[HN Gopher] Monetizing hobbies
___________________________________________________________________
Monetizing hobbies
Author : victorstanciu
Score : 146 points
Date : 2022-04-21 08:26 UTC (2 days ago)
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| u2077 wrote:
| As someone with a somewhat successful side project, I highly
| recommend monetizing it. However, you should choose a small
| enough price that you don't feel like you owe customers fast
| support or every feature they ask for. (In some cases a donation
| button may be better)
|
| Also, when you start expecting your project to meet income
| requirements, it can take the fun out extremely fast. Part of the
| fun is being able to work on it as much or as little as I want.
|
| Benefits of monetizing (from my experience):
|
| Extremely validating, what you enjoy doing has value to others.
|
| Offsets costs, even if your only cost is time, a few bucks really
| helps.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _(In some cases a donation button may be better)_
|
| If you are not a charity, do not call it a donation. Call it a
| _tip_.
| WJW wrote:
| Is there some legal distinction? Getting money with the
| expectation that it will be used to further some vaguely
| defined public good you are doing (writing freely available
| software in this case) sounds exactly like a charity,
| especially since you will be doing most of the public good
| regardless of whether you get the donation or not. A tip on
| the other hand is an additional payment for some good or
| service that you were already paying for, but that is not the
| case for most software projects.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I'm a blogger, not a programmer. I don't make near enough
| money from it but calling it a tip instead of a donation
| has performed better.
|
| Tip signals "payment for my work." Donation signals "gift."
|
| People seem to be more inclined to actually fork over a few
| bucks if you signal "This is my work. I deserve to be paid
| for it." than if you signal "I would like gifts (or
| charity) from random internet strangers."
| WJW wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for the explanation!
| jlokier wrote:
| Fun fact: Tips are subject to income tax, donations are not.
|
| That may be relevant to people seriously monetizing their
| hobbies.
|
| (Whether something is, for tax purposes, a tip or a donation
| is determined by the reason the money is given, not what you
| call it, but if it's truly a donation then I'd be inclined to
| call it one just in case that influences some judgement
| further down the line.)
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Years ago, PayPal had _donate_ buttons and my recollection
| is there was text somewhere on the site indicating that if
| you hit $10k in donations, they would want a copy of your
| 501c3 or some such. It 's one of the reasons I stopped
| using _donate_ buttons.
|
| These days, there are other monetization products but I'm
| not sure the IRS would approve of you calling it whatever
| you want for reasons of avoiding taxes.
| 13415 wrote:
| I monetized my German science fiction novels by publishing them
| on Amazon, but so far have regretted it. They generally get great
| reviews and sure have their readers, but mostly just one of them
| (by far not the best) sells well continuously. The rest would
| require marketing that is a completely different activity than
| writing books, and really not fun to me at all. Moreover, you
| invariably get the occasional bad or intentionally misleading, if
| not downright evil review, and if you happen to get one of those
| in the beginning by accident, then your book will never sell -
| nobody is going to buy a self-published book with a score below 4
| stars and future reviews will be lower than deserved due to the
| anchoring effect. I'm no longer sure the benefits of getting a
| few hundred readers and the corresponding royalties outweigh the
| substantial efforts of getting a book ready for publication,
| which have nothing to do with the joy of writing.
|
| Seeking for channels to give away your work for free like open
| source or creative commons can make more sense. Software is
| another issue, by the way. I used to sell shareware for Macs for
| 20 years, and the problem is it can cause a lot of work if you
| want to support your customers _after initial sales_ have cooled
| down. It can easily turn into a chore.
| victorstanciu wrote:
| First of all, congrats on finishing the novels. That's a huge
| accomplishment in itself!
|
| Writing sits comfortably in the territory of hobbies which
| require neither money nor storage space to perform, so I can
| totally understand how someone would choose to forgo money
| completely in order to not have to deal with the unpleasant
| aspects of self-publishing. Speaking of which, I assume you've
| already decided against traditional publishing?
| ffhhj wrote:
| You should convert them into ebook apps, something I have
| noticed is that nobody reads the reviews. Maybe give the first
| chapters for free and the rest paid. Just make sure the user
| knows that's the deal so they don't get frustrated.
