30 Hobbies That Make Money

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Hobbies are a great way to pass the time and they offer numerous mental health benefits, as they can calm you down and make you feel more relaxed. But what if someone told you that you could turn your favorite hobby into a money-making venture? In this article, you’ll find amazing hobbies that make money, with an estimated amount you can make with each option.

Where To Start

If you already have unique interests or hobbies you love, you can start turning them into profitable ventures, but you’ll first need to determine what you’re good at while identifying the potential it has to rake in a few bucks. That’s because, while hobbies are meant to be fun and relaxing, once you decide to monetize them as resources, you need to master that hobby to be able to convince others to invest financially, whether directly or indirectly.

You might also want to decide if you want to turn your hobby into a side gig or your main business, as these options might require different levels of commitment. How much income from hobbies you stand to make will depend on the hobby itself and the effort you put in.

That said, here are some tips to keep in mind if you’re thinking about turning your interests or hobbies into something profitable.

  • Teach Your Hobby to Others

A great way to earn money is by teaching others how to participate in it. For example, if you have knowledge in crocheting, you can set up a Youtube page, a blog, or use any streaming service to build an online following to teach others how to crochet and get your followers to sign up for your class and pay to receive lessons, as well as create workshops or design downloadable teaching materials.

  • Sell the Results of Your Hobby as Finished Products

Another way to have profitable hobbies is to sell the final product. For instance, if you enjoy sculpting, painting, or any other form of visual art hobby, you can sell your finished product to art lovers or collectors, preferably via online e-commerce platforms. Again, you need to be good at what you do so your products are worth buying.

  • Get a Job Related to Your Hobby

Another thing you can try is finding a job related to your passion or interest. For example, if you love writing, you could get a job as a writer.

  • Sign Up for Competitions

You can look for local competitions related to your hobby and sign up to participate in them. From baking and photography contests to video games tournaments, you’ll find various competitions to take part in, exhibit your talent and love for your hobby, and win cool cash prizes if you’re good enough. Many people have launched massive careers from winning or just taking part in competitions related to their lucrative hobbies.

Did You Know: Nearly 4 in 10 people in the US pursue side hustles or monetize their hobbies.

30 Hobbies That Make Money

While most people don’t typically get into hobbies to make money, some of them can become a reliable stream of income if you take them seriously. Depending on how well you manage to direct your interests and talents, you can earn some extra money or even turn your hobby into a small business that you can promote locally. If you’re still looking for hobby ideas that you can monetize, here are 30 options that can inspire you to get creative.

Taking Surveys

Believe it or not, taking surveys can be one of the simple money-making hobbies you can enjoy during your free time. Taking surveys is very easy, taking only a few minutes to complete. While they may not make you rich, you can earn anywhere from $5 to $10 per survey.

You can find the top survey sites here.

Freelancing

If you develop skills like coding, programming, photography, etc., you can monetize them through freelancing and make about $20 per hour for your services.

Crafts

No matter what crafts you enjoy, you can make your product available for sale on various e-commerce platforms if you do them well. The amount you can make will depend on how you price your final product. Among the crafts that make the most money are jewelry, art, and photography.

Drawing

If you like creating beautiful images on a canvas or on your tablet or computer, you can sell your drawings or art in general for cash. While getting started, you can charge as little as $5 per square inch of drawing.

Gardening

Aside from offering a soothing experience as you spend a relaxing time with nature, gardening can also provide side income if you sell your produce, from flowers and herbs to fruits and veggies. This low-cost business idea can yield high profits, as many specialty crops can bring as much as $90,000 per acre.

Writing

If you love putting your thoughts on paper in your free time, you’ll love hearing it’s one of the hobbies that can make money. The options are numerous, including starting a blog, freelance copywriting, writing books, and so on. Freelance writing can earn you $1,215 per week on average.

Blogging

Blogging isn’t only about writing, as you can share tutorials, conduct reviews, and update various types of content and earn a side income of $200 to $2,500 on average through paid sponsorships, affiliate marketing, or ads. If you want to find out how to make money blogging, click here.

