Whether you're looking to make some fast cash, or you're after long-term, more sustainable income-producing results, there are certainly ways you can make money online today. The truth is that making money online isn't as difficult as most make it out to seem. It does require some discipline. Sure. Without discipline, you'll find it tough to make a buck both online or offline. 

However, if you're looking for realistic ways you can start earning money online now, then it really truly does boil down to seven paths you can take towards profit. Some will provide you with immediate results, helping you to address your basic monthly necessities such as rent, utilities and groceries, while others have the potential to transform your life by revolutionizing your finances in the long term.

No matter what method you select for generating your online income, there's one very important thing to understand. Today, across this globe, with its 7+ billion inhabitants, there are two recurring things that people are looking for more of. Either people want more time or they want more money. The truth? Time is far more valuable than money. You can't recreate time. Once it's spent, it's gone forever. Not money.

Money can be earned and spent, saved and pilfered, invested and wasted. Not time. That's why time is far more valuable than money. The point? When you lack the luxury of time, making money online (or offline) can seem like an impossible task. How are you supposed to do that when you're working at a life-sucking nine-to-five job? While the stability of full-time employment might allow most to sleep well at night, it doesn't empower your creative juices to search for new income-producing strategies.

Now, this isn't about some get-rich-quick method here. If you want to get rich quick, forget about trying to do it on the internet. Sure, Facebook ads are all the craze, but without a serious understanding of the mechanics behind sales funnels and conversion optimizations, which only comes after years and years of in-the-trenches work in the internet marketing field, you're largely wasting your time trying to "get rich quick."

How to Make Money Online

No matter what method you end up using to generate an income on the web, you need to adjust your mindset to help empower you rather than discourage you. The truth? Making money online can be fraught with avoidable pitfalls. There's no shortage to the rah-rah cheers of internet marketers looking to find ways to ensure they part you from your hard-earned cash. The trick? Cancel the noise and get to the real meat and potatoes, so to speak.

To do that, you have to harbor a few fundamental guiding principles in your mind. Today, if you're at all serious about generating a full-time income (and more) from your online activities, then you need to focus on passive income as opposed to active income. Sure, the active income will help you survive. That's the scarcity mentality at play. But it's the passive income ideas that will help you thrive.

Considering that you have a finite amount of time, passive income should make up a large part of your work. And if you're serious about generating any semblance of income online, then passive income should be one of your sole goals and ambitions. Why? Simply this. Wouldn't you prefer to do the work one time and get paid repeatedly as opposed to relying on your time to generate that income?