17 ms·

Monetizing hobbies

161 points by victorstanciu 4y ago

political12345 4y ago
If you are so obsessesed with optimizing your life (most of us on HN are) and want to monetize your hobby, pick a job so interesting and open ended that your job becomes your hobby. You are killing two birds with one stone in that case
- koheripbal 4y ago
  Running a small business is like this.
- n4bz0r 4y ago
  > You are killing two birds with one stone in that case Achievement unlocked: Dennis the Menace
- cehrlich 4y ago
  The downside is you might end up resenting your hobby
  - Damogran6 4y ago
    Then pivot. So many of these decisions are "If you do X, you'll end up with Y" as if that's the end. There's nothing wrong with 'trying something on and changing your mind once you see how it looks.'
    - political12345 4y ago
      exactly
- jotm 4y ago
  That's a very limited pool with high competition though :D
daveaiello 4y ago
The author has some good points. 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.
- hammock 4y ago
  Magic the gathering?
thowaway_420_69 4y ago
Turning your hobby into a business can get complicated, to the extent that it could kill your passion for it. It is, in the end, a commitment that requires hard work.
black_13 4y ago
AussieWog93 4y ago
I've monetised my hobbies three times so far. 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.
- sprkwd 4y ago
  I’d love to know what they all were.
- rockbruno 4y ago
  I agree with this sentiment. I started taking sponsorships for my blog and it very quickly sucked the fun away from it. I now felt like I couldn't do whatever I wanted because I needed to optimize the sponsor's time and post content to make them feel like it was worth it. In other words, it became a boring job.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  > All three times it has become lucrative, but none of them are hobbies any more. 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.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    One way to do it have the hobby be something that’s entirely yours (you carve intricate models of Vietnamese railway cays say) and someone else sells them, almost without any communication as to “what is selling etc”. Never take orders.
u2077 4y ago
As someone with a somewhat successful side project, I highly recommend monetizing it. However, you should choose a small enough price that you don’t feel like you owe customers fast support or every feature they ask for. (In some cases a donation button may be better) 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.
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  (In some cases a donation button may be better) If you are not a charity, do not call it a donation. Call it a tip.
  - jlokier 4y ago
    Fun fact: Tips are subject to income tax, donations are not. 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.)
    - DoreenMichele 4y ago
      Years ago, PayPal had donate buttons and my recollection is there was text somewhere on the site indicating that if you hit $10k in donations, they would want a copy of your 501c3 or some such. It's one of the reasons I stopped using donate buttons. 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.
  - WJW 4y ago
    Is there some legal distinction? Getting money with the expectation that it will be used to further some vaguely defined public good you are doing (writing freely available software in this case) sounds exactly like a charity, especially since you will be doing most of the public good regardless of whether you get the donation or not. A tip on the other hand is an additional payment for some good or service that you were already paying for, but that is not the case for most software projects.
ThinkBeat 4y ago
A hobby should be something you can do for yourself. Something you get pleasure / relaxation / a welcomed distraction. out of doing. 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.
- FourthProtocol 4y ago
  With things like (marathon) running, hiking, it is easy to meassure Objective progress and qutie hard to moneteize. 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?
  - verve_rat 4y ago
    But that is not running, hiking, or snowboarding. What you are talking about is making maps and writing reviews. They are related, but are not the thing the enthusiast enjoys.
    - FourthProtocol 4y ago
      They were ideas of the top of my head. And what if he/she DOES enjoy that aspect? I'm a snowboarder and love it. The point is to have an open mind. Like it? Great. If not, also great, no?
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
I like the "don't get caught up in metrics" approach. 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.
- deebosong 4y ago
  I don't mean to pry, but it sounds like you have "retired" and found your calling instead, if you are working for free, but are 100% invested in the quality and professionalism? And that you have your basic needs (and then some) pretty much covered? 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?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    It is amazing. I was forced into it, though. I found out (the hard way) that no one wants to play with older folks. I'm very fortunate that I had built up enough of a base to retire early. It wasn't planned, but it was there. I just heard from an ex-employee of mine, that he just got let go, and is running smack-dab into this ageism issue. He's very, very good, but he'll struggle like hell, and he doesn't have my resources. 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.
turtledove 4y ago
Why do we feel the need to be 'productive' (in the economics sense) even in our leisure time? 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?
- Helitioo 4y ago
  My personal development should not be driven by my work. 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.
  - abhaynayar 4y ago
    You can have personal development without being productive. 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.
drmpeg 4y ago
There's an old saying in ham radio. "If you want to make a small fortune in ham radio, start with a large fortune".
- Damogran6 4y ago
  Also racing cars. Boats have a lot of similar aphorisms, too.
  - krallja 4y ago
    “Boat, (noun): a hole in the water you throw money into”
    - PyWoody 4y ago
      Break Out Another Thousand
Arrivest 4y ago
As a software developer, when I monetized my hobby code that solved a niche problem, I needed to spend 10x more time to make it from "usable for me" to "usable for users".
pmlnr 4y ago
Never monetize your hobby. You'll end up hating it, whereas it's supposed to charge you up.
vonunov 4y ago
Turning your hobby into your business is a very different move from getting a job in the field that your hobby suggests
- draw_down 4y ago
makz 4y ago
I don't understand how people monetize hobbies. For me a hobby could be a very niche thing that only interests me and maybe a dozen people in the world. Hard to monetize that.
- lupire 4y ago
  Why so obscure?
- Finnucane 4y ago
  In that case, you go into academia.
ahmed_ds 4y ago
