Live players tend to be much more inelastic with draws and pairs, meaning they will give large and small bet/raise sizes roughly the same amount of action. Whereas online players tend to be more elastic and give those large bet/raise sizes less action (and thus when they do give action it's with a stronger hand range!)
So to answer the question of can you make money playing poker, the answer is yes. However, you need to use a strong fundamentally sound poker strategy. This involves first picking the best games to play in. For a beginner I suggest low stakes full ring cash games online.