Over the past decade or so we've seen a massive increase in the number of people making lifestyle choices that mean leaving employment where they work for someone else, are governed by bosses, have set hours etc.
Many of these people want to spend more time with their families and enjoy more of the things they really like doing, so they've opted instead for working from home, being their own boss, choosing their own hours - and working on the internet! The state of the world's current financial crisis means that many more people are out of work, taking a cut in pay, or looking to make some extra money to make ends meet.
So now we're seeing even more people turning to the internet to see whether it's possible for them to start an online business.
If you're one of those people, the options open to you are almost endless, limited only by your imagination.
Some options will, of course, require more technical skills than others, so levels of expertise are important although they can be learned en-route, via experience.
But of course you need to get started by doing something within your comfort level and your skill level.
With this in mind did you know that you don't even have to have your own website to start earning money on the internet? What you can do - without the hassle of creating your own products, without your own website and without all the responsibility of maintaining it and providing customer support - is to help people who already have a business online to sell their products or services.
This is called 'Affiliate Marketing', and the beauty of it is that you can start doing this almost immediately.
Your first task is to identify something you're interested in and perhaps know something about as that will make it easier for you.
For example, if you have a hobby such as fishing you may want to do something related to that, or maybe personal development is what you're interested in.
If you want to, bring it down to a particular niche i.
e.
sea fishing or personal development for women.
Having established the niche you want to be in, look for products related to it and see whether you can find a business with an affiliate programme.
Having done that you may want to Google search the company to see what others are saying about it.
You want to choose one that's supportive, provides you with a website, some ideas about promoting their product/service and getting traffic to their site, as well as some support.
This will ensure that you have the best possible chance of making some money.
Obviously the more money you make - the more they make.
You can expect to get paid a commission of about 5% of the product price for every visitor to your Blog who clicks on the link that takes them to the Vendor's site, and around 50% of every sale that's subsequently made by that visitor.
Based on the cost of each product/service, you can work out how many products you need to sell for the daily amount you want to earn.
Of course, you're not limited to just one website/product, you could have a number of them, all selling different things or, if you wished, related products e.
g.
one may be selling cameras and another one decorated photo frames.
Having learned through this process, some of the skills and some of the things that work / don't work, you may then be ready to move on to creating your own internet business.
This is where you get 100% of the sale cost and you could even get other people to become affiliates for you, meaning they do the 'leg work' and make your sales for you!