How to monetize your interests without really "working"

[Devil's Advocate]

This was from the "What's your retirement number?" thread :

jacob wrote: "As I recommend, the things I do almost all tend to lead towards some cash in some form. However, most people I know don't do this---they don't take the step to monetization or extending the value they build to other people (e.g. websites, forum/group participation/network); they don't even try. This is unfortunate, because I think this is important."


Jacob's already elaborated on this, in response to Jenny, on that thread. And 7W5 has provided another example of her own there.

I get the point, the principle : but can people come out with more concrete examples? Real stuff they've actually done, or are thinking of doing?



(Didn't mean to derail that discussion, hence this new thread.)

[George the original one]

Anything can be monetized. The real question is how do you monetize it without turning it into "a job".

[Devil's Advocate]

Anything can be monetized. The real question is how do you monetize it without turning it into "a job".

That's what I was wondering.

There were two examples in that other thread. I was looking for more concrete examples that people have actually done, or at least seriously considered.

I can think of two personal examples myself. I contribute articles on Spirituality and meditation to a magazine, for free, voluntary work. I also give some Pran-ic breathing and meditation classes, again voluntarily. I could conceivably earn money doing these things, except : (1) I would need to pretend to be more accomplished and expert than I actually am, and (2) I believe it is extreme bad form, bordering on fraud, to charge money for things of this nature.

And yes, I teach accounting and credit rating methodology, part time, and do earn some money. But I'm loath to do this full-time : that would make it "work".

Other than these I can't think of any way to monetize anything, not without making it a "job".

I'll appreciate any suggestions, as well as accounts of your/others' personal experiences.

[BeyondtheWrap]

The answer is pretty easy if you're an artist of some kind. There are several forum members who are authors, for example.

Me? I've done acting in the past, but I didn't want to make it a career due to my preference for a steady paycheck. If I'm financially independent, I'll have the freedom to audition for roles without having to worry about where the money comes from; eventually I'll likely be able to find some paid work in that area, enabling a higher SWR. The temporary nature of most acting jobs should keep it from becoming too much of a "job" for me.

[Matty]

I look forward to following this discussion.

Does exercise count as an interest? You could earn $100 a week pretty easily by offering to mow your neighbour’s lawns (do it as quick as possible for interval training or enjoy leisurely wheeling your mower around the neighbourhood on a Thursday afternoon). Or take your neighbour’s dogs for a run a few times a week. $100 is a lot for someone with frugal ability and equates to over $100k in capital if you are happy to do this indefinitely.

Gardening is my thing and I’ve done some thinking about how to monetise this.
• I’ve considered raising seedlings for sale, you could set up a small seedling nursery with minimal space/time; the key would be marketing your products. Tomato seedlings sell for about $3 each in the shops, you could sell them for a bit less, make your own seed-raising mix, save your own seed and the biggest overhead would be the pot, perhaps you could source a recycled product? Some real rough numbers: raising 1000 seedlings at $2 each = $2000 minus $500 of soil, water, pots and lost/unsold plant overhead. $1500 profit over a 3 month period allowing 4 hours per week to plant, maintain and sell is $31 an hour, not bad…
• You could sell high value herbs/tea/garlic. Good quality loose leaf herbal teas are expensive here and all imported from india/china.
• I have a friend who sells eggs to neighbours, if you can buy food in bulk you could make a few dollars per dozen above your food costs; 20 chickens would give you 120 eggs x $2 = $20 a week – not a lot, especially when you consider time to look after chickens and collect and sell the eggs, but there is a pretty big market for locally sourced eggs vs the pseudo-“free-range” labelled supermarket eggs.
• A cool website (started in Australia!) for marketing this kind of stuff is http://www.ripenear.me/ plus you could use gumtree, craigslist, local message boards etc.
• A business idea I entertained after uni was to install vegetable gardens for people. I would assess aspect and other factors, build raised beds, supply soil, seedlings and set up irrigation. To maintain an income stream I would also offer a maintenance service where I would weed, fertilise, plant new seasonal crops and harvest any produce and leave it by the back door. I never ended up doing this because I got offered a corporate gig and didn’t feel like I had enough gardening experience. A few years on and my gardening skills have improved so it’s something I’m considering again. The big question is whether I could find the market for this service. Generally people garden for the enjoyment and independence and wouldn’t pay someone $20 an hour to do it. I would have to focus on the time-poor, skill lacking people who want to feel more “sustainable”. I guess plenty of people pay that for someone to mow their lawn so why wouldn’t they pay for something that provides a product… In my research I’ve come across several companies starting up offering a service like this over the past few years , including some that appear to have gone out of business…
• Extending on from the above idea there may be other niche “sustainable” services which offer better monetisation potential. A few ideas include breeding and supplying chickens and their coops to people interested in keeping backyard chickens, installing rainwater/greywater harvesting systems

If you enjoy outdoor activities i.e. bushwalking, camping, kayaking, rock-climbing you could get involved in guiding but there is the potential to lose your enjoyment of these activities.

