We all have hobbies, whether you’re into collecting comic books, painting, writing, sports, you have a hobby.  Have you thought of finding a hobby that makes you money?

Perhaps that’s why you’re here.  Looking for a hobby that could make me money was how I discovered the wonderful world of blogging. 

About a year and a half ago, I stumbled on a finance article about how to improve one’s finances.  One of the suggestions from the article was to find a hobby that makes money.  This evoked an image of many of the hobbies I had when I was younger.

I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit, particularly when it came to my hobbies. 

In high school, I had a thriving comic book collection.  This was back when the comic book industry was filled with collectors and you could find a comic book store popping up all over town.

I enjoyed reading the books and perusing the artwork, but the other aspect that I really love about that hobby was the trading, selling and buying of comic books as well.  I would go through a collectors book called The Wizard’s Price Guide.  (Ok, I’m a geek!)  The book would list comic books and give me an idea of the price trends.  Then I would buy or trade the books and then resell or trade them for a higher value.

Not only was I able to build up my collection, but I made a bit of money as well.  I recall one summer ending with a profit of over $300 and had increased my collection substantially in the meantime.  Of course, eventually, the industry moved ahead and I moved on to other hobbies.  I believe I still have several boxes of comic books collecting dust in the attic.

Later on, my hobbies turned to video games and other entertaining endeavors.  Often, where I could, I enjoyed sharing my passion and trading on my hobby.

These days I’ve turned a fun hobby for me into a second source of income with this blog.  I’m enjoying learning new things about blogging, the internet, and finance in general and have fun sharing that with all of you.  In the meantime, I’m also able to make a few hundred dollars each month that can go towards all sorts of other things.  This month, the journey is bringing me close to $1000 for the month.  It’s been an amazing process and thoroughly enjoyable!

I think that part of my success has been that I started with the mindset that this would be a fun project and to really enjoy the process.  That has allowed me to stay consistent and continue trying to tweak and improve my skills.  Rather than going into this with the goal of trying to find a second job or replace my income, it was a fun thing for me to do and that makes a huge difference.

The key to making money on the side starts with a passion.  From my experiences, I believe it’s possible to turn virtually any hobby into a way to earn some extra cash.  Check out a few of these examples from my own personal experiences:

I have friends who enjoy shopping and buying new clothing and accessories.  They’ve learned to make money with their hobby by selling items on ebay.

In college, I met a guy that loved to buy broken down old cars and rebuild them.  He would spend a month with a car taken apart in his garage and fix them up.  It was time consuming, hard and dirty work, but he loved it.  Then when the whole thing was rebuilt and in working condition, he would sell it for a profit and start looking for the next car to rebuild.

If you love photography, you can find tons of places where you can sell your photos.  There are tons of websites these days where you can sell your photos and people can purchase them from you and turn them into prints.

I’ve even made money in the past raising aquarium fish!  I loved raising fresh water fish for quite a time and had several more exotic fish with a well decorated tank.  This eventually segued into starting a saltwater aquarium.  I’m sure you’ve heard, that is an expensive hobby.  So, I would build up the aquarium by trading the fish and equipment that I had for better fish and equipment.  This worked reasonably well to keep the costs of the hobby to a bare minimum.  If done right, it’s not an expensive hobby at all.  Then as I had animals that grew and outgrew the tank, I sometimes could even sell things for a profit.

I’ve also had friends that have addictions to video games.  World of Warcraft anyone?  They’ve even been able to turn a profit by leveraging their video game prowess.  They sell in game equipment, characters and accounts for real cash.

I had a good friend in school that loved to play the guitar.  She also had a great voice and some talent in music.  She would get together and have jam sessions with other people that played instruments and eventually formed an amateur band.  These days she’s a dentist, but she also performs about once a month at some of the local clubs and bars.  The band gets paid for the performance, but for her it’s mainly just a fun hobby.  I suspect she’d still do it for free even if they didn’t pay her.

Almost anything can become a way to make money!

If all else fails, and you can’t figure out a way to turn your hobby directly into a money making machine, you can always start a blog and write about your hobby!  Get the word out and find a way to share your interest with other enthusiasts and monetize your blog.

The idea is to start with your passion and joy.  Use that energy to translate your passion into a profitable hobby.