Let's see if this sounds familiar. You have a hobby that you enjoy doing very, very much. You're quite passionate about it. So you're willing to spend quite a substantial amount of money to finance this hobby of yours. You buy materials for your scrapbooks, purchase old coins for your collection, or get some new seedlings to plant in your expanding garden. You need to budget your expenses just right so you can have enough to fuel your passion. And often, your loved ones-spouse, parents, friends-simply can't understand why you'd want to "waste money" on this hobby of yours.
Sounds familiar?
Well you're not alone. And it always comes as a surprise to me that while so many people are willing to spend money on their hobbies, very few of them think about MAKING money from them. The very fact of the matter is that in this day and age, with the help of the great information technology that allows to you to get in contact with virtually anyone across the globe in an instant, you can generate profit from ANY hobby. There is literally a niche market for everything-every interest and every quirk. Using the internet, you can easily tap to these niche markets relatively easy.
So how do you turn your hobbies into profit? Well, let's simplify things a bit and group these various hobbies into three categories and see how you can make money from each.
The first group of hobbies includes those that involve "production." This would include, for example, scrapbooking, soap making, candle making and the likes. The way to profit from these hobbies is pretty straightforward: selling them. For many hobbyists, without them realizing it, they already have a client base. They've often made scrapbooks and soaps as gifts for friends and family. You can move from there to market your product. Instead of giving them as gifts, offer them to people for a price. Local fairs and shops often serve as the best starting points to introduce your wonderful products to the market.
One Catherine Failor started out as many soap makers did. She started making homemade soap in the late 1980s as presents for family and friends. Before long, she was experimenting with colors and scents and patterns and started selling her soap to gift shops and health food stores across the country. Within only a few years, Failor was pulling in about $250,000. Now mind you, this takes several years-this is not a get-rich-quick scheme-but people do get there.
The second group of hobbies includes collecting: rare coins, stamps, trading cards, etc. Avid collectors would be willing to spend huge amounts of money to get their hands on rare collectibles. This then, is one obvious way you can profit from your collection. You play the role of an investment broker: buy one item and resell them at a higher price. But another way you can make money from this hobby is by selling valuable information. With your knowledge on a particular collecting hobby, you can develop newsletters and electronic magazines that people can get by paying a subscription fee (again, the internet will make everything simple for you to do this) or you publish them for free and invite other businesses to put their ads on them. This would allow you to generate recurring revenue.
Finally, there are activity hobbies: sports, traveling, cooking-you name it. Again, you can profit from selling information to fellow hobbyists. And you don't even need to start your own newsletter or ezine; you can get paid for writing articles on them and sell them to ezine publishers. Or-and this has happened many times to many people-you can start your own blog and place Google ads on them.
These are just some of the more obvious ways you can turn your hobbies into profit. There are more ways out there if you're willing to look for them. That should be your first order of business: get as many information as you can. There are hundreds of thousands of people that make a very comfortable living from their hobby alone. Many more make significant second streams of revenue by turning their hobbies into profit. I should know; I've helped some of them set up their businesses. Now it's your turn to profit from your hobbies.
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