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3 Hobbies That You Can Monetize

By Leslie Irving, California Business Journal

Wouldn’t it be great if you could monetize your hobbies? The dream of many these days is to make money online and realize location independence and financial freedom.

It’s not just a dream – many have done it! These are three ways to turn your hobbies into dollars and cents. Of course, you’ll have to be good at them first, so the sooner you get started, the better.

Playing Video Games

Most gamers have had at least one person in their lives tell them that they’re wasting their time. Maybe that was the case back in the days of consoles and cartridges, but in the current day and age, there are a number of ways to make money gaming online.

Coaching newbies after you get good is one way to make money from gaming. If you master any type of game, from fighting to MOBAs, you can eventually become a coach and help newbies develop their skills.

Streaming is also a way to make money from gaming. It takes a while to build up your channel, but there are lots of gamers making a living on platforms like Twitch. Subscriptions, live stream donations, selling merch, and sponsorships are all possible revenue streams for streamers.

Play-to-Earn games are also beginning to take off. Many of them are found in the crypto space and are built on blockchains. For example, Crypto Fights allows players to earn from winning battles and forging, building, and trading items in the game.

Being a Sports Fan

There are a couple of different ways to turn your knowledge of your favorite sports into cold, hard cash.

First, you could make content about sports on platforms like YouTube. There are billions of sports fans all across the world, and they’re all looking for useful information, stats, and entertainment.

Another way to make money from sports is to bet on them. Of course, there is no foolproof way to make money when you wager on anything, especially something as unpredictable as sports. However, many pros have made a killing at it, and millions of people make money betting online every day.

Sports bettors follow various strategies with varying degrees of success. Some always bet on the favorite and grind out small profits, while others always bet on underdogs and lose small amounts often before experiencing huge wins when the improbable happens.

Whatever way you decide to do it, it has never been easier to place bets. There are literally thousands of sports betting sites online. You can find more at http://legitgamblingsites.com/us/.

Blogging About Your Hobbies

This isn’t a hobby, per se, but rather is a way to turn any hobby into a steady income or a cash windfall.

Turning your hobbies into content has already been mentioned once on this list. However, it’s big business these days, so it’s worth exploring in more depth.

Starting niche sites has made lots of people passive income and has even made a handful of pro bloggers rich. The idea is to focus on one thing, create useful content that will help others with the same hobby, and then get lots of traffic from Google and other search engines.

How do you turn blog visitors into money? There are two primary ways: ads and affiliate sales. Ads pay a rate per one thousand views, and affiliate sales involve selling items linked to the hobby or niche on Amazon and other e-commerce stores.

How much could you make from your blog? The sky’s the limit, and some well-established niche blogs have sold for millions of dollars on sites like Flippa. Blogging takes time, but it’s a great way to make money from your hobbies.