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Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

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Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#131

Post by iamflimflam1 »

Robotbeat wrote: post #88
gumby wrote: post #72

> As if the only value anything has is by how much dollars it makes. Thanks for highlighting this corrosive attitude right up front. The current US frenzy in this attitude started in the 1980s (remember Boesky, portrayed by Hollywood as Gordon Gekko: "Greed is Good") and went into overdrive over the last two decades. But it's certainly been popular in other times in US history, as well as elsewhere.

I feel like this isn’t so much a 2 decade thing but a 1 decade thing. 10-20 years ago, the open source and maker movement was at its peak. Even stuff like cryptocurrency was often motivated by interests other than money but instead ideological idealism. I think that changed a lot after a boom in startups and people just getting insanely rich for silly things… powerful fear of missing out killed a lot of the ideologic…

This includes the drive to monetise everything. Hobbies, interests, skills - everyone now thinks: “how do I turn this into a side hustle? Must monetise all the things…”

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#132

Post by climatologist »

moneywoes wrote: post #126
climatologist wrote: post #49

Let's think about what it means to "make money". The phrase itself is already misleading because no one can make money, money is "made" by the central banks by changing some numbers in mainframe databases. These mainframes are connected to some local distribution banks like credit unions which then enable economic activity by business loans and other kinds of "investments", e.g. local government services like street…

In that case what do you suggest, do we ( i.e. the less fortunate not gifted these networks and connections) just give up?

That's entirely up to you. I'm just explaining how the system works. Once you realize how the whole thing is engineered the rat race starts to look like insanity.

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#133

Post by BaseballPhysics »

htss2013 wrote: post #114
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're an outlier. Studies have shown repeatedly that monetary compensation undermines intrinsic motivation: https://hbr.org/2013/04/does-money-really-affect-motiv > The authors synthesized the results from 128 controlled experiments. The results highlighted consistent negative effects of incentives — from marshmallows to dollars — on intrinsic motivation. These effects were particularly strong when the tasks were in…

It's amazing that society still puts so much stock into these types of impossibly confounded studies. Ok, so they found that people who are top earners are no more satisfied with their jobs than bottom earners. Might this be because top earners tend to be the types who neglect other aspects of their lives? Or who are hypercompeitive and are unlikely to be satisfied at any level, otherwise they would have stayed where…

> It's amazing that society still puts so much stock into these types of impossibly confounded studies

That particular example was a meta study of over 100 other studies

But sure, I'm sure your expertise in study design and statistics is enough to invalidate their work and the work of hundreds of other researchers simply because you don't agree with the conclusion.

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#134

Post by s1artibartfast »

bdw5204 wrote: post #39

Where the author made a mistake was in trying to make "what the market wants" rather than just making stuff he/she actually wanted to make and trying to see if it was possible to make money from it. If you try to make "what the market wants" rather than what you want, you're going to make garbage and further saturate a market that is already filled with garbage that was designed to cash in on "what the market wants".…

>Where the author made a mistake was in trying to make "what the market wants" rather than just making stuff he/she actually wanted to make and trying to see if it was possible to make money from it

It doesn't sound like that's the case. This specifically talk about stories that they wrote for fun and for themself.

I think the story is a little bit more interesting because even if you make something exciting for yourself, that doesn't mean it sells

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#135

Post by edmundsauto »

jrockway wrote: post #122
a13n wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, at the same time, I think the problem a lot of entrepreneurs have is that they overfocus on "what you are interested in" instead of "what the market wants", and therefore build something that nobody wants. If you can find a perfect intersection, that's beautiful, but probably uncommon. Some of the most lucrative businesses are stuff like (anti)fraud/security/payments that is pretty darn drab.

I disagree with that. If you make what you want, you at least have one user. If you make what you think other people want, you might end up with zero! Nobody wanted an open-source Unix-like OS, a keyboardless touch screen with third-party apps, a mini hard drive with a display and headphone jack tacked on, maps that could be infinitely panned instead of clicking arrows, etc. But they ended up being some of the defini…

Nobody wanted those products but they did want the problems solved that those products addressed.

IMO, focus on the problems - those often exist before the solutions have manifested.

