Flexible Working Life

If you spend all day in a job waiting to get home so you can crack on with your hobby, then chances are, you could probably make some money at it.

Because not all hobbies are going to be money makers, the first thing to do is to take a good look at your past time and view it from a different angle.
Think about what you are doing and how it might be profitable.  Are you creating something?  Providing a service?  Doing an action that could offer valuable information?  Does your hobby give you insider knowledge?

For the purpose of this article,  I phoned up my sister and asked her what her hobby was.
My sister is four months pregnant, so much of her activities have changed in the past weeks, but one constant passion she has is ‘reading.’    Taking my sisters hobby as an example, I decided to look at if you could make money from reading.
I followed through these three steps and worked out how her hobby of reading could be changed into a business.  In your case, change ‘reading’ and insert whatever it is that you love to do and lets see how we can start earning some money from it.

Would people pay you to do your hobby?  
Truth is, in today’s market, most things are sold on marketing and ideas rather than direct merit.   When thinking about if your hobby has a market, think about who would pay for it, what your audience is and why they would pay for your service.

My sisters passion is reading.  She loves thrillers.  She reads fast and she always has a comment about the book, in fact, even if my sister hates the book, she’ll keep reading till the end.  So who would pay her to do this and why would they pay her?

Aspiring authors might pay for a detailed critique on their unpublished book.  Book publishers might pay for a reader to go through the slush piles, but those positions might need more experience than a thriller enthusiast.
However, publishers might also need an honest account of books from a regular reader to write a review.

OK, so now I know that my sisters service is marketable.  What next?

Can it be developed?
If any hobby is to make any kind of income, it has to have the capacity to be up-scaled, and up-scaled with ease.  Any hobby is probably done at first on the small scale, which is fine for some extra income, but if you want to make a living out of it, think about if it can be developed and how.  How long will it take you to deliver the goods and what would it involve?

My sister takes about three days to read a book cover to cover.  But then, life happens and sometimes it’s longer.  So is her hobby easy to upscale?  What if a publisher wanted six books reviewed in one week?  Well, she could start to pass her work onto someone else – I know two other people off the top of my head who would jump at the chance to read and be paid for it.  She could also start a ‘book club with a difference,’ where she gave out ‘free’ books and recorded conversations about the reviews, perhaps even set up a website for it.   In fact, that would also tie up with her marketing plan – she could set up ‘book clubs with a difference’ and sell the idea to publishers that she was getting immediate feedback, or to other readers and take a commission on the books she sold.  Great.  Now this idea is beginning to develop.

What else is involved?
When a hobby becomes a business it can change.  My sister reading for pleasure is different to my sister reading for money.
Just a quick outline of the example business above shows that you also need to think hard about marketing, organisation, profitability and motivation.

The bottom line is how far you want to take it.

You could carry on doing your hobby as a one man operation for extra income or upscale it and develop it as a business.   So for starters I would recommend that my sister approach the local paper and see if it is interested in book reviews perhaps from local authors.  She could then research how to write a great book review, see if she liked reading for money and if she did and went on to approach other magazines, she’d have some published examples.

A quick search on the Internet has brought up lots of sites offering free books for reviews and also some excellent advice about writing reviews so it is workable.

So whatever your hobby, have a think and see if there is any potential for you to get paid for it, in most cases you’ll probably be able to.