When the Internet took off, it introduced a whole bunch of new sounds into our lives. We've grown used to hearing the two-note ring that tells us we have mail. We can recognize the rising sound of Windows opening up across a crowded Starbucks. And we all know the death-knell "bong" warning us that we've just done something wrong.

But there's one sound we don't hear on computers, even though it's been part of our lives for decades: the "KaChing" sound a cash register makes when it opens.

That's a real shame, because to an entrepreneur, there's no music like it.

It's not just the announcement that you're getting money—although that's always very nice. It's the declaration that you've achieved success.

You've made a sale!

You had an idea. You did the research. You created your product, and when you launched it in the marketplace ... it worked!

You were right!

People do like the idea. They like it so much, they're even willing to put their hands in their pockets and give you their own money for it. There's no greater proof of your ability than that.

It's an incredible feeling. Not even your first paycheck can compare to it. There are no risks involved in renting your skills to an employer. There's no investment, so the rewards are much lower, too.

But when you're setting up your own business, when you're launching a product—even if it's a product as simple as an ad-supported web site—you're investing your time, your passion, and yes, perhaps a little of your money, too. It's the biggest test you'll ever take. It's not a test of your knowledge. There are plenty of people around with brains like encyclopedias who are barely making minimum wage. This is a test of your imagination, your creativity, and your ability to get things done.

The stakes are higher, the thrills are higher, and the rewards when it all comes together are so much higher, too.

If you are the owner of a brand-new store opening your doors for the first time, you have no idea whether your dream will fly or whether you're going to be shutting down before you've even had a chance to declare your first end-of-season sale.

But when you open your cash register and hear that KaChing sound for the first time, you know. Even if the business doesn't succeed—and many new businesses don't—you know you've achieved something.

You've taken a business idea from concept through implementation to launch. And you have persuaded someone to buy. You got there.

If you've done that once, you can do it again. And again. And again.

You have what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, and you're going to be hearing that ring of success for the rest of your life.

But we don't get that on the Internet.

When a check from Google lands in your mailbox, there's no KaChing sound.

When money arrives in your PayPal account, you might hear the sound of an incoming e-mail, but that's not the same as "KaChing."

Maybe that's a good thing. In a bricks-and-mortar business, sales usually come in spurts. People line up, hand over their credit cards or their cash, and process their purchase. Each sale is an event, one that can be celebrated with its own ring.

Online, sales come in all the time. Day and night, weekday and weekend, from Washington, Wisconsin, and Wellington, New Zealand, anyone, anywhere, anytime can push a button on his or her computer and give you money.

And you don't have to do anything. You don't have to stand behind the cash register. You don't have to count the change. You don't even have to smile and wish your customers a nice day.

It's all automated. Set up the system and your online business will practically run itself. All you have to do is cash the checks.

It would be nice to have a KaChing, though.

This book isn't going to make a KaChing sound. It's going to do something even better. It's going to help you create a KaChing system. It's going to explain the principles behind an Internet business that makes money, and it's going to provide real, practical advice to help you build your own.

Those suggestions aren't going to be general ideas about what might work or what should work. They're not going to be theoretical. They're going to be the real strategies that have worked for me.

If you count dialing into local bulletin board systems (BBS) in 1980, I've been online for more than 30 years. I built my first web site in 1995. That might not sound like a long time, but in Internet years, it feels like forever. When I launched my first site, there were only about 25,000 other sites on the Web. In September 2009, Netcraft, an Internet services company, found that the top half dozen or so hosting companies alone were serving an incredible 226,099,841 web sites.

With that growth has come the money. Advertising distributed by the top four online ad agencies—Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL—was worth $32.9 billion in 2008. In Britain, more advertising money is now spent on the Web than on television.

And that's just the cash spent persuading people to buy. In 2008, Forrester Research estimated the value of retail sales made online worldwide at more than $200 billion.

