One of the first things people ask about starting to make money online is: do I need to spend money? The answer is: it depends on what you want to do. Some business models require a little cash to start up. Others can be done with little or no money.
If you are looking to start a business without any money, expect to put a lot of time in to make a little. Most methods require a lot of writing. Bum marketing, or article marketing, is probably the most popular. This is using the existing article directories and free websites to promote affiliate products. You can also put up content on sites that share revenue with you. Some of these sites include Squidoo, Xomba, and Hubpages.
If you’re not into writing, your options are limited for making money without spending anything. You have surveys, which don’t pay much. One company is Pinecone Research. They pay $3 a survey. You also have paid to read emails. One company I like is Inbox Dollars. You get $5 for signing up, $1 for a survey and cash on a number of offers. However, you have to have $30 in your account before you can cash out, and that takes a while.
If you have a little money to spend, your opportunities to make money online grow a lot larger. Owning your own website is one way to go. It only costs $10 for a domain name, and then $10/month for hosting. At first, all the technical information can be overwhelming, but it’s not that difficult once you get into it. WordPress is relatively easy to use.
There are even more opportunities if you have more to spend. A lot of people make good money from advertising, although this takes some practice to master.
But back to the original question – do you need to spend money to make money online? No, but be prepared to put in a good amount of work before you start earning.