Velkai Studio

Category: Productivity

  • Should You Turn Your Hobby Into a Side Hustle?

    Should You Turn Your Hobby Into a Side Hustle?

    Turning a hobby into a side hustle can be highly rewarding (and very tempting for extra money!)

    Whilst some hobbies can work quite well as small businesses, others are probably more enjoyable when they remain separate from work and the headaches that go along with it, such as deadlines and high expectations from customers.

    The most important thing to ask yourself is whether turning your hobby into a side hustle will suck the joy out of it. Making money sounds great, but you don’t want it to ruin your experience of an activity you love.

    Why Turn a Hobby Into a Side Hustle?

    A hobby-based side hustle can let you:

    • Earn extra money from an existing skill
    • Pay for more tools and materials
    • Test out a small business idea before you commit
    • Reach people who appreciate your work
    • Improve your skills by forcing yourself to work regularly
    • Build an income stream gradually

    You may also enjoy having a practical ‘why’ to motivate you to make more items or develop your skills.

    However, you really need to keep in mind that earning money from a hobby goes beyond just the craft.

    What Changes When a Hobby Becomes Work?

    Once customers are involved, you may need to deal with:

    • Deadlines
    • Pricing
    • Packaging and postage
    • Marketing
    • Messages and customer service
    • Record keeping
    • Repeating popular products
    • Producing work, even when you don’t want to
    • Taxes!

    For example, just because you love jewellery making doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll enjoy photographing products, writing listings and posting orders.

    The business surrounding the hobby may take as much time (if not more) as the actual creative work.

    Will You Still Enjoy the Hobby?

    Consider whether you enjoy making things to your own taste or whether you would be happy to adapt your work for customers.

    A hobby can feel different when:

    • Someone else chooses the design
    • You need to complete it by a set date
    • You must calculate the cost of your time
    • Mistakes affect an order
    • You need to make the same item over, and over (and over) again

    Some people enjoy this extra structure, but others find that it removes the freedom that made the hobby relaxing and may therefore start to resent and dread what they’ve gotten themselves into.

    Is There Demand for What You Make?

    Being good at a hobby doesn’t guarantee that people will pay enough for the finished result.

    Before investing in supplies and materials, look at:

    • What similar items sell for
    • The cost of materials
    • Selling and payment fees
    • Packaging and postage
    • The time required to make each item
    • Whether customers are already looking for it

    A product may be popular but still difficult to sell profitably if it takes many hours to make (not worth your time), or unexpected platform fees or delivery and packaging fees eat into your margins.

    Can You Start Small?

    You don’t have to turn your hobby into a full-on business immediately.

    You could begin by:

    • Selling a few finished items
    • Taking part in one craft fair
    • Listing surplus creations online
    • Accepting only a limited number of orders
    • Teaching one beginner workshop
    • Selling a simple pattern or digital resource

    A small test can show whether you enjoy the process of selling and running a business before you commit more time or money.

    Do You Need to Monetise Every Hobby?

    No and no. Absolutely not.

    A hobby doesn’t need to earn money to justify the time spent on it.

    Keeping an activity purely for enjoyment can protect it from financial pressure. If you’re like most people, you probably have enough going on in your life without converting your free time into another source of work.

    If you want to, it’s also possible to monetise one hobby whilst keeping another completely private, recreational, and ‘just for you’.

    Questions to Ask Before Starting

    Before turning your hobby into a side hustle, ask yourself these:

    • Do I enjoy making things for other people?
    • Would I still like this activity if I had to follow a deadline?
    • Am I willing to handle the administrative work?
    • Can I charge enough to cover my costs and time?
    • Do I have space for materials and stock?
    • Would I be disappointed if sales were slow?
    • Can I stop or scale it back if it becomes stressful?

    Honest answers are more useful than assuming that making money will automatically make the hobby more worthwhile and bearable.

    Should You Try It?

    A hobby-based side hustle may suit you when you enjoy both the creative work and the process of selling it.

    Start yourself off with a small, low-risk experiment rather than buying large quantities of supplies or accepting too many orders. Keep track of your costs, time and enjoyment as well as your sales.

    You can continue if the experience is rewarding, change the business model if parts of it are not working, or revert it to being a hobby only.

    Turning a hobby into a side hustle is an option you can take if you truly want to. Never do it out of a sense of obligation.

  • Why Does a Hobby Start to Feel Like Work?

    Why Does a Hobby Start to Feel Like Work?

    A hobby can start to feel like work if it gets connected to pressure, targets, deadlines or other people’s expectations.

    Even if what you’re doing hasn’t changed, the way you feel about it can take a downturn over night if the wrong things happen.

    The great thing about hobbies is that they are designed to be relaxing and done by choice, just because you can. Once something starts to feel like it has to be measured or that you have to sustain a certain level of productivity from it, any joy you had can turn into a slog.

