One of the many wonders of the internet is that the giant Google has made it incredibly easy for you to generate a bit of income by using its AdSense program.

In 2006, Google did an amazing thing. They bought YouTube. On the surface this may sound innocent enough, but it was a global marketing gold mine for them and an opportunity for anyone to make a little money off of it.

When we search for something on the Internet, most of us use the Google search engine, sometimes without realizing how wonderful it is. We enter a few words in the search box and many websites with information on the chosen topic appear. Think how hard it was to do this in the old days of reference libraries and encyclopedias!

Near the top of that search list will almost always be, you guessed it, a YouTube video! It’s pretty obvious now that the search engine and YouTube are owned by the same company.

A key takeaway from all of this is that most people would rather learn about something, or be entertained by watching a video, than read a lot of text about it. It’s just the way we are these days.

When we click on the YouTube link to watch a video, it will start with an ad, which should be relevant to the topic you searched for, or a pop-up will appear at some point during the video’s playback. If you click on it, you will be taken to a relevant website.

If the ad, or even a portion of it, is seen at the beginning of your video, or is clicked while your video is playing, Google pays the creator a small fee if you have chosen to “monetize” your video.

What this means is that you can make a lot of informative or entertaining videos and earn a lot of micropayments with them. This is a great passive income machine and a great way to supplement your income.

To start this process, you need to sign up for a Google AdSense program and open an account, which is free. You can even receive the money generated in your bank account.

The more informative and entertaining your videos are, the more popular they will be and the more money you will earn from them. So there are always channels to promote your videos through Twitter and Facebook.