Tips For Choosing a Hobby

Anna D. Banks, GCDF asked:

Baby Boomers - Turn your Creative Practical Hobbies into a business

The retired life

The baby boomers are those who were born in the mid 1940s to the mid 1950s and are now retired and living the cozy life. But is it cozy? If you were to ask any one of these retired individual how they are enjoying being retired, you would get a response saying they enjoyed it initially but now they are bored, with lots of free time and nothing to do. Adjusting to a retired life can be difficult for some, especially those who are used to being active and working. How much golf and sailing can one person do any way?

One of the biggest disadvantages of being retired is the fact that there is a problem of money. You are retired and do not have a monthly income coming in, so playing golf, sailing or just going shopping may not be an option to those who have money constraints.

Pick a hobby

Every single person, man, woman, teenager or child has a hobby. Something they enjoy doing when they have free time. It could be reading, singing, swimming, dancing, painting, gardening, shopping, and decorating…. the list is endless. Hobbies help people relax and distress. When we get involved in our hobby we forget all our troubles and worries.

Each one of us is talented and enthusiastic about our hobby. Wouldn't it be great if our hobby could help us make money? This is what most of the baby boomers are doing. They are converting their hobby into money making ventures. But do not confuse this with a quick money making scheme, because it is not that simple. It involves hard work and dedication.

Make your hobby work for you

Once you have decided that you are going to use your hobby to make money and get an extra income, then comes the time to make your hobby work for you. Before you start with earning money through your hobby, you have to evaluate whether or not your hobby is marketable. You need a hobby that is marketable or you need to think of a way to make your hobby into a marketable resource.

If you enjoy collecting books, open up a small library with a monthly subscription. If you are a woman who enjoys shopping and is aware of the latest styles and trends then become a personal shopper for those who need it. If gardening is your forte then write a book on gardening or create a website that generates money on gardening. If you like writing, then work with a magazine or a local newspaper.

If you love kids, open up a day care at home or start teaching or helping out at the local kindergarten. If you enjoy cooking, start a small catering business or work with a restaurant. If you are poetic, then get in touch with a greeting card company and help create the copy for greeting cards. If photography is your passion, make that work for you. If you are interested in tarot cards, then become a tarot card reader. There are so many options and so many avenues open for you.

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Antonio Thornton asked:

Everyone has a hobby of some kind - most people have several. There are people who collect stamps; people who make scrapbooks or create graphic designs with their digital photos; people who love horseback riding, hiking or bicycling. Maybe you do something that you don't even know is considered a "hobby". Technically, anything that you engage in for fun that is outside of your occupational activities is considered a hobby- so chances are you have lots of hobbies!

Have you ever considered turning one of your hobbies into a business? You may be surprised at how virtually any hobby can be converted to profits, and without tremendous overhead or ridiculously high start up costs. What's even better, you aren't required to have a specific product to sell! In fact, you can make your knowledge your product to sell.

If you participate regularly in some sort of hobby, you are bound to know quite a bit about it. If you make scrapbooks of your family and friends, then you probably have extensive knowledge about where to get the best deals on your scrapbooking supplies, and how to create special effects on your photo album pages. Maybe you have magazines and websites that you refer to all the time for inspiration. You have the personal knowledge of what it took to get started in the hobby. For example, scrapbooking requires that you have access to supplies like paper, stickers, glue, photo albums and scrapbooking tools. Someone who has just learned about scrapbooking and thinks they want to start the hobby will need to figure out what they need to get started. You could offer this knowledge as your product to sell. Think people won't buy it? Think again.

If you've ever used a search engine to look up information, you know that it's time consuming to sort through all the data to find exactly what you're looking for. Often, you're given tons of information that doesn't seem all that reliable, and you have to determine what you can use and what you need to avoid! When you make your personal knowledge of a hobby your product to sell- you're helping everyone who wants to find that information without spending hours searching for it!

You do not need to have a physical product to sell in order to make a profit. In fact, having an inventory or having to create physical items from materials offers a lower profit margin than selling information.

Information products are among the top items to sell for a variety of reasons. They offer a low cost to get started, meaning you start earning a profit after just a couple sales. Informational products include eBooks, online courses or email courses, software, audio files, web sites- basically anything that can be downloaded from the internet. You aren't required to have an inventory and you can set up your business model to allow you to earn money by the work other people do for you.

So now, maybe you're thinking that this is all well and good- but you still don't have a product to sell! You haven't written an eBook, and maybe your writing skills leave little to be desired. Creating online or email courses are time consuming, and to create software you need special training. You can still sell your knowledge. Create a "package" of items that someone would need in order to get started in a particular hobby, and promote it as the "everything you need to know" about starting the hobby. Contact someone who has written an informative eBook on the topic; find someone else who has made an online video or radio show regarding it, and request permission to sell the items in your package. If they have affiliate programs, you can probably sign up for the affiliate programs and earn commission that way. Include your list of great providers for supplies or information that you refer to regularly, and anything else you know a person needs in order to get started in the hobby. This is a product to sell: selling your knowledge.