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#136

Post by garrickvanburen »

uncertainrhymes wrote: post #82
noelwelsh wrote: post #12

I think people who have never run a business believe that running say, a bakery, involves baking all day. Anyone who has ever run a business should know that is false. Running a business involves doing all the stuff around the main task (marketing! accounts! infrastructure! customer support!) so that the people doing the main task can get on and do it. If you understand this you won't turn your hobby into a business…

I've met many people who love beer and think they should start a brewery. All I can tell them: I hope you like cleaning. Really like it, because that is what 90% of the job is.

Absolutely.

Similarly, I tell them, “do you own rubber boots? Do you want to own rubber boots?”

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#137

Post by kelnos »

a13n wrote: post #47
bdw5204 wrote: post #39

Where the author made a mistake was in trying to make "what the market wants" rather than just making stuff he/she actually wanted to make and trying to see if it was possible to make money from it. If you try to make "what the market wants" rather than what you want, you're going to make garbage and further saturate a market that is already filled with garbage that was designed to cash in on "what the market wants".…

Eh, at the same time, I think the problem a lot of entrepreneurs have is that they overfocus on "what you are interested in" instead of "what the market wants", and therefore build something that nobody wants. If you can find a perfect intersection, that's beautiful, but probably uncommon. Some of the most lucrative businesses are stuff like (anti)fraud/security/payments that is pretty darn drab.

I think the calculus changes a bit when you're trying to build a business around a hobby. If the entire point is to see if your hobby is going to make a good business, then you will naturally start with "what you are interested in", and the goal of the exercise will be to see if that matches up with "what the market wants".

That feels like a reasonable approach to me, though -- as with anything -- you need to know to pull the plug as soon as you have some confidence that it's not going to work out, which might be harder to do for a hobby, since you presumably have some emotional attachment to it.

> Some of the most lucrative businesses are...

You don't really need to aim for "most lucrative". If you're trying to promote "hobby" to "business", I think you should just aim for "good enough to pay the bills and give me a comfortable lifestyle without working myself to the bone". Starting out with a goal like "I'm going to turn my hobby into a blockbuster business that gives me FU money in 10 years" is probably unrealistic, but that's ok. More modest goals are just fine.

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#138

Post by kelnos »

wvenable wrote: post #93
bdw5204 wrote: post #39

Where the author made a mistake was in trying to make "what the market wants" rather than just making stuff he/she actually wanted to make and trying to see if it was possible to make money from it. If you try to make "what the market wants" rather than what you want, you're going to make garbage and further saturate a market that is already filled with garbage that was designed to cash in on "what the market wants".…

> Where the author made a mistake was in trying to make "what the market wants" rather than just making stuff he/she actually wanted to make and trying to see if it was possible to make money from it. If you want to make a business, you must make what the market wants. Making your own stuff and trying to make money from it is possible, but it's no longer a business. I'm a professional software developer and a hobbyis…

But you don't know what the market wants. I would think that a primary goal of turning a hobby into a business is to answer the question, "is my hobby something the market wants?"

And sure, the answer might be a resounding "no", but you can change your focus once you figure that out. And that change in focus might make you hate it, which sucks.

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#139

Post by kelnos »

brianpan wrote: post #103
uncertainrhymes wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've met many people who love beer and think they should start a brewery. All I can tell them: I hope you like cleaning. Really like it, because that is what 90% of the job is.

This is how I felt when I got one of the original Roombas. It's great if you don't like vacuuming but really like robot cleaning and maintenance.

Hah! Fortunately they've gotten a bit better now.

But instead of spending my time vacuuming, I instead spend my time picking stuff up off the floor that will get the robot stuck.

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#140

Post by [deleted] »

uncertainrhymes wrote: post #82
noelwelsh wrote: post #12

I think people who have never run a business believe that running say, a bakery, involves baking all day. Anyone who has ever run a business should know that is false. Running a business involves doing all the stuff around the main task (marketing! accounts! infrastructure! customer support!) so that the people doing the main task can get on and do it. If you understand this you won't turn your hobby into a business…

I've met many people who love beer and think they should start a brewery. All I can tell them: I hope you like cleaning. Really like it, because that is what 90% of the job is.

[deleted]
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