- Home Scents – Candle Making
- A Saucy Adventure – Home Cooking
- Upping The Ante – Poker & Online Gambling
- Crafting the alphabet – Writing
- Pixel Perfect – Gaming
Imagine leaving your regular 9-5 behind and doing what you love every single day—waking up in the morning and knowing that your income comes from a place of passion and joy.
There has been a shift in the work landscape over the last 10 years, and pursuing passions and turning hobbies into paid work has played a big role in that change.
It is not uncommon for people to make heir full-time occupation travel, gaming, writing, or becoming a musician.
So if you have ever wondered if you can turn your passion, be it drawing or poker, into a lucrative career – you’re not alone.
The self-employment rate for most countries is rising.
Here is how it looks globally:
Source / Citation: OECD (2021), Self-employment rate (indicator).
And, it’s not surprising to see that figure on the rise. CNBC reported that almost half of older millennials wish that they had chosen a different career path.
47% of survey participants said that they would have chosen a different career path, amongst the reasons quoted:
- Pressure to pursue full-time education to degree level
- Lack of solid support to find interests and passions
- Financial realities aren’t clear with student debt vs. career prospects
- Fear of leaving the current city
- Staying in a poorly paid job due to lack of options and mounting student debt
The good news is that it is never too late to turn your hobby into a lucrative career.
5 Hobbies that turn into Lucrative Career Prospects
1. Home Scents – Candle Making
Have you ever heard of Yankee Candle? You might even have one in your home or know someone that does. They’re among some of the most popular gifted items and have a reputation for being affordable but luxurious items.
Yankee Candle started back in 1969 when Micheal Kittredge made a scented candle for his mother out of wax crayons. People started to place orders with him, and he invested the profits in better ingredients.
The company formed while Micheal was in High School and is now worth a huge $840 million with 560 stores worldwide.
2. A Saucy Adventure – Home Cooking
A sauce so good, it had a song as it entered Dragon’s Den UK. Levi Roots spent his childhood making sauces and food with his grandma in Jamaica.
He was learning the secret to mixing flavors perfectly.
Levi took the recipe with him to Brixton, where he continued to prepare it for his own family and eventually set up his Rasta’raunt in the 90s.
Levi is now worth a cool $45 million, and his sauce is available worldwide.
Levi isn’t the only success story; you can look to Ben & Jerry’s for inspiration too.
3. Upping The Ante – Poker & Online Gambling
You’ve probably heard of the big poker players like Dan Bilzerian, Doyle Brunson, and of course, big winner Antoni Esfandiari.
Players that turned their passion for poker into a full-time profession.
There is more to this than just being good at poker. Like any other business or hobby, it takes time to get your competency to a level you can succeed.
Interestingly there are many avenues to making money from online gambling, and when combined, they can be more lucrative than many other hobby-turn businesses.
Arbitrager: finding the difference in the odds at different bookmakers, then placing bets on all the outcomes. It uses the odds at each bookmaker to guarantee a win and a profit.
Poker: to take home the big wins, you need to play and be as dedicated as the players mentioned above.
Match betting: maximizing the income you get from free bets. There are guides to matched betting that can help you master this art.
Value bettor: an intense way to make a living, but you learn more about the teams than the oddsmakers. You’ll have to take these bets to marketplace-based betting because you’re creating your own odds.
Any of these, or a combination of them, will set you firmly in the professional gambler career path.
4. Crafting the alphabet – Writing
Writing doesn’t just cover writing and publishing novels. There are many career options for putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard in modern times).
Writing has solidified itself as one of the most important creative pursuits, and every single business benefits from writers.
The words on a blog, the clever copy on a bus banner, or the wonderful book you’re currently reading.
All from writers with a passion for what they do.
When you choose freelance writing as your career, the world is your oyster, and you can make as much money as you like. Because you run your schedule and pricing.
Hundreds of companies are eager to work with skilled freelancers and thousands of posts daily looking for writers.
Stephen King, Tom Wolfe, and Nicholas Sparks make their cash from books and movie options.
But you can make your mark in a column, on a blog, or with a content agency.
The key to being a writer is writing. Often and everywhere.
5. Pixel Perfect – Gaming
Gaming for many years was written off as something people do to waste time. However, with the ability to stream and open source code and gaming assets available, gaming became mainstream.
You’ll be hard pushed to speak to someone who hasn’t either got a Twitch or YouTube gaming channel or watched one.
Mobile gaming is one of the biggest global markets, and there are plenty of funding options for those who wish to create games.
There are even incredibly competitive game tournaments where the most skilled teams and players compete for huge cash prizes.
Call of Duty League has a prize pool of $500,000 shared out between 8 teams, the winners taking the highest prize of $200,000.
Riot Games spends over $100 million in support of esports, and the world championship of LoL (League of Legends) can payout up to $2.5 million.
And if playing the games isn’t what you want to do, consider training to make the games and take a game design or coding course.
Alternatively, make like PewDiePie, put in ten years of solid YouTube uploads, and make $160,000 per day from 110M subscribers.
And while we might not all see the dizzy heights of the most successful in the field, they have paved the way for turning a hobby into a thriving business.
Ready to turn your hobby into a business? Check out this post: 5 Tips for Starting a New Business.