Have you ever thought about starting your own business but weren't quite sure where to begin? Well you can start by looking at the things you already enjoy doing – your hobbies, if you will – and consider turning them into a hobby business. This is one of the easiest ways to start a money-making venture.
The fact that your business will be based on something you both know about and enjoy doing is a big advantage in quickly getting your business up and running. After weighing the pros and cons of this method, many hobbyists find that this approach works very well. Maybe you have played around with the idea of making a little bit of money with your hobby, but really you can go further than that and turn into a very profitable livelihood indeed.
Hobbies abound and any one of them could potentially be turned into a cash producing venture. With some hobbies such as golf, people do spend quite a bit of money in pursuit of their passion. So the first thing that you need to do is to hop on over to Google and do some research and see what others are doing in your particular hobby.
Before moving ahead, you need to determine if there is a large enough community or sufficient demand for your hobby to warrant you moving forward with your business. Failure to do this could result in you wasting a lot of time on money chasing non-existent customers. Of course if you are already making money from your hobby then you know that there is a demand and all you'll need to do is to kick it up a notch if you so desire.
Create a plan
Next comes the planning stage. Get some sort of a business plan going. How formal and detailed is up to you – it doesn’t have to be anything fancy. But at least get a sense of how much you might be able to make, how to market and advertise your products or services (flyers, classified ads, web sites, etc.), what kind of start up costs, if any, you’ll have, and how high the demand in the market is.
Finally, just get into business following the process you’ve outlined in the planning stage or trying out various approaches to test them for effectiveness. You may find, for instance, that certain types of advertising work better than others and bring in more business, or that certain items sell better than others. You’ll also get a sense of how to streamline your time in order to be more productive. If you’re discerning, over time you’ll find the way to make your profits increase. And all the time you’ll be doing something that you actively enjoy.
Here are some of the pros of the hobby business approach:
1. The inspiration and pleasure of doing your hobby as work will motivate you, making you dedicated and productive.
2. The knowledge and experience you already possess in the hobby activity will mean you don’t have to get expensive or time consuming education to begin the business. You can start pretty much right away.
3. You may already have friends and contacts involved in the hobby activity who are either doing it commercially, can direct you to people who are, or who may even want to team up with you in starting a hobby business enterprise.
4. You more than likely already have some or all of the equipment and gear associated with the hobby business, cutting down on start up costs. You may also know others who can lend you their equipment or to whom you can outsource various portions of the business process.
5. You are probably even familiar with the business side of the hobby even if you haven’t previously pursued it a commercial sense. For instance, you may be familiar with how hot the market is, time and productivity factors, or profit potential. So again, you will have useful knowledge and experience that can help you to launch the hobby business quickly and effectively.
To be thorough, we should note that there may also be some cons to this approach. But don’t let them discourage you, often they can be surmounted in some way. Potential cons might be:
1. Doing your hobby full time could lead to your getting tired or burnt out. If it’s very important to you that the hobby remain strictly an amusement or leisure time activity, this may be a consideration. Doing it as a full time business will change your sense of how you see the hobby. It may begin to seem more like work if you are doing it full time. A good remedy for this is to start several hobby businesses and do each of them part time or whenever you are inspired to do them.
2. There may or may not be a big market for your hobby. Looked at realistically, just as with anything else, there is more demand for some goods and services than others. If your hobby business happens to be one that many others are doing, you may face a lot of competition. Or it simply may not currently be a particularly hot market. Remember also however, that the creativity and energy that you put into it could distinguish your business and turn these issues around.
3. Since you didn’t originally select the hobby with business in mind, there may be costs that are not ideal for a small start up. For instance, you may be able to afford materials for it in an occasional hobby sense, but the costs for these materials for a more high volume venture may be difficult to meet. Creative financing of various sorts could help you to get around this.
Going from just being a hobby to a hobby business is a very exciting and wonderful idea because you are getting the best of both worlds so to speak. It is quite possible to find financial success while still enjoying your hobby with such a business strategy. While you definitely want to pay attention to the drawbacks of turning your hobby into a business, you should not let that stop you from pursuing your dream.
