So, the first thing you need to assess is where your abilities lie and because there are so many ways of earning a living online on the two most important (I believe) are mentioned in this article
There is no great mystery to making money because it is just a case of meeting the needs of people, once you find out what it is they are looking for.
Affiliate marketing is probably the most popular way to make money online where you become a commission only salesperson for a company which can easily have thousands of sales people (affiliates) working for them.
Obviously the greatest benefit for affiliates here is that they do not own the company or have any of the pressure of running it and only have to think about sales. If the affiliate can find a reliable company then his future will be a little brighter and he can be assured of regular payments for each sale.
The percentage of the revenue given to an affiliate can be anywhere from a few percent (avoid these unless turnover is high) up to as much as 75 percent. The reason many people like affiliate marketing as a way to make money online is the fact they do not have to own or promote a product of their own so there is very little financial outlay involved.
Google also has its own program called Adsense which uses content relevant adverts on websites and blogs to attract people to click on and is the second main method of making money online. This is a simple system whereby Google pays each person who has an account with them (it's free) for every time the adverts are clicked although this is a very small amount.
Unfortunately either a very well visited site or a large number of sites with a few visitors clicking is needed to generate a decent income with this method. While almost anyone can join Google's program, care is needed as they are continually updating and amending their terms and conditions which will affect your revenue.
We all have different reasons for wanting to earn a living making money online; you just need to know why you are doing it. Your success depends on some education in addition to other skills but if you do not get visitors to your site you cannot earn any money so do some studying on this subject for the many free online resources available to you.
There is a lot of research available online if you just look but a trusted and respected resource is the Warrior Forum where most people who earn a living online go to discuss every sort of topic you can imagine about working on the internet.
The great thing about making money online is that it can be all done from your computer and even without a great amount of computing knowledge; where else could you achieve this!