This is a question more and more people are asking themselves these days. The answer of course is yes you can and the Internet is one of the biggest reasons this is possible. It has changed the way the world does business and no self respecting entrepreneur will have failed to see this fact. That is why there are so many ways of conducting your business online and you don't even need to sell your own products or services, that is not necessarily what a home business means these days.

To put things in context there are now approaching 2 billion people that use the Internet and there are millions of transactions taking place every hour of every day for 365 days a year.

Around 80% of Internet users make purchases online. That is a lot of people and transactions; so no wonder so many people are now looking to work at home and tap into this huge marketplace.

There is quite a bit of work to do in order to learn the techniques for making money at home, particularly if you want to run a successful home business. So if you are unfamiliar with the methods and you are just starting out, then you are going to need to do a bit of research. It is also a good idea to do that research up front.

If you have already started then don't worry, better late than never, do the research now before you waste a lot of time and effort going in the wrong direction or getting yourself demoralized through lack of results.

The options you should be considering for an online business include: -

• blogging for money

• publishing websites for money

Two of the best tools you can use are: -

• affiliate marketing, where you promote other people's products and services then get paid commission if they buy something.

• placing adverts on your blogs or websites so that when people click on them you get a small commission

The reason I say these are the best ways is because you can do this completely free of charge. No registration fees, no set up charges and if you use free blogging services or single page website publishers, you do not even have to pay for your online presence.

I don't know any other business that you can start up for nothing and begin to earn money from pretty much immediately. Of course the key to being able to do this is the amount of traffic or visitors you can get to your websites and blogs without this you may as well pack up and go out to work.

There is a third option, which many people adopt, called direct marketing. This is where you identify a product that has a demand and sell it over the Internet; a good example of this, that many of you may be familiar with, is eBay.

Not that you have to use eBay, with the advent of 3rd party payment processors, such as PayPal and Google Checkout, you can pretty much operate a direct marketing business from nearly any website or blog platform.

You will most likely, with this type of Internet business, have to invest in some level of stock and get involved in the physical storing and shipping of products, but as many people have proven, it could well be worth the effort.