You're limiting yourself. Selling things doesn't mean having a crappy web store with mugs in it. For facebook it means figuring out how to package and sell its massive database of golden marketing data. For Homestarrunner it's a matter of figuring out how to bring people into their in-group by uniting them with recognizable paraphernalia.

For you it might be something else, but it's almost certainly not mugs. Your comment boggles my mind:

> But that is a way for a business to make money, not a site.

If you are trying to make money with a website, that's called a business. Otherwise it's a hobby, which is fine too.