There are many people who have a dream of someday being their own boss. They hear about online entrepreneurs and think of how great it would be, until they actually get started and find that following in the exact footsteps of the people they learn from isn’t much different from being in a corporation.
That’s because most people are so desperate to succeed, they feel if they don’t do what others are doing, they may not have a chance to profit. If the instructor showcases a niche site example about diabetes, they build the same, even though they have zero interest or enthusiasm for that niche.
The key to appreciating your new career is to take the strategic and technical lessons and then apply them to a niche and business model that you do enjoy. The best place to start is with the hobbies and activities you like doing during your off hours, whether that’s reading, gardening, or cooking – to name a few.
Almost any hobby can be turned into a lucrative online business if you know how to set aside your fear and tap into your enthusiasm and passion for what you’re doing. If you’re willing to share your efforts, others will become loyal followers who contribute to your online earnings.
Become an Entrepreneur Based on What You Truly Love
There are sometimes things we enjoy doing, but when asked about it from a potential business perspective, we never connect the dots of how it would work. Instead of trying to see the profit potential up front, start by simply making a list of things you enjoy.
For example, you might like to paint or do some other arts and crafts projects during your off hours. Maybe you hit the links and play a round of golf every weekend to unwind.
No matter how insignificant you think it may be, jot it down in a list of potential business ideas based off the hobbies and activities you enjoy. You’ll learn how to monetize it, but the first task is to choose something you’d be thrilled waking up and working on day after day.
If you pick a niche solely based off profit potential, you’ll quickly find that you dread having to create content for it, having to research the topic and engage with customers who need insight.
Not only is it doing yourself a disservice to lock yourself into a career that bores you, but it’s also not fair to the consumer. They deserve to have someone to turn to who is dedicated to the topic, looking for cutting edge advice and who enjoys answering questions and being part of their community.
Beginners Welcome – You Don’t Have to Be an Expert
When you start making your list, you may have brainstormed a few topics that you don’t consider yourself an expert in. Most online entrepreneurs aren’t experts, to be honest. They’re simply people who enjoy what they do and who want to share it with others.
If you’ve been employed in a fulltime career for years, you may have even found it hard to come up with many hobbies, because to date, you haven’t had much time to pursue anything.
By the time work is over, dinner is complete, and the kids are off to bed, you find it hard to keep your eyes open, much less do something fun that you enjoy. Now is the time to start thinking about what you would find fun.
Even if it’s something you have always wanted to learn, but never found the time – that is a perfect opportunity to develop a business. Consumers love seeing someone’s journey unfold from beginner to expert.
They’re along for the ride, and you can genuinely help them because the questions and problems you’ll have and run into are the same ones they’ll have. This helps the consumer not feel “stupid,” like they sometimes do when having to turn to a true expert and ask what they consider a dumb question.
Because you’re a newbie, too – they’ll feel relaxed and at ease asking questions and engaging with you about the hobby. Plus, if they see you becoming a success, then it lends credence to your claim as an expert later on – as opposed to those who simply claim it, but nobody knows what their experience truly is.
If you do get into a niche hobby that you feel you’re a beginner at, take time to learn and share your findings with others. Not only will you be perfecting your skills – whether it’s with photography, your golf swing, or how to cook a juicy chicken, but you’ll also be showing others that you take time to level up, and that you’re a leader worth following.
Don’t worry about the possibility of weeding out people who are in that hobby who are ahead of you in terms of skill and knowledge. That happens to even the top people in their field eventually.
Focus on those on the same level as you, because when you’re doing this as a fulltime or part time job, you’ll quickly climb the level of success and experience and your label as a newbie will be short-lived.
You might even want to pursue the niche hobby site from a slant for beginners, because even as you escalate your skills, the site will enable them to grow with you. And of course, if you are already a seasoned expert, that can help you attract an audience, too!
Earning Commission By Giving Your Opinions
So the question after you pick a hobby to pursue is, “How can I make money with it?” There are many ways, but one of the easiest ones is by giving your opinions and recommendations about products, courses and other tools.
Affiliate marketing is a business model that’s perfect for making money with your hobbies. It consists of guiding others to the right products they should buy, which entails you discussing their options and which products you believe would be best for them to buy.
What you’ll probably want to do is begin by building a blog for your niche hobby. On this site, you’ll be talking about everything from how to do something to what they need in order to do it.
For example, if your hobby is grilling, then you’d teach them how to grill meats and vegetables, but also teach them which grill they should purchase, too. You don’t only make money off the main product, either.
With a grill, for example, you’ll be talking about all of the various accessories they have available to them such as forks and tongs, spatulas, meat injector kits, basting tools, meat thermometers, cooking gloves and more.
Every time someone takes your recommendation and follows the link to the site where it’s sold, you’ll earn a commission. The link is coded to credit you with the sale. You can send people to individual product links or search results pages on sites like Amazon.
When you have a niche hobby blog, sometimes you’ll have posts that are strictly review posts. For example, you might have a “Top 10 Indoor Grills” blog post. Each product in the list can link to that specific product, but you can also link to the “all indoor grills” results page on the site.
Another way you can earn is by weaving your affiliate link into the instructional blog posts that you share. So let’s say you want to teach people how to grill juicy chicken breasts.
Your blog post can walk them through each step. At some point, one of your instructions will be for them to check the temperature of the meat they’re grilling. You can either link out to meat thermometer pages there, or send them to another blog post on your site that teaches them how to check the temperature of meat when it’s grilling.
