What to study for an online career?

Actually, anything digitally based would be good to telecommute. If you look at design jobs, most graphic designers are the freest in their ability to produce wherever whenever. This is for freelancing--usually for companies, they would want the person to work in-house.

This goes for marketing for a specific company as well. I'm not sure about journalism, but I think the more formal the company, the more you have to see the people working there, too. You have to go to lots of meetings with marketing [individual clients moreso than your boss].

Hope this helps! :]
-JAC-

Study Marketing and writing. If you can market or write you can make a ton of money on the internet. I suggest checking out warriorforum.com for learning about making money on the internet

You may want to forget journalism and marketing as they are already too competitive. More IT is being outsourced each month than new opportunities are being created. I suggest you read "the 4 hour work week" by Tim Ferris & the blog: http://chrisguillebeau.com for ideas and watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U for more & better ideas!!

You are asking for technical suggestions and specific career choice ideas, I think.
In my opinion, a better question is how can I educate/train myself to have a successful life.
You've mentioned that you want to work entirely online. If there's a physical limitation that prevents you getting out of the house, that's understandable; if it's a behavioral trait that causes you to want to remain out of contact with the peopled world, I strongly suggest you work on taking yourself out of your comfort zone a little at a time. Life's short with no dress rehersals. If you settle for a small life, you may regret it.

Having said all this deep advice, if you really just want to know how to make a living on-line, here goes:
1. trade stocks
2. trade/sell stuff on eBay
3. design signs
4. design art
5. design sites
6. market for business using social networking
7. design yachts
8. design houses
9. become an accountant
10. read everything you can for understanding, memorize it and make money answering questions at ideaOffer.

Well get the courses done which will help you for your online job like languages html/java/c/vb etc

But frankly speaking i think you need to get more of the practical experience,start trying stuff your self,interact with the people who know stuff,visit forums regularly,read articles,etc.

You can try stuff for free,virtually anything like website making,offering service etc.

The best forum for building up your knowledge base would be Digital Point Forums.

There are many others there.try the out.

Most importantly dont be afraid to try new stuff and of failure...initially it will be difficult,but you will soon master techniques of SEO and other necessary methods.

All kids are learning online business which is flooding the internet. I would suggest learning a high paid offline career that can then be used online. Anyone with a good offline career can make money tutoring or offering advice online.

And another example might be becoming a lawyer and specialising in online business like copyright and online business law which is one of the top upcoming fields.
Advise teens to go into careers that can be spread over many areas including online.