a journey. When you first join up, the information on how the paying thing works can be overwhelming. Here are the basics for you noobs.

You can get paid from two things: Adsense and Affiliate advertisements. Adsense are the little text ads around the page sponsored from Google. These ads pay a few cents per click and get put in a big pool with 50% being shared with the writers of the lens based on how popular the lens is, otherwise known as lensrank.

The tiers go like this:

Lensrank 1-999 get the lions share of the Adsense money.
Lensrank 1000-9999 get the next biggest chunk.
Lensrank 10,000-100,000 get the third biggest chunk.
Lensrank 100,000 and up get practically nothing, maybe a few cents.

The Affiliate ads are things like Amazon and Ebay and you only make money from these if a person buys the item they click on from your lens. This will also be a 50% cut of the commission that Squidoo makes from the sale. Now a smart person would tell you to bypass Squidoo and go sign up for your own affiliate program at Amazon and other companies and try to get all the commission money for yourself. This takes more time and effort so you can be your own judge.

The best tips for making money on sites like Squidoo and Hubpages are to make lots of high quality lens and try and generate traffic there as much as possible. This can be done by being active in the forums or joining groups. The resident expert on Squidoo money making is Janet21, visit her lens here.

Affiliate marketing is when you have traffic on your site and you sell other peoples products though a link they get from your site. You then get a commission from the person originally selling the product. Clickbank is probably a great place to do this and I plan on trying it out soon.

I am experimenting with the Supertips affiliate right now and the information is great. It presents a strategy for selling any type of product using methods which will never become obsolete. It also has an ingenious twist which will make this guy rich but easily make you some cash along the way.

The Ultimate SuperTip, written by Harvey Segal (Mr SuperTips) is neatly set out, easy to follow, written without hype and not littered with annoying links. In this short (37 page) eBook Harvey has managed to include one unique idea after another on a wide variety of topics starting with his controversial stance on search engines and moving on to:

- Getting traffic to your site
- Preselling with free eBooks
- Preselling with articles
- Autoresponders and follow up campaigns
- Ad tracking
- Affiliate marketing
- ClickBank
- Viral marketing
- PDF book creation
- EBook rebranding
- Creating niche sites
- Resale rights

He even throws in an amazing "quick-start" idea at the end.

This is not:

A pyramid scam.

Complex mumbo jumbo just to get you to buy something.

Something you have to convince your friends and family to participate in, it's online only.

A waste of time.

A big investment.

This is:

A great way to start an online business (even if you don't have a product, lots of money, or advanced computer skills).

And the cost of this book: It's free !

You don't even have to submit any personal information to get it, just download it:

You really should take a read through on this one folks! To download the FREE EBOOK, just click on this picture:

So as you can tell this guy goes all out to hype you up to get his book, I read it and I even bought the extra books. He doesn't disappoint and is highly recommended on a number of sites I have visited.

The freebie world first debuted in 1999 with Paid to Surf programs like "AllAdvantage". These sites would usually require a user to download an 'ad bar' that would sit on your screen displaying advertisements. You were paid for referrals, but mostly based on how long the bar detected you were using the computer, the limit being around 20 hours a month at 50 cents an hour. In 2001, the formation of FreeCondoms.Com by Gratis Internet (now under the name FreePay) opened up a new world of freebies. It was soon followed by the much more highly renowned site, FreeiPods.Com.

FreeiPods.com soon became very well known and an instant hit attracting all sorts of attention from interested users, the media, and other entrepreneurs excited to create sites of their own.

Because these websites commonly rely on the exponential growth of users referred by other users, it was not long until web forums and communities started to be formed with the common goal of getting the freebies.

A "freebie" is a product that is offered as a reward to people who complete the requirements stated by a freebie site. Examples of freebies include iPods, gaming consoles, TV's, electronic gadgets, and technology gear. Freebies also include cash, which is often paid in the form of PayPal but also include personal checks, wire transfers, e-gold, and other online money handling services.

Freebies are acquired by completing requirements of a freebie site, which usually involve:

1. Signing up and creating an account with the freebie site.
2. Completing the required number of offers.
3. Getting the required number of referrals.

Free sites make money to give away free gifts through incentivized advertising. This means that the free sites offer an incentive - a freebie - to gain business. Free sites' goal is for new customers to click on advertisements and use or try the products being advertised, such as Blockbuster.com. As a result of bringing new customers and business, the advertising company (Blockbuster) pays the free site a predetermined amount of money, such as $40 per offer completion.

For example, freeipods.com gets paid $40 for batman129 to complete an offer, and then another $240 for each of his 6 referrals to complete an offer ($40 x 6 = $240). The free site, freeipods.com, now has $280 and can afford to purchase and ship an iPod to batman129 at an online rate, leaving some money leftover as profit.

