Many of us work just to pay bills and save money for a holiday, retirement, and other expenses. Few of us make money from doing the activities we are passionate about.
Below are some suggestions and I encourage you to add your own idea if it’s not on here.
Hopefully one day you’ll be able to do it full time, just like what Confucius said: “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
Blogging
If you never blog in your life but love writing, this is the best time to start blogging. You can start with free blogs like WordPress, Wix, Strikingly, or Blogger. With so many pre-made templates to choose, you can get your blog up and ready within a few minutes.
If you want to have your own domain, e.g. yourname.com (instead of yourname.wordpress.com), you’ll need to buy a domain from a site like Godaddy you may want to consider your hosting.
When you start having more readers, you can start letting other companies use some parts of your blog to advertise their products/services. This is one of the best passive income sources where money literally goes to your bank even when you’re sleeping.
Here is a book about Creative Blogging: Your First Steps to a Successful Blog, and here is a guide about how to blog faster, better, and easier.
You can also align your blog with affiliate marketing where you get a commission each time your readers click and buy a product you’re promoting in your blog. ClickBank is one of the most popular affiliate marketing websites. Here are more details on how you can generate money from ClickBank using affiliate marketing. Many bloggers earn more than $5000 per month from affiliate marketing.
Vlogging
Share your views, knowledge, experiences, from exercising, gardening, baking, decorating, and much more with the whole world through popular platforms like Youtube, Daily Motion, Vimeo, etc.
A YouTuber would make (on average) $9.90 per 1,000 views. That’s a lot of money if you can generate one million views for just one video. If you have 100 videos? You can literally ditch your full-time work and become a full-time YouTuber.
To know more about how to make money with Youtube, you can watch this instruction, officially from Youtube.
Book Writing
Just like blogging, vlogging, and teaching online, you can share your expertise and experience by writing a book. Publishing a book has never been easier, just search in google ‘how to publish a book’ or ‘how to self-publish a book’ and you’ll get a lot of results. Tablo is one of the easiest platforms to help you with publishing your book. They take care of the mundane processes and make your book available in eBook, paperback and hardcover with every bookshop in the world, including Amazon, with each copy printed and shipped on-demand.
Teaching online
If you possess one or more skills you’re passionate about and enjoy showing people how to learn the skill(s), why not making money out of your passion? It can be anything: cooking, baking, cake decoration, woodworking, repairing, sewing, and much more. You can start teaching right away. Udemy is currently one of the best platforms to teach people around the world.
Editing/Proofreading
If you’re a spelling and grammar nazi, you can offer your service in a Fiverr, a website where you can sell your service.
Music
Do you love mixing sounds or composing your own songs in your spare time but don’t really want to take it to the recording company the bureaucracy, not to mention the potential rejection, turn you off? Sell directly to stock music agencies like Shutterstock.
Photography
Apart from teaching your photography skills through ‘teaching online’ as described above, you can also make money by teaching at a workshop. You can have your own workshop via Meetup.
Selling your photos is a good option too.
You can sell your photos through microstock agencies like Shutterstock, Deposit Photos, Dreamstime, and BigStock Photos. The drawback of selling stock photos is that the agencies set the price and you receive a relatively small amount of commission from $0.25 to $9 each photo. But don’t underestimate the power of quantity, as you sell 1000 photos $0.25 becomes $250 and if you’re lucky, $9 becomes $9000.
You can also sell your printed photographs as posters in platforms where you set your own price. Currently, the most popular platforms are eBay, Etsy, and Fine Art America.
Graphic Design/Drawing
If you’re passionate about designing and drawing, apart from sharing your skills by teaching online as previously described above, you can sell your designs and drawings as posters in various platforms such as eBay, Etsy and Fine Art America.
If you think your drawings will look awesome on iPhone cases, travel mugs, tote bags, Tshirts, etc, sell your drawings on companies like Fine Art America, RedBubble, or Zazzle. The best part is that you don’t have to worry about the mugs, bags, T-shirts, etc because these are taken care of by those companies.
Craft Making
You can sell your crafts in your local Saturday/Sunday markets, or sell them on the internet. Etsy is currently one of the best platforms on the internet for craft makers.
Better yet, you can record a video of how you make your crafts and upload it to Youtube (see “Vlogging” as described above).
Gardening
Apart from selling your plants in local markets, you can also write a book, blog, or vlog about your knowledge and skills in gardening.
Cake Baking and Decoration
There are several ways to make money out of your passion for cake baking and decoration. You can sell your cakes at local markets and bakeries, sell them to your friends, as well as advertise your expertise and products on Instagram, Facebook, or local newspapers to get more buyers. You can also have a workshop (class) for cake baking and decoration, or simply record a video of how you bake and decorate your cakes and upload it to Youtube.
Travelling
Don’t forget that this hobby, too, has a lot of potentials in making money. You can write a book, blog, or vlog about anything related to your travelling experiences, from merely informing the price tags on products and services you purchase, to expressing your opinions about the places you visit so your readers/audiences are well informed.
In Conclusion
Almost any hobbies can be turned into money, and if you’re passionate enough, you can turn your hobby into a full-time job, just like what Confucius said, as previously mentioned above, “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.” And if you can reach this level, you’ll be one of the most content people, living their lives happily and passionately.
Don’t hesitate to add your own ideas and/or share them in the comment box below.
