Friday, November 15, 2019

Hobby or Hustle? Here’s How to Decide

A woman sitting at an office table looking off in the distance.
Flamingo Images/Shutterstock

So, you’ve found a new hobby, and you absolutely love it! Maybe you’ve discovered the thrill of snowboarding or just picked up a paintbrush. Perhaps you’ve realized you have a knack for finding the best vintage clothes at the thrift store.

In today’s gig economy, you can turn almost any hobby into a money-making side hustle with enough effort. However, this can leave you feeling pressured to turn everything you love into a part-time job, which can suck the joy out of each new hobby.

Both hobbies and side gigs can be wonderful parts of your life, but how do you know whether you should turn a hobby into a hustle? Here are some ways to know where to draw the line.

Look at Your Schedule

If you’re good at a hobby—and, especially, if you’ve been doing it for years—it’s often tempting to think monetizing it will be simple. However, turning a hobby into a hustle is a time-consuming effort, no matter how experienced you are. If you’re already pressed for time, it’s probably not going to work well.

When you decide to monetize your hobby, you might need to invest some time into improving your skills. However, what really makes the process time-consuming is all the work required to get the word out about what you do.

You might need to build a website, create a social media strategy, attend networking events, design business cards, and much more. If adding those kinds of responsibilities to your schedule doesn’t sound feasible, your hobby should probably remain a hobby.

Consider Your Budget

Similarly, turning a hobby into a hustle can also drain away a lot of funds. Can you stand to lose money right now?

This might seem counterintuitive. After all, the whole point of a side hustle is to make more money. However, 29 percent of small businesses fail because they run out of money.

Before your side hustle becomes lucrative, it will just be an additional expense. For example, you might need to spend cash on promotional stuff, like flyers or web design. You might have to rent or buy a booth from which to sell your wares or purchase supplies to create your product. Also, until people know who you are, you won’t be making much income.

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