Don't be put off from the fact that it will cost you less than $20 to get started. That $20 actually covers a domain name and 1 month hosting, so it's an investment that will allow you to build an income easily up to $300 or $500 a month. You may even make more, but I'm setting realistic targets here, based on my own experience.
The first $100 I made online, way back in 2003, was using adsense. These days you have a lot more choice. You can use different contextual advertising companies. You can even get paid per visitor to your site - whether they click on your ads or not.
There are many ways to actually make $100, but I firmly believe adsense is the easiest. Why? Because you don't have to learn about writing a killer sales letter to sell a product or entice people to sign up to your list. You don't need to spend weeks or months developing a product. You'll be able to create something unique, so you don't have the trouble of competing against a lot of affiliates.
Earning money from adsense requires less skill, and has the shortest learning curve of all methods. And the beauty of it is, you can use the site you create to add in different revenue streams later, when you're ready.
The steps I'm about to describe involve creating a content site. But we're going to take a few shortcuts, so you're earning money fast. And we're not going to spend too much time worrying about choosing a topic. Think of this as an assignment in class. Give yourself a deadline. You'll work faster, and see results faster. You can fine tune the details later. This is a 'learn as you earn' way to develop an experiential knowledge of what works online, and how it works.
Here is an overview of those steps. You can use it as a checklist or blueprint.
1. Choose a topic
2. Get your keywords
3. Organize your keywords into a site blueprint
4. Set up your domain name and web hosting
5. Install your free content management system
6. Write your home page article
7. Write your main category articles
8. Write 3 to 5 articles in each category
9. Apply for adsense if you are not already a publisher
10. Get traffic: Write an article on the same subject as one of your article pages and submit to the main article directories
11. Get traffic: Repeat this for all your articles and category pages
12. Get traffic: Find relevant blogs to comment on, leaving your main url in the comment form
13. Get traffic: Find relevant forums to post your comments on, leaving your url in your signature
14. Get traffic: Submit your site to the free web directories
15. Add more articles, and get more links to them.
I'll be going into more detail on how to do these steps in the other articles in this series.
If you don't have a website, and don't know how to install and set up a free content management system, check out these Joomla tutorial videos. They take you step by step through the whole process, in an easy to understand manner. And there's a special bonus if you're one of the first 250 people to purchase: http://www.joomla.pickthebusiness.com Rebecca Prescott is the author of many business, health, and pet websites.
Domainer