You can simply add a quick note that says, “I personally prefer this meat thermometer because it alerts you whenever the meat reaches the temperature that you set.” You would hyperlink the words this meat thermometer to the product you want to recommend and earn a commission on.
Teaching What You Know to Other Enthusiasts
As a niche hobby blogger, you’ll be teaching other people what you learn or already know. You can do this on your blog, but also other places, as well – including those that are monetized.
In addition to posting lessons and tutorials on your blog, your lessons can trickle out in email autoresponders to loyal subscribers. You can set these up on autopilot to drip out over time to all new subscribers.
You can also create broadcast emails that go out the day you write them. Just keep in mind that if you use broadcast emails, then people who sign up at a later date will not see these messages because they weren’t on the list at the time they were mailed out.
But you can also create information products where you sell your expertise in the form of a course to the people who want to learn more about it. These info products can be in eBook form or video format, depending on what your hobby is and how you feel comfortable teaching it.
A good example of this is the golf niche. This is a lucrative hobby that you can find hundreds of books on. Some have images and some just have step-by-step instructions and tips.
But there are also many videos people upload and video courses that people pay for in order to learn how to improve their game on their own time, without having to pay for personal coaching.
You’ll have competitors who also create info products for the hobby, and for those, you can act as an affiliate and promote them in exchange for a larger commission than what you often make with tangible products.
Once you have your own info product, you can approach your competitors and ask them to promote your product in exchange for a commission (typically about 50%). This also helps you add their subscribers onto your list, which means you can promote to them in the future.
If you’re not sure what your audience wants to know, besides thinking about what you wanted to know when you first got started in the hobby, use keyword tools and other methods to figure it out.
If you were going to create a YouTube video or a section of your info product about knitting, for example, you could run a search on a keyword tool for how to knit and you’d see results like: how to knit a blanket, how to knit a scarf, how to knit a hat, and so on.
Using those exact keywords in your posts will bring in traffic to your site from the people who are eager to learn. Then, you can direct them to your full course that teaches them everything from soup to nuts.
10 Lucrative Hobbies and How You Can Monetize Them
If you’re at a loss as to how to monetize hobbies, you might want to choose from some of the top ones with plenty of money making opportunities. These aren’t the only options – there are many more – but it might give you a bit of guidance to get started.
1 – Reading and Writing
Do you end each day curling up with a good book? Books are one of the top sellers on sites like Amazon. In fact, many authors give free copies or even pay people to read and review their books.
You can also promote and create courses that teach people how to write their own books, both fiction and non-fiction. With self-publishing platforms like Amazon Kindle, it’s easy for anyone to pursue their dream of being an author – and you can help them with it.
2 – Cooking, Grilling and Baking
If your heart is in the kitchen, or even outdoors cooking, then you might want to be a part of this lucrative niche. Not only can you promote things like grills, bakeware, cookware and accessories – but you can also promote cookbooks and recipe books that you create or have read and enjoy.
3 – Gaming
Gaming is a good niche for both men and women and it can focus on one or multiple platforms. Some people like playing video games on a PC, while others prefer a PlayStation, for example.
4 – Photography
More people are becoming amateur photographers. It’s not just reserved for professionals anymore. Not only can you promote the affordable to top-of-the-line cameras, but the accessories, such as lenses, cost a pretty penny, too.
You can also create or promote courses that teach people the fundamentals, how to take better pictures, or how to take a specific type or photo, like a portrait. These are skills that can help them launch a business of their own.
5 – Sports
With sports, you can certainly create a site and business built as a fan of major league sports. With this, you could promote things like jerseys, for example. But it also might include things golf, skiing, fishing, biking, tennis or some other sport they can participate in and not just act as fans.
If you’re in a hobby sports niche, then you can earn money promoting the equipment (like golf clubs or a tennis racket), but you can also promote training equipment and courses that help the person learn how to improve their game.
6 – Beverages
When you think about relaxing, you might think of what beverage you enjoy while you do it. That may be freshly brewed coffee, beer or wine. Some people really take their love of beverages to the next level and make it a hobby, brewing their own beans for coffee and making their own wine or beer.
You might also target the mixology niche, where you’re teaching people how to make mixed drinks. For the home brewers, not only do they want instructions for making the best beverages, but they also need the equipment to do it, which can put profits in your pocket!
7 – Bodybuilding
Some people can’t stand exercise, some do it for health – and others pursue it as a hobby, like bodybuilders. Bodybuilders need tips and insight, but they also need things like weights, meal prep containers and supplements that you can earn from.
8 – Arts and Crafts
One of the most common hobby niches is arts and crafts. This might include drawing, painting, knitting, sewing, candle making, crocheting, scrapbooking and more. People love buying courses and tools, like the paper, paints, fabric and other items.
9 – Traveling
If you love to travel, whether at home or abroad, you might want to make a niche hobby blog from it. People love following along and getting travel tips, and you can make money from travel accessories like luggage – or earn commissions as a travel agent, too.
10 – Gardening
Not only is gardening a hobby, but it’s a stress relief tool that helps people stay healthy, too. You can make money promoting gardening tools and accessories and also from courses on raised bed gardening, container gardening and more.
There are so many other hobbies you can get involved in that serve as wonderful moneymaking opportunities. Whether it’s woodworking or camping, or something with a smaller following, you can lead fellow enthusiasts in their quest and have fun each and every day as you build your business.