41–50 of 98 posts
If you are so obsessesed with optimizing your life (most of us on HN are) and want to monetize your hobby, pick a job so interesting and open ended that your job becomes your hobby. You are killing two birds with one stone in that case
The downside is you might end up resenting your hobby
Seeking for channels to give away your work for free like open source or creative commons can make more sense. Software is another issue, by the way. I used to sell shareware for Macs for 20 years, and the problem is it can cause a lot of work if you want to support your customers after initial sales have cooled down. It can easily turn into a chore.
I've found that commercial work as a craftsman has pushed me to learn much more than my own designs are. I think this is akin to learning other people's songs when you learn an instrument; if you don't, its much too easy to get stuck in a rut of your own ideas.
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I don't mean to pry, but it sounds like you have "retired" and found your calling instead, if you are working for free, but are 100% invested in the quality and professionalism? And that you have your basic needs (and then some) pretty much covered? If so that sounds amazing! If I may prod a bit, why not take a salary in your situation? Why work for free, especially when it's highly valued not only by others, but to…
It is amazing. I was forced into it, though. I found out (the hard way) that no one wants to play with older folks. I'm very fortunate that I had built up enough of a base to retire early. It wasn't planned, but it was there. I just heard from an ex-employee of mine, that he just got let go, and is running smack-dab into this ageism issue. He's very, very good, but he'll struggle like hell, and he doesn't have my res…
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One way to do it have the hobby be something that’s entirely yours (you carve intricate models of Vietnamese railway cays say) and someone else sells them, almost without any communication as to “what is selling etc”. Never take orders.
kinda like agents and artists ?
But yes, some artists have famously gone through intermediaries such that there isn’t a feedback loop possible.
I monetized my German science fiction novels by publishing them on Amazon, but so far have regretted it. They generally get great reviews and sure have their readers, but mostly just one of them (by far not the best) sells well continuously. The rest would require marketing that is a completely different activity than writing books, and really not fun to me at all. Moreover, you invariably get the occasional bad or i…
Writing sits comfortably in the territory of hobbies which require neither money nor storage space to perform, so I can totally understand how someone would choose to forgo money completely in order to not have to deal with the unpleasant aspects of self-publishing. Speaking of which, I assume you've already decided against traditional publishing?
Ah, the old phrase "my avocation is my vocation" I'm very blessed to be able to tell people this. When I was growing up, my grandmother had a radio scanner in her small town Virginia home, and I was fascinated that you could listen in on what the police and fire departments were doing on a daily basis. My parents bought me a radio scanner a few years later and as a young boy I followed the rabbit hole of radio commun…
I monetized my German science fiction novels by publishing them on Amazon, but so far have regretted it. They generally get great reviews and sure have their readers, but mostly just one of them (by far not the best) sells well continuously. The rest would require marketing that is a completely different activity than writing books, and really not fun to me at all. Moreover, you invariably get the occasional bad or i…
I don't understand how people monetize hobbies. For me a hobby could be a very niche thing that only interests me and maybe a dozen people in the world. Hard to monetize that.