Money Making Hobby Ideas
By Steve Gillman
The following money making hobby ideas are part of the "ideas"
section of this site, so as they say, "Your results may
vary." But where there are numbers to be mentioned, I mention
them, just to give you some idea of the possibilities.
I start with a true story about a co-worker of mine who had
a wood-working hobby. At some point he made a life-sized cow
out of plywood, and painted it up with brown and white. He put
it in his yard and soon someone stopped to ask him if it was
for sale. By the third time this happened he realized it should
be for sale, so he made more and started to sell them. He wasn't
going to get rich making a $50 profit a few times per month,
but it was a fun way to make money.
I enjoy making walking sticks, and once sold hundreds of then
over the course of a summer. My neighbor recently gave us one
of his handmade birdhouses, which he tells me sell well at a
flea market where where he markets these and other wooden handicrafts.
What other hobbies can you turn into cash?
If you love photographing cars you can attend car shows and
take photos of participants with their cars, to sell the framed
results.
If your hobby is gardening you could offer seminars on the
subject.
If you like to watch and talk about movies you can become
a movie critic for a local paper.
If you play role-playing games as a hobby, you might create
a blog providing tips and ideas to other players, and monetize
the blog with advertising or links to affiliate products.
Think broadly. A hobby of hiking could lead to making sandstone
coasters from all the nice rocks you see.
How Much Can You Make?
Who knows? Some hobbies have a lot more profit potential than
others, of course. You can make big money restoring old cars
if that's your hobby, for example, but collecting sea shells
is a tougher hobby to make into a business. On the other hand,
thanks to the internet money making hobby ideas are more feasible
than ever. My backpacking hobby makes me thousands of dollars
annually by way of a website about it. My interest in metaphors
only nets me $20 monthly from a site on the subject, but it was
fun to create. My favorite hobby is perhaps sitting around and
thinking up new ideas about everything from inventions to politics.
The site I built to tell others about all those ideas makes thousands
of dollars annually.
Ways to Make More | Related Opportunities
| Tips
Some hobbies are common business activities as well (photography,
knitting, cooking), in which case you just need to take the next
logical step--start doing it for money. Hobbies that are not
as common as businesses (playing chess, writing love poems, hiking,
playing with cats) can be made profitable by creating content
about them online and monetizing the traffic you get.
Qualifications / Requirements
A hobby and a commitment to make a little cash from it are
all you need to start.
First Steps
Again, look for the obvious business potential in the hobby
to start with. If nothing comes to mind right away, writing a
book on the topic (see the page Self
Publishing: An Interview), or publishing related content
online is worth considering.
Resources
http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol17/hobby.htm
- An article about making a hobby into a business.
Craft, Inc.: Turn Your Creative Hobby into a Business,
by Meg Mateo Ilasco - Chronicle Books 2007
http://www.999articles.com
- My ebook, How to Make Money Writing, has some content on how
to promote a niche website--which can be a way to turn any hobby
into an income.
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