Prologue: What's so good about making money online?

Imagine, waking up whenever you want, lying in bed at noon. You prop yourself up, your back still lying on top of your fluffy white pillows, and you grab your laptop from your bedside table. You turn it on and you're instantly connected to the internet wirelessly. You go online and find out that you made $145.82 while you were sleeping. You then begin to work, in bed, for a few hours, and then spend the rest of your day doing what you want.

This is what happened to me when I first started making money online. Unfortunately, it isn't always like this, and although it's very easy to get into, it takes dedication to get to the point where you work only a few hours a day or less.

A few hours a day or less!?

Yep. And it's not wishful thinking. Depending what sort of work you do online, you can setup systems that will work for you. If you are an affiliate marketer, your sales copy, your pitch, is your 24-hour, 7-day a week salesman who will work tirelessly for you. If you run ads, they will run while you sleep. If you're doing more "traditional" e-commerce, your online store will take orders while you relax, sleep, eat, play with your kids, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is why people who do this fulltime eventually have more time on their hands than when they had a job with paid vacation, holidays, etc.

Now imagine yourself on the beach, somewhere in the Caribbean, or perhaps a Mediterranean island, or perhaps in some exotic place on Earth. You have your laptop by your side, connected via satellite internet, and the screen is updating your earnings every minute. While you lay out in the sun, you're earning hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Not many people get to this point, but it is very possible for many internet entrepreneurs. So what is so good about making money online in a nutshell?

• you can work anywhere and everywhere in the world there is a computer and an internet connection
• what you put out on the web stays there when you're not online, and will work for you like a fulltime salesman, manager, etc. while you sleep
• earnings can be directly deposited into your bank account, so you don't have to deal with checks from dozens of streams of income
• at first you have to work hard, but once you set up streams of automatic or near-automatic income, you can spend less time working and more time doing what you love

The internet is the largest global market the world has ever seen, millions more people are connecting to the internet every year. This means your income potential is virtually without limit.