Starting a Hobby Business: Tips to Get You Started with 8 Hobbies You Can Monetise & Turn into a Small-Scale Business! (2020)

14/08/2020 Newest

If you sincerely love your hobby, you may as well turn it into your own business. However, you must know the nuances of running a business and shorten your learning curve if you have to succeed in your venture. In this post, we bring you handpicked tips from the experts to get your hobby business started, and eight hobbies you can pick up if you're looking for one!

Table of contents

Willing to Transfer Your Hobbies into a Profitable Business?
Tips on How to Get Started
Hobbies You Can Start and Convert into a Business!

Willing to Transfer Your Hobbies into a Profitable Business?

All of us have our hobbies. They act as a welcome relief in our busy times. After a hectic week, a fishing trip, perhaps, can rejuvenate some of us for the struggle next week. Some of us love painting, and it helps to provide some relief to our stressful lives. In troubled times, our hobbies can help us keep going, and we can earn some money out of it too.

However, turning your hobbies into a full-fledged business requires a lot of planning and investment also. There are sacrifices to be made. You need to transform yourself from an employee to a CEO and act like one. You need to be committed, skilful, and must possess the energy to convert your hobbies into a successful business model. Here are a few tips on how to turn your hobbies into a profitable business.

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Tips on How to Get Started

Fix Your Goals: As a first step, you must finalise your goals and objectives of your business. To give a formal structure to your business, you must formulate the mission and vision of your business. The various KPIs must be fixed against which you can assess your progress. At the initiation, you must finalise whether you would wish to continue the business as a full-time venture, or would it be a part-time engagement. You need to think about the future and how to integrate your business into your family life.

Brainstorming Helps: It is best that you rope in a few market experts and brainstorm the various ways and mean to be deployed to make your venture a success. You may discuss with your friends who have ventured into a new business earlier. Learn from them the nuances of the business world. They will be able to tell you about the pitfalls you may face when starting a new venture. They may also help you in connecting with investors who can be interested in your business. Before these, you must first have a robust business idea and various strategies on how to monetise your hobby. If you are a photographer, you must devise ways to reach out to more people, open up a photography course online and provide certificate courses, create videos about your portfolio and partner with various websites to sell your services or photographs.

Assess Yourself: You must be excellent in your hobby before you plan to convert it into a full-blown business. The reason is that there are too many competitors vying for the same customers. So, unless you are among the best in the market, you will find it challenging to have a toehold in the market. You may have to brush up your skills or get yourself certified in that field. Starting a business requires dedication. Ask yourself if you are doing it for a pastime or a side income, or are you serious about it. Various aspects of your business also need your attention, viz. delivery, finance and invoicing, and marketing. You need to attend to these areas too. So, you must first assess whether you would be ready for this new venture.

The Finer Nuances of Business: You must utilise your network of friends and family to the fullest. Learn digital marketing and learn the finer nuances of increasing your connections quickly. You should get enrolled in some marketing and sales courses before starting your venture. The reach of online marketing is higher than that of offline marketing. The return on investment is also much significant. You need to enter into alliances with aggregators in your field too. Similarly, you must understand some of the basics of accounting too. You have to create invoices and send them out. Moreover, you have to get involved in delivery as well as customer support for some time.

Improve Your Skills Before Starting: Before starting your business, you must assess your skill level in that field. The market is already full of like-minded people, and you must have a unique selling proposition that will separate you from the others. It could be your creativity, your punctuality in delivery, or your after-sales support. Across the entire operations process, there could be areas where you need to either brush up your skills or take up new courses. Several online courses can help you gather the required knowledge within a short time. If your line of work requires credentials to be presented, work towards acquiring certification.

Decide on a Business Plan: Before embarking on your business, you must create a robust business plan detailing the activities that you will undertake to make your venture a success. As a first step, you must evaluate the market and find out the market size. Then you make a suitable assumption about the target market and your buyer persona. Once this is finalised, you have to pen down the market factors that you will be faced with and the possible outcome and how you may overcome these factors. The business plan should also cover in detail the marketing strategies you will take and then budget allocated under each head.

Check Your Standing: While embarking on business, we must have our house in order. There could be instances when we may not be on the right track, and the business may not turn out to be as planned. For such a scenario, you need to be ready with a contingency plan. Research has shown that more than half of the start-ups do not operate after the first year. Do a self-assessment on how to cope with such a scenario. Do you have a contingency plan in place? Will you be able to pump in more resources if things do not go as planned? This is an aspect that you need to consider and check your standing accordingly.