[Ian]

This has been one of my goals for some time, but I can't say I've been tremendously successful in accomplishing it, so I will be watching this thread.

[7Wannabe5]

George the original one said: Anything can be monetized. The real question is how do you monetize it without turning it into "a job".

True. IMO people can not go on for very long in pure relaxation mode. So, even if you are fully-financially-independent-retired, you will eventually assign or find some work or goal-oriented activities for yourself or expand the time/energy you devote to productive interests you previously only kept at low hobby level. I have given this matter some thought and I think for me the difference between enjoyable work and an oppressive job has to do mainly with form of contract. The variations of contract being permanent vs. temporary, self-employment vs, other employment, full-time vs. part-time, passively acquired vs. actively sought, etc. For instance, I would not want a full-time permanent contract as a teacher in an inner city school but I find doing it part-time only-when-I-choose as a substitute teacher is quite rewarding. Another example would be that my overall enjoyment level of dealing rare books on the internet went way up when I outsourced the shipping of individual units to Amazon. I do something that makes some cash-money pretty much every day but there is very, very little on my platter that I am compelled to do on any given day.

The rule of thumb is that money naturally flows into your life when you are doing the work that other people want you to do. This is a rational rather than moral statement. For instance, the work some other people might want you to do is cook methamphetamine and then sell it to school children. OTOH, there may be no other people who want you to do the work of composing the highly experimental work for pan flute and sampled garbage-disposal-unit which you are inspired to produce. One huge benefit of being financially independent is that you will never be compelled to do anything like the first and you can work on the second example to your heart's content. However, most activities you may choose to engage in would be some combination of more socially beneficial and desired than these two, so as long as you do not perform the work in a total social vacuum, the rule-of-thumb will prove out and either money or social capital or cultural capital or some-other-form-of-capital will flow into your coffers. However, my experience has been that the form of the flow into your coffers is largely dependent on your relative position in these forms of capital within the given social context. IOW, if somebody has money and knows you could use some money they will more likely offer you money for service or product rendered rather than or in addition to giving you a hug or publishing your work in their zine etc. Of course, social capital can often be converted into financial capital or something-for-which-you-might-have-otherwise-needed-money at some later date. For instance, because I was at home caring for my youngest child 20 years ago, I was also able to provide care to one of my nephews during his infancy. So, if he lived a bit closer to me, I would not hesitate to call in the "loan" and have him double-dig a plot of my garden for me which is a service for which I might also choose to pay cash.

Anyways, my point here being that if you have the social reputation or reality of being a wealthy, older, privileged man (directed at the author of the thread) then it is less likely that your activities will naturally monetized through osmosis process in your natural social environment (you will get more hugs less cash) but you can still monetize your high skill/mastery activities to niche interest groups. I hope this made some kind of sense.

Humorous semi-related note being that I was thinking that instead of trying to date through a general purpose site on the internet, I would find a more niche market site that attracted people who like and were free to travel and camp. My first attempt at search came up with the Miss Travel site where "People Who Are Generous" pay the way for "People Who Are Beautiful" as travel companions. So, if one of your post-retirement work activities/goals was "Making/Keeping Myself Beautiful" and one of your post-retirement expenses was "Travel" then this site would offer you free service in assistance to monetizing your activities. However, I suspect that maybe, just maybe, there might be some kind of hidden clause in this contract.

[jacob]

How do you do it? You close the circle ...

If you like learning things ... you gotta teach it (write a book, make a video, lead a group, become the teacher)
If you like making things ... you gotta get rid of them (sell them, swap them)
If you like buying stuff ... you gotta sell them again
If you like 'doing' things ... you gotta show others how to do it too, how to make it easier for them

Consumers overwhelmingly find themselves on the left side of this list. But you want to take the step over to the right side where producers are. How much left and how much right determines your net cost.

