YouTube is going for the gold - or rather for your wallet - by selling music, games, music and more directly from its online store.

That’s right, YouTube is turning into another e-commerce outlet to help pay for those massive bandwidth bills despite Google’s financial backing. While the video-sharing website previously depended on revenues provided by advertisers, the company is now seeking ways to broaden its revenue, starting with selling retail products through external partnerships.

According to an article over on Reuters (story), YouTube will be partnered with other e-commerce websites such as Amazon and iTunes. Gamers checking out an uploaded YouTube video of Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway can click a link and be directed to Amazon’s online store. Amazon will thus share its revenue with YouTube once the consumer purchases the game. The same concept also applies to music, movies and more.

Surprisingly enough, last week YouTube launched a revamped version of its video uploader, allowing account holders to upload 1 GB movies over the previous 100 MB limit. This move may tie in to the company’s plan to use InVideo advertising or the possibility of implementing a pre-roll advertising system (10 to 20 second commercial appearing before the video). There’s also the Video ID system that YouTube hopes will bring in more revenue: content owners will know when users upload their videos to YouTube, thus the exposure brings the consumer to the product, and thereby the advertiser shares the love with YouTube.

Shishir Mehrotra, YouTube director of product management, talked about YouTube and its use of advertising in a recent interview. "There’ll be lots of different solutions for lots of different problems," he stressed. "We’ve tested a lot of things already, and we’re going to be testing more in the future. Some will work, some won’t."

As of Q1 2008, the video sharing website was not profitable according to its wiki listing (site). In fact, its 2007 revenues were classified as "not material" by Google. After acquiring YouTube in November 2006, Google has been testing the waters with YouTube advertising to see what floats and what sinks, knowing full well that the site would initially not earn any cash. But now the company is "turning up the dial on monetization" as foretold by Google’s content business director Dave Eun.

The launch of the online YouTube store should bring in the bucks, but will it be enough to keep the site afloat? Only time will tell if consumers catch on to the new service. The innocent YouTube we’ve all come to know and love over the years has probably seen the last of its days.