Everyday more and more entrepreneurs are flocking to the internet in search of money making opportunities. Some are drawn in by late advertisements promising unbelievable riches others have heard rumors that it's possible to earn a living staying at home and working online.

Regardless of how one decides to pursue a work at home career what's important is where you'll end up. There are many different ways to make money online and I will highlight the perks and pitfalls of some of the most popular methods.

One of the most well known methods for making money online is Affiliate Marketing. This is where you promote other peoples products through referral links placed on your website or through search engine advertisements for a commission.

This is probably one of the best ways to make money online because you don't need to concern yourself with product development, shipping, or storage. The downsides to this method are that if you do not have a website with constant traffic you will need startup capital for an advertising budget.

The next popular method of making money online is through eBay and other auction sites. Since this form of commerce has been around now for quite some time you really need to know what you are doing to make a living from it.

Since there is so much competition the profit margins are extremely low and you really need an advantage buying your products at wholesale value in order to undercut your completion and still turn a profit.

The trick is to not compete with the professionals and try to focus on unique niche products where the supply is low enough to not turn your business into a pricing battle with your competitors.

Another way of making money online that most people are familiar with is through survey sites and get paid to offers. There are opportunities for you to make money through participating in online market research. Also with get paid to sites you can make money by reading emails or viewing advertisements while you play games or engage in other activities.

These opportunities may seem like amazing offers but there are many problems with these methods of making money online. With survey offers the difficulty lies in qualifying for the survey, most research projects are specific to the demographic they need and thus tons of people end up wasting their time taking pre-qualifying tests.

With the other method of getting paid to read emails the problem is that you only get a handful of emails a day which pay pennies. You will end up wasting your time and destroying your email account with spam all for a reward of several dollars a week. The main thing to understand is that you might be able to turn a couple bucks here and there but these methods are not sustainable business opportunities.

This is why it's important to thoroughly research any opportunity since for every benefit there is a downside to overcome. However, if you're careful and apply yourself you can make it working online in a business of your choice.