A habit which cost money is said to be a hobby by most people. Well, what if your hobby makes money for you? Interesting, right! Doing something you like to and earn money out of it. This is what you can say is thinking in an unconventional way, different and out of ordinary. Isn’t it? Always at the hour of choosing a career, parents and peer pressure made us opt for either an engineering stream or medical leaving our hobbies back into schools or limited to homes. Now, no more, the parental attitudes have significantly shifted. They have grown up with the generation Y. They are too thinking out of the box. Parents, today let the children choose a career of choice.
Thanks to global recession the change gear is witnessed because of it. The parent’s thinks there is no good job for an engineer and computer graduates. The shift is good as doing something you enjoy can help you think more creatively and give you confidence. Moreover, hobbies can enhance your creativity. Importantly, it helps you think more clearly and sharpen your focus.
Besides, Webster's Dictionary defines a hobby as "a pursuit outside one's regular occupation". It has helped many to build a part-time and also full-time career successfully. In words of Saumya, a painter who teaches nib painting to neighborhood children opines, ‘Creativity comes from soul. Artists are like scientist who observe and record the environment and own mind. A way of expression it is’ She is not a recognized famed painter, but has utilized her hobby teaching others.
A hobby can be a job. A dream job which everybody loves, say a Dream Career. We all have hobbies. Art has always been a favorite subject to the peoples. I still recall my art class in school, “I wish I can have arts class all day”. Sketching, writing essays and poems is something always I was passionate about. Now that helped me to make a career as a freelancer.
However, it is truism that the applications for offbeat subjects like mass communication, Journalism, psychology, library sciences have doubled according to the Osmania University this year. To a larger and larger degree people are seen opting for arts as it is said to be something “Uber Cool” according to most youngsters these days.
Sachin wants to pursue a career in Journalism. It is because; his engineer brother is on hunt for a good job after being fired by Batronics. He says, despite of economic slowdown the arts students have found good jobs in content writing and teaching. He do not want to be one engineer among the others seeking for jobs.
Hobby is where a person is more skilled at. Between work and family, always we have little time or energy left for hobbies. And without hobbies, though, life feels ordinary. So, it is no wrong if you turned that hobby into a career. If you are smart and creative there are many work and employment ideas providing opportunities that you can choose to start a career or build your own business
For instance, if your hobby is food related. Enter the health department say kitchen. Make a dream come true if your family and friends always comments on your talent and cooking is your favorite thing to do. Turn your hobby into a career.
If you’re sound enough open your own restaurant or become a caterer for private and corporate parties. After a short period of time your business will grow through recommendations. Well, what are friends and contacts for? Also you can write a cookbook or e-cookbook and hold cooking classes for kids. A cooking career can be very lucrative. Start small and take any opportunity you can to prove yourself.
Writing is another lucrative profession. If you have the talent cash on your skills through writing, editing, or proof reading. A degree in English literature or journalism automatically qualifies you for a career in writing. It is easy to earn some bucks for grocery and bills for ladies who want to freelance.
There are companies, e-newspapers, magazines online who own a website will pay you for providing good content to them. You can make a good living by offering your writing skills in the form of articles, blogs, forum posts, etc. it is a good home career opportunity where the better the content you provide, the better the pay will be for the work.
Another paid hobby is Photography. If clicking pictures is what amuses you. Great! Don’t stop only to family photographs. You can try your hand at weddings and parties where photographers are paid well. Photographs make a statement in its own way. The real snapshot of locality and rural areas makes good stories in newspapers if being sold.
Without forgetting the most attractive hobbyists today are singers, dancers, actors and models. Music is something every three in ten trying out. Same is with acting, dancing is these days. Every one is switching to glamour world. That is why the reality shows like SA re ga ma pa, Little Champs, Star Voice of India are more popular than the news stories.
The child actors are earning fairly well and parents have no problem sending their kids to the studios missing out the play and academics. Children are earning for their future and also supporting parents from tender age.
