Turning Your Hobby into a Passive Side Hustle

Everyone has a hobby. Something that they love doing when they aren’t doing their day job. For a lucky few, they can turn that hobby into a side income. Even better is being able to turn that hobby into a passive income that you can grow alongside your main income.

What is a passive income? It’s when you get paid for work you’ve done previously. You could be at a beach but you’re still selling books, earning advertising revenue or gaining commission off product sales. Here we take a look at how to turn your hobby into one of these passive side incomes. 

If you have something to sell

For those with something to sell, you have the ability to set up an online store where anyone interested can purchase an item. For many people, this will involve getting an order and then shipping out to them. This can be fairly passive if it’s not time sensitive. 

A more passive way would be to use drop shipping. This is where you sell an item, that order gets sent to a warehouse and then they send it out for you. It gives you the sale without needing to worry about stock, storage or overheads. 

If you’re a writer

Are you a great writer? If so, you can sell books. This is perhaps the most classic way of earning a passive income. Imagine how much J.K. Rowling still gets from the sales of Harry Potter books.

While that is a dream scenario, you can still earn a great passive side income from your own novels or perhaps you want to write non-fiction. Biographies, how-to guides and buying guides and all great ideas for eBooks. You can publish them easily through Amazon and watch the sales come in. 

If you can make a great website

There are many ways that a website can earn money. We’ve already mentioned ecommerce but you can also earn plenty of money through affiliate marketing and advertising. This works very well on blog sites.

This is perfect for those who are good at writing and have a hobby where you can impart your knowledge. An example of this would be someone who loves model trains. They could create a whole website dedicated to it and enjoy the revenue you get from the traffic.

The website needs to be great and look professional. You don’t need to spend money to do that as you can create a free logo that you can check out here and you can create a free website with WordPress. 

If you have a passion

For those with a passion for anything, you can turn that into a great passive income with YouTube videos. You may want to review musical instruments, make top 10 film lists or perhaps discuss the untold stories of WWII.

Whatever you have a passion for, you can use that to create high-quality videos with a tool such as Animoto. Some patience is required as you’ll need your channel to grow subscribers, but it can be a fantastic passive income once you do.

If you take great photos

There is a great way to sell photos online without even worrying about getting orders or sending anything out to clients. If you upload your photos to a stock website such as Shuttershock, you can get royalties from it. 

It can be a great way to turn your photography passion into a second income. You can even add to this by creating your own website and selling your photos through an online store. 

A word of warning

You may be excited about the possibility of earning a second income but there is a word of warning. These aren’t going to be instant money earners. It can take a while to make a name for yourself, gain subscribers, get online traffic or build your brand. It takes hard work but eventually it can turn into a lucrative side hustle.