Turning Your Hobby Into a Business: Part 2

1. Is the hobby scalable?

If it’s a business you’re looking to build then you need to consider whether your ‘hobby’ can be automated in any way, and whether you can outsource any aspects of the service or production.

If the answer to the above is yes, you then need to consider whether the cost of doing so still makes for a profitable business.

Let’s say I can sell my cards for £3 and I can produce 6 an hour. That’s £18. If I take off the cost of producing each card (£2 per card) then my profit is £6. If I then employ someone at £6 an hour to produce the cards then I’m now making £0. Therefore my business is limited to the amount of hours I can work on it myself. I can’t take on staff and as I don’t have a lot of spare time I’ll only ever make a small income from this particular business idea.

This would be enough to steer me away from this hobby as a business as it’s not scalable.

2. Will it still be a hobby when it’s paying the bills?

The final consideration is whether, when you’re doing it as a ‘job’ or it’s your business whether you’ll still enjoy it in the same way.

For example you enjoy spending a Sunday afternoon creating beautiful handmade cards for family and friends. Now imagine you’re doing that 9am-3pm every day to make money, will it still be as enjoyable?

These are some of the questions to ask yourself before turning your hobby into a business. There are lots more things to consider too: a hobby that doesn’t pay if you are simply making and selling items may become much more profitable if you can hold classes to teach other skills, create how to guides, run a blog on the topic etc.

Think laterally!

Are you now ready to turn your hobby/passion into a great business? Excellent, what will be your first step to getting this venture off the ground?