Turn your hobby into cash graphic

Do you have a hobby that you just love? Something that consumes all your spare time and maybe all your spare money?

This blog will show you how to turn your hobby into cash.

At the very least you can make enough to pay for your hobby and at the top end of the scale you can turn your hobby into a lucrative online business that pays more than your full-time job.

It takes very little upfront capital to start and no-one dictates how much income you can make. Put simply the more effort you make the bigger your rewards will be.

So what is this wonderful opportunity I hear you say!

Affiliate Marketing is how you do it.

What is it really?

Affiliate marketing is a very simple concept and anyone can do it.

There are 4 basic steps:

#1 Decide on a niche market

This will be your hobby. It doesn’t matter what your hobby is there will be a market out there. There is a huge group of people just like you who are interested in your hobby.

Man with fishing rod

Just think about all the different things you can research on the internet. All of those topics are of interest to masses of people.

It is estimated that between 3.2 to 3.7 billion people use the internet – how many do you think might be interested in your hobby? There will be plenty that will want to read your blog.

Just off the top of my head I can think of a heap of hobbies that would work beautifully for affiliate marketing, and that people can and probably are making money from:

  • Remote controlled cars
  • Learning how to play the guitar
  • Family ancestry or history
  • Bonsai gardening
  • Fly fishing
  • The art of karate
  • How to write a romance novel
  • Playing darts

If you are having trouble thinking about which of your hobbies might be suitable you can check out my article on choosing a profitable niche by clicking here.

So in my case I love horses. I have two of my own and they are my hobby and my passion. I enjoy learning about how to care for them, train them and build a partnership with my equine pals. People that know me know my two horses are my life, they come first before pretty much everything else. I can talk for hours about every and any aspect of horse ownership – just ask my non-horsey friends!

Now horses in general as a topic is too big for me to cover every aspect of. So my niche market, the people that I would like to help and who I want to come to my blog, are specifically new horse owners. I love helping people and my site is aimed towards those new to owning a horse who have lots of questions and need help with their horses.

If you would like to see what a hobby affiliate website looks like you can check out my niche website by clicking here.

But whatever your hobby is, let me assure you, you can make money from it.

#2 Build a website to showcase and talk about your hobby

Now don’t worry about this part if you are not computer savvy. These days building a website is simple. You no longer need to be a techy whizkid to build and run a website. There are plenty of plug and play type programs plus loads of training and tech support out there to help you.

Computer, laptop and Ipad

Your website does not need to have all the bells and whistles and be very expensive to build and run. You do not need to pay a web designer to build one for you.

Honestly everyone can do this with a little help. I knew nothing about it until 6 months ago when I built my first hobby niche website.

I know 70 year olds who have no computer skills what so ever who are making money from their hobbies right now.

The basics of what you need are a website, a domain name (that’s your website address) and somewhere to host your site (that’s someone to get it up on the internet for you).

I will give you my #1 recommendation at the bottom of this blog if you decide you do want to have a go at affiliate marketing. It is a one-stop shop where you can buy your domain, have your site hosted and received tech support and training to manage your website.

Best of all you can get started for free.

#3 Generate traffic to your website

Obviously you need an audience for your blog. There are lots of free ways you can bring traffic to your website.

Yes there are paid options also like advertising on Facebook and other social media sites. But if you know, there are many many ways to get eyes on your blogs without spending a cent.

And once you have written your great blog you can start getting it out there straight away. You don’t need to wait for people to find you, that will happen over time as your site becomes better known.

In the early days you can use Facebook groups, Pinterest communities and a host of other platforms to get your blogs circulating out there on the world wide web.

#4 Earn Revenue

So you have a great website with some cool articles about your hobby and you are getting people to read it.

dollar sign on notepad

How does this make money?

This is where you monetise your site through marketing of other people’s products or services.

So let’s take my new horse owners website as an example. I use lots and lots of products with my horses. I have some favourites I wouldn’t be without and I have also come across some I wouldn’t buy again.

All those products are available for others to buy and I can recommend them or review them and provide links to where my readers can buy them.

The aim of my blog is to help new horse owners, and I know through my hobby what I have wasted money on and what has been great value and I can share that information with my readers.

Don’t worry this doesn’t need to be salesy or pushy. I write my blogs as if I am talking with my best friend. Of course if I know of a great product she can benefit from then obviously I am going to tell her about it. It is the same for your audience.

It doesn’t matter that they don’t know you personally. Because you have skills, knowledge and experience in your hobby you will be able to help people and save them wasting money and making the mistakes you have made. They will appreciate being told what products are great and likewise what products to avoid.

I have sought out the businesses who sell the products I like, I have found great prices for my audience and I have included that information in my blogs.

Sale price tag with thumbs up

 

I receive a commission from my affiliate partner business if someone clicks through the link on my website to the business and purchases the product.

It is as simple as that.

I don’t have to hold any stock or process any money or actually ship the item. My job is done once I have introduced my audience to the business via their website. I then get paid a commission if they buy something.

And it’s not just products you can recommend. There are lots of services that have affiliate programs for training courses or coaching systems.

