The sheer number of options and things one can do to make money online is astounding. How much you make depends on how much work you put in, your talents, your knowledge, your desire and a whole lot of other things. For instance, many people get started making money online by going to one of the surveys for money sites. There they can make $20 a week or more and it is something they can do mindlessly. They don’t have to have their own website and they don’t have to get very involved.

People who want more money than they can get that way need to put in more hours and have a greater level of involvement. They might even need to have their own website(s) and that takes a lot commitment than the first group of folks was willing to give. When you have your own websites you have to maintain them and rank them so that you can get traffic. You also need to have a product, service, or affiliate deals in place in order to make money.

There are many different varieties of websites you can have and that is where people can truly go their own way. If you are able to imagine it, you can probably do it on the web and make money. The greater your imagination and your work ethic, the greater your chances of becoming a success.

Most people who do well at making money on the Internet like being in charge and being their own boss. They like working alone or with small groups and they enjoy calling the shots. They would rather succeed or fail on their own rather than work for someone else. That desire to be in charge is what makes them willing to work harder so that they never have to work for anyone else again in their life.

Oh, wait.  All of those sites make money.  Maybe you can make money online.  In fact, maybe it’s relatively common.  But surely my cooking blog doesn’t count, right?  I mean, who would really pay me money to read about the spatula I accidentally melted in the oven?  And it’s not like I’m being paid for every recipe I post.  Why would anyone pay for my failed avocado cream pie attempt?

Fortunately, I know how to make money with Google.  No, I’m not selling them recipes or spatulas or avocado cream pies.  Somehow, I doubt that Google would want them.  What I’m selling them is advertising space.

You see, those side bars on my blog hold invaluable empty space – space that can be used to sell someone else’s products or services.  And Google allows me the chance to earn money every time one of my foodies clicks on an advertisement for a new, melt-proof spatula.

Here’s how it works: Google has clients who pay them for advertising.  Every time that ad gets a click or appears on a web page, Google gets paid for it.  The advertisers are happy to pay for the publicity, because it increases their sales revenues.  Google is more than happy to oblige, since it doesn’t cost them anything to put the advertisement on the side of their page.

But if Google can put the ad on the side of my page, that means the ad gets more traffic.  More traffic means more clicks, and more clicks means Google gets more money from their advertisers.  So, Google is more than willing to give me a small cut of the profits in exchange for my cooking blog’s cooperation.  So even if my pie was a little greenish, I could still make a little money off of the blog post.

Want to try for yourself?  Check out Google’s Adsense program!

Adsense is an ad serving system run by Google which puts relevant ads on your web pages for your visitors to click. Every time someone on your web page hits one of those ads you get paid by Google, doesn’t that sound like an easy way to make money? As always things are never quite as easy as they seem but if you are willing to put in the effort to learn the ins and outs of the Adsense system you could find yourself generating a passive income stream in no time at all.