One key point here is how comfortable you are with pressure and deadlines. Hobbies don't have deadlines but clients/users/stakeholders do. No matter what value you provide the hobby-centric approach of doing it on your own time, own pace might not work out.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
  That depends on the hobby you're monetizing, I think. For instance, one of my hobbies is watchmaking (cleaning, servicing, restoring). I don't do it for money, but those who do don't really adhere to deadlines. It's all very open ended, even for the large companies like Seiko and Rolex. They don't guarantee a timeframe, and you won't know how long they'll have it until they tell you they're sending it back. 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.
blantonl 4y ago
Ah, the old phrase "my avocation is my vocation" 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 :)
- victorstanciu 4y ago
  I feel like you might like one of my previous posts too (https://tegowerk.eu/posts/serendipity/ https://tegowerk.eu/posts/serendipity/). The trajectory of my life has also been shaped and defined by a series of decisions and events which didn't seem at all momentous at the time :)
- bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
  Just wanted to thank you for your work! I got my Technician license last year and your site was one of the resources that I found as a result.
OrangeMonkey 4y ago
My wife and I were feeling cooped up from Covid so we started a new hobby - storage auctions. We buy abandoned storage units at auction, sell the things, keep (very very rarely) any upgrades or things we want, and move to the next. 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.
photochemsyn 4y ago
The author mentions bike repair as a hobby, and the issue with trying to turn that into a monetized hobby will quickly become apparent once you talk to some experienced full-time bike mechanics. As a hobbyist your scope is almost always rather narrow, i.e. you may know all about how to repair your particular model of bicycle, and perhaps a few others. In contrast a professional will deal with dozens of models and will also know who to contact for specialty jobs (some of the early suspension bicycles, for example, require highly specialized tools that only a few mechanics own and which are no longer produced). 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.
- SnaggyJoker 4y ago
  Something you will find is that sometimes you can become friends with the owners of the speciality shops and borrow their tools. I have run into this in the automotive repair field. Specifically when I was repairing foreign vehicles. Of course some times the shop will charge you for the favor and usually it is better to just recommend them for the service if they have the availability. This can also help bolster your friendship with them. 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!
13415 4y ago
I monetized my German science fiction novels by publishing them on Amazon, but so far have regretted it. They generally get great reviews and sure have their readers, but mostly just one of them (by far not the best) sells well continuously. The rest would require marketing that is a completely different activity than writing books, and really not fun to me at all. Moreover, you invariably get the occasional bad or intentionally misleading, if not downright evil review, and if you happen to get one of those in the beginning by accident, then your book will never sell - nobody is going to buy a self-published book with a score below 4 stars and future reviews will be lower than deserved due to the anchoring effect. I'm no longer sure the benefits of getting a few hundred readers and the corresponding royalties outweigh the substantial efforts of getting a book ready for publication, which have nothing to do with the joy of writing. 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.
- victorstanciu 4y ago
  First of all, congrats on finishing the novels. That's a huge accomplishment in itself! 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?
- ffhhj 4y ago
  You should convert them into ebook apps, something I have noticed is that nobody reads the reviews. Maybe give the first chapters for free and the rest paid. Just make sure the user knows that's the deal so they don't get frustrated.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- 4y ago
abakker 4y ago
I think there's an important distinction here. Monetizing metalwork or woodwork (which I do, and have done) doesn't seem to ruin the fun for me. The hobby is about output, and more time spent equals more practice equals more skill. So, with some hobbies, it really benefits to get commercial. 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.
quags 4y ago
I turned my love of computer hobby into a business and have been running it for many years. I don't regret it, I still like computers but no longer have that young love for it where I would learn all about another cool programming language. Part of that may be I am older, part is certainly dealing with customers. It is now a job so I sometimes say I lost my hobby by doing what I loved. I at least like my job but need a new hobby.
karaterobot 4y ago
> In a professional environment, it makes total sense to measure time. Cheesy as it might sound, time is money for the professional, and when your paycheck depends on how much work you can do in a limited time span, time itself becomes a factor for optimization. But when the main reason you’re doing it is because you love doing it, time becomes the gun you shoot yourself in the foot with. 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.
xwdv 4y ago
Monetizing a hobby is like monetizing your wife. Things will never really be the same afterwards, even if you decide to demonetize.
- winterplace 4y ago
  Or monetizing an app
floren 4y ago
I've spent the last 5 months or so working on a custom-built mouse, for the fun of it. Designed the PCB around a high-end laser sensor, designed the case in FreeCAD, wrote the firmware. I've made two so far and given one of them away. I'm planning to make at least a few more. By the time I get 5 or 6 built, I'll have probably spent $1000 on the project, although a majority of that is a 3d printer. 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.
- batperson 4y ago
  Sounds interesting. Got a picture or something ?
  - floren 4y ago
    http://jfloren.net/b/2022/3/2/0 http://jfloren.net/b/2022/3/2/0 has pictures and a video
draw_down 4y ago
soheil 4y ago
I wish there was a straightforward way to monetize software written as a hobby just like selling pottery on Etsy.
qiskit 4y ago
What'll you do for enjoyment then?
bradlys 4y ago
I think something missing here is return on investment and opportunity cost. 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.
ed-209 4y ago
It sure is a fine line - putting your thing out to the world & trying to make more of the world appreciate the thing more. My hobby being an art, I get to experience this internal tug-of-war with each new work. If I do nothing, I may be the only person on earth to appreciate it, which feels really bad. If I promote with the handful of inadequate tools at my disposal, I may become lost in metrics and disappointed with cost/benefit.