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Hobbies You Can Start and Convert into a Business!

Writing

Are you fond of writing articles or poetry? Or do you specialise in creating jingles? You can monetise this hobby by publishing your creation online. You can further your career in this hobby. Alternatively, you may rent out your skills on various freelancing platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, or Freelancer. You may also reach out to your network for work.

You must know how to write a blog post, keeping in mind the SEO requirements. Writers with experience in a particular niche have high demand in the market. You can write jingles or a storyboard for a video. You can also ghostwrite a book or be a speechwriter.

Creative Art

It is another field that requires freelancers by the dozens. You can get work related to the design of marketing materials and branding elements. It could also be t-shirts and other household materials. You must be creative enough as there are several people already in this space. You must create a unique design to create a brand for yourself. In case you need help with offset printing or apparel design, there are numerous resources at your disposal.

You can also sell creative products that people send as gifts to others. You can see demand during the festive season or on special occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, etc. You can start by selling to friends and family. You can then move on to professional websites to sell your craft.

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Photography

Do you own a high-end camera and are an avid traveller too? Are you the one who has been clicking snaps at all family events? If the answer is yes, you can as well start a small business with your hobby. You can be a freelance photographer for specific events, or you may publish your snaps on social media channels like Instagram and Facebook and have a huge fan following. As your fans keep growing, you may be noticed by renowned magazines who may buy your work.

There are various photography related websites or online stock photo websites where you can enlist your work for sale. Numerous online guides detail how you can sell your creations online. Once your business stabilises, you can even specialise in a particular niche.

Cooking

Many of us have a penchant for cooking and like to cook our favourite dishes for our friends and family. While we know about the renowned chefs, many amateurs are no way less than any of them. There are various options in front of you.

Most amateurs start by taking pictures of their creation and posting them online. It allows them to get the first few clients. The more enthusiastic ones can create YouTube videos and start cooking lessons too. And the next step can be to start a food truck business. Once you are successful in your juvenile venture, you can move into the gourmet restaurant business. As you practice new recipes, you can add them to your menu, and it becomes a unique proposition for your patrons. There are various online guides to start a food venture that you could browse through.

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Gaming

Gaming is also a great money-spinner these days. You can play games online through various gaming sites that reward you through points. These points can be redeemed against gift cards or PayPal payments. If you are an experienced gamer, you can also provide technical support. The company could supply the necessary equipment.

Avid game enthusiasts can also act as beta testers of games. You must play the game over some time and do exhaustive reporting about how the game responds. Some gaming companies also look for remote playtesters if you can prove your worth. A gaming coach is another opening for you whereby you can hop onto a platform and recruit students who you may coach in games of your choice. A good writer can also be a review writer for various games.

Gardening

Are you an avid lover of greenery, or do you have a certificate in any gardening course? There are a few people who prefer to have a large garden in their homes. Some of them even prefer to do organic farming in their homes. You must have talent in designing a great garden for these clients and earn some quick money. Act as a garden designer – it could be on your client’s balcony or their garden.

You can also grow some exotic herbs and flowers in your garden and sell them. Also, you can grow some organic vegetables on your farm for selling. Organic food is known to be a fad these days, and you will find lots of clients.

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Dancing

Most of us have a liking to dance, and some of you might have even done a few stage shows too. Some of us even have a certificate in dancing. So, why not take it a step further and do something on your own. You may start by taking individual dance lessons. As your students grow, you may open up a dancing school. Ideally, you must cover all dance forms as diversification can allow you to reach out to more students. You can also take online dancing lessons by putting up YouTube videos.

Painting

Painting is another passion that you can monetise. You can start your painting school and can sell your paintings online too. Several websites can act as a suitable platform for you. With time you can even have your exhibitions that can bring in a lot of your potential customers together. Once you gain recognition, you can sell your canvases through your website.

Digital Marketer, Blogger

Sanjay Das

Sanjay is a marketing professional with more than 15 years of experience. He has a penchant for writing blogs and articles and has written over 350 blogs across diverse topics and industries. Sanjay takes a keen interest in SEO-based content writing for websites and social media. He also runs his own blog for digital marketing articles.

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Don't Expect that You'll Turn into a Business Sensation Overnight!

Getting into the shoes of a CEO overnight is not possible. Your transition to a business owner will take some time. It will require a lot of dedication, and you need to create a robust business plan first. You may also need to make some initial investment that can be from your savings, or you may borrow from friends and family. Whatever you choose to do, remember it takes time for a seed to become a fruit-bearing tree!