Earning free money online? Did I hear that right? For starters: I never knew you had to earn something you get for free. I would not know how to go about earning free money. I'd just pick up the moolah and skip the earning part.

But maybe I read this wrong or got the true meaning wrong. You might mean: Can you make money online without having to spend money?

Well...yes, it is possible. But you will have to work for it. What you don't pay out in money you will have to make up for in work and also ingenuity. It would also help if you have some computer knowledge. A few steps up from knowing how to open and send e-mail, although that is a bit of a help.

The way to make money without spending any, or very little has come to be known as "bum marketing". Bum marketing involves setting up a Blog, writing posts on it and then submit articles to Article Directories. You write the articles about the same topic and using the same keyword as you used for your post. And you link your articles to your post.

Buying e-books and software online is not going to teach you how to really go about bum marketing. Unless the book you buy is specifically about this topic.

The best advice I can give you is to join a good online marketing community. A community where the people will give you relevant and complete advice. Spend time on the Forum there. Read the posts and the answers. You will soon find out which marketers on there know what they' are talking about.

Ask some questions and get answers. And once you have some solid knowledge start taking action. The best way to learn is by doing. Make mistakes, it doesn't matter. But learn from them.

For over a year I did absolutely nothing. I read forum posts and Blogs....hundreds of Blogs. But that didn't produce any money.

Terms like FTP, MySQL etc would bring on panic attacks. Finally I took the plunge and started to use the bits of knowledge I had picked up. I learned to make Squidoo lenses...a big feat for me. And now I have my own blogs, put up by myself, with just a little bit of help.

Don't subscribe to every newsletter you see or join mailing lists on Websites. Ask yourself if this is the type of Site you can benefit from.

Personally I have unsubscribed from most of the e-mails I was getting. Would you believe over 80 a day? Many of them are just there with the next big product we can't do without. I still read a handful of e-mails from people who really, seriously want to help others.

Money is starting to come in slowly now but it's getting to be a constant trickle. It's a start and I know I'm on the right path.

So gather knowledge and then act on it....do something. Just don't try to earn free money online.