As Mark Twain famously said, “find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Turning a passion project into a high-paying job is what many people dream of doing. Unfortunately for many people, this dream never becomes fulfilled into reality. Perhaps one of the key deterrents to this is the fact that most people do not know how to transition from doing something as a hobby into doing it as a professional career. Here are five tips to help you make the transition:
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Make a Monetization Plan
There are different ways you can profit off of your hobby – advertising revenue, lead generation and referrals, sale of a flagship product/service, sale of exclusive content or upgrades, etcetera. In the broadest sense, a clear distinction between a hobby and a business/career is that the latter makes money. Thus, identifying the best way to make money from your hobby is the first official step towards making it a potentially lucrative career. Each business model has its pros and cons and no single approach is completely flawless. You will want to decide which business model to go with based on your production and inventory capacities, upfront costs, and target market.
Find Someone Who Has Successfully Done It
Perhaps the simplest, low-friction path to turning your hobby into a full-blown career is through a mentor or guide. Seek the advice of people who share the same interests as you have. If you are lucky enough, you may find someone who is willing to share his/her step-by-step journey from hobby to career. Social media makes it easy nowadays to find these invaluable connections with like-minded people.
Make Use of Free Tools
Free tools come with many restrictions, but they also let you test out what you need to switch from hobbyist to professional-grade results. For instance, if your hobby is translating video content from one language to another, you could use a free audio remover online to detach the original audio and then attach a new audio translation to that same video. These free tools help you achieve professional-grade results with little to no financial risk. Once you figure out which programs you need, then you can invest for full-access to said program/s.
Learn How to Ask For Money
In many cases, what’s stopping someone from turning their hobby into a career is the fear or inability to ask for money in exchange for their work. This is a persistent issue for hobbyists who are not natural-born entrepreneurs. Fortunately, it’s not something you either have or don’t have. You can train yourself to be more comfortable having these conversations with potential customers by practicing with close friends and family. And thanks to social media, you don’t even have to put a face on your services or business. You can anonymously sell your products/services online.
Consider Hiring Someone
For hobbyists who want to focus on the creative aspect of what they love doing rather than the business aspect, you always have the choice of hiring someone to handle the business end of operations. This doesn’t mean you become their employee. Instead, it becomes a partnership wherein you create the goods or services and they handle the sales, advertising, bookkeeping, etcetera. The division of tasks will vary based on what individual skills you and your chosen partner will bring to the table.
When turning your hobby into a career, it’s important to retain and protect the elements that make you love what you do. Never do anything that would compromise your relationship with that hobby otherwise you may end up recoiling from it as a career.
Categories: Tips And Advice Stuff