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| I've published a few non-fiction books in the tech space--one
| through a major publisher and couple independently.
|
| Certainly some people do well but, in the main, the finances
| don't really work. I've never done a serious marketing push
| beyond book signings at some industry events (with someone else
| paying for the book copies) but I'm not at all confident that
| incremental sales would cover significant PR/marketing
| activities.
|
| What it _has_ done in my case is a likely pretty significant
| enhancement to my visibility /stature professionally. Which has
| been very beneficial.
|
| I did shareware for a while too back in the 90s (MS-DOS
| mostly). I enjoyed doing it for a time, liked interacting with
| my testers and other users, was part of the shareware
| community, etc. And made reasonable side hobby business money.
| But certainly not at my day job level.
| political12345 wrote:
| If you are so obsessesed with optimizing your life (most of us on
| HN are) and want to monetize your hobby, pick a job so
| interesting and open ended that your job becomes your hobby.
|
| You are killing two birds with one stone in that case
| jotm wrote:
| That's a very limited pool with high competition though :D
| koheripbal wrote:
| Running a small business is like this.
| n4bz0r wrote:
| > You are killing two birds with one stone in that case
|
| Achievement unlocked: Dennis the Menace
| cehrlich wrote:
| The downside is you might end up resenting your hobby
| Damogran6 wrote:
| Then pivot. So many of these decisions are "If you do X,
| you'll end up with Y" as if that's the end. There's nothing
| wrong with 'trying something on and changing your mind once
| you see how it looks.'
| turtledove wrote:
| Why do we feel the need to be 'productive' (in the economics
| sense) even in our leisure time?
|
| I'm not sure such an attitude is healthy or sustainable. We
| fought hard to get a 40 hour work week, why do we feel pressure
| to go back on that and work in our leisure time?
| Helitioo wrote:
| My personal development should not be driven by my work.
|
| Personal development means more than sitting in front of a tv.
|
| I want to need to work less so I can be productive for myself.
| abhaynayar wrote:
| You can have personal development without being productive.
|
| There are many hobbies where you don't produce or monetize
| anything, but they are still better watching TV. For example,
| playing a sport, learning an instrument, reading books,
| learning a new language, etc.
|
| The distinction being whether you are producing something or
| learning something just for its own sake.
| black_13 wrote:
| drmpeg wrote:
| There's an old saying in ham radio. "If you want to make a small
| fortune in ham radio, start with a large fortune".
| Damogran6 wrote:
| Also racing cars. Boats have a lot of similar aphorisms, too.
| krallja wrote:
| "Boat, (noun): a hole in the water you throw money into"
| PyWoody wrote:
| Break Out Another Thousand
| abakker wrote:
| I think there's an important distinction here. Monetizing
| metalwork or woodwork (which I do, and have done) doesn't seem to
| ruin the fun for me. The hobby is about output, and more time
| spent equals more practice equals more skill. So, with some
| hobbies, it really benefits to get commercial.
|
| I've found that commercial work as a craftsman has pushed me to
| learn much more than my own designs are. I think this is akin to
| learning other people's songs when you learn an instrument; if
| you don't, its much too easy to get stuck in a rut of your own
| ideas.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| A hobby should be something you can do for yourself. Something
| you get pleasure / relaxation / a welcomed distraction. out of
| doing.
|
| If you take up painting (art, not houses) you should know you
| will never be Rembrandt and it should not keep you from painting
| (Unless painting houses is your hobby)
|
| With things like (marathon) running, hiking, it is easy to
| meassure Objective progress and qutie hard to moneteize.
|
| If you are a programmer all day, and your hobby is programming I
| dont think that is ideal.
|
| I have been there myself a bit earier in life and regret that
| now.
|
| Thers is soo much to see, experience, learn outside of computers.
|
| Plus doing something else will help your brain relax, or at least
| not running the exact same parts as when you are at work, that is
| in itself a valuabe thing. Giving your brain something different
| to chew on, connect new paths, all good.
| FourthProtocol wrote:
| _With things like (marathon) running, hiking, it is easy to
| meassure Objective progress and qutie hard to moneteize._
|
| Well, no. You can do sooo much here. Log your hike, provide
| coordinates of off-the-beaten-track routes and sites, provide
| info on trail conditions, run team events, gear reviews, first
| aid courses...
|
| Also, who said I can't be the next Rembrandt? Kandinsky is only
| one of many proofs that that second sentence of yours is off
| the mark.
|
| I've actually just started work on making piste maps better for
| snowboarders. Making bank off that would be ace, if not well OK
| then. Being defeatist because the probability of failure is
| bigger than success is defeatist, no?