The following websites are where people get referrals. You can get paid to do referrals (i.e. get paid $25 to buy a $1.99 product) or you can start amassing your own referrals to get the prize that you want.

anything4free.com

freeipodguide.com

referralswapper.com

I know this all seems confusing, and it is, but if you join these sites and read the forums and wiki pages you will begin to grasp how it all works. I am in the early stages of this method and once again you won't get rich but you can definitely make a few bucks.

So as not to waste your time here are some things you definitely need to do this:

- Credit Card
- Verified Paypal
- Not on AOL
- Reside in United States or Canada

Remember take your time reading the information and take it slow, feel comfortable and understand the process before you go too far with it.

Ok this is something I have not tried yet but intend to. Since I can't give you specifics on how to do it I will tell you what I do know.

It is not easy.

That's right, there's a lot more to blogging than pouring your heart out on the internet and everyone rushing to read the latest chapter of your life. I think you need a certain level of skill to capture your audience, because in the end these are the folks who will be giving you some income.

That being said there's nothing wrong with giving it a shot, I intend to. There's a lot more science or internet mumbo jumbo you will need to understand before you make some cash though. Oh and by the way the "experts" say you should be blogging for the enjoyment not the cash, but we'll see what happens.

Since I am not an expert yet, here are the guys I consider to be at the top of their game. Sometimes the information gets a little technical, but I know you're a smart cookie and can figure it out.

Bloggerunleashed

makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com

These guy's websites are hard to navigate but trust me the content is there folks!

This is a topic that I keep hearing a lot of noise about lately and something that I decided I had better start reading up on.

The first things I read got me so excited that I immediately went and signed up at Google Adwords and Clickbank and almost started paying for Adwords before I even knew what I was doing. That's when I slapped myself in the face and came to my senses. First rule of online business: research the hell out of whatever asks you for your credit card number.

That being said, what are Adwords and Clickbank?

Adwords is a Google invention that has changed the way people advertise online. You know those pretty little Google ads on this page that makes us money? Well people pay to be in those spots.

Clickbank is a website that is basically a big warehouse of digital products (mostly eBooks) just waiting to sold like hotcakes. Who does the selling? You, me, anyone. You sign up for free and then pick product/products you want to sell and go to it.

Yes I realize this is a simple explanation, but hey I am newbie too.

After many many hours and reading articles and lenses until my eyes bled, I realized that the Adwords/Clickbank thing is quite a complicated beast. For every person who got my hopes up telling me in their blog about how easy it is to make money, another person dashed my hopes and dreams away by saying they lost a bundle. This leads me to believe that it is possible to make this work but you need to do your homework.

Speaking of homework, this eBook keep coming up in my research and had many supporters, it doesn't make any promises of making millions doing nothing, it takes smarts and understanding to beat Adwords. And that is the title of the book, which you can get here:

www.beatingadwords.com

This little banner is a perfect example of how Clickbank works, you click it, take a look at what these guys have to offer, if you decide it's worth having you buy it and then I make a few bucks; simple as that. So with Clickbank offering 200,000 products it would be easy to find something of interest to you and incorporate it in a lens and try to make some money too.

You cannot make money at this.

I know, I know, it's hard to hear it, but this not a reliable way to make income. Even if your rich uncle from Las Vegas tells you about some kind of system he has, forget it.

Don't believe me?

Ask the Wizard of Odds a former gambling machine designer who knows all the necessary math to ensure the "house" will always be the winner. If you are ready to see lots of math proofs take a look at his website:

wizardofodds.com

The bottom line is that a gambler usually has Gamblers Fallacy.

The gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the false belief that the probability of an event in a random sequence is dependent on preceding events, its probability increasing with each successive occasion on which it fails to occur. If a fair coin is tossed repeatedly and tails comes up many times in a row, a gambler may believe, incorrectly, that heads is more likely on the following toss. Such an event may be referred to as "due". This is an informal fallacy.

Thanks Wikipedia!

Now there is still a chance for you hardcore gamblers, do you like sports? Well it doesn't matter, there's this guy who claims to be a statistician and loves sports. Apparently he has put together some kind of system to bet on certain sports with 97% accuracy of winning. I am still in the researching stage of this one, so I'd rather not give out specific info at this time, I wouldn't want to be blamed for causing anyone to lose money.

It does seems to make sense in theory since sports teams and players have a history of stats to look at. There is a possibilty you may be able to increase the odds a little bit. The deal cost's $197 to buy from this guy and I cannot find any negative information about the product or guy. So I may give it a shot but I am still scared, but I'll keep you all up to date. If you really really want to find out about it just Google sports betting, I'm sure you will find it.