Most hobbies are based on creative interests and the creative field attracts so many talented people. There is high competition. It requires immense hard work. It takes effort to turn hobby into career and earn. Being a paid professional you have to know the basics business practices. Without knowledge and seriousness you cannot proceed.
And store in the mind, it is important to be proactive and intelligible in the beginning as there are many hoaxes out there and you should be careful to avoid them especially if going on an unknown road dreaming high. Because a hobby turned into a job is challenging. It needs lot of practice to expertise in a particular field. The focus is important to establish yourself; only then your hobby can be your job, a dream job. So for all those who dream, happy dreaming!
COULD YOU GET PAID FOR HOBBIES?
If you spend all day in a job waiting to get home so you can crack on with your hobby, then chances are, you could probably make some money at it.
Because not all hobbies are going to be money makers, the first thing to do is to take a good look at your past time and view it from a different angle.
Think about what you are doing and how it might be profitable. Are you creating something? Providing a service? Doing an action that could offer valuable information? Does your hobby give you insider knowledge?
For the purpose of this article, I phoned up my sister and asked her what her hobby was.
My sister is four months pregnant, so much of her activities have changed in the past weeks, but one constant passion she has is ‘reading.’ Taking my sisters hobby as an example, I decided to look at if you could make money from reading.
I followed through these three steps and worked out how her hobby of reading could be changed into a business. In your case, change ‘reading’ and insert whatever it is that you love to do and lets see how we can start earning some money from it.
Would people pay you to do your hobby?
Truth is, in today’s market, most things are sold on marketing and ideas rather than direct merit. When thinking about if your hobby has a market, think about who would pay for it, what your audience is and why they would pay for your service.
My sisters passion is reading. She loves thrillers. She reads fast and she always has a comment about the book, in fact, even if my sister hates the book, she’ll keep reading till the end. So who would pay her to do this and why would they pay her?
Aspiring authors might pay for a detailed critique on their unpublished book. Book publishers might pay for a reader to go through the slush piles, but those positions might need more experience than a thriller enthusiast.
However, publishers might also need an honest account of books from a regular reader to write a review.
OK, so now I know that my sisters service is marketable. What next?
Can it be developed?
If any hobby is to make any kind of income, it has to have the capacity to be up-scaled, and up-scaled with ease. Any hobby is probably done at first on the small scale, which is fine for some extra income, but if you want to make a living out of it, think about if it can be developed and how. How long will it take you to deliver the goods and what would it involve?
My sister takes about three days to read a book cover to cover. But then, life happens and sometimes it’s longer. So is her hobby easy to upscale? What if a publisher wanted six books reviewed in one week? Well, she could start to pass her work onto someone else – I know two other people off the top of my head who would jump at the chance to read and be paid for it.
She could also start a ‘book club with a difference,’ where she gave out ‘free’ books and recorded conversations about the reviews, perhaps even set up a website for it. In fact, that would also tie up with her marketing plan – she could set up ‘book clubs with a difference’ and sell the idea to publishers that she was getting immediate feedback, or to other readers and take a commission on the books she sold. Great. Now this idea is beginning to develop.
What else is involved?
When a hobby becomes a business it can change. My sister reading for pleasure is different to my sister reading for money.
Just a quick outline of the example business above shows that you also need to think hard about marketing, organisation, profitability and motivation.
The bottom line is how far you want to take it.
You could carry on doing your hobby as a one man operation for extra income or upscale it and develop it as a business. So for starters I would recommend that my sister approach the local paper and see if it is interested in book reviews perhaps from local authors. She could then research how to write a great book review, see if she liked reading for money and if she did and went on to approach other magazines, she’d have some published examples.
A quick search on the Internet has brought up lots of sites offering free books for reviews and also some excellent advice about writing reviews so it is workable.
So whatever your hobby, have a think and see if there is any potential for you to get paid for it, in most cases you’ll probably be able to.
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