161 points by victorstanciu 4y ago

If you are so obsessesed with optimizing your life (most of us on HN are) and want to monetize your hobby, pick a job so interesting and open ended that your job becomes your hobby. You are killing two birds with one stone in that case

koheripbal 4y ago
Running a small business is like this.
n4bz0r 4y ago
> You are killing two birds with one stone in that case Achievement unlocked: Dennis the Menace
cehrlich 4y ago
The downside is you might end up resenting your hobby
- Damogran6 4y ago
  Then pivot. So many of these decisions are "If you do X, you'll end up with Y" as if that's the end. There's nothing wrong with 'trying something on and changing your mind once you see how it looks.'
  - political12345 4y ago
    exactly
jotm 4y ago
That's a very limited pool with high competition though :D

daveaiello 4y ago

The author has some good points. 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.

hammock 4y ago
Magic the gathering?

thowaway_420_69 4y ago

Turning your hobby into a business can get complicated, to the extent that it could kill your passion for it. It is, in the end, a commitment that requires hard work.

black_13 4y ago

AussieWog93 4y ago

I've monetised my hobbies three times so far. 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.

sprkwd 4y ago
I’d love to know what they all were.
rockbruno 4y ago
I agree with this sentiment. I started taking sponsorships for my blog and it very quickly sucked the fun away from it. I now felt like I couldn't do whatever I wanted because I needed to optimize the sponsor's time and post content to make them feel like it was worth it. In other words, it became a boring job.
agumonkey 4y ago
> All three times it has become lucrative, but none of them are hobbies any more. 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.
- bombcar 4y ago
  One way to do it have the hobby be something that’s entirely yours (you carve intricate models of Vietnamese railway cays say) and someone else sells them, almost without any communication as to “what is selling etc”. Never take orders.

u2077 4y ago

As someone with a somewhat successful side project, I highly recommend monetizing it. However, you should choose a small enough price that you don’t feel like you owe customers fast support or every feature they ask for. (In some cases a donation button may be better) 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.