| verve_rat wrote:
| But that is not running, hiking, or snowboarding. What you
| are talking about is making maps and writing reviews. They
| are related, but are not the thing the enthusiast enjoys.
| Arrivest wrote:
| As a software developer, when I monetized my hobby code that
| solved a niche problem, I needed to spend 10x more time to make
| it from "usable for me" to "usable for users".
| soheil wrote:
| I wish there was a straightforward way to monetize software
| written as a hobby just like selling pottery on Etsy.
| quags wrote:
| I turned my love of computer hobby into a business and have been
| running it for many years. I don't regret it, I still like
| computers but no longer have that young love for it where I would
| learn all about another cool programming language. Part of that
| may be I am older, part is certainly dealing with customers. It
| is now a job so I sometimes say I lost my hobby by doing what I
| loved. I at least like my job but need a new hobby.
| OrangeMonkey wrote:
| My wife and I were feeling cooped up from Covid so we started a
| new hobby - storage auctions. We buy abandoned storage units at
| auction, sell the things, keep (very very rarely) any upgrades or
| things we want, and move to the next.
|
| Its still a hobby, but we are now optimizing for cash / time
| spent / ease of flip so I think its at the cusp of moving away
| from hobby.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The author mentions bike repair as a hobby, and the issue with
| trying to turn that into a monetized hobby will quickly become
| apparent once you talk to some experienced full-time bike
| mechanics. As a hobbyist your scope is almost always rather
| narrow, i.e. you may know all about how to repair your particular
| model of bicycle, and perhaps a few others. In contrast a
| professional will deal with dozens of models and will also know
| who to contact for specialty jobs (some of the early suspension
| bicycles, for example, require highly specialized tools that only
| a few mechanics own and which are no longer produced).
|
| It is sometimes possible that a hobbyist can find an entry point
| to the professional world. Building wheels is something I've
| recently been learning, but there are a lot of people who've been
| doing that for over a decade and they can probably build a wheel
| in 1/10th the time it would take me. Given the supply chain
| backups and the scarcity of bike parts today, however, there
| might be a little niche there.
|
| Point being, the leap from hobbyist to professional in any area
| can be a lot larger than it appears at first glance.
| SnaggyJoker wrote:
| Something you will find is that sometimes you can become
| friends with the owners of the speciality shops and borrow
| their tools. I have run into this in the automotive repair
| field. Specifically when I was repairing foreign vehicles. Of
| course some times the shop will charge you for the favor and
| usually it is better to just recommend them for the service if
| they have the availability. This can also help bolster your
| friendship with them.
|
| As far as monetizing something like wheel building, of course
| the more experience you have the faster you will be at it. In
| the end it is all about what the customers want, and they might
| value having you do it over the more experienced person for
| different (and possibly illogical) reasons than you might
| think. It might even boil down to simple availability or your
| location being more convenient.
|
| Make sure you have proper insurance!
| pmlnr wrote:
| Never monetize your hobby. You'll end up hating it, whereas it's
| supposed to charge you up.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I like the "don't get caught up in metrics" approach.
|
| I love what I do. Folks here, would call it a "hobby," because I
| don't get paid for it, but I _guarantee_ that the folks I 'm
| working with, don't see it that way. They are quite aware that I
| have done hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of top-shelf,
| beyond-production-Quality work for them, for free.
|
| I do work, for free, that would have a lot of startup founders
| crying in their beer. I take it ultra-seriously, and do a highly
| professional job. In fact, the professionalism of my approach is
| one of the challenges that I set for myself.
|
| I don't bother measuring myself. I may measure my code, but not
| myself.
| deebosong wrote:
| I don't mean to pry, but it sounds like you have "retired" and
| found your calling instead, if you are working for free, but
| are 100% invested in the quality and professionalism? And that
| you have your basic needs (and then some) pretty much covered?
|
| If so that sounds amazing!
|
| If I may prod a bit, why not take a salary in your situation?
| Why work for free, especially when it's highly valued not only
| by others, but to you as well, since you know what you're
| giving, and work hard to maintain a high level of quality?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It is amazing. I was forced into it, though. I found out (the
| hard way) that no one wants to play with older folks. I'm
| very fortunate that I had built up enough of a base to retire
| early. It wasn't planned, but it was there. I just heard from
| an ex-employee of mine, that he just got let go, and is
| running smack-dab into this ageism issue. He's very, very
| good, but he'll struggle like hell, and he doesn't have my
| resources.
