How I Monetized My Passion
thesevenfive.com
thesevenfive.com
If you build something cool, people will find you and give you consulting work
That's a strategy that has worked for me several times over the years. I mentioned a silly unmonetizable Travel Blogging site elsewhere in this discussion, but if you look at the paying client work that resulted from that site's existence, you could argue that it's been one of my most successful products.
I'm facing that dilemma now. Should I focus on the product I want to build and possibly fail months later with nothing to show for the effort and no budget left to live on (I'm still recovering from the last one)?
Or should I build several smaller demo projects as portfolio pieces I can shop to get client work to fund the part-time development of my eventual product? Especially considering that my walled-off enterprise projects are inaccessible and built with tools other than the open source ones I'd prefer to be working with.
It's almost like starting from scratch.
They're even better for folks who don't have good designers available or who don't have the technical chops to make adjustments to their sites themselves.
As a business model, it is pretty good if you can get traction, too -- the content scarcely ever rots, per-customer value is high (relative to, say, B2C software), and you stand a decent chance of getting repeat business if you continue expanding your product line. I wouldn't want to get into it myself (no design skills and I think I'd be about four years behind the curve even if I could design my way out of a paper bag), but it is clearly successful for some folks.
At the moment, I'm passionate about rock climbing, travel, surfing and computer programming. If it weren't for that 4th one, I'd be screwed.
I currently run maybe the 3rd most popular Travel Blogging site out there. It's had a good 5 years of passion poured in now, off and on, and if I were to slap ads on it today I'd pull in a buck thirtyfive a day.
I also run a little service that processes the draconian logfiles that Amazon provides for its webservices and spits out pretty analytics. It's a subject that no human being could ever be passionate about and it pays my rent.
Sometimes it's better to monetize something boring that people are willing to pay for.
Those specific examples may or may not work for you, but even if rock climbing itself isn't a profitable activity, there's surely some way to build business related to rock climbing.
Climbing shops squeak by selling ice axes to non-climbers who mount them on their walls. Climbing guides survive by taking beginners up mountains and hosting birthday parties at the crag. Guidebook authors are lucky if they recoup their printing costs.
Climbers (and outdoor folks in general) just don't like to pay for stuff. I rode enough outdoor-enthusiast dot-coms into the ground back in the 90's to know to stay clear of that space.
I see where you're going with this though, and I'll grant that you can certainly find a way to squeeze out a niche in even a space this dirtbaggishly stingy. But if you're going to put in the effort, I'd recommend doing it in a vertical full of people used to paying lots of money to make their technically trivial problems go away.
There are plenty of those verticals waiting to be tapped, and chances are they're not your passion.
While it isn't a particularly expensive sport like hockey or golf, I'd say it isn't cheap either. Day passes at the gym are $16, and it is packed. And it's growing too! There's lots of newbies starting the sport, especially parents bringing their kids, or school groups.
This could vary widely from location to location though.
Gyms are a good example of this. They make the lion's share of their money off of Birthday Parties. Monthly dues won't even keep the lights on.
Other lifestyle sports have the same issues. There's a reason why most Surf Shops don't sell surfboards. They sell boardshorts to people who want to look like surfers. The actual participants don't spend much on their sports.
The ones I've been to have a range of climbs: from a small section available to beginners, to routes and bouldering that require a much higher level of technique and endurance.
From personal experience, I've already spent an embarrassing amount on courses, memberships, and equipment.
Daypasses cost $16 and end up generating a lot more revenue. Birthday parties cost $10/head, happen 16-30 times a month, and bring in enough to keep them afloat.
That's why you end up with tons of toproping areas, easy routes, and pretty looking features: to bring in the one-time visitors.
A good training area doesn't need to look pretty. In fact, the more it looks a lot like an inclined piece of plywood, the better. History shows, however, that training-focused gyms fail every time, whereas beginner & birthday party "social" gyms can sometimes squeak by.
It's certainly not an industry you go into to make money.
Let me know when you get into traditional climbing, all the gear that it comes with, and start flying to different crags, then it will surely start adding up :P
I climb to get away from computers, to spend an afternoon (or a few days) with friends away from technology and have by my escape. Just like artists who choose not to sell their art, I'm afraid trying to make money from it will ruin it. I have met guides who I've taken lessons from before who absolutely loved guiding and would not have traded it for the world. Obviously, other peoples' opinions will differ.
(Where are you geographically btw?
edit: just checked your info and I think I've asked you this before. Last time I did, you were in Thailand or the UK, not quite sure if I remember)
Do you mean $1.35/day? If that's the case, then I see your point: even though you're passionate about it, it (in and of itself) won't pay the rent.
The problem with monetizing the Travel side of a site like this is that there are dozens of big money sites devoted to doing exactly that. Blogabond's whole appeal is that we don't surround your blog with banner ads and we don't try to help you book flights and rental cars.
So yeah, we could do that sort of stuff and maybe make a few dollars, but it would just turn us into another TripAdvisor instead of a cool place to host your blog.
Providing a service of building websites quickly & cheaply using something like WordPress can be valuable and lucrative even in the corporate world. I recently proposed this to my company for a new project and got the green light (after getting quotes of above $15K from other shops for a custom job). It was however difficult to find WP hackers easily and ended up building the site myself (in a fraction of the time and cost).
For todays projects, I tend to use small microframeworks using Python, but WP is still my 0-60 in 5 seconds platform.
1) Chasing your passion is better than chasing your money. Sometimes money becomes the by-product of the former.
2) (A hidden message) You need to be talented and committed to successful.