Once you've earned money from this type of information product business, you can invest in the creation of your own products if you want, or start offering more informational products that allow you to sell your knowledge!

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When I was younger the issue of boredom always seemed to come up. I long for those days now that my work week is 80+ hours but creativity was so important while growing up poor. One of my favorite things to do was pretend I was pitching in the major leagues and managed to situate a table on its side so that the tennis ball would either pop up or ground out to me. I spent days playing solo Monopoly and weeks creating a fully stocked video store mockup. I think the poorer a person is the more interesting their hobbies are.

Some very common hobbies include collecting things such as dolls, die cast cars, real cars, or weapons. Coin and stamp collecting have long been a hobby for many, especially of commemorative mints (www.coin-usa.com). Coin and paper money from around the world is collected by Trader Joes if you haven’t noticed. A lot of gold and silver coins are worth something because of the amount of the particular metal contained in it.

The collecting of action figures (www.herofigure.com) used to be isolated to the very young and has crept its way into the hands of middle aged men. Comic book popularity has enjoyed the same fate and has created multiple movie trilogy empires in Hollywood. I don’t know if this popularity is due to the growing infancy of adult men or the impressive quality of modern movies. Either way it looks as if the comic book genre will continue to impress.

A lot of collectors base their hobby on an addiction such as alcoholism. Wine collectors invest in storage units, large quantities of aging bottles, and some even build entire rooms customized with climate controlled environments for the storage and display of their wine. In college I remember seeing fraternity bedrooms outlined by old bottles of consumed Vodka as if they were little league trophies. One of the most popular social hobbies men have is a combination of beer and poker (www.queenplay.com). These events are usually shared on a regular basis with more than two people where food is consumed. This hobby can be extended to Las Vegas if the player needs a more stimulating environment.

Hobbies seem to differ between people depending on the geographic location. Shooting ranges are more popular here outside of Seattle and are even more popular if one visits the eastern portion of this state as opposed to the limits of the city. Hobbies differ between genders—shopping for clothes is more popular among women while playing basketball is more popular among men. Another demographic where hobbies tend to differ is in the different age groups. Gardening is very popular among the older folks while radio controlled racing is more popular amongst the young. Children spend more time swimming than they do cooking. Adults spend more time cooking than they do swimming. The same thing applies to paintball, snowboarding, skateboarding, and Saturday morning cartoons. Now that I have money I can actually buy things to entertain myself. Rather than pretending to ride a dirt bike I can actually get one.

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You know what it is like when the kids have time off from school and the weather is playing up. They always sit about moping and saying they are bored, even though they have endless video games and toys at their disposal. What they needs is a past-time that has been around for generations, is cheap and easy to get started in and won't make much mess for the parents to tidy up. Stamp collecting for kids may not sound like the answer to parent's dreams but with so many possibilities on offer, this is one hobby that is sure to be a hit.

Stamp collecting for kids is a great hobby because it doesn't cost a lot of money to get started. Every kid will start with a few stamps. Later the kid can develop their collection based on what he likes. The hobby may look dull and boring but if the kids see the wide variety of stamps the kids will get to like it right away. There are countless stamps featuring their favorite comic book heroes, singers, TV shows and sporting stars which means that stamp collecting for kids can follow on from their existing likes. Stamps are being issued all the time and some of them feature kid's favorite. The means that they can have a collection without knowing that they are already collecting stamps.

Another great benefit of stamp collecting for kids is what the child buys today can be a great investment for their future. There are a number of investors putting money into stamps to guarantee a return in the future and even on a child's pocket money, a decent collection built in their youth can provide a return when they are older. It may not be enough to put them through college but it can certainly provide a return to allow them to have some fun when they get there. So stamp collecting for kid can be really fun. And in the future, their stamp collection can bring them money too!

One thing that most parents like about stamp collecting is that it is a hobby that will keep them buzy. It is also a hobby that will teach their kids about value and learning how to take care of their things. The kids may think that they are not learning much in this hobby. However, they may not realized that they are cultivating the responsibility of taking care of a collection. This trait will serve them well in the future. That is one reason why many parents like to see their children to take up stamp collecting. It is even better if they have some friends with the same hobby as it will allow them even more interaction as they can swap and collect together.

Stamp collecting for kids may not be the most exciting hobby in the world. Most kids would rather play video games. However, it is a hobby that will still provide fun, instill reponsibility and allows interaction with other people. This should be a great hobby that all parents should encourage their kids to adopt.

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