The Different Ways To Make Money Online

There are various ways to make money online. I'd like people that read this to participate in this discussion by adding a commment. This isn't exact science but it's what I've learned over the years of online business.
I'll just briefly enumerate the various ways in this post and go over each one and how you can get started in other posts... sort of a mini-online selling crash course.

Content Websites-
Content websites are, like the name implies, websites with useful content to offer to their visitors. They are generaly targeted to a specific market or niche if you will. for example. An example would be a website pertaining to Nascar fans. These websites make money from selling advertising as a general rule. This a fun way to make money online as you don't have any selling and thus any real customer service. It's probably the easiest way to make money online... more detail later.

Product / Service Selling Websites-
This is probably the most basic way of making money online. Any business-minded person will think of this first when they originaly dream up the idea of getting in business online. These business make money form selling products or services online for a profit. These businesses require more ressources, have more risk and generally require a big customer service effort. They can get extremely profitable however, especially if you are innovative and can offer something unique (a way of doing business, a unique product or any combination of innovations).

Auction / Classified ad - type selling:
This method of selling is similar than the one above with the difference of not using your own website. You are using the popularity of another website to list them and sell them, eBay for example. These business can have high selling costs, for example with PayPal transaction fees, ebay listing fees and end of auction fees, it costs about $14 to sell a $200 item. Also, this type of business requires constant re-listing to keep the business coming. eBay estimates it has around 100,000 sellers doing that as living so there is money to be made here and it shouldn't be overlooked!

Affiliate Programs-
This type of program allows you to escape any interactions with the customers (generally) and promote another company's product or services in exchange for a commission on sales. Making money online this way can be a very fun experience because it requires usualy little interaction, customer service or risk associated with doing business.

Here it is, these are the ways I am aware of doing business online. There may be a combination of these ways of making money online into one venture. For example a content website might also use affiliate program and sell products of their own.