37 Hobbies That Make Money

1. Blogging

At the heart of making money from your hobby is creating a website about your passionate hobby. Look, you may be the best horse back rider in the world. But if nobody knows who you are, nobody will care. If nobody cares, you won’t make any money with your hobby. Which is why it’s incredibly important to make yourself known. Again, the easiest and cheapest way to do this (and make a lot of money) is to reach people online.
1(b). Taking Paid Surveys

Did you know you can make money expressing your opinion?

Companies are desperate to make better products and services, and they need your opinions in order to accomplish this.

You can make a decent income by participating in surveys for money daily. It’s a nice little side hobby because they pay you right away and you can actually make a decent income from it. And you can get started right away. All you need to do is sign up with a few survey websites to begin taking surveys for money.

Here are two few really great high paying and reputable paid websites to get you started:

2. Gaming

If you’re a gamer and you’re fairly good at it, you can make money by uploading your game play to website like Youtube. People will watch your videos and a percentage of them will click the Youtube ads. You will make a commission every time someone clicks. It could be a few cents to a few dollars.

If you’re really elite, you can join clans and go to tournaments in your city or even around the world. If you’re successful, you can win items like the latest gaming hardware, games, and even cash. Big tournaments pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can also potentially get sponsored by big gaming brands, too. That’s guaranteed money in the bank.

Playing in gaming tournaments for money is called esporting. Big money is paid out at these tournies. Just look at these payouts.

3. Baking

If you love baking, you know you don’t spend hours baking just a few cookies. You bake TONS of cookies. And you can’t eat them all. Instead of giving them to your neighbor or forcing them down your throat, find schools, restaurants, cafes, or bake sales where you can sell your baked goods.

You can (and should) start a baking blog as well. Because your earning potential online is virtually unlimited. You could create a baking ebook and sell it to your readers. Or display ads on your website. Or create baking tutorials on Youtube and make money off Youtube ads.

4. Photography

Photography is an incredibly lucrative hobby. It’s absolutely necessary to create a website to display your work. I’d personally choose a type of photography, like “scenery photography” or “animal photography”, or “travel photography” and specialize in that.

The sky is the limit for money making potential. You can create photography tutorials to sell, review your photography gear and make money from referring people to places to buy photography gear, or sell your photos. You’ll get paid a flat fee for each photo or get paid on a royalty basis, where every time your photo is downloaded, you get paid.

If you want to learn how to master photography in order to make money,

5. Web Design

If your hobby is web design, you have an incredibly useful skill. This is a skill worth learning if you don’t have a clue about it. Virtually every business is online and new business are created every minute. They all need websites created and managed. You can charge a ton of money too.

You can charge $2000+ to create a website that may only take you 20 hours to complete. You can also outsource someone to create a website for your client. You charge $2000 for the website to be made, and pay the outsourcer maybe a few hundred dollars to make it, while pocketing the change. Rinse and repeat. You’ll want to find someone in a country like the Philippines to create the website because you can pay them way less.

Like virtually everything on this list, I recommend creating a blog to showcase your work to help people choose your web designing abilities for their business.

Here’s a good review of what making money with web designing is like.

6. Reading Books

Make money from reading books? Yea, you actually can. What you want to do is make a website where you can give your opinion on the books you’ve read. People value opinions and love to hear about what other people think.

People will search online for reviews of books before they buy. Who wants to waste money on a shitty book, and worse, waste time reading a crappy book? NOBODY. Your website can fix this problem.

Along with that, you can leave a link on your blog and refer people to an online bookstore like Amazon where they can buy the book. If they do, you will earn a commission.

7. Making Crafts

Craft making is about as “hobby” as it gets. You need to do a little bit of research to find out what people like to buy. Once you do, start making your own version of that craft. Hopefully people like it. If they do, you have created yourself a little business of creating and selling arts and crafts.

You can sell crafts online on a website likeEtsy. Other places are eBay, Craigslist, and even Amazon. Other than selling your crafts online, try local shops, souvenir stores, and maybe even places like the dollar store. Whatever makes sense and profitability.

8. Recipe Making

You probably don’t know this, but the most searched thing online is recipes. Yep, more than anything else in the world. So you KNOW there is someone out there interested in your unique flavor of cooking.

Creating your own food blog is absolutely necessary. You can talk about everything related to cooking. I’d also invest in a good camera to take mouth watering photos of your cooking.

A few ways to make money are: displaying ads on your cooking blog, creating a recipe book, reviewing kitchen tools and appliances, selling other peoples cookbooks, cooking classes, or creating your own cooking tutorials on Youtube.

One of my favorite foodie bloggers is Nom nom paleo. She goes beyond your typical recipe blog to make money. She created an app and also sells clothing.

9. Coaching / Teaching / Mentoring

If you are pretty knowledgeable about anything, you can help others gain some of that knowledge by teaching them. For example, if you love doing math, you can help students learn math in the evening. Or if you love soccer, you can coach a soccer team and earn money that way, too.

