Everyone is looking for a way to make money off of their hobbies. (What do you think I am doing with a blog?) But hobbies are not always a lucrative source of money. At least, not if you don’t know where to look.
Here are a few great ways to make money through your hobbies that you have never thought of before. Read more below to start earning your buck for your bang!
1. Create an Etsy Shop
Okay, you’ve probably already heard about this one, which is why it’s on this list. Etsy is one of the most popular ways to make money with your hobbies. You can sell the items you make online with this site. Etsy is the place for you if you have a crafting hobby.
Selling on Etsy is pretty simple. You get your account (or create a new one) and you click selling on Etsy. There should be a button to open your Etsy shop. You need to fill in a few preferences, like language, currency, and payment method, but then you are ready to go.
Since you’re only looking for a side hustle, you don’t need to worry about making a living. Focus on earning a little bit of extra cash and sharing your hobby with others. Then you can finally get those paintings out of your house!! Nope, not frustrated. Not at all. (I may or may not have too many paintings in my room right now.)
Try it out! If it doesn’t work, it’s no loss to you. Etsy only charges a few cents to publish your items. And if you don’t sell, you don’t have to pay the 5% transaction fee. So really you have nothing to lose.
2. Start Your Own Site
Now, this one is a little harder. Starting your own online shop does require some extra steps and most likely some extra money. But if you think you have a product worth selling, go for it! If your side hustle takes off, you can easily find yourself with a new career. Who doesn’t want to live off their hobby?!
Keep in mind that running a website is not easy. Getting traffic to your site alone is tough. I would only suggest taking this path if you are 100% prepared for the work and for it to take time. You might have a product that people love and it could take off immediately. Let’s say you love carpentry, maybe your site is about selling tables that you’ve made. I must say people love beautifully crafted tables. You might find that your website is crazy popular. However, this is not the case for a lot of people.
It will take work and most likely months to get your website off the ground, but don’t be discouraged. Just believe in yourself and your product!
3. Write Songs
So your music career didn’t take off. You tried really hard, but it just didn’t work out. However, now you have a bunch of songs that you’ve never used. Or you have the skills to write music but nothing to do with the songs you’ve created. Believe it or not, there are sources out there for you to sell your music.
If you write lyrics or the whole song, people want to buy them from you. The internet is full of miraculous things, including ways to sell pretty much anything. Websites, like Songbay, provide you with the opportunity to get your music out there even if you aren’t the one singing or playing the song.
Before you go ahead and start selling your songs, keep in mind, you are selling the music to someone else. The song will, of course, always be yours at heart, but someone else now has access to it as well. It can be hard seeing someone else use your music, especially when you wrote the music for yourself.
With that out of the way, why not write songs for others? If you love to write but you don’t have much of a stage presence, here is your chance to get your music out there.
4. Try Beta Reading
Beta reading is essentially reading other people’s writing and telling them what you think of it. (This is definitely one of my dream jobs. Getting paid to read. How lovely!). If you love to read, beta reading is for you!
I’ll admit that this is not the most lucrative way to go. When you begin beta reading, you typically start off small (maybe 5-6 dollars per book). You don’t have any references yet, so your prices need to be low enough for people to want to use your services. Once you get more positive feedback and reviews on your services, you can start to up the prices.
As you know, books take time to read. So this side hustle is not one that can be accomplished in just a little time. But if you’re already reading the books, it isn’t that much more of a step to start getting paid for it.
Fiverr, a website that provides a platform for selling services, is a great resource to start your beta reading side hustle. They make it easy to get started.
5. Try Web Design
Speaking of Fiverr, you can sell lots of services on their website, including web design. I am not a techy person in any sense of the word, so I would greatly benefit from someone’s help with my blog. Plenty of other people have the same problem I have. You can be the one to help them!
You can help people create pages or their whole website. Whatever you choose! If web design comes naturally to you, lots of people will pay you to improve their websites. When you are really good at it, you can make a fair chunk of change designing websites for other people.
Give it a try! Fiverr is pretty easy to use. You get to start your own freelance side business. Sign up and start some gigs now!
6. Start Taking Commissions
One way artists make money is by taking commissions. A lot of social media accounts with art will sell you a custom piece of art if you ask (well, you also have to pay for it). You can be one of those artists!