Photography

You can make money from taking unique images and making them downloadable only for a fee or get paid for covering various events. Photographers can earn $30,000–$75,000 per year.

Graphic Design

Graphic design is an excellent niche to earn money from if you’re good at it. You can respond to graphic design job ads from various sites or even set up your own graphic design business, with a website or blog containing samples of your work. The current average yearly salary for a graphic designer is around $48,000, which makes it a great career.

Proofreading

Another way to put your writing and language skills to use via hobbies that make money online is through proofreading and correcting other people’s work. If you love fact-checking, correcting grammatical errors, and more, you can charge anywhere from $20 to $45 an hour as a proofreader.

Music

From singing to sound mixing engineering, you can create music and sell it on various music-related e-commerce platforms. If you’re good at playing any instrument, you can also offer lessons for a fee.

Reading

You can turn those comfy moments of reading in bed into one of your money-making hobbies from home by getting paid to read books, publications, academic papers, blogs, joining reading competitions, and more. Reading can earn you around $43,000 a year.

Dropshipping

While it might sound like a side gig, dropshipping can still apply to your hobby, depending on what it is. For example, if you love working on cars, you can turn that passion into a dropshipping business and sell car parts to other car enthusiasts, earning $1,000–$5,000 per month.

Dog Walking or Dog Sitting

If you love spending time and taking care of a man’s best friend, you’ll love dog sitting or dog walking for busy dog owners, in addition to being able to earn above $50,000 a year.

Cooking

This is one of the frugal hobbies that make money since you can earn money from cooking simply by preparing and selling meals on order, or starting a cooking class or a cooking-themed blog. However, you can also open a bakery or restaurant, depending on what you love to cook.

Professional Gaming

If you’re one of those who love playing online video games, you can make money from your passion by participating in various video gaming competitions, reviewing video games online, or even getting paid to test up-and-coming video games. If you put some effort in, you can earn $10,000 a month from playing video games.

Go Shopping for Profit

When wondering how to make money in your spare time, you can even consider making money from shopping. E-commerce platforms like Amazon offer ways for shoppers to make money by creating reselling accounts. The more items you sell, the more money you make.

Bake Homemade Dog Treats

If you’re both a dog lover and a passionate cook, you can start making healthy homemade dog treats. With so many dog owners looking for healthier feeding options for their pets, there’s a huge market for this passion. You can make an extra $500–$1,000+ per month selling homemade dog treats!

Key Takeaways

It’s possible to earn good money from your hobbies.
Providing payment options is vital to monetizing your hobbies.
There are several payment options available to choose from.
Although there are a lot of hobbies that can make money, it’s important to be really good at them to be able to market them.

Flying Drones

Flying drones is becoming an increasingly profitable hobby for many drone lovers. You can pilot drones to take aerial shots and videos for a wide range of businesses, including farmers, construction businesses, etc. As per Glassdoor, the median drone pilot salary is around $64,520.

Creating or Editing Videos

There’s an ever-growing demand for high-quality video content, and if you have a knack for creating or editing impressive videos, you can make loads of money from this passion. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that film and video editors make an average of $86,830 per year.

Web Development

Every business needs a good website, which is why web development is one of the hobbies that make money (especially in 2022). If you’re well-trained in creating and designing attractive websites, you can earn around $51,564 annually.

Spending Time on Social Media

If you love surfing social media platforms, you can earn some extra cash managing other people’s social media accounts, and if you have a large online following, you can make good money by becoming a social media influencer, earning between $40,000 and $100,000 a year.

Woodworking and Carpentry

Anything to do with carpentry and woodworking is a beautiful art form with great income potential. Plus, with many businesses taking over the carpentry industry, there’s a special opportunity to create unique woodworks that many people will gladly pay for. In addition to being among the crafts that make the most money, with carpenters making a median salary of $48,330, carpentry is easily recession-proof.

Fitness

For fitness enthusiasts who love to spend hours in the gym, you can turn your passion into a side gig or small business by becoming a personal trainer or starting a fitness blog or class online. Statistics collected in 2020 show that the average annual salary for personal trainers was $40,510.

