Although you’re wise to be searching for a guide to making money online, if you really want to make money online, no doubt you’re already confused with all the crap that’s thrown at you these days. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now and just started making money, so I can tell you what NOT to waste your money on as an online marketer newbie.

First, if I were to really act as your guide to making money online, I would not advocate paid advertising…

If you want to make money online, paid advertising is a good way to get you discouraged in a hurry. Granted, a lot of information you might get from the “Guide to Making Money Online” you could probably purchase and print out will tell you to throw a ton of money at Google PPC (pay-per-click) and solo ads. And, although these methods do work quite well for the experienced online marketer who knows exactly how to track and tweak his ad constantly, as an internet marketing newbie, you can count on throwing away thousands, and chalk it up to a “learning experience”.

Frankly, I choose to take my learning experience a little more cost effectively, because there is a way to learn and grow with this business little by little, and it actually becomes very exiting when you start to see how you can make money blogging online – even before you know how to sell anything!

The reason why blogging works for everyone and not just the marketing gurus is that people can reveal their own lives and their own feelings. And, if anything’s hot these days, it’s reality shows! People like what’s real and they can see right through anything that isn’t the real you through and through.

So what about YouTube? Is that a good guide to making money online?

YouTube has an Alexa score of three, which means it’s third most popular site on Google. And therefore, whatever you put on YouTube has a greater chance of ranking on Google’s page one than practically anything else. However, you must be careful here. Remember that the purpose of YouTube is to provide entertainment and “how to” information.

So, if you get into the habit of posting a lot of videos and declare a clear call to action throughout and at the end, inviting people to click your capture link and opt in to become your lead, you’ll get more leads, but you also will be eventually shut down.

It’s easy for anyone who sees your video to mark it as “spam”. Even if you don’t think it’s spam because you’re giving out valuable information, remember we’re all different, and spam is a subjective term. And, it only takes six spam accusations before you’re shut down for good!

Therefore, as your guide to making money online, I strongly advise to use YouTube with a “soft sell” strategy only, providing only valuable information or entertainment, and provide the link to your blog beneath the video where people can click for “more information” (and where you will be providing links galore to your capture page).

And just what does this guide to making money online have to say about article software?

It used to work great until the Google penguin ruling in 2011. Now it sucks and can actually hurt your rankings! Plus, it’s very time consuming, so I’ve recently taken the system off my “recommends” page on my blog. Because, after all, whether I make money on a product or not, I will not recommend anything that does not work!

So if all that doesn’t work, is there an actual guide to making money online anymore?

The search engines are constantly trying to make things more real, so marketers who use software and cheating techniques will be kept out of the way so the average guy with something valuable to say can actually be heard.

When you think about it, this can be a good thing! This means that all you have to do is provide valuable information – that is, information that people are searching for – and give them what they want.

Can you make money from blogging?

The answer is yes, of course! Based on what I’ve said above, the way to get started is obviously with a blog.