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Hobbies can be incredibly fun and fulfilling, but earning some extra cash from them takes something you love to an entirely different level. Possibly the most obvious way to make money from your hobby is to sell your creations. While this can't apply to every hobby, if you're into sewing or knitting, or maybe make jewellery, or enjoy painting and drawing, you'll have physical items you can sell online. You might be surprised about how many different places offer opportunities to sell your work, so it's worth investigating which works best for you.

The first place you might want investigate is eBay, which is the most popular online auction site right now. You can sell just about anything on eBay, from tiny charms worth a few pennies right through to luxury cars and pretty well anything else you can think of. It really depends on what exactly it is that you're intending to sell, but one of the problems with eBay is that so many people from all over the world are using it to sell their stuff that your item can easily get lost among all that.

If you do decide that eBay is the place for you to sell your creations, you'll want to keep in mind that you'll have seller fees to pay. As a private seller, you'll be able to list up to 20 items for free each month (sometimes eBay promotions mean that number rises to 100 for a limited time), but you'll still need to pay eBay a 10 percent fee on the total transaction amount including postage as well as a PayPal fee if your buyer pays using the online payment service. If you intend to sell lots of your items on eBay, you may have to set up a business account, which means fees may vary depending on the type of item you're selling. If you manage to become a particularly successful eBay seller and get top-rated status, you'll get a fee discount.

Then there's Amazon, which allows third-party sellers to sell their wares on its platform. These days, many people will automatically think to check Amazon for pretty much anything they're thinking of buying, so it's a good place to be when they come looking.

As with eBay, though, sellers’ fees apply and can be far more than eBay's. It depends what you intend to sell, but, as an example, if you want to sell jewellery you'll pay a listing fee of 75p plus a 25 percent referral fee from Amazon at a minimum of £1.25 $1.96.

A better option than Amazon is Etsy, which is set up to help people sell their creations. You can sell handmade or vintage items on Etsy, including art, homeware, mobile accessories, jewellery, clothing, wedding items and craft supplies. Fees on Etsy are significantly lower than Amazon and eBay. You'll need to pay $0.20 (around 13p) for each listing, and that listing will last for three months before you need to renew it and pay the listing fee again.

You can increase the quantity of an item for sale without having to pay the $0.20 listing fee, but that fee will be charged when you sell those additional items. Then, when your item is sold, you'll also be charged a 3.5 percent transaction fee which doesn't include shipping or tax.

For some people, other websites might be more suited to their particular hobby. For example, artists, designers and illustrators should check out Threadless, which offers the potential to earn you money should your designs be taken on by the company. Similarly, it's worth investigating Ohh Deer

and Art Rookie.

CafePress is worth a look too. It offers the ability to open your own store that lets you have your images printed on T-shirts, scarves, cushions, mugs and much more, and you don't even need to deal with the printing part yourself as CafePress will do all that for you.

There's always the option of creating a website as your own online shop for selling your items. It's trickier to get your products in front of as many people that way, as you won't have the benefit of eBay, Amazon and Etsy's registered buyers, but if you're starting to get serious about your hobby and want to take it a step further into the professional realm, it's a brilliant thing to do.

We've been using 1&1's new MyShop feature for MyWebsite. which lets you build a website from scratch using the easy-to- master template-based website builder, and then quickly and easily integrate an online store into that website. It's as simple as dragging and dropping. and if you've already taken some good photographs of your products for use on one of the big online selling sites, you can have your website up and running with fully functioning e-commerce built-in and a really nice, unique design within a day or two.

MyShop also offers the option to automatically create invoices and delivery notices for every order, and lets you add different payment and delivery options to cater for a wider range of buyers. An inventory management system will make sure you don't sell anything that you haven't got in stock. As mobile usage grows it's important to make sure that your website is accessible to users of smartphones and tablets, and helpful. 1&1's MyWebsite and MyShop are fully optimised for mobile.

