The epiphany sometimes comes that a hobby could turn into a career. With the rise of YouTube and Twitch showing that even talking at a camera and playing games can become good earners, it’s no surprise that many people dream of turning the activity they love into their full-time occupation.
If you are going to try this, however, you will need to first work out how you will monetize your hobby. This could be relatively straight forward, in the form of selling products, items or services, or it could be in a slightly more unorthodox manner such as taking advertising revenue from your blog posts or YouTube tutorials.
Whichever way you go about it, getting help from your friends, perfecting your passion and making intelligent business decisions will help you on your way.
Get a killer website
First things first, you will need an outstanding website to sell your product on. If you are handcrafting items, then sales pages should pop and be driven to from all other parts of your website. Marketing copy should be well-written, and images should be crisp, making your products look desirable. Get help with web design – finding web design Coventry or other locations is easy online – as they can improve your search engine optimization, your product management and help you with conversion rates for leads and customers.
Having a well-designed, good looking website will improve your reliability early in your business’s life and give you the platform to monetize your products easily.
Increase the time you spend on it
To effectively turn your hobby into an income, you will likely need to increase the amount of time you spend on it. This will depend on the hobby and on your personal and financial circumstances, of course. If you only have time for a couple of hours a day on your hobby then work hard and make them count, but also don’t put too much pressure on how much money you earn, either. If you are pressed for time, you are likely working another job already, and that should remain your focus while you financially rely on it.
However, when you are able, try and start rebalancing the ratio of how you spend your time. If the hobby you are monetizing is filming guitar tutorials, for example, then the more you play, the better you get, the more you edit videos, the more professional they become, and the more videos you create then, the more money you will earn. It sounds idealistic, but some monetized hobbies could be so successful you can give up more “normal” working hours in favor of it.
Start with your friends
Once you have worked out how to generate an income through your hobby, you will need to find some customers. The best place to start with this is your family and friends. Ask them to share your social media pages, offer them referral discounts or simply tell them easy ways to help you. For instance, if you are getting advertising revenue from YouTube, you could tell your friends to leave your videos running on a loop all day. This requires no effort from them and puts some cents in your pocket.
Your friends will be loyal to you. Once you have provided them with an excellent product – for example, if you are selling handmade clothes – they are sure to recommend you to others.
Make it a passion project
Finally, and an important point psychologically, make sure your hobby remains a passion project. Do not put too much strain or stress on it, expecting it to make you lots of money straight away. If you are finding your hobby becomes a chore, then take a step back. It is your passion that made you start this venture, and it should be that same desire that continues to drive it to success.
