Category: Make Money

How to Monetise your Hobby

If you want to make a bit more money then you might feel that it would be a good idea to try to make money form your hobby. This can seem like a fun thing to do because you will be doing something that you enjoy while you are making money as well. However, you will have to give some thought to what you will actually do in order to make the money.

What can you sell?

You need to start by thinking about what you can sell. If you have a crafty hobby then you might produce paintings, knitted items, lace or things like that and you might want to sell them. However, some hobbies do not produce anything such as playing video game, going on holiday or fitness. However, you may still be able to make money by writing a guide or tutorial, perhaps such as a book, vlog, instructional video or website. There is something that you would be able to do for every hobby but you will just have to decide what you think would work for you.

How can you sell it?

Once you have an idea of what you can sell, before you actually start producing the items you need to think about how you will sell it. It is good to start by finding out if there are other people selling the same or similar things as this will help you to figure out whether you can compete in that market and if you do decide to sell, how much you will be able to charge and if you will make a profit at that price. This research stage is worth spending some time over as you will be able to find out whether your idea of making money will work. It might be that you will need to slightly change your idea or do something completely different. This means that it is important to be flexible and open minded about your idea as you may need to change it.

How can you promote it?

You will also need to think about how to promote your good or service. You might put it on a platform that will already have people looking at it such as on Etsy or Youtube but that will not automatically mean that you will find customers. You also need to think about how to get people to buy your items over other peoples. You might want to think about using social media or other things to promote the item so that you are more likely to make sales.

As you can see, there is a lot of things that you will need to think about and do. It will not just be able continuing with your hobby but you will have to do a lot of other things as well if you want to be successful at making money form it. This might actually take time away from your hobby and might even mean that you hobby becomes less fun as a result. You therefore need to think carefully about whether you really want to do this. It can depend on the amount of time that you have because you might still want to be able to do your hobby to have fun and relax as well as spend the time trying to sell. You may decide that you do not want your hobby to be stressful or feel pressured because you need to make money from it. It is good to make this decision early, so that you do not spend a lot of time starting to try to sell and then decide that it is not right for you and will have wasted that time.

Should I Set up my Own Business to Make Money?

We might often hear about these entrepreneurs that are able to make a lot of money form setting up their own business. It can be really easy for us to them think that this will be something that will work for us and that we will make a lot of money from as well. However, this is not something we should move into lightly as there are sadly a lot of people who start up businesses and do not even last a year. So, make sure you are well prepared first.

It is hard work

It is worth being prepared for the fact that it will be hard work. It is easy to think that it will not be because we hear about people who come up with a successful business idea and then are able to sell their companies to make lots of money. We do not hear about how hard they worked to get to that position first. It is likely that you will be working very long hours every day of the week for a long time to get things going. You will need to start by doing a lot of things yourself because you will not have a big team of helpers or if you do have help, you will need to teach or train people to your way of thinking.

You will probably need to learn a lot

Running a business means learning lots of new things. This can be fun and exciting but it is wise to try to learn as many things as you can before you start. You will need to learn about how to do accounts so that you can keep a close eye on your income and expenditure to make sure that you are doing the right thing. Many people pay an accountant or bookkeeper to do this but then as it is only reviewed yearly they may have no idea as to whether they are making much money or not or whether they are overspending in certain areas. You will also need to learn about marketing so that you can make sure that your goods and services are purchased. You will need to know how to use the internet to publicise your business too, probably social media as well as a website. You may need someone to design the site for you but you will need to keep updating it so that you attract new business and visitors.

You may not be able to pay yourself

It is worth being aware that you may not be able to afford to pay yourself any money when you first start out. You will need to pay for all sorts of things and therefore may need to plough all the money you make back into the business. For example, you may need to buy stock, hire premises, pay staff, hire equipment as well as pay insurance, tax, utilities, domains, to name but a few things. It is well worth working out everything you will need to pay for to start with so that you can work out how much you will need to pay out each month to cover those costs. From that you will be able to work out how many items you will need to sell to cover the costs and how many more you would need to sell to give yourself an income. This is a useful thing to do before you set up as it will allow you to think about whether your business idea is realistic as you can work out whether you will be able to sell your items for enough money to be able to make enough money from them to cover your costs which includes everything that you need to pay for. If there is not enough for this then you will need a different plan and if there is enough for this you are then in the position to work out whether you have enough left to give yourself a decent income as well.