|
| I do work for nonprofits. These are folks that can't afford
| even crappy devs.
|
| TBH, I get kind of a "screw you" kick from doing this. I was
| willing to work for quite a bit lower wages than even kids
| right out of school (if the work interested me), as I had my
| retirement set, and I would have settled for having the bills
| paid. I would have been absolutely ideal for startups.
|
| But every company that I applied to, was more interested in
| insulting me, and ignoring my portfolio, than in taking me
| seriously.
| deebosong wrote:
| Wow that's kind of amazing.
|
| Much respect. It's def inspiring and a very different way
| to just view the world, and to do work that matters to you.
|
| Warms my heart! haha. Old people rock!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Old people rock!_
|
| Not all of us. I do understand some of the animosity, but
| it is _very_ self-destructive; especially when I see some
| of these Jurassic-scale crash-and-burn disasters that
| were entirely avoidable, if only one single person in
| authority had been out of school for more than ten years.
|
| I also have participated in a Service organization
| (nonprofit) for most of my life, and a lot of the work
| that I do is based around the community it Serves.
|
| But I was just talking to a friend of mine, whose father
| suffered a stroke, and we'll probably work on an iOS app
| that will be designed to help with some of his rehab.
|
| I like to help people that help people.
| deebosong wrote:
| Oops, for some reason I thought you were volunteering to
| help older folks, hence my comment (expressing I am a fan
| of the older cohort, as they carry much wisdom & grace).
| Didn't mean to express the opposite!
|
| Just to level the playing field, I've participated in
| orgs with "younger" leadership and have been burned, and
| also made my errors from my own arrogance/ lack of
| experience. The "good" that came out of that was perhaps
| a deeper appreciation for older folks (again I mistook
| one of your previous comments as that you were
| volunteering to help older folks - my mistake).
|
| My own dad also still works, despite being way over
| retirement age, and he helps those older than him as
| well. I got nothing but respect for those who wanna serve
| those that society often overlooks out of callousness and
| overall lack of heart, so to speak.
|
| Either way, really appreciate you sharing your insights/
| experiences.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| What amused me, the most (except it wasn't really
| amusing, at the time. Looking back, I'm ROTFLMAO), was
| the recruiters.
|
| I have a pretty heavy-duty resume. I've been _shipping_
| (not just "writing") software for over thirty-five
| years, and have a fairly big portfolio (that really only
| covers the last ten years of my work, and just the open-
| source portion of it). I've written APIs that have lasted
| 25 years. I do good work, and can prove it.
|
| They would contact me, breathless and excited by my CV,
| then ghost me, as soon as they figured out that I was
| over 40.
|
| I guess that math isn't a big requirement to be a
| recruiter. The industry must be awash in 30-year-olds
| with 35 years of experience.
|
| These days, I just make it clear that I'm older, and they
| stopped bothering me.
| deebosong wrote:
| Dang. Ageism sucks. Would be cool to have a culture
| change where those with more years & experience are
| honored, and seen as deep players on the team rather than
| as outdated.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Well, I think what's happened, is twenty-something-year-
| old CEOs.
|
| They may be brilliant, driven, creative, hardworking
| people, but they Just. Don't. Have. Scars.
|
| They never really had the chance to run face-first into
| reality, while still in a position where the stakes are
| low, and there's more experienced folks around, to help
| them get back on their feet.
|
| Their first mistakes are disasters, because they have it
| all on the line.
|
| In the past, the older folks had the money and power, but
| were often locked up by caution, and lack of creativity.
|
| The younger folks had the energy and creativity, but not
| the sense of mortality. They needed the money and power
| from the older folks, and the older folks needed that
| creativity, and, for lack of a better word, recklessness,
| that could drive their investments forward, so they had
| to work together.
|
| These days, it's pure recklessness. The first forays into
| shipping are "bet the company," so failure is an E.L.E.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| This is why I stay at a job where I'm not working at my
| optimum, isn't the best, isn't the worst, but also isn't me
| looking for another job in my 50's.
| qiskit wrote:
| What'll you do for enjoyment then?
| vonunov wrote:
| Turning your hobby into your business is a very different move
| from getting a _job_ in the field that your hobby suggests
| draw_down wrote:
| ed-209 wrote:
| It sure is a fine line - putting your thing out to the world &
| trying to make more of the world appreciate the thing more. My
| hobby being an art, I get to experience this internal tug-of-war
| with each new work. If I do nothing, I may be the only person on
| earth to appreciate it, which feels really bad. If I promote with
| the handful of inadequate tools at my disposal, I may become lost
| in metrics and disappointed with cost/benefit.