That's a fantastic opportunity. It's a gigantic gold mine, and it's one that everyone has access to. You don't need to own a giant media company to take a share of that revenue. You don't need a degree in computing, communications, or advanced nuclear physics to make money online. You just need to know how the system works and have the patience and the drive to succeed.

In the time that I've been online, I've seen all sorts of ways that entrepreneurs can divert the funds flowing on the Internet toward their own cash registers. Not all of them have proved to be as great as promised, but the best ideas have stuck around. They've proven their value to sellers, to buyers, to publishers, and to advertisers.

In this book, I'll describe those methods, and I'll explain how you can make them work for you.

I'll begin by talking about the New Web Order.

The Internet has revolutionized the business environment. It hasn't just created an entirely new way of buying and selling products and services, it has also democratized business.

If once you needed capital, contacts, experience, and an appetite for risk to become an entrepreneur, today you don't need anything more than a computer and an Internet connection. That's a genuine social revolution. It's capitalism for the masses. It's the chance of KaChing for people who don't even own a cash register.

In Chapter 1 I talk about what it means for you and how people like you have been using that new landscape to make a mint.

Then in Chapter 2 I discuss what you need to build an Internet business. You won't find a long equipment list here. Instead, you'll find a discussion of ideas because that's really what you need to succeed online. Understand what you love, recognize your passion, and you'll know your niche. Success will follow. I explain how to do it.

Presenting that passion will usually come by delivering content. It's often been said that content on the Internet is king. I prefer to think of it differently. I like to think of content as KaChing. Good content is money, and the better the content, the greater the amounts of money. In Chapter 3 I talk about more than a dozen different ways to turn content into cash.

Content is usually delivered on web sites, but that's not the only way of getting information from you to people willing to pay for it. Another method is through information products sold across the Internet. These can be incredibly powerful and open a whole new opportunity to sell knowledge for its true value. In Chapter 4 I tell you what you need to do create your product line—and sell it.

Information certainly isn't the only kind of commodity you can sell online. Affiliate programs have now become a standard way for savvy marketers to sell anything from cars and computers to books and buzz saws. Just one of my sites alone generates five-figure commissions every single month through affiliate sales. It's simple, and it's certainly rewarding, but you have to find the right products, the right market, and follow the rules. Chapter 5 explains what I do to make the sales.

Affiliate sales should come in a steady flow, but the best kinds of sales are subscriptions. These are guaranteed payments that you can rely on month after month. They can form the basis of a business, giving an entrepreneur a solid foundation on which to grow. They require a little more thought than conventional web sites, but they can be lucrative, valuable, and enjoyable. My membership site has brought in tens of thousands of members who pay $78 per month each. In Chapter 6 I tell you what I do so that you can do the same thing.

And once you're achieving success, you'll find that you've picked up two more assets that are more valuable than anything you'll have sold until now: knowledge and experience. You can't sell those assets, but you can sell the benefits of those assets. Coaching programs are a fantastic way to give back to the community of entrepreneurs—and make even more money from your achievements. In Chapter 7 I explain how to offer both group and personal coaching, and how to use branding and PR to bring in clients.

Finally, in Chapter 8 I provide a bunch of examples that illustrate many of the strategies that I've described in this book. There's no point in reinventing the wheel when someone's done all the hard work for you. One of the most important steps to success is to build on the achievements of others. When you achieve success, you can be certain that others will be building on your accomplishments, too. You'll be able to use these case studies as models for your own business.

In a bricks-and-mortar store, there's only one way to generate a KaChing sound. It happens when a customer agrees to swap hard-earned cash for the product the store owner has agreed to sell. Online, your opportunity is much, much bigger. There are five primary methods of making money on the Web, and I explain how I use all of them in my multi-million-dollar Internet business.

By the time you've finished reading this book, you'll have all the information you need not just to create a successful online business—that's easy—but to create an online business that makes the most of all of the Internet's most powerful revenue-generating opportunities.

That's not a one-off KaChing ring. It's a constant chime that will accompany you as you continue to grow and develop your online business.

Let's start by looking at just what those opportunities can bring.