There are several techniques, many listed on this site, for earning an income on the Internet - ranging from creating membership sites to selling your own products - and each has the potential for providing substantial income with the right kind of knowledge and effort. However, if you are willing to set your sights a little lower and with a dash of realism, aim to earn a small income using the Internet first - your chances of reaching your goal increases dramatically. Plus, the effort needed to reach your target would be substantially lower.

Having made the decision to earn only a small income using the web, what pathway should you choose? This is an important consideration, and one to be taken with some care. What type of investment are you willing to put into your online venture both monetarily and in terms of time and effort?

A common denominator in setting up your online venture is the need for traffic to your website. One way or the other, you have to pay for this traffic. You either put in sweat equity, allowing three to four years for your site to mature and become content rich, while also developing a mailing list, or you advertise in e-zines, use pay per click and other means of advertising to get qualified traffic. This is the one reality of an online venture that you can never escape from. You need qualified interested traffic to your website.

The simplest answer for most individuals to earn a small income is to start a content-oriented website, and allow the traffic to build over time. Content attracts traffic on the Internet like few other items. People use the Internet as a giant answering machine (encyclopedia if you will), and only secondarily for shopping or for watching movies, playing games and so on. So if most users are searching for information, providing information becomes the best way to bring them to your site. Companies such as Google and Yahoo! have made billions of dollars simply organizing all the amazing information available on the Internet.

If you are to begin creating an information site, it will be best to choose a topic that is frequently searched for, but does not have enough quality websites providing the kind of detailed information users need. Next, you need to develop some degree of mastery of the subject matter at hand. Even if you are not an expert on a given subject, you can develop the requisite expertise by reading material on the subject, as if you were writing a research paper on the subject. Use tips from the book "Find it fast" to do your research.

For almost six months after starting your information site, you may find little or no traffic visiting your site, but you have to keep up your efforts at keeping your website fresh. After 6 months, your traffic will start picking up steadily, and as your content grows so will the traffic. If your content is of high quality, you will soon develop a strong return traffic, as well as a niche audience. Use your server's logs to determine the keywords for which your audience found your website, and then develop more content around those keywords. Also, link to quality sites from your articles, this further raises the value of your articles. Sustain this effort for a year or more, and you will find a reasonable amount of traffic headed your way (~100/day).

Monetizing this traffic through Google AdSense or other advertising techniques, many highlighted in this research report, will help you earn a small income from the Internet. In the beginning, the income will be just enough to pay your costs, but soon it will rise to a point where you will be pulling in north of $750/month ($9000/year).

Information sites pulling in $100,000+/year exist, but you have to carefully choose your topic, and deliver top-notch content on a regular basis. You will not see serious money until you have about a 1000 pages of content, and have been around for 3-4 years online.

All the best in your journey!