Monetizing hobbies
tegowerk.eu
tegowerk.eu
I'm very blessed to be able to tell people this. When I was growing up, my grandmother had a radio scanner in her small town Virginia home, and I was fascinated that you could listen in on what the police and fire departments were doing on a daily basis. My parents bought me a radio scanner a few years later and as a young boy I followed the rabbit hole of radio communications, scanners, and listening in to police, fire, aircraft, amateur radio etc.
Fast forward many years: I'm well established in a career as an IBM System Engineer, and during my downtime in the 90's, I thought it would be really neat if, instead of purchasing books with radio frequencies, it would be pretty cool if you could search on the WWW for this data. This was back in the day when this data was just starting to be made available on dial-up BBSs, but this new WWW thing was becoming more and more popular.
Mind you, I still pursued my hobby of radios and scanners, and had lots of expensive equipment to listen to everything around me. All the while taking multiple conference calls with IBM customers and generally doing my "day" job from home.
So, one week I sat down and taught myself Perl and MySQL. Created an online database, solicited people over Usenet to submit data to the new site, and RadioReference.com was born.
Fast forward to today. RadioReference.com is my avocation and vocation, I get to stay home and develop and manage my business which is also my hobby. And we did some amazing innovation which resulted in Broadcastify.com, which allows you to listen to police scanners all over the world without ever having to buy a complex radio.
So, yes, you can monetize your hobby, and this article really resonates. I never made it about the money, but my business is wildly successful and I can definitely tell you that I am living the dream :)
I wonder what percentage of people of working age have this privilege (or more precisely, have earned it!).
I think I recall emergency services switched nationwide in/by 2010, certainly it came to the small town (i.e. far from breaking new ground) I was in around then.
As I understood it at the time, it meant everything was encrypted and you could no longer listen in. But reading your comment and some of the details there (and having studied such things since then, albeit largely forgotten) I wonder if it's similar to your description, and it mostly prevented casual listening just because it raised the bar for the equipment needed, not because it was actually encrypted.
(Afaik before that it was analogue, or at least dual or slowly switching/some services analogue.)
Listening to the scanner isn't illegal here, so long as it isn't in the commission of a crime, but the ones that are encrypted obviously would be illegal to listen into without explicit authorization.
A lot of agencies want to keep their transmissions open, but with how easy it is to turn on encryption on their existing equipment, it only takes one incident for them to suddenly decide to encrypt.
It was disappointing when I moved from an area that had all but tactical channels in the clear, to one that encrypts everything. Apparently it even caused the state agencies to say they would not respond within the jurisdiction, for a period of time, as they were locked out of being able to talk to that jurisdiction's dispatch. Ultimately they were given encrypted access.
All three times it has become lucrative, but none of them are hobbies any more.
One of the important things along the way I've learned is that what makes hobbies relaxing and fun isn't about the specific task you're doing but the fact that it's about enjoying the process of making/doing rather than feeling pressure to deliver the end result.
That's not to say I have any regrets about what I did - it's turned into a pair of businesses that are interesting and challenging in their own way while bringing in some serious coin - but the whole adage about "do what you love and you'll never work another day in your life" doesn't apply to running a small business.
I regularly wonder how to balance the intrinsic pleasure with extrinsic value. I keep thinking that people could meet on the point where both find great pleasure in this venture. Something rare in the current economy it seems.
Never take orders.
But yes, some artists have famously gone through intermediaries such that there isn’t a feedback loop possible.
So I think for this to work, you have to go full collectivist: gather up a bunch of people interested in different things, produce stuff for each other and divide equally with no money being involved in the transaction.
I also successfuly monetized my hobbies.
Is that because when you turn a hobby into a business there are lots of non-hobby tasks and requirements? Like sales, marketing, etc, etc?
Or because of the pressure of delivering the result?
Or for some other reason?
Worst case, if you get burned out on the new job you will not only no longer have a job but also won't enjoy your hobby anymore.
basically, yes, all of these reasons apply.
I'm good at drawing, not at selling myself; my work sells itself to a certain degree but that only gets you so far. Not everything I'm paid to draw is a thing I love to draw, either. And sometimes even a thing I love to draw becomes less fun when it has to meet someone else's approval; going back and forth with a client is a very different feeling than "I start drawing and I fix things I don't like until I'm happy with the piece".
