Turning your
hobby into a successful career takes a lot of careful planning and smart thinking. Since the pandemic, many
startups have sprouted up at a sporadic pace. People are trying to do what they love and earn from it.
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However, transforming your
hobby into a successful career could be tasking, and time-consuming. You’ll also need to identify if your hobby can pay the bills or can metamorphose into something big.
In this article, I’m going to explore 4 ways you can transform your hobby into a successful career.
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Research On The Financial Possibilities Of Your Hobby
This should be the first consideration when attempting to make a career out of your hobby. Henry Ford has been popularly quoted to have said, ”Make money out of what you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” This is very true in many respects. Without money, the business fails. Discouragement sets in. Before you quit your regular 8 to 5 job and move on to transform your hobby into a successful career, ensure that there’s an available market where your hobby can be sold.
Before you switch to engaging full-time into your hobby-turn-career, make sure you work on your hobby as a side hustle first, before taking it up as a full-time business. For instance, if you love beautifying ladies as a makeup artist and you want to delve into it full-time, you must have had a considerable amount of customers whose patronages and pay is either nearly the same with or more than your current salary.
If it’s far too lower, it’s advisable to still keep it as a side hustle. Ensure you’ve tested the waters before diving in. You can also start by offering free services to potential customers to get feedback so as to understand the possibility of profitability.
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Start Advertising And Marketing
Before you finally take up that hobby and transform it into a career, make sure you’ve already built an audience around it. Advertising and marketing your hobby can be rewarding. Run a promotion around your side hustle. For example, if you love baking and you want to go into catering business, ensure you leverage on the power of the internet.
You can start a blog on baking, build social media pages, drop daily contents and run ads. You can run a Facebook ad for as low as N500. Following the right search engine optimization models can give traction to your business website, too.
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Build A Team Around Your Hustle
As your side hustle begins to pay off, it’s expedient to employ people that can keep it running even while you focus on your 9-5 job. For example, if you’re into baking confectioneries and the likes, you might likely have to employ the services of three people in your business – a social media manager, a delivery person, and a co-baker.
You can employ more depending on the growth of your side hustle. This is how to build the foundational phase of your business. Rather than making your business a one-man show, you can hire people when affordable.
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Fund Your Hobby With Your Salary
If you’re earning a salary, it’s advisable to fund your hobby in order to give it the necessary career frame it needs. Transforming hobbies into career will cost you money. You’ll need to set up a website for your business. Starting with WordPress, Wix.com and so on, are good places to start building your website.
Getting a website on WordPress will cost you at least the sum of N10,000. You’ll also need to pay your team, get new equipment and so on. This could be funded from your salary or savings. As you delve into it full-time, you can apply for a loan.
Conclusion
There you have it – how to turn your hobby into a successful career. Always remember that there will be challenges to face when trying to transform your hobby into a successful career. However, be reminded that people have successfully done it and yours can’t be an exception.
Featured Image Source: Forbes
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