Commissions might include sketching a person, character, pet, or thing for your customers. People love to get their portraits done in other people’s art styles! It might not be exactly what you want to be drawing or painting, but sometimes we all need to make a few sacrifices to get some extra money. You never know. You might really enjoy the challenge that comes with completing other peoples’ art requests. The challenge could be a great way to show yourself how skilled you are. (If you are looking to improve your painting skills to get better at commissions, read more here.)
Commissions are not always an artist’s dream. Customers can be difficult. They might not want to pay you, or they might not like your work. You have to take that risk when taking commissions. However, if you really want to make money with your art – both painting and drawing – commissions are a good place to start.
7. Compete in Competitions
There are always competitions out there to show off your amazing skills. When you’re browsing through Facebook, you pass by drawing competitions or writing competitions. You could…you know…actually enter them. I know I’ve passed by quite a few of them thinking I wasn’t good enough or that I didn’t have the time to put into it. Don’t let those thoughts creep into your mind and keep you from entering the competition as they did for me.
Competitions do not guarantee you any money – far from it. You have to compete against a lot of others to win the prize. However, your chances of winning might be slim, but your chances of winning if you don’t enter are nil. What’s the harm in giving it a try? It might take up some of your time, but what does that matter if you are doing something you love to do? Give it a try!
8. Crafting Conventions
We had (pre-pandemic) crafting fairs every few months where I live. You got to walk around and see what people had created. Those things ranged from jewelry to knitted items to books. The crafting conventions are always fun to attend, but imagine participating in them as a seller! You can easily sell a lot of your items with so many people walking around. Some people are bound to love what you brought. Whatever it is that you like to create, you can sell them alongside other hobbyists like yourself.
Crafting conventions are a great place to sell your hobby items because that’s where all the like-minded people go. If you want someone to appreciate your crocheting or your cross-stitching, here is the place for you! It’s the people who love buying crafts who attend these conventions.
If you want to sell your crafting items, crafting fairs are the way to go! Check out my article about hobbies for creative-types to get some items on what hobbies you should work on for your crafting conventions.
9. Teaching
If you can’t do, teach. At least that’s what they say. When you have a skill, you can share it with others to help them improve. However, helping others doesn’t have to come for free. You can charge for your teaching services.
Teaching can be done online just as easily as in person. As long as you have access to a streaming service, like Microsoft Teams, you can give people virtual lessons. You can teach in person if you feel comfortable with that too.
The hard part about teaching is the actual teaching. Not everyone has a knack for it. I know it’s not my specialty. (You know that friend that explains stuff by saying “the thing, you know the thing.” Well, who has two thumbs and writes a blog? That’s me.) If you think you can teach your skills to others, I say go for it.
With this side hustle, you might also need to do some advertising to get students. It’s not always easy to get people to pay to learn a skill from someone else when they can learn it for free on the internet. But a personalized class is always better for learning than other methods. Convince them that you are worth coming to and you’ll have plenty of students in no time!
As long as you have a skill to share, you can teach others how to do it too.
10. Be an Extra
This opportunity isn’t for everyone, but for those of you with acting skills, you can become an extra in a film or a TV show.
Although, you may want to consider that this side hustle does have a location prerequisite. You need to be in a city, or in close proximity to a city, that shoots movies. Vancouver and Hollywood are probably your best bets, but other cities have movie shoots too. You just need to keep a look out for any opportunities!
The pay for being an extra varies, but it’s not always that much. However, if all you are looking for is a side hustle, it might be just what you’re looking for.
If you loved participating in your school plays or you love filming videos, you might just love being an extra in a movie or TV show.
11. Perform at Clubs
The always popular club gig is a great way to perform with your skills and get money. Some clubs are always looking for entertainment and they are willing to pay for it.
You might need to perform for free a few times to get up enough of a reputation to receive a paid gig, but performing is the fun of it. If you can play an instrument and sing, you’re set for some great gigs.
Clubs are open at night; therefore, you won’t have to interrupt your daily life or job to try this side hustle out. You can perform at night in a club every once in a while to get a few bucks, but also to enjoy performing in itself.
One thing you might not know about me is that I love to sing (but I have no real training). I love performing when I can. These short club gigs sound really thrilling to me! So good luck to anyone who tries this out. Let us know how it goes!
There are the few ways I come up with to make money from your hobbies. Hobbies are really fun, but they are even better when you can make a little extra money! If you try out any of these creative side hustles, let us know how it goes in the comments. I would love to hear how you use your hobbies to make money!
