There are basically three ways to make money online. Each is distinguished by the method you use to bring visitors to your website. The choices are:

1. Offer your readers a chance to make lots of money with little or no effort,

2. Set up a niche marketing site and fool the search engines into ranking your web page highly, by means of "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO), or

3. Create a "content rich" website that over-delivers precisely the kind of information for which your readers are searching.

Consider the first option:

In this instance you are suggesting that your reader should be well rewarded for giving her customers something that costs her nothing. How much real value can such a product have? At best, you are inviting her to join you in scamming her readers, just as you are scamming her.

It is true that there are a lot of very desperate folks out there who will buy a "get rich quick" business deal in hopes of solving their financial problems overnight. Do you want to make money by contributing to their woes? If so, you will have to go elsewhere to learn how to do it. I won't be a party to such dealings. I urge you to reconsider.

The second option, niche marketing with SEO is viable, but it has a downside - some distinct disadvantages.

The Downside of SEO:

Let us take a look at those disadvantages. For starters, the search engines keep changing how they rank websites - they become ever more sophisticated in how they judge the quality of any particular website. Their objective is always to present the user with the best information possible about whatever topic is entered as the user's keywords.

When you focus on the ranking process using SEO you get ever further from the core purpose - providing quality information. The result, too often, is that you are not using your time and efforts well - and too often also, as the search engines get better your ranking suffers. Not the best plan.

Remember, the big three search engines, (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) have enormous resources at their disposal, and hire large numbers of experts to keep improving their algorithms - the mathematical formulas that compute the ranking scores.

The long and the short of it is that you can never keep up with them. I don't recommend this.

A Better Way to Make Money Online:

Instead, stay focused on the quality and quantity of the information that you provide your website visitors. If this is truly your focus, your ranking will get better and better as the search engines evolve.

Maintaining this focus is the best of all ways to make money online. When you provide your readers lots of great information on the subject of their interest, they come to trust what you have to say, and ultimately will buy what you have to offer. It's that simple - not always easy - but simple.

Needed Resources:

So what resources do you need to pursue this simple way to make money online? Ideally you will have at hand:

* Reliable web hosting,

* Capable online tools to do your market research - to determine which markets constitute potentially profitable niches,

* Detailed step-by-step instructions to design websites that please both the search engines and your website's visitors,

* Website construction tools that enable someone with your level of skills to build a well-designed professional-quality website,

* Immediate feedback on the quality of each web page that you create, and guidance in editing the work that you have done to maximize its effectiveness,

* Traffic generation tools that successfully get your website noticed by searchers and search engines alike - thereby continuously improving your ranking and your visibility to potential customers,

* Detailed guidance that enables you to "pre-sell" your visitors effectively, by demonstrating your ability and willingness to provide them with top-notch information of the kind they are seeking,

* Excellent sales and presentation models to guide you through all aspects of monetizing your website profitably,

* In depth information on every phase of developing your online business - not just your website, and...

* Online forums in which you can ask questions concerning every step of the online business-building process - and get meaningful answers from a cadre of successful online entrepreneurs - whom you can actually contact and talk with.

Finding These Resources:

Whether you are a beginner, a novice, an experienced online marketer, or a professional webmaster, you owe it to yourself to have all of these resources at hand.

That may seem like an unreasonably high expectation, but the resources exist and cost far less than you probably expect. In fact, many are available for free.