I find it absolutely amazing how the internet has just permeated into every aspect of our lives. Money used to be represented by gold, copper or other metals. The value of money used to be backed by the amount of gold the issuer had. Then when money was taken off the gold standard, it became represented by paper. The piece of paper in itself had no real value. It was who was printing that piece of paper that mattered. Money became an IOU of sorts. Today, with the internet, money is not even that piece of paper anymore. It is represented just by numbers. Money can be created out of nowhere, and can disappear as quickly. Making money has never been easier. Today, even virtual products can be bought and sold, for real money. All thanks to the internet.

So what are the ways of making money online ? My list is far from exhaustive, I'm sure.

Online marketing has been used in the real world, where real products are bought and sold. Supermarket chains now allow their customers to order their products online. Shopping used to take 2 hours, including travelling time. Not to mention, one had to match one's timing to when the shops were open. Today, you can do your groceries at 1 am, and get them delivered the next day. Just log onto the website, click a few items and pay with your credit card. Done. You don't even need to buy your things from shops in your neighbourhood. The shops don't even need to be in your country. In some cases, the shops don't even exist in the real world, just online. You can get books and many other products from Amazon.com. Ebay is virtually synonymous with online buying and selling. You never have to touch a paper dollar. Paypal transfers some numbers from your account to the merchant's account at a click of a button. Selling products online has opened a whole new world of customers. Now you can sell your products to people worldwide. All they need is an internet connection. Then the postal service collects the goods, and ships them over to you. And I thought with the advent of faxes and emails, the postal services will go out of business. Now they are busier than ever.

So what else can one buy with online marketing ? Digital products are becoming increasingly popular. E-books, computer programmes etc can all be sent through the internet. No need to wait for the postal service to deliver the product to you. Just click on the button, pay with paypal or your credit card, a few numbers disappear again, and the product is yours ! Huge business. If the google advertisements are to be believed, many people are getting rich just selling digital products online. The production costs are minimal. Outlay doesn't cost much. It is hardly surprising these products are able to pay out as high as 50-70% in commissions.

Google and Yahoo! function almost entirely in the internet world. Look how rich their creators have become, and their wealth is still increasing.

Then you can online with advertisements. Google adsense is probably one of the best known ones. People pay google for its pay-per-click ads, called adwords. Others allow google to put a few little advertisements on their websites. Hardly complicated. In fact, for the google people, it's almost nothing, as the advertisements are written by the advertisers themselves. The computer helps them find places for the advertisements to appear. People who want the advertisements simply apply to have them appear on their websites. Someone else clicks on the advertisement, the advertiser gets charged, and the "advertisee" gets paid. Hopefully a sale also results. And google makes a fortune. They must be hundreds of digital products and blogs / websites all tailored towards making money using adwords or adsense. These products in themselves generate millions of dollars.

There are also many websites set up specifically for people to get their websites noticed by those searching for similar products. Some are free. Others charge a fee. You can always get a website set up by someone who is technologically savvy, or use one of the many services available.

Then there's affiliate marketing. Wonderful way of making money online. For this, you don't even need to have products. You just borrow other people's products, market it for them, and get paid commissions if the products are sold. Add this on to websites that get created for you, and you barely need to do much work yourself. I've found that you can even pay people to write articles for you to promote the products !

If all this sounds too complicated, there are the old easy ways of making money online. Enterprising people have put together lists of companies who are happy to pay people to answer surveys online. For a small fee, these companies are able to get surveys to find answers to how their customers feel, what they want and what products they like. They don't have to hire people to do it for them anymore. At a click of a button, they can send the surveys out to many who have registered with them to answer surveys. In the past, someone would have to call each person up and speak to them. As for those answering the surveys, it is really easy money. For a few minutes of their time, at their own leisure, they just click a few answers and the money comes in ! Wonderful concept.

Just a side comment. Trading in stocks and their derivatives have been around for a long time. All this has become so much easier with the internet. Traders no longer need to call up their brokers frantically trying to buy or sell their stocks. That's another way to online.

And finally, this one took me by surprise when I first read of it in the newspapers. People are now selling virtual products online. There are many online games, some where players from all over the world meet in the virtual world. Some games involve creating characters with particular powers, or with particular weapons that can be used against other players. The article mentioned that some people were actually paying others real money for virtual weapons !

There are so many ways of making money online. Money is being created everyday this way. And all it takes is a lot of imagination , eyes to see where the money is and a little technical know-how.