With the advancement of social media, turning a hobby into a side hustle or even a full blown, lucrative business has become exceptionally easy.
With just a nicely done website, a couple social media pages, and a few dollars to invest, you can have something truly valuable up and running in pretty much no time.
However, starting a side hustle is like having a small business which means it can require a lot of effort and time on your end.
While hobbies should always be fun, there are times when running a business definitely won’t be.
And so, the question is: how do you turn your hobby into a hustle without sucking the fun out of it? It’ll require some focus and flexibility, but it’s possible!
Here are 4 ways to make some money from something you love without losing your love for it.
Get organized and create boundaries.
Turning your hobby into a side hustle is a lot less labor-intensive than creating a full-blown business.
However, each process does have one thing in common: you absolutely need to be organized and structured in your approach.
It’s so easy to feel like you can do whatever, whenever you want when you’re making money from a hobby.
This is not true. You still need a firm set of boundaries to make sure that neither your money nor your mental or emotional health suffers in any way.
A few things to try:
- Get yourself a planner. Carve out hours during the week where you’ll work on your side hustle, and then days and hours that you’ll dedicate to other things in your life. Make it top priority to not blur these lines.
- Designate an area in your house where you will keep your work stuff. Having supplies all over the house makes it harder to seperate yourself from your work at the end of the day. Pick a space and keep everything there.
- Decide when you’ll do your hobby for money and when you’ll do it just to do it! This is super important because there will be days when you don’t want to do custom orders or you don’t feel like doing it as a service, and that’s OK! Set your boundaries early on.
At the end of the day, it’s totally up to you to decide what makes you feel productive and efficient without also feeling burdened and stressed.
Set aside time for yourself.
One of the biggest mistakes budding solo business owners make is blurring the lines between me-time and work time. Truth be told, not all of us can afford an office or create a separate space to take care of business, so it’s pretty easy to fall into this trap.
However, it’s important to have time away from work—even if what makes us our money and brings us joy happens to be the same thing.
So, knowing this, make sure you take some time out for yourself. Go get your nails done, treat yourself to a good meal, or simply read a book and take a nap.
Whatever it is that makes you nourished and recharged, do it! And then you can get back on the grind.
Work smarter, not harder.
Being a hard worker is a great trait to have. But when all that hard work leads to physical exhaustion and mental burnout, it doesn’t seem all that worth it.
Really, there is one truth we all seem to avoid: you can get the same results by working smarter, not harder.
Now this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put in any effort at all! Rather, you should be more intentional about how you use your energy, space, and time.
For example, let’s say your side hustle involves you shipping goods out to customers. You’re constantly packaging items, and running to and from the post office on a daily.
Instead of making multiple trips to the post office every day, why not streamline the process by picking one or two days out of the week where you package and ship all of your orders? Better yet, you could even have the packages picked up at your door!
See? That saves you both time and money in the long run! This is just one example, but there are many different ways to work smarter and not harder.
Remember that it’s still a hobby.
Remember that this is your hobby that you can make money from, and not a way to make money that also happens to be enjoyable.
Don’t exploit something that gives you true fulfillment and peace of mind for a quick dollar.
Create, serve, bake—whatever—at your own pace and sell according to how you feel. If at any point you no longer feel like doing it for money, you can stop and simply do it because you love to do it.
It’s really that simple.