| daveaiello wrote:
| The author has some good points.
|
| What can look like a hobby to some people can be seen by the
| creator as part of their mission in life, or a calling card that
| is part of what makes the creator unique.
|
| If you feel that way about something that doesn't monetarily pay
| off, does that make it a hobby or something else?
|
| A company in a tangential space approached me the other day for a
| second time to discuss whether I could collaborate with them on
| something that would make their service offering more complete.
|
| For years I have been building an on-line resource that provides
| information about an avocation of mine that I thought the on-line
| world needed. Currently, that resource is very poorly monetized,
| and its existence is financially supported by other consulting
| and advisory work that I do for which I am fairly compensated.
|
| At one level, this is totally a hobby. But at another, I always
| believed that if I built this on-line resource that a group of
| people and/or companies would find my work important, and I would
| find a way for the work to pay off.
|
| If a collaboration produces revenue in any amount, it's a
| confirmation that my work has utility and value to others who
| certainly are making money from a larger service offering.
| hammock wrote:
| Magic the gathering?
| bradlys wrote:
| I think something missing here is return on investment and
| opportunity cost.
|
| People here are using survivor bias to indicate what has went
| from a hobby to a full time career. While nice - not relevant for
| most young people these days. Truth is - very few can turn a
| hobby into a real profitable profession. This isn't because they
| lack talent, dedication, or smarts. It's because they lack timing
| (being born when a house in SV wasn't $2.5m), lack the right
| hobby to monetize (e.g. dancing - a notoriously poorly paying job
| unless you're in the top 0.01%), or lack the social capital
| necessary (again - many reasons for why this might not be
| possible for you. Your race, gender, orientation, class, and
| looks really could be holding you back here. In the case of
| dancing - you often need to be good looking too).
|
| If you're working in SF as a software eng making $400k/yr - just
| enjoy your hobbies and stop trying to monetize them. If you're
| struggling for money - leetcode, system design, and being a rule
| following brown noser will do you 200x on your time investment.
|
| Personally - I have no interest in trying to monetize my hobbies.
| There's no chance they will ever have _any_ return on investment
| that will make it worthwhile compared to what I get paid at my
| job. They are for pleasure and for enrichment of the mind.
| draw_down wrote:
| makz wrote:
| I don't understand how people monetize hobbies. For me a hobby
| could be a very niche thing that only interests me and maybe a
| dozen people in the world. Hard to monetize that.
| lupire wrote:
| Why so obscure?
| Finnucane wrote:
| In that case, you go into academia.
| thowaway_420_69 wrote:
| Turning your hobby into a business can get complicated, to the
| extent that it could kill your passion for it. It is, in the end,
| a commitment that requires hard work.
| ahmed_ds wrote:
| One key point here is how comfortable you are with pressure and
| deadlines. Hobbies don't have deadlines but
| clients/users/stakeholders do. No matter what value you provide
| the hobby-centric approach of doing it on your own time, own pace
| might not work out.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| That depends on the hobby you're monetizing, I think. For
| instance, one of my hobbies is watchmaking (cleaning,
| servicing, restoring). I don't do it for money, but those who
| do don't really adhere to deadlines. It's all very open ended,
| even for the large companies like Seiko and Rolex. They don't
| guarantee a timeframe, and you won't know how long they'll have
| it until they tell you they're sending it back.
|
| I think this is partly because these are generally considered
| luxury items rather than necessities, but also partly because
| many regard the inner workings of a mechanical watch to be
| magic.
| floren wrote:
| I've spent the last 5 months or so working on a custom-built
| mouse, for the fun of it. Designed the PCB around a high-end
| laser sensor, designed the case in FreeCAD, wrote the firmware.
| I've made two so far and given one of them away. I'm planning to
| make at least a few more. By the time I get 5 or 6 built, I'll
| have probably spent $1000 on the project, although a majority of
| that is a 3d printer.
|
| I'm still not sure if I want to try and monetize that or not.
| People have expressed interest in buying them, but I've actually
| done the electronics production line thing in a long-ago
| internship and I know that it really is a job. Also, it's not
| like I'm going to be retiring off the proceeds of selling
| weirdly-shaped 3-button wired mice with no scrollwheels, it's a
| hell of a niche.
