Why not make your hobby a business?

If you’re someone who has a hobby, you’ve probably thought about monetizing your work before. Your hobby could be art, like painting or photography. You could be someone who builds furniture, or makes pottery. Maybe you sew or knit in your free time. Do you play intramural sports or go to the gym? If you haven’t yet started to monetize your hobby, generating an extra income source from something you’re already doing could be an easy and fun way to help save extra money.

If you haven’t started monetizing your hobby yet, maybe you’re thinking that making a business out of what you do would take the fun out of it. That could be the case if you created unrealistic expectations for yourself, or added unnecessary pressure onto yourself. You can avoid this by thinking of your hobby business as a side project. If the business isn’t your main source of revenue, and you only work on it when you want to, you’ll likely avoid burnout and resentment of your hobby.

By starting your hobby business small and scaling it to the capacity that you can manage, you can keep the fun aspects of your hobby, whether it be creativity or stress release, and give yourself a new revenue source.

You can monetize your hobby in several different ways. If you’re a painter, selling on Etsy is extremely easy. If you build furniture or make pottery, Squarespace is a great tool to build a beautiful shoppable gallery. If you like to thrift, you can re-sell your best finds on platforms like Depop. If you have a specific skill, like cooking or another trade, you can sell your time by using Square Appointments.

The great thing about keeping a side project of something that you are passionate about, is that you can scale your side project to become your main job over time. If you’re an artist, it has never been easier to sell your work passively online while working a day job. If you’re a chef, but can’t open a restaurant yet, you can sell dinners on social media to an online dinner club.

The digital tools of today make is to that if you have ever considered a creative pursuit as a business for yourself, it is now the easiest it has ever been in history for that to be possible for people. You don’t need to wait for a gallery to display your work, you don’t need to save up money for a retail space, you don’t need to wait for someone to tell you to start. If you have a goal in mind, or want to try to make something for yourself, it is now entirely possible to build something from what you love to do.