Where do I start?

I am a big fan of the World Wide Web and the Internet especially with the advent of high-speed connections like DSL and cable modems. The old dial-up was good enough for me when I started to surf the net, it was quite expensive too if I can remember right. I just recently subscribed to a DSL package offered by my phone company and I did not really use it much at all. However, I always kept in the back of my mind the idea that maybe I could make money on the Internet. The problem was how to go about doing it?

I had no one to guide me so I was just left to my own devices. I browsed the popular sites like Yahoo, Excite, Lycos. These were the ones offering free email service and I thought what a cool idea: free email. Unsavvy in the ways of the web I could not help wondering why they would offer free email to people? Obviously, they are making some money or they would not be giving away these services free. So I thought, I should be like these websites. I should offer email. This was my brilliant conclusion after seeing how these giants worked. The next problem arose: I know nothing about being an email provider. Tough luck. So, I concluded that not everyone can be a free email provider.

Finding ways to make money on the Internet is not such an easy thing as I discovered. From surfing various websites I could see one common theme: they are all pitching a product of some sort whether it be actual consumer products or some service or software. I do not have a store and I have no products to sell. I do not have services to offer so that avenue is also closed to me. Software? Maybe, if I find some new idea that no one has thought of or done before and if I had the time or the money to do research and coding and testing. This was proving more difficult than I imagined. If one had a car dealership then one might advertise in the web and sell more Honda cars or Toyota cars. If one is service oriented one might be able to sell health insurance or maybe life insurance but I have neither of those.