| batperson wrote:
| Sounds interesting. Got a picture or something ?
| floren wrote:
| http://jfloren.net/b/2022/3/2/0 has pictures and a video
| karaterobot wrote:
| > In a professional environment, it makes total sense to measure
| time. Cheesy as it might sound, time is money for the
| professional, and when your paycheck depends on how much work you
| can do in a limited time span, time itself becomes a factor for
| optimization. But when the main reason you're doing it is because
| you love doing it, time becomes the gun you shoot yourself in the
| foot with.
|
| Except that if you do that, you're a dilettante, not a craftsman.
| If you take on a project to fix somebody's bike, and you take
| your time so as not to stress yourself out, your customer is
| going to be pissed off at you: they want their bike fixed, that's
| why they're paying you money that they earned doing things that
| stressed them out. You should feel a sense of obligation when you
| take someone's money: not an obligation to chase your own sense
| of joy, but to do the thing they paid you to do.
|
| That's why I think turning your hobby into a job (which is what
| you do when you take money for it, no matter what you want to
| call it) is a bad idea. The author dismisses it as a cliche, or
| as bullshit, but it's the most valid argument against what
| they're saying: making your hobby your job means it's not your
| hobby anymore.
|
| If you have a lot of money -- enough to lose it on a failing
| business -- it's okay to be a dilettante, take your time, and
| appeal only to a small number of customers. If you have a lot of
| hobbies, and can afford to sacrifice one of them to make it a
| real profession that pays your bills, while getting your pleasure
| in other areas, then that's fine too. But if you have one big
| thing you love doing, you will _probably_ stop getting the same
| kind of pleasure from it if it becomes your full time job. This
| isn 't true in every case, but in the majority of cases it is.
| xwdv wrote:
| Monetizing a hobby is like monetizing your wife. Things will
| never really be the same afterwards, even if you decide to
| demonetize.
| blantonl wrote:
| Ah, the old phrase "my avocation is my vocation"
|
| I'm very blessed to be able to tell people this. When I was
| growing up, my grandmother had a radio scanner in her small town
| Virginia home, and I was fascinated that you could listen in on
| what the police and fire departments were doing on a daily basis.
| My parents bought me a radio scanner a few years later and as a
| young boy I followed the rabbit hole of radio communications,
| scanners, and listening in to police, fire, aircraft, amateur
| radio etc.
|
| Fast forward many years: I'm well established in a career as an
| IBM System Engineer, and during my downtime in the 90's, I
| thought it would be really neat if, instead of purchasing books
| with radio frequencies, it would be pretty cool if you could
| search on the WWW for this data. This was back in the day when
| this data was just starting to be made available on dial-up BBSs,
| but this new WWW thing was becoming more and more popular.
|
| Mind you, I still pursued my hobby of radios and scanners, and
| had lots of expensive equipment to listen to everything around
| me. All the while taking multiple conference calls with IBM
| customers and generally doing my "day" job from home.
|
| So, one week I sat down and taught myself Perl and MySQL. Created
| an online database, solicited people over Usenet to submit data
| to the new site, and RadioReference.com was born.
|
| Fast forward to today. RadioReference.com is my avocation and
| vocation, I get to stay home and develop and manage my business
| which is also my hobby. And we did some amazing innovation which
| resulted in Broadcastify.com, which allows you to listen to
| police scanners all over the world without ever having to buy a
| complex radio.
|
| So, yes, you can monetize your hobby, and this article really
| resonates. I never made it about the money, but my business is
| wildly successful and I can definitely tell you that I am living
| the dream :)
| AviationAtom wrote:
| But now many jurisdictions are choosing to go full-encrypted,
| because of people showing up to the scene and getting in the
| way. :-/
| victorstanciu wrote:
| I feel like you might like one of my previous posts too
| (https://tegowerk.eu/posts/serendipity/). The trajectory of my
| life has also been shaped and defined by a series of decisions
| and events which didn't seem at all momentous at the time :)
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Just wanted to thank you for your work! I got my Technician
| license last year and your site was one of the resources that I
| found as a result.
| mooreds wrote:
| That is awesome, congrats!
|
| I wonder what percentage of people of working age have this
| privilege (or more precisely, have earned it!).
| mod wrote:
| I've used your site several times, thanks!
