Turn Your Hobby Into A Business With These Tips

Many of us dream of ditching the 9-5 job to pursue our hobby full time and have a better work-life balance,  but sadly, unless we already are millionaires, it is unlikely to happen. We have bills to pay, children to clothe and feed and everything else that we have to pay for.

However, there is one way to make that dream come true, and it does not involve a winning lottery ticket, and that is turning your hobby into a profitable business. Confused? Read on to find out how you can do it!

Photo by Nicate Lee on Unsplash

1. Create A Plan

You cannot go into any form of business without making some sort of plan. It does not have to be set in stone – in fact, it will almost definitely need to be tweaked along the way, but to start with you, you need to have a strategy. For example, if you are a keen hobby guitarist or other musician, you could look at becoming a music teacher. Before you give up the day job, use every spare hour possible, after work and on weekends, to find some students and begin teaching them. It will be exhausting, but put all of that money to one side. Once you have saved enough money to cover four to six months of expenses, (remember the costs of living as well as running a business), quit your job and go full time.

2) Get Your First Sale

You can’t have a business without a sale, whether you are offering goods or services. It does not matter if that first sale is worth £5 or £5000; it is the most important sale you will ever get, and the hardest one. There are plenty of strategies for actually getting your first sale, but it all depends on the product you are selling. If you are selling a service, you may want to start by offering a free trial and generating some word of mouth. If it’s a product, excellent product placement and advertising in the right places can lead to a sale. Social media is particularly powerful if you are trying to reach the masses on a small budget. Get it right, and before you know it, you will be working on a global scale, and searching for gas oil prices for shipping your products all over the country.

3) Network

Thee days, online marketing is the best way of attracting new customers, but do not discount the importance of good old fashioned networking. Attend trade shows, conferences, and groups in your specialty that cater to other professionals in the industry. You will learn a lot from these events and get the chance to network with people who are at the same stage as you, and preferably a little further. Just be sure you have an elevator speech prepared for moments like those. Your elevator speech is a brief overview of who you are and what you do in a one minute or less speech.

There is also a lot to be said for learning through trial and error. If you are good at what you do and there’s a market for your hobby, then there’s no reason why you can’t make it into a full-time job. Go ahead and see what happens!