Here is the fun thing: what if I told you that no matter what your favorite hobby is, you can easily monetize it online? What if I told you that you don’t need to pick up a new hobby and pretend like it is what you want to do in your free time just because that’s the thing someone’s willing to pay for?
We are living in the information age, and with an easy twist you can really make money from whatever your hobby is. In this article I’m going to show you how.
How To Make Money From Your Hobby
This is actually easier than you might think. You just need to change your idea on how money is made. Instead of focusing on the 9-5 corporate culture, where money is actually made by selling your time, you need to understand that in real business money is actually a reward that’s given in exchange of providing something useful.
No matter what your hobby is, if you can turn it into something that’s useful for at least a handful of people, you can make money from it. And the more people find it beneficial for them, the more money you can make.
So the right question when it comes to how to monetize your hobby is not what your hobby is, but how to make it useful for others.
4 Best Ideas To Monetize Your Hobby
Here are my tried and tested ways of how to actually make your hobby useful for others, and how to make money from it.
Please note that all these methods require time and persistence to make money from your hobby. There is no such thing that making money fast without much effort.
1. Start a blog and use ad services like AdSense or Media.net
This is the easiest way to make money from your hobby. You can literally start a website in 20 minutes, and start publishing your thoughts and experience on your favorite hobby.
With this method, you build up an audience by writing useful articles to people with similar interest, targeting search engine results.
After 15-30 published articles you can apply to the Google AdSense program, and then with just a few clicks place automated ads on your blog. There are other programs like Media.net that you can join once you get more traffic to your blog. Once you get over a couple thousand visitors per day, you can apply for premium ad services, such as Ezoic, AdThrive or Mediavine.
Please browse my website and my online marketing YouTube channel for more information and useful tips on Search Engine Optimization and creating websites that can actually generate you income from your hobby with the free WordPress platform.
Tip: this is actually easier than you might think. You really don’t need to be tech savvy to start your blog and monetize your hobby. Besides blogging about your hobby will give you creative strength just by expressing what you feel and think, and also teach you how the online business world works.
2. Start a YouTube channel for YouTube partner revenue
This is another great way to make money from your hobby, though it is harder to start. You need to create a YouTube channel, and obviously learn how to make videos. You’ll also need some gadgets like a camera, microphone and a video editing software, and accept the fact that you will be seen on the screen. Although this might vary depending on the types of videos you want to shoot.
Other than this, the process is pretty straightforward. Starting a YouTube channel literally takes just a few clicks. Start with some basic equipment like your phone, and make sure you upload videos regularly. I recommend uploading at least 3-4 times a week if you really want to get on track with monetizing your hobby on YouTube.
As of the publication of this article, you need 1000 subscribers to your YouTube channel and 4000 total watch hours of video in the past 12 months to enroll in the YouTube partner program and start making money. This is pretty tough, but if you upload regularly and your videos catch the viewers’ attention, you can reach this threshold in no time.
3. Start an affiliate site
This is another variation of starting a blog in order to make money from your hobby. You can even combine the two. By the way, for best results you should combine all these options I’ve listed here.
Here is how it works. You start a website, and write about your hobby. See Start a blog section above. The way you monetize your traffic is to join affiliate programs (Amazon Associates is the easiest, you should start with that). Then you feature your favorite products, and whenever someone clicks through to their site and buys that product, you get a commission. Easy as it gets, and it can provide a very healthy ROI in a passive way.
4. Create your own info products
By far this is the most lucrative way of monetizing your hobby. You need to do some extra work though, as you must build up a real business around this. But it is extremely rewarding, and if you are looking after how to really make a lot of money from your hobby, this is what you’re looking for.
Combine all the examples above with products that you create. These should be informational products as they are the easiest to build, and you can generate a solid passive income from them. You simply create your product once, and you can sell it literally thousands of times without doing any extra work.
Just to give you an idea, informational products can be ebooks, video courses, other online courses, subscription newsletters etc.
Monetize Your Hobby And Live A Happy Life
So here it is, 4 great ideas to monetize your hobby.
And the best thing is that not only can you make some real money this way, but you’ll finally get on track of making a living from what you really love. And when you do that, work is no longer a burden.
I can tell you this is also your way to live a much happier life.