You have a home computer, a good internet connection, and some time on your hands. Perhaps you have young children at home, or you're tired of spending more money filling your gas tank than you make at work every day. The answer: creating information products at home and selling them to make money online.

The Internet is one thing above all others: a perfect medium for distributing information. What do you know well? How to raise children, how to research cancer treatments, how to play poker? Somewhere out there is an audience hungry for the information only you can teach them - and that audience can help you create a second income, or even a generous first income. Fortunes have been made online, and are still being made.

Types Of Information You Can Create

There are several different types of electronic publications you can create, but the simplest way to get started is to create a blog and add something new to it every day. You'll put this online for free, but consider it an investment in your future instead of as you giving things away.

As your blog grows, you'll be doing at least four things: creating an audience of fans hungry for your information, learning more about the craft of writing to teach people things, learning more about how the internet works and how you can make money on your information, and developing a body of work you can later package and sell. Once your blog has a fair-size audience, you can start making money through advertising and affiliate programs, but this won't be your real income.

Instead, you need to take the information you've got down in words now and turn it into an ebook, a series of reports, or workbooks. Your limitations are only those you impose on yourself.

For example, suppose your expertise is home budgeting: you know how to squeeze every penny out of a small income, and you've managed to buy a home and fund a retirement on your spouse's single income. You can do a blog on frugal homemaking, and sell advertising to coupon services. Once you've got enough information on your blog to create a book, pull all that information together into a step-by-step how-to book teaching readers how to simplify their lives, save money, and make a little extra cash on the side using eBay, yard sales, odd jobs, etc.

Don't just leave it there, however; create spreadsheets that will help them track budgets, workbooks they can use to figure out where all that cash goes, and daily tip emails to dole out one hint each day to inspire and enable. For a really good system to transform your life, what would you pay?

Some ideas for things many people have expertise on: home budgeting, simple car maintenance, home improvements, gardening (this would be a great product for videos - you don't even have to write, just know how to teach), child care, professional in-home child care, dieting, exercising while doing housework, bellydancing (another video-friendly product), making and mending clothes, organizing your closet, or any one of thousands of hobbies: collecting, model making, needlepoint, crafting, woodworking, painting. These are off the top of my head; you know what your expertises are.

How To Make Money On Your Information Products

First, you must believe someone will pay for your information. With the hundreds of millions of Web users today, you can rest assured someone wants to learn about exactly the thing you want to teach.

Once you have your products together, there are many ways to monetize, or make money on them. Start with advertising. Google's AdSense is always a good and inobtrusive addition to your blog or website. Less lucrative in most cases, but still an option, are dozens of advertising exchange companies these companies pay you per impression (that's each time the ad is loaded on your page) or per click, or both. You can also run affiliate programs on your site; that's where a company pays you a commission for each item sold to someone referred by your website.

Your reports, ebooks, and informational packages can be sold for surprisingly good prices. That weight-loss system you devised to lose 120 pounds? Package that sucker up and sell it to others. This entails creating a sales page and advertising plan, but it can create a steady income for you.

Everything you create should point back at a central location: your main website. This ensures that no matter where your information products wind up, your readers will go back to you as the source of information.

You can also sell your e-products to a market hungry for information to resell - but this is the least profitable route for your words. You are your best selling tool and success story. Sell your information yourself, directly, and watch your online empire grow.