10. Video Editing

Video editing, like web design, is also one of those internet skills that is incredibly useful. If you don’t have any video editing skills, it’s a skill worth learning.

Business need videos to get their marketing message to their audiences. Regular people like you and me need videos put together for school presentations or work presentations. Amateur singers need to create music videos. Facebook pages are filled with brands and companies that use videos to get their message across. This incredibly useful hobby can be turned into a money making machine when you get your name out there.

12. Podcasting

Podcasting itself probably isn’t going to make you money, unless you use it to sell your product or service. But think of it as more of a lane where people can come discover who you are and what you do. If you like to talk or interview people, this is absolutely for you.

For example, if you are knowledgeable about self development, you can start a personal development podcast and talk about things related to it. Let people know about your blog to learn more. They just might end up buying your product/service or listening to your advice on what to buy.

14. Investing

I don’t know if investing is really a hobby, but it’s definitely a way to make money. I think people who really get into investing treat it like a hobby. They obsess about it and think about it all the time. I know I”m like that.

I think about stocks I can invest in. I hear people talking about our government or where they think the economy is going, and I can’t help but think about how this could help me pick better stocks. I think making passive income is a hobby in itself, and a worth every second of your time.

15. Writing

Every write has thought about publishing their own book. Whether you take this seriously or not doesn’t matter. You can turn your pen pushing hobby into regular paychecks quickly. The internet needs content. You can get paid by offering your writing to blogs and websites.

16. Playing on Social Networks

Did you know that having ACCESS to an audience is worth a TON of money? That’s right, your stupid little Facebook page about cat memes could make you money. Don’t worry if you don’t have one. You can create it.

Here’s how it works: Choose a topic and a social network to promote it. I’d use Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. You want to build an audience by posting stuff that is relevant to them. After awhile, you can promote/show them products that they would be interested in buying. If they buy, you make money. That’s it.

Here is a pretty good tutorial on how to build a Facebook fan page to make money.

18. Making Apps

If you are a computer programmer, you’ve no doubt made apps before. Well, I don’t have to tell you there is a lot of money in app making. So if you aren’t a programmer, you can still make money with apps. You would hire a computer programmer and get that person to make the app. You just need to figure out what’s missing in the app stores that you could fill. If you’re successful, you could make hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Here are a few examples of mobile apps that have made millions of dollars.

19. Getting Fit

Are you passion about nutrition and eating well? Have you lost a lot of weight and look great now? Do you really enjoy a certain type of exercise plan? Well, why wouldn’t you want to make money from your experience!!

Start a blog about it and tell the world what you learned, how you’ve benefited from it, and the challenges you’ve had. People that find your blog and connect with your story will be your loyal listeners. They eagerly listen to your recommendations for all things fitness related. And you can make money from recommending them these products and services.

20. Playing Sports

If you’re fairly good at a sport you can teach other people who aren’t as good at it how to get better. For example, if you are good at soccer, you can create a blog/Youtube channel to show people things like soccer drills, how to kick a ball, or how to buy soccer cleats. You’d make money through affiliate sales or display ads.

21. Playing Music, Teaching Music, Producing Music

Music is never going away. Ever. So if music is one of your hobbies, you have an evergreen skill you can leverage to make money with. You can do the traditional thing of giving instrument lessons, like going to someones house to teach them how to play the piano. But you could make so much more online!

With music, I feel video is pretty important. You can record yourself playing an instrument or singing a song. You can also give basic tutorials on how to play an instrument. If your videos are popular, you will make money with Youtube ads. And get discovered like Bieber (lol okay probably not to that extent).

I would create a beginners tutorial on how to play the guitar for example. Yea, sure there are a million of them out there. But be YOU and be different. Teach it well and you will earn your own audience who want to learn from YOU. You can also make money from your audience by recommending music products you use, or want to buy.

22. Practicing Funny

Making people laugh is an incredible skill you can cash in on. We pay a lot of money to be entertained, and we all love to laugh. Becoming a famous comedian is a tough road to walk, but its not impossible. But get online and make your own Youtube videos telling your jokes. Teach people how to write jokes and do stand up. Write a book on how to be funny (I’ve researched them and there truly is a lack of books that really help IMO).

23. Buying Antiques & Collectibles

Collecting things is one of the most extremely hobbies that exist IMO. Have you seen Hoarders? lol. Anyway, you don’t just want to collect anything. You want to focus on things that can appreciate in value over time. Anything works. Comic books, vintage electronics, art and paintings, sports cards, etc.

All these things can gain value as time rolls along, increasing your wealth. People that collect stuff REALLY REALLY like doing it. It’s worth it.

24. Gardening

If you’re an avid gardener, you know that you’re likely to grow more food than you could ever eat. Instead of forcing your family or neighbors to take it all, why don’t you sell it? You can rent a spot at your locals farmers market or even simply sell it to someone who already sells at the farmers market.

