There are numerous ways to make money free online, some are fairly easy and others a little more difficult. When people first come to the Internet to search for information on how they can create an income stream they find, all too soon, a ton of sites all promising the silver bullet solution to making an online income.

Most of these offerings, once explored, generally all require further spending on additional, higher priced products.

Another related issue that new starters encounter is that they are also offered many different newsletters all promoting a different way, whether Web 2.0, Pay Per Click or Adsense for example, as the best current way to make money online.

It is not surprising then that the aspiring Internet Marketer (AIM) will quickly become confused and overwhelmed with all the opportunities and possibilities available to them. When this happens the most common response is to either dive in and buy and subscribe to multiple products and then become overwhelmed and confused and do nothing, having then wasted a considerable amount of money, or walks way confused and disappointed.

However, and this should be good news to our AIM - making money free online can be straightforward. You do not need your own products, or your own website, nor do you need to subscribe to any affiliate programs (although there are some really good ones out there which are ideal for new starters).

One of the quickest and perhaps the simplest ways to start generating some income online is to use a combination of articles with affiliate marketing.

Check out the following straightforward steps to get going:

1) Find a product through one of the online marketplaces where people offer their products for affiliates to sell for commission, one of the most well known ones is Clickbank but there are others if you do a search. The idea here is to find a product that you want to promote. An important consideration here is to choose a product that is performing well - you don't want to select a product that is not selling.

You also want to consider the product itself - is it something you want to sell and, looking on their sales page, do you think it would sell to someone that would be looking for this type of information. In other words, would you buy this product if you were looking?

Take note of the features and benefits of the product as well as any other important information about it from the sales page. You will need this for the next step.

2. Write one article.

Simple enough right? Write an article that includes the information you gathered in the step above. We looking for features and benefits of the product you have chosen to promote. Ensure you make it simple and don't try to make it a sales page - if you do it is not likely to be distributed. What you looking for, for example, is taking a product on How to Avoid a Divorce and you would then look to write an article based on this but along the lines of 'Top 10 Things to Prevent A Divorce' then list these ten things that you got from the sales page.

Make these your bullet points and add some additional information to each point. It doesn't need to be fancy, keep it short and sweet.

3. The Resource Box

Most popular article directories allow you to provide some additional information about the author or the product. You can't do this in the main article but here you are allowed to provide information for readers to continue reading or follow up on if they have found you article of interest and worth pursuing. You do this in what is called the resource box or about the author box - usually located at the bottom of the form you populate with your article.

You can typically provide a website link, 2-3 lines of text about yourself or the product, you can suggest a helpful solution (your product that you promoting) to assist the reader. You will only have a few lines so think carefully about your message, write a few versions until you are happy with it. You goal is to have the reader click on the link to take them to the product you are promoting. An example might be: 'For additional support and information on advanced techniques to save your marriage visit your-affiliate-link'

4. The final step

Search online for the term Article Directory and you should find many different websites that you can use to submit your article to. This is the fastest and most effective way to distribute articles as it will get picked up by people searching for information, webmasters looking for content for their sites and the search engines. Post to as many as you can - target about 30 as a minimum. The reality is that this has the potential to get your article in front of hundreds if not thousands - it is free advertising without needing all the extras like a website or a marketing list.

And that is it! Now you can sit back and wait to see the results by tracking the sales that you have made and more importantly the commission you have earned. Note the results will be different - on some products you might make a few hundred dollars (not bad for a few hours work), whereas with others you may make into the thousands. The great thing about this method is that you now repeat the process for as many different products as you like and make money free online!