DoreenMichele 4y ago
(In some cases a donation button may be better) If you are not a charity, do not call it a donation. Call it a tip.
- jlokier 4y ago
  Fun fact: Tips are subject to income tax, donations are not. 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.)
  - DoreenMichele 4y ago
    Years ago, PayPal had donate buttons and my recollection is there was text somewhere on the site indicating that if you hit $10k in donations, they would want a copy of your 501c3 or some such. It's one of the reasons I stopped using donate buttons. 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.
- WJW 4y ago
  Is there some legal distinction? Getting money with the expectation that it will be used to further some vaguely defined public good you are doing (writing freely available software in this case) sounds exactly like a charity, especially since you will be doing most of the public good regardless of whether you get the donation or not. A tip on the other hand is an additional payment for some good or service that you were already paying for, but that is not the case for most software projects.

ThinkBeat 4y ago

A hobby should be something you can do for yourself. Something you get pleasure / relaxation / a welcomed distraction. out of doing. 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.

FourthProtocol 4y ago
With things like (marathon) running, hiking, it is easy to meassure Objective progress and qutie hard to moneteize. 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?
- verve_rat 4y ago
  But that is not running, hiking, or snowboarding. What you are talking about is making maps and writing reviews. They are related, but are not the thing the enthusiast enjoys.
  - FourthProtocol 4y ago
    They were ideas of the top of my head. And what if he/she DOES enjoy that aspect? I'm a snowboarder and love it. The point is to have an open mind. Like it? Great. If not, also great, no?

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

I like the "don't get caught up in metrics" approach. 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.

deebosong 4y ago
I don't mean to pry, but it sounds like you have "retired" and found your calling instead, if you are working for free, but are 100% invested in the quality and professionalism? And that you have your basic needs (and then some) pretty much covered? 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?
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  It is amazing. I was forced into it, though. I found out (the hard way) that no one wants to play with older folks. I'm very fortunate that I had built up enough of a base to retire early. It wasn't planned, but it was there. I just heard from an ex-employee of mine, that he just got let go, and is running smack-dab into this ageism issue. He's very, very good, but he'll struggle like hell, and he doesn't have my resources. 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.

turtledove 4y ago

Why do we feel the need to be 'productive' (in the economics sense) even in our leisure time? 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?

Helitioo 4y ago
My personal development should not be driven by my work. 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.
- abhaynayar 4y ago
  You can have personal development without being productive. 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.

drmpeg 4y ago

There's an old saying in ham radio. "If you want to make a small fortune in ham radio, start with a large fortune".

Damogran6 4y ago
Also racing cars. Boats have a lot of similar aphorisms, too.
- krallja 4y ago
  “Boat, (noun): a hole in the water you throw money into”
  - PyWoody 4y ago
    Break Out Another Thousand

Arrivest 4y ago

As a software developer, when I monetized my hobby code that solved a niche problem, I needed to spend 10x more time to make it from "usable for me" to "usable for users".

pmlnr 4y ago

Never monetize your hobby. You'll end up hating it, whereas it's supposed to charge you up.

vonunov 4y ago

Turning your hobby into your business is a very different move from getting a job in the field that your hobby suggests

draw_down 4y ago

makz 4y ago

I don't understand how people monetize hobbies. For me a hobby could be a very niche thing that only interests me and maybe a dozen people in the world. Hard to monetize that.

lupire 4y ago
Why so obscure?
Finnucane 4y ago
In that case, you go into academia.

ahmed_ds 4y ago

One key point here is how comfortable you are with pressure and deadlines. Hobbies don't have deadlines but clients/users/stakeholders do. No matter what value you provide the hobby-centric approach of doing it on your own time, own pace might not work out.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
That depends on the hobby you're monetizing, I think. For instance, one of my hobbies is watchmaking (cleaning, servicing, restoring). I don't do it for money, but those who do don't really adhere to deadlines. It's all very open ended, even for the large companies like Seiko and Rolex. They don't guarantee a timeframe, and you won't know how long they'll have it until they tell you they're sending it back. 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.

blantonl 4y ago

Ah, the old phrase "my avocation is my vocation" 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 :)

victorstanciu 4y ago
I feel like you might like one of my previous posts too (https://tegowerk.eu/posts/serendipity/ https://tegowerk.eu/posts/serendipity/). The trajectory of my life has also been shaped and defined by a series of decisions and events which didn't seem at all momentous at the time :)
bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
Just wanted to thank you for your work! I got my Technician license last year and your site was one of the resources that I found as a result.