25. Sewing

Sewing goods is kind of like crafts making where you sew things and sell them for profit. If you are sewing to fix broken things or to adjust sizing of clothing for example, you may want to open your own shop and create a business around it. I’m not sure how well a home business of sewing would work, but that would save you money. The main problem is getting traffic.

26. Dancing

Making money from your dancing skills can go beyond opening up an expensive Studio and teaching people in person. Why not start a dancing blog and show off your skills online? You will reach a much larger audience and can make way more money without spending a lot of money up front.

27. Drawing

You can create drawings to sell to business and people who need creative pictures to market their products and businesses. You don’t have to be an expert drawer either.

Go on Facebook and find pages that like to share images. If you find a page that doesn’t seem to post that same crap every other page posts, or they post original content, ask them if they would like hand drawn pictures to grow their audience.

Business regularly pay hundreds of dollars to Facebook to advertise themselves. If they can pay you $20 for a picture that will go viral and earn them a lot of fans, they will keep coming back to you for more pictures. And all you’ll have to do is sit there and draw all day. Yay. The trick will be to find pages who will be wiling to pay you for your photos, and then creating photos for them that have the potential to go viral. If you can hit both of them, you’re probably looking at earning a lot of money.

28. Giving Your Opinion

If you are the type to have a lot to say, then use one of the many online websites that pay you for your opinion. You won’t earn a ton of money, but if you’re bored, why not.

29. Poker

Poker is a serious hobby with serious income potential. You don’t really even have to be amazing. You just need to be better than most people you’re playing with. Because that’s your competition. If you ever wanted to get serious about playing poker for money, just head online to any of the poker websites and go for it.

30. Magic Tricks & Card Tricks

I think getting your own show would require a TON of skill and time in the “trade”. if it’s a pretty big hobby for you, or a hobby you’d like to get into, I’d make videos of you doing tricks. Everyone likes them, even people who aren’t interested in magic. Who doesn’t like to be perplexed?

31. Yoga

Yoga has got to be one of the coolest hobbies. I’m always interested in people who tell me they are into Yoga. Something about someone who takes care of themselves and enjoyed connecting their mind body spirit.

You’re not going to be shocked when I tell you Yoga is a great hobby to make money from as well. Making apps and tutorials are pretty saturated. But hey, do your own Yoga thing and there could be plenty of people who want to learn Yoga from YOU!

If you want to use Yoga as a cornerstone part of making money, I’d start a health blog and make Yoga a HUGE part about it. I’d talk about how I keep healthy (food, diet, daily workout routines, and of course, Yoga). And I’d talk about the products I use to stay healthy, and give my readers an opportunity to buy these products through my affiliate links.

32. Martial Arts

You can teach basically martial arts online (probably through videos is best). Why not open up your own school as well. You can gain customers with your online videos.

33. Weight Lifting

Strength training is a big market that appeals to both men and women of all ages. And it’s incredibly lucrative too. Supplements, workout routines, Nutrition plans, workout equipment, etc. If getting buff and pumping iron is something you’re really into, why not make a blog journaling your journey? You can talk about your favorite exercises, how you grew a lot of muscle with your unique version of super sets, or your favorite bench presses.

34. Eating Healthy

I think I covered this topic above with some of the other related topics, so I’m going to sound like a broken record (a amazing sounding one though) when I tell you to start a bog on nutrition and make money by showing others how you eat healthy and stay gorgeous.

Steve Kamb’s website Nerdfitness.com is an excellent example of creating a unique website about your passion (eating and being healthy).

35. Make Up

Watching tons of videos on Youtube about make up makes me want to go to Sephora and pick out my perfect lipstick. JUST KIDDING it doesn’t. But it does for a lot of girls (and some guys) who really get into facial art.

If you’re into that, or have a lot of knowledge about putting on make up, why not show other people how to do it. Youtube is your friend here. If you get popular, you’ll not only make money by recommending products and displaying ads, you’ll get free products to test out and make videos on. Score.

36. Reviewing Gadgets

Gadgets and technology is a massive niche that is also very lucrative. It’s also very competitive, and it will be tough competing with websites like Engadget. But you have a lust for buying new cool shit and testing them out for your own pleasure, you need to show the world your unique point of view. And if people like it, you’ll likely get popular and start making money from it. Like make up above, you’ll start getting companies emailing you asking if you can review their products. You get to keep the product most of the time (some people get Apple products for free OMG!) in exchange for your review.

37. Fixing Cars

I can’t tell you how valuable you are if you have car mechanic skills. I have a few friends who are super car enthusiasts and love working on them, especially building them from scratch. You can obviously start your own car shop and work on troubled vehicles, but I really think starting your own DIY car repair website would be killer. There are a lot of monetizing opportunities in the car niche as well