How To Make Money Off Of Your Hobbies

By: Dannie Phan | October 9th, 2020

These days, non-traditional methods of employment have risen in popularity. YouTubers, for example, can make as much money as someone going to the office every day, even though the career path is still new.

You too can turn your hobby into a career if you want to. The process can be lengthy and lacks the structure of work provided by an office job. However, by taking something you love and monetizing it, you can find yourself more passionate about what you do and more productive as a result.

Hobbies That Make Money

When it comes to making extra money through non-traditional means, you have to get creative – often literally. The internet hungers for content, and the best way to start making a living for yourself is to contribute to that content. When you provide a creative means for people to enjoy, or you contribute to someone else’s development of those means, you create a desire and the objects that fill that desire, effectively building your own market for employment.

Popular Money making Hobbies

What are the best hobbies to try and monetize from the comfort of your own home? These can include but are not limited to:

Video Making

If you want a fun way to make money, what better to do than start crafting videos? You can publish long-form content through a YouTube channel or short-form content through social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Twitch

The process of creating video content for these kinds of videos can take a considerable amount of time, but the returns are often worth the effort. You can begin to build up an audience and collect money from ad revenue while also sending viewers to your Patreon or Ko-fi. Eventually you can build a following that could take this into a full-time job.

Blogging

If you’re looking for a platform that’s a little less face-forward but that still lets you share your opinions with the world, blogging may be for you. Bloggers can work alongside platforms like Google to generate ad revenue and to grow your audience. You can again use platforms like Patreon to reserve content for parties willing to share for it, or you can request that your readers frequent a donation app. Affiliate marketing can be leveraged to bring extra revenue every time you get your readers to purchase items at a partnered store like Amazon, Ebay, or Etsy.

Exercising

Do you have a regular gym schedule, even in 2020? Do you not only enjoy working out but enjoy sharing your gain strategies? Then you can make a career out of your love of exercise.

Not only do many folks want to interact with a personal trainer, but they want to do so from the comfort of their homes. You can write up or record your exercise routine and walk beginners and practiced athletes alike through the steps you take to stay fit. You can create custom workouts or build a community around a specific workout like dance, yoga, powerlifting and more.

Graphic Design

The prevalence of online content makes it all the simpler for artists with a passion for graphic design to make a living. If you set up a portfolio and make the prices for your work clear, you can make icons, emojis and other content for streamers and businesses alike to use. In doing so, you’ll be able to expand your roster of work while also generating a reputation among businesses for quality work and a creative mind.

Illustration

In a similar vein, you can also choose to open up artistic commissions to the general public. The rise of Dungeons and Dragons over the past five years has reinvigorated the game by the artistic community around it. You can produce illustrations of other people’s characters or, alternatively, focus on more traditional art and offer portraits of weddings, birthdays and graduations.

To get started, you’ll want to bring together a portfolio and set your prices so you can make at least minimum wage in per-hour work. Once you have your tools in place, you can start reaching out to see who wants their art to come to life in your style.

Writing

If you already write for fun on a regular basis, you can easily translate your skill into a career. Freelance writing requires you to think on your feet – or rather, your fingers – to produce work on all manner of topics. To get started in this field, you can connect with a host who interacts with clients, or you can reach out to those clients on your own. Platforms like Upwork and Guru are both ideal for beginning freelance writers who want to see the breadth of projects available to them.

Proofreading

Compared to proofreading, writing can seem like a straightforward career. Proofreading, comparatively, requires you to look through someone else’s work and identify the grammatical errors and thematic divergences they’ve included in what is supposed to be a coherent piece.

A career in proofreading takes patience, but if you like to tear through work and make it better, it could be the field for you. As you get to know a writer’s style, you can build them up in the ways that matter and help them become better at what they do – all while making your job simpler.

App Creation

Finally, you can always create an interactive experience for others to enjoy. App creation takes time and resources, but once you release the product through Google Play or the Apple App Store, you can relish seeing other people’s reactions to your work.

You can create all manner of apps from games to day-to-day management aids to health trackers. Just focus on your preferred field, research what competition you may have to go up against, and see where your imagination takes you.

Easiest Trades To Learn

Learning any trade takes time and patience. After all, you’re not going to be perfect at everything, and even the things you’re good at can take time to master.

Coming into a trade will require you to practice, even if you have a strong base in that field. For example, if you’ve spent the past five years drawing for fun, you may have the basics of form and lighting down. However, you’ll need to take time, as you make drawing a career, to focus on color theory and composition if you want to reach a broader audience.

Put another way: No trade is easier than any other to learn. If you want to determine for yourself what the easiest hobby to monetize may be, think about your interests and about what you do for fun. If you play video games most days of the week, it’ll be easiest for you to learn how to stream your experience. If you write for fun, you have the groundwork in place you need to consider writing as a career.

That said, you can also branch out, if you so choose. If, after years of writing, you want to learn how to draw, try and connect with those parties who are already masters in their fields. This way, you can start to learn the basics that will eventually allow you to turn your new skill into a career.

What Is The Best Trade To Learn?

When it comes to learning a trade to make money, the trade you’ll want to take up is entirely up to you. On one hand, work becomes easier when it’s something you enjoy or when it’s something you’re good at. On the other hand, if you find yourself overly invested in what you’re doing, you may not be able to separate your hobby from your job.

With that in mind, consider taking on a trade that does fulfill you, in some way, but that also allows you to take time yourself on the average day. This could be creating graphics when you draw as a hobby or writing SEO when you also write fiction, nonfiction or for yourself. Above all else, be sure to give yourself time during a day to step away from the work you’re doing and enjoy the hobby instead.

In short, the best trade to learn depends on your skill set, your interests and your perceived ability to maintain interest in such a trade if you decide to turn it into a career.

Side hustles are all the more popular today because they allow young creators to monetize their hobbies. There are lots of creative ways to make money. Work, after all, feels less like work when you’re able to be creative and do what you love for a living. If you’re interested in discovering a new or unusual way to make money, consider doing what you love with an organization or a client base that will pay you for your services.

And if you’ve got a green (or greenish) thumb and you’re feeling creative, make a fairy container garden on the cheap. It’s a fun project for you to get your creativity flowing, and you might find that it’s great pastime or hobby to make some money.

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