Deadlines suck and I mostly arrange my work so as not to have any. Yes, this is a luxury. It probably means less money but I make enough to get by.
It's mainly this. It's not a hobby when the customer needs their product delivered by Thursday, not is it a hobby where you need to maintain a certain output to pay the bills.
Sales and marketing are just a thing that you get used to.
It is sometimes possible that a hobbyist can find an entry point to the professional world. Building wheels is something I've recently been learning, but there are a lot of people who've been doing that for over a decade and they can probably build a wheel in 1/10th the time it would take me. Given the supply chain backups and the scarcity of bike parts today, however, there might be a little niche there.
Point being, the leap from hobbyist to professional in any area can be a lot larger than it appears at first glance.
As far as monetizing something like wheel building, of course the more experience you have the faster you will be at it. In the end it is all about what the customers want, and they might value having you do it over the more experienced person for different (and possibly illogical) reasons than you might think. It might even boil down to simple availability or your location being more convenient.
Make sure you have proper insurance!
If you take up painting (art, not houses) you should know you will never be Rembrandt and it should not keep you from painting (Unless painting houses is your hobby)
With things like (marathon) running, hiking, it is easy to meassure Objective progress and qutie hard to moneteize.
If you are a programmer all day, and your hobby is programming I dont think that is ideal.
I have been there myself a bit earier in life and regret that now.
Thers is soo much to see, experience, learn outside of computers.
Plus doing something else will help your brain relax, or at least not running the exact same parts as when you are at work, that is in itself a valuabe thing. Giving your brain something different to chew on, connect new paths, all good.
Well, no. You can do sooo much here. Log your hike, provide coordinates of off-the-beaten-track routes and sites, provide info on trail conditions, run team events, gear reviews, first aid courses...
Also, who said I can't be the next Rembrandt? Kandinsky is only one of many proofs that that second sentence of yours is off the mark.
I've actually just started work on making piste maps better for snowboarders. Making bank off that would be ace, if not well OK then. Being defeatist because the probability of failure is bigger than success is defeatist, no?
Is it being defeatist to not buy a lottery ticket? or 10? or 100?
Or can you say that the chances of winning are so remote that you dont want to spend money on buying tickets?
The chances someone who dedicates their entire life, all their academic efforts, all the apprenticeships possible, giving it their all, the chances that person will become the next Rembradt is far less than winning a lottery ticket.
If you pick up a brush for the first time in your 30s, the chances are much lower.
So yes, it is possible. But the probability is near zero.
What I was saying was find a hobby that you can get some enjoyment out of.
If in your 30s: You pick up a paintbrush becasue you know you will be the next Rembradt, or You learn to drive a stick shift knowing you will become the biggest Formula1 Champion ever. or Start reading "An Idiots guide to Basic Physics" knowing you will far exceeed Einstein
Chances are you won't really enjoy it that much.
Seeking for channels to give away your work for free like open source or creative commons can make more sense. Software is another issue, by the way. I used to sell shareware for Macs for 20 years, and the problem is it can cause a lot of work if you want to support your customers after initial sales have cooled down. It can easily turn into a chore.
Writing sits comfortably in the territory of hobbies which require neither money nor storage space to perform, so I can totally understand how someone would choose to forgo money completely in order to not have to deal with the unpleasant aspects of self-publishing. Speaking of which, I assume you've already decided against traditional publishing?
Certainly some people do well but, in the main, the finances don't really work. I've never done a serious marketing push beyond book signings at some industry events (with someone else paying for the book copies) but I'm not at all confident that incremental sales would cover significant PR/marketing activities.
What it has done in my case is a likely pretty significant enhancement to my visibility/stature professionally. Which has been very beneficial.
I did shareware for a while too back in the 90s (MS-DOS mostly). I enjoyed doing it for a time, liked interacting with my testers and other users, was part of the shareware community, etc. And made reasonable side hobby business money. But certainly not at my day job level.
What can look like a hobby to some people can be seen by the creator as part of their mission in life, or a calling card that is part of what makes the creator unique.
If you feel that way about something that doesn't monetarily pay off, does that make it a hobby or something else?