Calligraphy

While many people think calligraphy is a dying art, there are endless opportunities for your artistic penmanship skills, making calligraphy another great hobby to make money. You can write on invitation cards, personalized gifts, signage, etc., or sell homemade cards. The average calligrapher salary in the US is around $64,490 per year.

Coding

Coding can lead to attractive job opportunities in many industries. You can also develop your own apps and software and earn an average salary of $63,903 per year.

Go Grocery Shopping for Others

If you don’t mind grocery shopping (or enjoy doing it), you can offer your services of taking care of other people’s grocery lists and earn $10–15$ per hour.

Watch Entertaining Videos

If you love watching entertaining videos online, it can be a great stream of income. Requiring only some free time, it’s among great retirement hobbies that make money, as several companies out there like Swagbucks are willing to pay you for watching things online.

Create a Podcast

Do you enjoy sharing your opinions or having thought-provoking discussions? If so, you could create a podcast that you can monetize using affiliate marketing or inviting guests who have products or services to sell and get paid in return. The most important thing is to have an audience.

Comedy

In case you’re the funny one in your circle, and everybody tells you how hilarious you are, your comedic talents could be a great answer to how to make money in your spare time. If writing jokes and making people laugh makes you feel good, you can consider a future in standup comedy, or even curate memes and viral videos on various social media platforms to amass a large following and earn through affiliate marketing.

Did You Know: The average side hustler spends 11–16 hours every week working on their hobby or small business.

What Are the Payment Method Options?

While all the options mentioned above can be great for earning money from your passion, you need to identify the right ways to receive your income from hobbies and set your rate.

Regarding your payment, there are several channels or platforms you can use. Here are a few of them.

Checks

Accepting checks is probably one of the easier options available, with the advantage of not having to deal with extra charges when depositing the checks into your bank account. The disadvantage is that some checks can take a while to be delivered.

PayPal

If you have many long-distance clients, an electronic payment system like Paypal is a wonderful option. The only disadvantage is that this option is still unavailable in many countries, so you need to check its availability before receiving payment from people in other countries.

Credit Cards

You can accept credit cards as another payment option for these profitable hobbies. Such payments are usually processed through PayPal accounts or other online payment systems. For the sake of convenience, you can choose to invest in your own payment processing equipment to make it easier to accept payments from your customers.

Using an Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) System

Electronic funds transfer systems also offer a quick and easy way to receive payments from your customers. With this option, a customer can make the payment directly from their bank account to yours without using a third-party platform or app. The downside is that such transactions are usually not instantaneous and can take up to four working days to go through.

The most important thing with money-making hobbies is to make your payment system as flexible as possible by providing various options for different customers, as well as to take good care of your finances–good business tax software can help you handle any bookkeeping issues.

When it comes to setting your rates, the best thing you can do is use others’ prices as a guide. Other valuable pointers that can help here include the following:

  • Consider time-based pricing
  • Value-based pricing
  • Project-based pricing
  • Set a benchmark
Did You Know: You can use accounting software to facilitate your payment collection process.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, hobbies can become more than simply fun and relaxing activities, as they are also potential avenues for generating wealth. If you’re already passionate about some activities on our list, you can use some of our tips to monetize your passion. On the other hand, if you’re unsure what hobbies to jump into, you can try any of the options mentioned and see if you’re good at them.

FAQ

What is a hobby that will make you money?

Any of the hobbies listed in this article can be excellent for making money. However, you need to be good enough at it to make your hobby marketable and attract others to invest in it.

How do I find a new hobby when nothing interests me?

If you have no special interests, you can try activities your friends are interested in or find ways to turn activities you already love into exciting hobbies. The most important thing is to take the first step, as you can never tell if something truly interests you until you’ve tried it.

What hobbies can you turn into a business?

When it comes to hobbies that make money, the options available are almost endless, and can include driving with Lyft or Uber, selling crafts, freelancing, becoming a tutor, event planning, cooking, web designing, etc.

ABOUT AUTHOR

I learned a lot about finance after working for a digital marketing company specializing in investing and trading stocks, forex, etc. After that, I got exposed to other verticals such as wealth management and personal finance, which further improved my understanding of the financial world.

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