There are other ways of making money once your website is up and running. You can put adverts on your site from other businesses and get paid if your reader clicks on the advert, this is called Pay per Click.

You might be able to write your own training on your hobby and have people sign up for that training, or pay a membership fee for the ongoing information you will provide them.

You might write an E-Book and sell that either through your website but maybe also on other sites like Clickbank or Kindle.

There are heaps of ways you can make really good money once you have your site up and running.

Who is doing this?

It is estimated there are around 500,000 affiliate marketers across the world. Now this may initially seem like a lot of competition and you might be thinking the market is saturated, but it isn’t. There is plenty of room for you and millions of others besides.

Let me explain why this isn’t something to worry about.

crowd of people on street

As I said above the number of people who are on the internet is 3.7 billion and that just continues to grow daily.

So while there may be even thousands of websites talking about your hobby there is a massive audience, enough for their website and yours to help people and make money at the same time.

By narrowing down your target audience you can also remove much of the competition. So say I love playing the guitar and I want to teach other people how to do that and talk to them about all the areas of playing the guitar that interests me.

There are probably lots of guitar websites out there, but if I think smaller like maybe How to Play an Acoustic Guitar then I am not competing against ALL the guitar websites only those others in my narrower niche of acoustic guitar playing.

I will still have access to all the great products to be able to market them eg. strings, guitars, picks, music etc. but my content will be more targeted, I will build up authority in my niche quicker because my content will be more relevant and I will be able to build a stronger following of dedicated people who are really interested in acoustic guitars.

What does it cost to get started?

That’s all good and well you might be thinking I have a great hobby, I am passionate about it and I can think of lots of things I want to tell people about and products that can help them.

wallet with bronze coins spilling outBUT you said it doesn’t cost much to start, how much are we really talking here?

You can get a website up and running and hosted with a cheap provider for as little as $10 – $20 per month. This would be the budget version without some essentials like site security, anti-spam protection or any training.

Do you want to have technical support if things go wrong? Do you want basic and ongoing training on how to manage your website and so you can learn how to generate the most amount of money possible?

If you would rather go with a better support system then you can check out which platform I recommend for your hosting, as well as all the added benefits of being a member.

I have provided a link to their free Starter Membership as part of my Ultimate How To Affiliate Marketing Guide which you can get from the link at the bottom of this post if you are interested in checking them out when you are making a decision about whom to go with for website domains, hosting and support.

You can get your website up and running, plus hosting and site security for free. You do not need to pay another cent to keep your free site running and there is no time limit, you have it forever.

If you want more training and assistance they do offer a Premium Membership, but there is no obligation to join as Premium. It is entirely up to you.

Their full membership program takes you through step by step, start to finish, as you build your affiliate marketing website. It is the best program I have found on the internet for support and guidance so you can turn your hobby into a cash flow.

How much money can I make?

Honestly the sky is the limit here. I am seriously not kidding you when I say people are earning 5 figures a month from their hobbies with affiliate marketing niche websites. They are giving up their full-time jobs to blog about what they love for a living.

Don’t go throwing in your day job just yet though. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme.


rolled up dollar bills

The amount you earn is proportionate to the amount of time and effort you put into your website.

If you only write one blog a month then it will take a long time for you to start seeing traffic and sales.

But if you are passionate about your hobby, like I am, I am always thinking of things I would like to write a blog about. It might be some new training I want to tell my audience, maybe a new product I am trying or a topical issue within my hobby I can blog about.

Any program that says you can do 30 minutes work and have thousands of dollars rolling into your bank account the next day is a scam. It simply is not possible and it does not work.

These types of programs will get you in on the cheap, offer you nothing and then try to upsell you to buy their products. Often you can’t actually make any money unless you pay them for added information and extra essentials!

My strongest wish is for you not to go down that slippery slope. There are scams galore out there and I will give you my #1 recommendation below which will save you heartache and grief if you would like to join us.

Get Started Today

So you’ve read all about how to turn your hobby into cash and you’d like to get started. I have been with my #1 recommended platform since the start of 2018 and I love it. I have two websites up and running and I am working my hobby websites part-time.

Thumbs up through an iphone screen

I can guarantee you it is the best online platform to learn affiliate marketing and offers the most value for money hosting for your website.

But don’t take my word for it – try it for free with a Starter Membership. You can test the waters and build your first hobby website absolutely for free.

The owners are so confident that you will love the platform that they give you a Starter Membership and two free websites so you can try it out with no risk, no obligation and you don’t need to provide your credit card.

As I said above there is a Premium membership option, BUT you can stay on the free membership, and keep your free hobby website(s) forever.

There is absolutely no pressure to go to a Premium membership if you do not wish too. You have my absolute word on this.

If you would like to read more about how to make money through affiliate marketing and about the platform and all it offers click on the button below and get my FREE Guide.

From there you can join us and start building your hobby website right with the free membership and I will see you inside to be your mentor and guide should you have any queries.

You never know maybe your hobby will become your living.

See you at the top sign off in yellow

About the Author

Heidi

It doesn’t matter where you are starting from, what you currently have or don’t have, if you too feel like there is more to life than what you are currently experiencing and you want to take charge and create a better life for yourself (and your family) then join me and we will do this together.

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