OrangeMonkey 4y ago

My wife and I were feeling cooped up from Covid so we started a new hobby - storage auctions. We buy abandoned storage units at auction, sell the things, keep (very very rarely) any upgrades or things we want, and move to the next. 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.

photochemsyn 4y ago

The author mentions bike repair as a hobby, and the issue with trying to turn that into a monetized hobby will quickly become apparent once you talk to some experienced full-time bike mechanics. As a hobbyist your scope is almost always rather narrow, i.e. you may know all about how to repair your particular model of bicycle, and perhaps a few others. In contrast a professional will deal with dozens of models and will also know who to contact for specialty jobs (some of the early suspension bicycles, for example, require highly specialized tools that only a few mechanics own and which are no longer produced). 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.

SnaggyJoker 4y ago
Something you will find is that sometimes you can become friends with the owners of the speciality shops and borrow their tools. I have run into this in the automotive repair field. Specifically when I was repairing foreign vehicles. Of course some times the shop will charge you for the favor and usually it is better to just recommend them for the service if they have the availability. This can also help bolster your friendship with them. 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!

13415 4y ago

I monetized my German science fiction novels by publishing them on Amazon, but so far have regretted it. They generally get great reviews and sure have their readers, but mostly just one of them (by far not the best) sells well continuously. The rest would require marketing that is a completely different activity than writing books, and really not fun to me at all. Moreover, you invariably get the occasional bad or intentionally misleading, if not downright evil review, and if you happen to get one of those in the beginning by accident, then your book will never sell - nobody is going to buy a self-published book with a score below 4 stars and future reviews will be lower than deserved due to the anchoring effect. I'm no longer sure the benefits of getting a few hundred readers and the corresponding royalties outweigh the substantial efforts of getting a book ready for publication, which have nothing to do with the joy of writing. 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.

victorstanciu 4y ago
First of all, congrats on finishing the novels. That's a huge accomplishment in itself! 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?
ffhhj 4y ago
You should convert them into ebook apps, something I have noticed is that nobody reads the reviews. Maybe give the first chapters for free and the rest paid. Just make sure the user knows that's the deal so they don't get frustrated.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
4y ago

abakker 4y ago

I think there's an important distinction here. Monetizing metalwork or woodwork (which I do, and have done) doesn't seem to ruin the fun for me. The hobby is about output, and more time spent equals more practice equals more skill. So, with some hobbies, it really benefits to get commercial. 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.

quags 4y ago

I turned my love of computer hobby into a business and have been running it for many years. I don't regret it, I still like computers but no longer have that young love for it where I would learn all about another cool programming language. Part of that may be I am older, part is certainly dealing with customers. It is now a job so I sometimes say I lost my hobby by doing what I loved. I at least like my job but need a new hobby.

karaterobot 4y ago

> In a professional environment, it makes total sense to measure time. Cheesy as it might sound, time is money for the professional, and when your paycheck depends on how much work you can do in a limited time span, time itself becomes a factor for optimization. But when the main reason you’re doing it is because you love doing it, time becomes the gun you shoot yourself in the foot with. 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.

xwdv 4y ago

Monetizing a hobby is like monetizing your wife. Things will never really be the same afterwards, even if you decide to demonetize.

winterplace 4y ago
Or monetizing an app

floren 4y ago

I've spent the last 5 months or so working on a custom-built mouse, for the fun of it. Designed the PCB around a high-end laser sensor, designed the case in FreeCAD, wrote the firmware. I've made two so far and given one of them away. I'm planning to make at least a few more. By the time I get 5 or 6 built, I'll have probably spent $1000 on the project, although a majority of that is a 3d printer. 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.

batperson 4y ago
Sounds interesting. Got a picture or something ?
- floren 4y ago
  http://jfloren.net/b/2022/3/2/0 http://jfloren.net/b/2022/3/2/0 has pictures and a video

draw_down 4y ago

soheil 4y ago

I wish there was a straightforward way to monetize software written as a hobby just like selling pottery on Etsy.

qiskit 4y ago

What'll you do for enjoyment then?

bradlys 4y ago

I think something missing here is return on investment and opportunity cost. 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.

ed-209 4y ago

It sure is a fine line - putting your thing out to the world & trying to make more of the world appreciate the thing more. My hobby being an art, I get to experience this internal tug-of-war with each new work. If I do nothing, I may be the only person on earth to appreciate it, which feels really bad. If I promote with the handful of inadequate tools at my disposal, I may become lost in metrics and disappointed with cost/benefit.