Cash in on Your Hobbies

Have you ever considered turning one of your hobbies into a business? You may be surprised at how virtually any hobby can be converted into profits, and without tremendous overhead or ridiculously high start up costs. What's even better, you aren't required to have a specific product to sell! In fact, you can make your knowledge of your hobby your product.

Steps

  1. Define a niche market. Defining a niche market is important, as it puts you into contact with the consumers who will most likely want whatever it is you’re selling with your hobby business.
    • For example; if you’re going to sell top quality baking supplies, than you will want to ensure that your advertising targets people who bake, and possibly even professional bakers. In this example, the niche market of the hobby business includes bakers and bakeries- and it would not do you much good to advertise to new parents!
  2. Choose your hobby business. How do you pick a particular niche to set up your hobby business? If you want your business to be one in which you will honestly enjoy the time you spend working on it, and one that can fulfill your financial needs, ask yourself the following question: What do I really love? If you don’t pick a subject that you are truly passionate about, you will end up having a difficult time enjoying your work.
    • Whether you consider yourself a salesperson or not, any businessman must invest in his or her products and services, believe in them - love them - in order to offer them to others in a way that encourages people to purchase them. As the authors of "Hobby for Profit" explain, when setting up a hobby related business, you want to "specialize deep NOT wide".
    • This means if your hobby is comic books, you'll have a hard time being one of the top listed sites in the search engines for comic books in general, but if you specialize in a specific comic book, released during a specific year, than you would be seen as the expert on the topic, and your site would become the site people would go to for information on this particular comic book!
  3. Know that size really does matter. How large of a niche do you want to work with? This is a vital piece of information to consider when deciding on what you want your hobby business to be..
    • If you want to turn your antique collecting hobby into a business, you know that there are two ends to the spectrum.
    • It's important that your niche is neither too large or too small as you will be lost in the sea of big businesses if you define your niche to broadly, and you won't have enough customers to remain in business if you define your niche too narrowly. You'll need to do your research regarding your hobby to find out whether or not there is a market for what you want to do.

Tips

  • Defining your market and figuring out the details of your new hobby business can seem daunting at first, but the time spent on the preliminary decisions is well worth the effort. Clearly defining your niche is often the difference between a successful business and a failed business. A niche that is too broadly defined would be trying to sell everything that is considered "antique". Too narrow of a niche would be selling only one, very specific item, for example, antique chairs made in the year 1804. If you attempt to operate a hobby business within too large of a niche, you’ll be swallowed by industry giants with far greater resources. On the other hand, if you create too narrow of a niche market, you won’t have very many customers. If you wanted to sell all antique chairs made in Italy, then you’ve created a reasonable niche market within your hobby, and will have a sizable potential customer base. You will be able to position yourself as an expert in the field of Italian antique chairs- which is exactly how you want to approach your hobby business niche!
  • Join a craft society. They may already have developed a market, possibly with a bigger company and contacts with both suppliers and retailers.

Warnings

  • Starting any business requires bookkeeping. There are also business and tax laws. Talk to your bank, and unless you are confident with your own finances, think of hiring a bookkeeper or accountant

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