Free Roll.
During my introduction to Online Texas Holdem in 2005 I learned to look for the Free Roll tournaments at the various Holdem websites I visited. Free Roll means no money required to buy-in to the designated tournament. Anyone can enter the tournament to try to win one of the tournament prizes. Different sites set up different values.
Initially, JimFeistPoker.com offered registered players two promo coins per day (no longer offered). Each could be used to gain entry into satellite games toward a weekly $1000 final game.
Ultimate Bet.com has several Free Roll tournaments each day with prizes including Prize Pool points, Bonus Dollars, and Tournament Entry Chips (TEC). A TEC can be used to enter a $100 buy-in real money tournament.
FullTiltPoker.com has at least 2 Free Roll games per day, each playing for $40 real money.
PokerStars.com has Free Roll games into special events such as the World Poker Tour and the European Poker Tour.
Some sites restrict some of the Free Roll tournaments to Frequent Player Point (FPP) redemption or Real Money deposit status.
The down side of this Free Roll world is that even though you are at a table of usually 9 players, there are from 900 to 2500 players in the tournament all going for the Free Roll prize. Thus, for the small reward you get if you win the tournament prize, a large amount of time is spent in front of the computer. Some of the Free Roll tournaments last 4 to 6 hours.
I have only finished in the money once on the Free Roll tournaments I have entered. I will still enter them periodically for a change of pace from the Sit & Go games, but I will stick to the Sit & Go games in the long run.

Holdem Time

Professional poker player I am not, but, the World Poker Tour(WPT) weekly program on the Travel Channel put the bug in my head. So after watching two seasons of WPT I finally gave in to my curiosity.
I started with play money only on a site called PokerStars.net in April, 2005. I wanted to play No Limit Texas Holdem and I found a variety of games available on this website, including Texas Holdem. The site starts you out with $1000.00 play money, and will resupply you when you run low. It seemed like a perfect starting place to me.
I started to play in an area of the site called "Sit & go". This is a site where you commit a portion of your play money to a poker game pitting you against other players, from 9 to 45 players depending on the selection you make from a list of available games posted.
I was successful with my play money experiences so much that I opened a real money account with PokerStars.com in May, 2005. I registered with an internet financial site and arranged for $50 to be deposited in my PokerStars account. Enough to test the waters, but, won't break my bank account.
I started playing the 45 player $1.20 buy-in multitable game, where, $1.00 goes to the prize fund and $0.20 goes to the house. The game pays the top 7 finishers from $14 to the Winner, to$2 to the 7th place winner. It took me about 2 weeks to finish in the money. It appeared that winning real money games was not as easy as winning play money games.
By the end of 2005 I was averaging about 50 No Limit Texas Holdem games per month and was now playing the 18 player $1.75 buy-in multitable games. My in the money finishes were not able to sustain my PokerStars real money account, so, I had to replenish my account periodically. Online poker wound up costing me about $30 per month in 2005 and that is much less than the cost of a trip to Las Vegas each month.