A company in a tangential space approached me the other day for a second time to discuss whether I could collaborate with them on something that would make their service offering more complete.
For years I have been building an on-line resource that provides information about an avocation of mine that I thought the on-line world needed. Currently, that resource is very poorly monetized, and its existence is financially supported by other consulting and advisory work that I do for which I am fairly compensated.
At one level, this is totally a hobby. But at another, I always believed that if I built this on-line resource that a group of people and/or companies would find my work important, and I would find a way for the work to pay off.
If a collaboration produces revenue in any amount, it's a confirmation that my work has utility and value to others who certainly are making money from a larger service offering.
Except that if you do that, you're a dilettante, not a craftsman. If you take on a project to fix somebody's bike, and you take your time so as not to stress yourself out, your customer is going to be pissed off at you: they want their bike fixed, that's why they're paying you money that they earned doing things that stressed them out. You should feel a sense of obligation when you take someone's money: not an obligation to chase your own sense of joy, but to do the thing they paid you to do.
That's why I think turning your hobby into a job (which is what you do when you take money for it, no matter what you want to call it) is a bad idea. The author dismisses it as a cliche, or as bullshit, but it's the most valid argument against what they're saying: making your hobby your job means it's not your hobby anymore.
If you have a lot of money — enough to lose it on a failing business — it's okay to be a dilettante, take your time, and appeal only to a small number of customers. If you have a lot of hobbies, and can afford to sacrifice one of them to make it a real profession that pays your bills, while getting your pleasure in other areas, then that's fine too. But if you have one big thing you love doing, you will probably stop getting the same kind of pleasure from it if it becomes your full time job. This isn't true in every case, but in the majority of cases it is.
I'm not sure such an attitude is healthy or sustainable. We fought hard to get a 40 hour work week, why do we feel pressure to go back on that and work in our leisure time?
Personal development means more than sitting in front of a tv.
I want to need to work less so I can be productive for myself.
There are many hobbies where you don't produce or monetize anything, but they are still better watching TV. For example, playing a sport, learning an instrument, reading books, learning a new language, etc.
The distinction being whether you are producing something or learning something just for its own sake.
Also, when you start expecting your project to meet income requirements, it can take the fun out extremely fast. Part of the fun is being able to work on it as much or as little as I want.
Benefits of monetizing (from my experience):
Extremely validating, what you enjoy doing has value to others.
Offsets costs, even if your only cost is time, a few bucks really helps.
If you are not a charity, do not call it a donation. Call it a tip.
That may be relevant to people seriously monetizing their hobbies.
(Whether something is, for tax purposes, a tip or a donation is determined by the reason the money is given, not what you call it, but if it's truly a donation then I'd be inclined to call it one just in case that influences some judgement further down the line.)
These days, there are other monetization products but I'm not sure the IRS would approve of you calling it whatever you want for reasons of avoiding taxes.
Tip signals "payment for my work." Donation signals "gift."
People seem to be more inclined to actually fork over a few bucks if you signal "This is my work. I deserve to be paid for it." than if you signal "I would like gifts (or charity) from random internet strangers."
People here are using survivor bias to indicate what has went from a hobby to a full time career. While nice - not relevant for most young people these days. Truth is - very few can turn a hobby into a real profitable profession. This isn’t because they lack talent, dedication, or smarts. It’s because they lack timing (being born when a house in SV wasn’t $2.5m), lack the right hobby to monetize (e.g. dancing - a notoriously poorly paying job unless you’re in the top 0.01%), or lack the social capital necessary (again - many reasons for why this might not be possible for you. Your race, gender, orientation, class, and looks really could be holding you back here. In the case of dancing - you often need to be good looking too).
If you’re working in SF as a software eng making $400k/yr - just enjoy your hobbies and stop trying to monetize them. If you’re struggling for money - leetcode, system design, and being a rule following brown noser will do you 200x on your time investment.
Personally - I have no interest in trying to monetize my hobbies. There’s no chance they will ever have any return on investment that will make it worthwhile compared to what I get paid at my job. They are for pleasure and for enrichment of the mind.
Its still a hobby, but we are now optimizing for cash / time spent / ease of flip so I think its at the cusp of moving away from hobby.