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I've monetised my hobbies three times so far.
|
| All three times it has become lucrative, but none of them are
| hobbies any more.
|
| One of the important things along the way I've learned is that
| what makes hobbies relaxing and fun isn't about the specific task
| you're doing but the fact that it's about enjoying the process of
| making/doing rather than feeling pressure to deliver the end
| result.
|
| That's not to say I have any regrets about what I did - it's
| turned into a pair of businesses that are interesting and
| challenging in their own way while bringing in some serious coin
| - but the whole adage about "do what you love and you'll never
| work another day in your life" doesn't apply to running a small
| business.
| rockbruno wrote:
| I agree with this sentiment. I started taking sponsorships for
| my blog and it very quickly sucked the fun away from it. I now
| felt like I couldn't do whatever I wanted because I needed to
| optimize the sponsor's time and post content to make them feel
| like it was worth it. In other words, it became a boring job.
| is_true wrote:
| A hobbie with dates isn't a hobbie.
|
| I also successfuly monetized my hobbies.
| scrapcode wrote:
| Interesting tidbit that obviously has plenty of objections.
| However, I do feel that this is the biggest barrier to my
| progress in one of my hobbies, jiu-jitsu. I have plenty of
| time to dedicate 10+ hours a week to fitness, but it is the
| aspect of having a set time that seems to limit when I can,
| or want to go.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| Which hobbies did you monetize? I'm curious. I'm guessing
| EspoTek Labrador is one of them (which I'll be sure to remember
| when I get back into electronics)
| agumonkey wrote:
| > All three times it has become lucrative, but none of them are
| hobbies any more.
|
| I regularly wonder how to balance the intrinsic pleasure with
| extrinsic value. I keep thinking that people could meet on the
| point where both find great pleasure in this venture. Something
| rare in the current economy it seems.
| bombcar wrote:
| One way to do it have the hobby be something that's entirely
| yours (you carve intricate models of Vietnamese railway cays
| say) and someone else sells them, almost without any
| communication as to "what is selling etc".
|
| Never take orders.
| agumonkey wrote:
| kinda like agents and artists ?
| bombcar wrote:
| The hard part is finding an agent who will not try to
| convince you to do things to increase profits.
|
| But yes, some artists have famously gone through
| intermediaries such that there isn't a feedback loop
| possible.
| kqr wrote:
| It's hard because extrinsic motivation kills intrinsic
| motivation (see _Drive_ for some of the behavioural science
| here). Once you start putting a monetary reward on things,
| people in general lose the interest in doing them for their
| own sake.
|
| So I think for this to work, you have to go full
| collectivist: gather up a bunch of people interested in
| different things, produce stuff for each other and divide
| equally with no money being involved in the transaction.
| mooreds wrote:
| > the whole adage about "do what you love and you'll never work
| another day in your life" doesn't apply to running a small
| business.
|
| Is that because when you turn a hobby into a business there are
| lots of non-hobby tasks and requirements? Like sales,
| marketing, etc, etc?
|
| Or because of the pressure of delivering the result?
|
| Or for some other reason?
| egypturnash wrote:
| My experience as someone who loves drawing and does often
| delightedly remind herself that her day job is _sitting
| around a park drawing shit_ :
|
| basically, yes, all of these reasons apply.
|
| I'm good at _drawing_ , not at selling myself; my work sells
| itself to a certain degree but that only gets you so far. Not
| everything I'm paid to draw is a thing I love to draw,
| either. And sometimes even a thing I love to draw becomes
| less fun when it has to meet someone else's approval; going
| back and forth with a client is a very different feeling than
| "I start drawing and I fix things I don't like until I'm
| happy with the piece".
|
| Deadlines suck and I mostly arrange my work so as not to have
| any. Yes, this is a luxury. It probably means less money but
| I make enough to get by.
| earth_walker wrote:
| Most hobbies doesn't have sales, marketing, taxes, regulatory
| mandated recordkeeping, deadlines, people yelling at you, or
| "regular business hours". Businesses have most if not all of
| these.
| WJW wrote:
| Hobbies are almost by definition not mandatory activities.
| Earning money to eat and pay the mortgage is not really
| optional. Making the hobby activity mandatory will make it
| feel a lot more like work and a lot less like a "fun"
| activity. It might not be as bad as working in an Amazon
| warehouse, but it'll be a job all the same.
|
| Worst case, if you get burned out on the new job you will not
| only no longer have a job but also won't enjoy your hobby
| anymore.
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