How To Make Money Online

Fifteen billion smackers: That's the value Microsoft recently slapped on Facebook when the computer giant invested $240 million for a 1.6% stake in Mark Zuckerberg's online social-networking site.

You could seethe with envy--or you could chase your own fortune on the Web.

Some online businesses require only a few hundred dollars in equipment, while others demand significant hardware and perhaps even a warehouse. Some might make you rich; others might just cover beer money. And all involve various levels of time, capital and technological skill.

"Some people have dreamed about owning their own business and have not followed through because of the investment in resources," says Jim Griffith, head of eBay University, for those aiming to set up shop selling goods at the online auctioneer's site. "The Internet allows people to at least try without making a large initial investment."

Army veteran Brandi Ramos of Springfield, Ill., did it. As a single mom in need of extra income, she started her online retail career peddling "big and tall" men's clothing on eBay.

Three years later, Ramos, 32, makes a good living working online out of her 600-square-foot basement packed with hanging displays and baker's racks piled with tupperware containing underwear and belts. Ramos aims to offer quick service, answering all e-mails within four to six hours. She claims to net $25,000 on $100,000 sales a year, and even earns a few bucks per order on shipping.

If managing inventory seems too big a chore, play virtual landlord and charge other retailers monthly fees (or per-transaction fees) for the opportunity to market their products on your site. Amazon.com (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people ) nabbed 28% of its revenues this way in 2006.

Craigslist is another take on this model: The 25-person company, worth a reported $2 billion, charges businesses to post help wanted ads in San Francisco, New York and L.A.; it also collects fees for apartment listings in New York City. Total page views per month: about 5 billion.

Then there's every pajama-clad blogger's dream: producing content supported by advertising dollars. Selling advertising is how thousands of established online media outlets pay their electric bills. They charge advertisers two ways: by the number of overall Web pages (called "impressions") served up, and by the number of people who click on the ads.

Setting up a blog requires not much more than a basic publishing program, a server and software to track ad clicks. The hard part, though, is attracting enough eyeballs to make it worth someone's while to pay to advertise on your site.

To have any prayer of attracting large advertisers, sites need to attract at least 500,000 unique visitors per month, says David Hauslaib, publisher of Jossip.com, a media and gossip blog that counts Coca Cola (nyse: KO - news - people ) and Sketchers among its advertisers. Sadly, even if you do generate enough traffic, the "click-through" rates on ads tend to be quite low--in the neighborhood of one half of 1%.

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