We are going to get into many things but before we do let me first say that you can start a business and make money online for free. Bare with me and we will get there. Consider this the condensed version of your education that took me several years and thousands of dollars to learn.

You have the "Guru's" claiming to be able to teach you how to make 10's of thousands of dollars virtually over night. Then you have the TV Infomercial Gods claiming "a couple clicks" to millions. Hopefully we all know the TV infomercial guys are not telling the complete truth and let's take a look at the "Online Guru's"

Most of these programs claiming outrageous amounts of earnings are using the Google Adwords advertising program and while it does work let me give you a little heads up on what to expect.

When you sign up for the Adwords program or any other PPC program like it, you have to submit your banking or credit card information.

You then proceed to start placing ads that hopefully shop up on the first page of the "sponsored listings". this is if you pay enough for every person that clicks on your ad and if Google deems your ad and site to be relevant enough to remain on the first page at a decent cost per ad click.

As soon as your ads start running and people begin clicking on them you'll be very excited until you realize you are paying for each one of those clicks. Not only are you paying for each one but that money is coming out of your bank account every single night.

If you are working with an affiliate program the chances are you will be paid on "net 15 terms". This means that whatever you earn from the 1st through the 15th of the month you will receive a check the following first of the month.

In the meantime your ads are running, people are clicking away and the cost of those clicks are coming out of your account every single night. This means unless you stop your ads you will be paying for clicks every day for 30 days until you receive your first check. That is IF you made any sales.

Would it not be nice if you could do the same thing without playing for the clicks every day? Well you can and we are getting to the part where you can make money online for free.

Let's assume you are paying a low .25 for each click and you set your spending limit at $25 a day. This is safe because once you reach that limit your ads will stop and you will only pay $25 for the day. Over a 30 day period that is $750.

So you purchased this "Guru's" package let's say for $49.99 and you have run your ads for 30 day and now you are $800 in the hole. Let's hope you made some sales. The reality is the majority of new people trying this approach fail miserably and I know because I was one of the majority.

What the "Guru's" are not telling you is that they are spending thousands a month in PPC ads to be able to make thousands a month. This is something they leave out because the "average Joe" can afford the $49.99 for the "Guru's" package but they cannot afford to spend thousands in PPC ads before they make money. If "average Joe" knew this he would have never purchased the package. Now you know.

Let's get to how you make money online for free.

We now know the "Guru's" package is using the "sponsored listings". You know the ones over there on the right of the search results?

What about the regular search results on the left or main part of the page? They are completely free and all you have to know is how to do certain things the search engines want to see and use completely free resources available to anyone online like Web 2.0 sites.

You can achieve the same results and make money online for free. It may take a little longer and a little more work to build your business but there is much less financial risk involved.

Some may say it is as simple as basic SEO but the reality is most people have no idea what "basic SEO" is let alone how to build a website to be optimized.

There are sites and free resources that take care of much of this for you.