There are many ways to make money and an income from working at home, and here are the best.

Paid to write

There are so many freelance writing opportunities available for everyone such as revenue sharing sites such as Helium, Triond, Bukisa, and Associated Content. Helium in particular is excellent for international members as it pays upfront payments when you have both a writing and a rating star. It is possible to earn $50 a month on that site from upfront payments alone. Other sites such as Demand Studios, Constant Content, Brighthub, Lovetoknow and Textbroker pay much more for your articles but they are more competitive and reject articles for small grammar mistakes. Alternatively you could join online job sites such as getafreelancer and elance and apply for writing jobs. Initially you would have to perhaps accept a low paying job to get positive feedback but when you would establish yourself on these type of sites the earnings could be very good.

Affiliate marketing

This is where all the big guns are making a fortune. If you have knowledge of SEO and keywords then you are well on your way, if not do some reading and you will soon be up to speed. The first thing to do is find a product or several related products and design a website geared towards selling them. It is important to have your keyword, which will represent the products in the title of your site and in the site domain name. Then you must add some information on the products and add many back links. Your main aim will be to get on the first page of google for your particular keyword. This way the traffic will flow and your products will sell.

Google adsense

Google adsense can be very profitable if you have a niche blog or website where you can display related ads. If you rank high in google search engine for many popular keywords then you should see good traffic. Getting targeted traffic to a niche site means your chance of getting an impression on one of your google ads is very high. The more impressions you get the more you earn. Updating a website and creating related back links over a period of time is hard work and takes dedication and effort, but when your site is established regular posting will help to ensure that you have a steady stream of income from google.

Things I think are a waste of time

Paid to click/paid to read
Autosurfs
Hyips

These three sites often turn out to be scams, so do not waste yout time, effort and money there. There are plenty of legit sites which will help you make money so stick to these.