Forget looking for your next job in a traditional office. Armies of recovering cubicle dwellers are making an honest-to-goodness living in online careers-and we don't mean by selling diet pills or kitchen accessories to unsuspecting friends and relatives.

From online writing jobs and graphic design to software development and social media marketing jobs, countless creative types are hanging their own virtual shingle, often with a minimum of overhead, sometimes even surpassing the salary they made as an employee. Herewith, seven successful web workers share their different types of web careers, how they did it, how you can follow in their footsteps, and what pitfalls to watch out for when working online.

1. Blogger Jobs. According to the Wall Street Journal, 1.7 million Americans make money blogging and 452,000 of them derive a majority of their income from it. Ariel Meadow Stallings is one such blogger, dividing her time between the blog she writes for her part-time corporate job and her own blog, Offbeat Bride. "It took about a year to build traffic to the point where advertising and sponsorships made sense," says Stallings, who's been publishing OffbeatBride since January 2007 and now averages nearly a million page views a month. Her advice to would-be career bloggers? "Just blog. And then blog more. And read other blogs." For tips galore on earning a living as a blogger, see ProBlogger.