If you’ve got a hobby you love, why not get paid to do it? Whether it’s crafting, sports or reading, your pastime can become a lucrative side hustle. The key is to find the right audience and platform. Here’s how to turn your hobbies into a stream of income.
Sell Crafts
Etsy has become a global leader in e-commerce, particularly for selling handmade, vintage, and unique items. As a seller, you’ll need to follow Etsy’s guidelines, ensuring the items sold are either made, designed or sourced by the seller. You also need to take original photos. (You can’t use stock photos to sell on Etsy.) And, you must disclose if you’re using partners to produce the items that you sell. Following the rules is important because the site is not shy about booting anyone that violates the guidelines.
That said, Etsy gives you wide freedom to offer anything from woodwork to t-shirts; dolls to jewelry. The site also has a vibrant “printables” business, which allows clever artists, illustrators — or simply great organizers — to create paper products that can be sold hundreds of times with no physical costs for the creator.
You decide what to sell and how much to charge for it. The site simply handles the marketing for a portion of the revenue. There are few better ways for turning a hobby into a profitable side hustle.
Illustrate
And if you love to draw, several other platforms can also help you turn this hobby into a profitable side hustle.
For instance, Fiverr has a vibrant community of illustrators, who offer to draw everything from corporate advertising reels to cartoons. One top-rated freelancer does product illustrations. Another will do pen-and-ink drawings on demand. Anime characters. Caricatures. If it can be put to paper, you can offer to illustrate it.
You set your own prices and deadlines for your work. You also dictate other terms, such as whether the buyer can ask for revisions or buy commercial rights to your art.
Another site called Reedsy, enlists freelance artists to illustrate books. This could involve designing book jackets or illustrations within the copy. When this site, which specializes in helping self-published authors, gets a client request, it refers the client to up to five illustrators working in the client’s genre. Illustrators bid on the projects they want, saying what they’d do, when they could deliver the finished project, and how much they’d charge.
Read
Meanwhile, US Review of Books pays bibliophiles to read and review books. Pay isn’t head-turning. You get $25 to $75 per gig, depending on the length of your review. But, the requirements are modest. — and many avid readers review books for free on Amazon anyway.
If you’re able to edit while you read, you can get paid fairly well. Several sites, including Reedsy, PenguinFreelancers and ServiceScape, pay for skilled freelancers to provide copy and content edits of everything from novels to academic papers.
Coach
Love sports? Whether you’re into baseball, basketball, la crosse, soccer, swimming or pickleball, you can get paid to coach your favorite sports as a side hustle. Several sites, including TeachMeTo, CoachUp and Athletes Untapped, enlist sports enthusiasts to coach everyone from kids to active adults.
You decide what sports to coach, how much to charge and when you’re available. You also determine where to meet — whether that’s a local field or your home pickleball court.
Make music
If music is your passion, you can turn this hobby into a profitable side hustle by teaching music online or writing songs for special occasions.
A site called LessonFace helps musicians connect with students from around the world. Wyzant, another big tutoring platform, also enlists freelancers to tutor music students.
If you’d rather compose than teach, consider signing up with Songfinch. This site pays artists about $100 per gig to compose and perform short custom songs for people wanting to commemorate a special event, such as a wedding, anniversary, birthday or graduation. Importantly, you keep the rights to the song. The buyer simply gets a license to play it.
Play games
Gamer? A great way to turn a gaming hobby into a profitable side hustle is to sign up with StartPlaying. This site brings together enthusiasts to play fantasy games like Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder online. And it enlists freelance “Game Masters” to organize games and direct the play. Game Masters set the price of each game and determine how many players can join.