To use 1&1's MyWebsite and MyShop, you can first go for 30-day trial to decide whether you like it and if it works for you, and then it'll cost you from £19.99 $31.31 a month for the service, so you'll want to make sure that you'll be earning more than that if you don't want to end up losing money. You'll also need to order a domain name; domain names often come free as part of the website building package but some extensions may cost you around £2.49 $3.90each.

Within that package, you'll also get 200 email addresses, assisted search engine optimisation to help you show up in Google, a library of images that you can use on your website, the ability to sync a Facebook page with your website, a newsletter service for online marketing, a £40 $62PayPal voucher and your online shop for up to 1,000 products. Other ecommerce options include Shopify, Big Cartel and more, which are also used by professionals and hobbyists wanting to sell their creations.

In order for any of the above methods of selling your items online to be successful, you'll also want to promote your brand on social media. This includes Twitter, Facebook, lnstagram, Tumblr and Pinterest. You may not need to use all of these networks, but it's worth trying each of them out to see how successful they are for your creations. Even if you decide not to build your own ecommerce website and stick with one of the other sites mentioned instead, it might be worth starting a blog. That way you can share what it is you're working on and direct people to the online marketplace where they can view and buy your stuff.

It's important to remember that building a social audience takes time and effort. You need to post regularly, and follow and interact with potential customers and other brands. You could try running a competition to help boost followers using Rafflecopter or Gleam, for example, and you can also try sending items to reviewers on relevant blogs for additional promotion.

if your hobby is photography, using the methods already outlined here to make money is not necessarily going to be the best option. You could create canvases with your photographs on or framed prints and sell them online, but there are other options available to you. For example, you could sell your photos to stock image sites for a small commission. For example, iStockphoto.com lets you contribute images and will pay you royalties for each file download your photos receive.

The same goes for Shutterstock, Fotolia, Dreamstime and more, although some will ask for exclusive rights to your photographs so you may not be able to put the same photos on multiple sites. Many of these stock image sites will also pay royalties on illustrations, videos and sound clips.

You can make money by writing. Whether it's the writing itself that's your hobby or it's your hobby (sport, travel, fashion, and so on) which you can write about, both approaches offer opportunities. Whatever your hobby, we'd encourage everyone to start a blog. It's not going to make you loads of money - particularly not to begin with and quite possibly never at all but there are things you can do to monetise your writing.

For example, you can sign up to affiliate schemes with any relevant brands to ensure that any time you link to their website from your blog you could earn a cut of the money spent there by your reader. Amazon offers an affiliate scheme, which you can sign up to for free. Check the very bottom of other relevant websites that you come across you might find they offer affiliate schemes. too.

Some blogging platforms allow you to make money through advertising, perhaps using Google AdSense, for example. If you want to make money from your writing in other ways, there are some websites that let you write and submit articles and reward you with cash. if you're an expert in a particular subject (which could well be your hobby), check whether that topic is available to write about on About.com. and then submit an application. If you're accepted, you'll earn money for the articles you write.

You could also try Demand Studios, which offers the opportunity to get your writing published on sites like eHow. LiveStrong, USA Today and more. and earn money from it. Alternatively, if you're considering writing a novel or book. you could self- publish it on the likes of Amazon's Kindle Store or Apple's iBookstore.

If writing's not your thing, how about videos? You don't need to have the very best camera in the world or be the best or most glamorous presenter. Whatever your kit and presenting skills, putting your videos on YouTube has the potential to earn you some cash by monetising those videos with ads.

Perhaps you can shoot how-to videos demonstrating the skills required for your hobby that you can share with others. Or if your hobby is gaming, how about sharing gameplay videos or walkthroughs on YouTube for others to watch? Don't expect the money to come rolling in straightaway. As with social media it takes time to build your audience. Yet it's worth remembering that some YouTube stars earn a living (and we're talking millions a year in some cases) simply by making videos in the comfort of their own home.