    You’ve Put Pressure on Yourself to Improve

    Learning and improving can be a great, satisfying thing, but constant pressure to get better can make a hobby feel like yet another responsibility in your life.

    If you are especially harsh on yourself, you may start judging every project by:

    • How quickly you finish it
    • Whether it looks professional
    • How much progress you have made
    • Whether it’s good enough to share
    • How it compares with other people’s work

    Judging yourself like this makes hard to just relax, experiment with something new, and have fun.

    Remember this: you don’t need to get measurably better at something every time you do it. Repeating familiar projects or making something imperfect can still be worthwhile. By learning, staying engaged, and not getting disheartened to the point of quitting, you’re much more likely to get good at what you’re doing over time, any way.

    You’ve Turned the Hobby Into a Goal

    Sure, setting your hobby as a goal can help you make time for it and help you take it seriously, but it does suck the joy away pretty quickly.

    If you get too much on the goal track, you may get it in your head that you have to:

    • Do the craft every day
    • Finish a set number of projects per year
    • Use up all of your supplies (can’t waste that money!)
    • Complete a long challenge
    • Post your work regularly on social media
    • Become skilled within a certain period

    A goal should support your hobby and motivate you, rather than make it into a nightmare that you can’t stand. If the target is creating more stress than motivation, amend it to be more lax or, better yet, drop it altogether.

    A note on the whole social media thing; as tempting as it may be to share your progress, you might want to consider giving it a miss. Showing your work to supportive friends or family members is one thing, but worrying about social clout can make things very toxic, very quickly.

    It’s probably best to focus inwards and do a new hobby for intrinsic reasons, such as joy and mastery of a new skill. Don’t do things to try to impress other people.

    You’re Focusing Only on the End Result

    Some hobbies are slow, repetitive or unpredictable. If you only value what you’re doing once it’s complete, the time spent learning, practising and experimenting can begin to feel unproductive.

    This can create pressure to rush through the activity.

    If you are concerned about money, you may want to think of it this way; rushing through a hobby makes your supplies more expensive per hour. Taking your time makes things more cost-effective!

    Try to notice whether you enjoy the process itself. You may like to do things like choosing colours, learning a new stitch, arranging materials or working quietly, even if the finished object isn’t especially important or useful (although you absolutely should be proud and cherish anything you produce).

    A hobby doesn’t have to give you a perfect output to be useful or to teach you something.

    You Have Taken On Too Many Projects

    A large number of unfinished projects can make you feel ‘behind’ or that you have a large backlog to catch up with.

    Instead of seeing possible activities, you might start to focus on tasks that need to be completed. This is especially common when you have spent money on supplies and feel guilty about not using them!

    You could choose one small project to continue and put the others away. You can return to them later, change them or decide not to finish them. If you can help it, try to contain things in the first place and not take on too much, too soon. Again, doing things just for yourself may help with this.

    Keep this in mind; an unfinished project is not a debt you have to catch up with.

    You Are Doing It for Other People

    A hobby may take on a different tone if you start to make things for friends, customers or an online audience.

    You may have to consider:

    • What other people will like
    • Whether the work is good enough to give away or sell
    • Deadlines!
    • Requests and alterations
    • Photographs and social media posts
    • Selling, packaging or delivery

    These expectations can replace your own curiosity for a new hobby with a heavy sense of obligation.

    Making something only for yourself can bring this freedom back.

    You No Longer Enjoy This Part of the Hobby

    You may still like the hobby overall but dislike a particular project, technique or stage of the process.

    For example, you might enjoy sewing but dislike cutting fabric, or find you like painting miniatures but dislike assembling them.

    You don’t always need to give up the whole hobby. You could choose a different type of project, simplify the process or spend more time on the parts that you actually enjoy.

    You Are Trying to Force Consistency

    You really don’t have to practise a hobby on a strict schedule.

    Interest naturally rises and falls. You may spend several weeks focused on one activity, get sick of it, and then leave it alone for a few months.

    Trying to force yourself to continue when you are tired or uninterested can make the hobby feel like homework. Taking a break may be more helpful than trying to recover your motivation through sheer, hard discipline.

    How Can You Make a Hobby Feel Enjoyable Again?

    Start by removing one source of pressure at a time.

    You could:

    • Stop tracking your progress
    • Only choose a very small project
    • Make something you don’t intend to share with anyone
    • Pause an unfinished project
    • Try a different part of the hobby
    • Take a break without setting a hard return date

    Ask yourself what originally attracted you to the activity. It may have been curiosity, relaxation, creativity or simply the desire to try something new.

    You also don’t have to recreate the hobby exactly as it was the first time; on the next time around, you can make some tweaks to the way you approach it.

    A hobby may not always feel effortless, but it shouldn’t feel like a permanent obligation either. If it regularly creates more pressure than enjoyment, you’re allowed to simplify it, pause it or choose something else.

    Happy crafting!