How can I make money online?

Richard writes in:

I enjoy video games, movies, radio-control model and photography.

I did read a lot of e-books a watch movies about making money online, I know there are different approaches and I will have to choose one. So right now I’m kind of lost in which one to choose. So, any comment on that would be much appreciated.

Those 4 topics will probably take longer to penetrate for rankings but you have to start somewhere. As long as you treat it like a hobby to begin with then it won’t seem like work and the site will probably take a life on it’s own. My specialty is gaming but I can certainly help with a content management system, some design advice and help you get the site off on the right foot so you don’t have to reinvent too many wheels. You have different avenues of making money from these sites, one is affiliate programs if you can pull it off. So here are some examples:

video games: selling ad space or writing ad related articles about video games and charging for those reviews. If you could sell the games online using amazon that might be a better means of getting some commissions. When in doubt use google adsense.

Movies: you can sell them in many methods but I’d say it’s possible via amazon, itunes and I am sure there are a few online sites where you can do video on demand. I’m not familiar with that but I’m sure it exists or at least the ability to order movies and have them shipped fast.

RC models: another tough one. It is a very niche market and it would be tough to get some income out of that unless a company has some affiliate program you could link with.

Photography: This depends what angle of photography you want to tackle targeting people who just want to buy a new camera, learn the art of photography, selling your own photos or putting them in istockphotos.

Since I don’t know these 4 methods so well I’d get you to do a research project and find sites similar to what you want to do and find out their means of making money. If you see they have ads find out what ad network they are using. Some of them will use google adsense and this is a good program that consistently performs. Find out how they make their sales whether it’s memberships, selling their own products or being an affiliate earning commissions and revenue share. If you want to do something different then that’s great but it helps to run these ideas by people who can give you an insight of the problems you might encounter along the way.

So research your competition and let me know how each site would potentially work and I can better help with research into some affiliate programs.