Everybody wants to know how to make money online. How do you do it? There are lots of different strategies and methods, but what you go after is largely dependent on your personal skills, what your budget is, and how much time you have to work on it. I'm going to give you a quick overview of some of the popular strategies and methods that are used to make money online.

One of the newest, and most popular, strategies is social media. Twitter and Facebook have exploded with users all talking to each other about what they like and hot. If you are unfamiliar with these sites, they can seem a little intimidating to get started with. Not to fear! If your 14 year old niece can do it, so can you. Facebook allows you to start up your own a fan page that you can use to advertise your business on your pages and it is a nice place to send people interested in what you're selling. Whenever someone "likes" your page, all of their friends can see that, and may come to see what the buzz is about. This is a great way to build your fans virally, and gives you a simple forum posting to talk about your business to people who are receptive to your pitch. Twitter allows you to place a web short link and a little message in your profile that goes straight to your business page. You can also place links to your site in your tweets. Just remember that nobody wants to get bombarded with ads. Don't be a spammer! The best part about social media is that it's free!

Another free method that just requires a bit more effort is article marketing. Articles can be uploaded on many different article writing sites that build links back to your business site. When you sign up at article publishing sites, you want to write a short profile about yourself and include a link back to your site. When your article is accepted and published, your resource box is added to the end of your article and gives your readers the ability to click your link and find their way into your sales funnel. This method is great if you enjoy writing, but it takes time to build traffic. The more articles you can write the more you can output, the more links you build back to your site. The articles stay up on the web almost forever, so they continue to drive traffic long after you have expended the effort to create them.

The most popular way to build immediate traffic to your site is through pay-per-click advertising. This method can get complicated, as Google (the most popular place to advertise) has lots of rules you must follow to advertise with them. Do your research first to find out what Google wants before you spend any money on a google adword campaign! If you set up an ad campaign the wrong way, Google (along with Yahoo and Bing adopting some stricter requirements) can shut down your advertising and may even ban you from advertising with them altogether. So educate yourself, read their TOS and Terms of Use, and then build out quality campaigns to make the most of your advertising budget.

These are not the only strategies and methods to make money online, but they are the most popular for people who are new to online advertising. Starting with the free methods and building an internet presence will start to generate revenue that you can then invest in the paid methods. As you learn by doing, you will find out what works for you and what doesn't. There are people who are willing and able to assist you as you begin your online business. See my resource box to learn more!