To capitalize on ways to make extra income you can (and should) use the Internet for test marketing:

(a) To establish demand for your extra income idea.

(b) To prepare yourself to take advantage of other ways to make extra income i.e. developing a residual income stream.

Unless your first work is of outstanding merit and focused on an equally exceptional topic you will almost certainly require to cool your heels for a spell while your proposal for publication is being assessed for viability.

It could be several months before you receive a decision and with good reason; publishers assume 100% of the financial risk involved and so need to be 100% convinced that your writing-for-profit text is sellable before committing to the first round of expenditure.

Cooling your heels however does not mean to imply that you sit around doing nothing - not if you want to make money writing from the outset.

In this fallow period you ought to be concentrating your energies on some test marketing for your extra income idea book and there is no smarter or efficient way of accomplishing this than using the Internet. Do some engine searching (use google.com for fast results) to locate online publishers specializing in niche non-fiction.

Choose the one whose featured produce most closely meets the criteria of your own area of expertise and make sure that submission of your manuscript wont cost you a penny and that your percentage of commission on sales is not less than 30%.

This is much higher than the royalty percentage you will receive when your book is published in hard copy format but then online concerns do not take on board the high risks incumbent on traditional publishing houses. What they do recognize though is that your work is just as much an extra income opportunity for them as it is for you.

You will very quickly become aware whether or not there is a genuine demand for your topic because sales for downloadable reading matter tend to trickle in rapidly from the outset of virtual publication.

The returns wont be dramatic but if you clock up 50 to 100 sales over two to three months you can be reasonably certain that your work has a better than evens chance of making it in the real world of publishing and introducing you to other ways to make extra income.

This is how to determine whether your make-money-writing project hits the button enabling you to earn extra income at home.

That said, the quality of your writing is germane to success both online and offline. Vapid and unreflective wont cut the mustard; sound and well reasoned writing will.

Chapters 7, 8 and 9 of my creative writing course Writing for Profit in Your Spare Time will provide you with the strategies essential to producing material consistent with the stringent demands of commissioning editors together with opening the door to various ways to make extra income.

Jim Green
http://www.writing-for-profit.com