You are killing two birds with one stone in that case
Achievement unlocked: Dennis the Menace
I'm still not sure if I want to try and monetize that or not. People have expressed interest in buying them, but I've actually done the electronics production line thing in a long-ago internship and I know that it really is a job. Also, it's not like I'm going to be retiring off the proceeds of selling weirdly-shaped 3-button wired mice with no scrollwheels, it's a hell of a niche.
I love what I do. Folks here, would call it a "hobby," because I don't get paid for it, but I guarantee that the folks I'm working with, don't see it that way. They are quite aware that I have done hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of top-shelf, beyond-production-Quality work for them, for free.
I do work, for free, that would have a lot of startup founders crying in their beer. I take it ultra-seriously, and do a highly professional job. In fact, the professionalism of my approach is one of the challenges that I set for myself.
I don't bother measuring myself. I may measure my code, but not myself.
If so that sounds amazing!
If I may prod a bit, why not take a salary in your situation? Why work for free, especially when it's highly valued not only by others, but to you as well, since you know what you're giving, and work hard to maintain a high level of quality?
I do work for nonprofits. These are folks that can't afford even crappy devs.
TBH, I get kind of a "screw you" kick from doing this. I was willing to work for quite a bit lower wages than even kids right out of school (if the work interested me), as I had my retirement set, and I would have settled for having the bills paid. I would have been absolutely ideal for startups.
But every company that I applied to, was more interested in insulting me, and ignoring my portfolio, than in taking me seriously.
Much respect. It's def inspiring and a very different way to just view the world, and to do work that matters to you.
Warms my heart! haha. Old people rock!
Not all of us. I do understand some of the animosity, but it is very self-destructive; especially when I see some of these Jurassic-scale crash-and-burn disasters that were entirely avoidable, if only one single person in authority had been out of school for more than ten years.
I also have participated in a Service organization (nonprofit) for most of my life, and a lot of the work that I do is based around the community it Serves.
But I was just talking to a friend of mine, whose father suffered a stroke, and we'll probably work on an iOS app that will be designed to help with some of his rehab.
I like to help people that help people.
Just to level the playing field, I've participated in orgs with "younger" leadership and have been burned, and also made my errors from my own arrogance/ lack of experience. The "good" that came out of that was perhaps a deeper appreciation for older folks (again I mistook one of your previous comments as that you were volunteering to help older folks – my mistake).
My own dad also still works, despite being way over retirement age, and he helps those older than him as well. I got nothing but respect for those who wanna serve those that society often overlooks out of callousness and overall lack of heart, so to speak.
Either way, really appreciate you sharing your insights/ experiences.
I have a pretty heavy-duty résumé. I've been shipping (not just "writing") software for over thirty-five years, and have a fairly big portfolio (that really only covers the last ten years of my work, and just the open-source portion of it). I've written APIs that have lasted 25 years. I do good work, and can prove it.
They would contact me, breathless and excited by my CV, then ghost me, as soon as they figured out that I was over 40.
I guess that math isn't a big requirement to be a recruiter. The industry must be awash in 30-year-olds with 35 years of experience.
These days, I just make it clear that I'm older, and they stopped bothering me.
They may be brilliant, driven, creative, hardworking people, but they Just. Don't. Have. Scars.
They never really had the chance to run face-first into reality, while still in a position where the stakes are low, and there's more experienced folks around, to help them get back on their feet.
Their first mistakes are disasters, because they have it all on the line.
In the past, the older folks had the money and power, but were often locked up by caution, and lack of creativity.
The younger folks had the energy and creativity, but not the sense of mortality. They needed the money and power from the older folks, and the older folks needed that creativity, and, for lack of a better word, recklessness, that could drive their investments forward, so they had to work together.
These days, it's pure recklessness. The first forays into shipping are "bet the company," so failure is an E.L.E.
I've found that commercial work as a craftsman has pushed me to learn much more than my own designs are. I think this is akin to learning other people's songs when you learn an instrument; if you don't, its much too easy to get stuck in a rut of your own ideas.
I think this is partly because these are generally considered luxury items rather than necessities, but also partly because many regard the inner workings of a mechanical watch to be magic.