[Gilberto de Piento]

Concrete examples that I or friends have done:
1. Start a gardening business. If you can tell the difference between a weed and a plant you can pull weeds, rake leaves, pick up sticks, mulch (not be a full on landscaping business). Obviously this is only "not working" if you really like gardening.
2. Buy things on craigslist, clean and repair if necessary, and resell. Build information asymmetry in your favor and hustle. Focus on a niche and be patient for the good deals so that you can make money at the buy. Have to enjoying hustling, buying, selling, using the items between the buy and the sell or this is work.
3. Teach an instrument. Have to enjoy playing and teaching or this is work.
4. River or climbing guide. Or just drive the canoe shuttle. Have to enjoy helping others, babysitting, and being outside or this is work.

I find a lot of the difference between work and "not work" is when you can choose to take on a job or not. People who are in a good financial position can choose to take on a job if they want and let jobs that don't sound good pass by. "Not work" is mostly a mental game - if you hate doing any sort of work and just want to watch ice road truckers from the couch you aren't going to be happy doing anything.

[Ego]

A person might buy this Land Rover for $8500, use it for a 4x4 tour of Africa, ship it to the US, import it, register it in California where they sell for a small fortune and sell it. I've seen diesels sell for $60-80k

http://www.autoscout24.it/Details.aspx? ... asrc=st|as



Vehicles older than 25 years are exempt from customs restrictions.

I'm in Morocco right now and have seen thousands of s-class Mercedes being used as grand taxis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_Morocco

S-Class, you know the market in CA. You should be importing them from here by the boatload.

[susswein]

I have quite a few river running/climbing friends who started guiding in order to monetize their hobby. Within 5 years every single one either quit guiding or quit climbing/rafting for fun. The universal reason was that the hobby started to feel too much like work

[7Wannabe5]

Jacob said: If you like learning things ... you gotta teach it (write a book, make a video, lead a group, become the teacher)
If you like making things ... you gotta get rid of them (sell them, swap them)
If you like buying stuff ... you gotta sell them again
If you like 'doing' things ... you gotta show others how to do it too, how to make it easier for them

Perfect. I just copied this on to a 3X5 for future brainstorming purposes.

susswein said: I have quite a few river running/climbing friends who started guiding in order to monetize their hobby. Within 5 years every single one either quit guiding or quit climbing/rafting for fun. The universal reason was that the hobby started to feel too much like work

I don't think it is the mere fact of monetizing an activity that makes it feel like "work." I think it is a matter of finding the right pace or balance or flow and challenge/learning curve and people have a tendency to push themselves past the level of enjoyment and/or challenge when they are also earning money. I can't imagine a single activity I would enjoy doing 5 days a week, 9-5, 50 hours a year for the rest of my life but if there are 10 different activities I could do today to earn some cash-money and 20 different activities I could do today to save some cash-money, it is likely that I can come up with a market-basket of 3 of them to employ myself with today and still have some version of an ideal day in the life for me. I mean, think about the reverse of this reality of burn-out, none of us would want to double-dig a garden 40 hours a week but once a year can be an enjoyable work-out in the fresh air. Also, there is no avoiding a certain amount of plain drudgery in any lifestyle. If I want to enjoy employing myself by baking a pumpkin pie today there has to be some other day on which I employed myself in tidying the pantry. For instance, today I might choose to:

1) Inventory and ship pile of books recently purchased (2 hours): This is a moderately enjoyable activity because it's roughly analogous to taking inventory of your bag of trick-or-treat candy when you are a kid and then selling the majority of it to a friend. "Hmmm...Construction Paper Sculpture: A Project Guide maybe I should keep that one for myself" CASH-MONEY

2) Rake leaves to compost on my vacant lots. (2 hours including walk?): Moderately enjoyable healthy activity if the weather permits. Although, since I am compelled to do this by the city it could also become NECESSARY DRUDGERY if I put it off. Eventually gardening the lots for my own use will SAVE MONEY and market gardening or re-selling the property for a profit will earn me CASH-MONEY.

3) Cook catfish tacos and bake carrot muffins (1 hour)- for my own consumption but will share with sister. SAVE-MONEY

4) NaNoWriMo-(1 Hour) -PERSONAL CHALLENGE

5) Color hair-(1/2 Hour)- NECESSARY DRUDGERY/SAVE MONEY

I think that's enough. I have employed myself for 6.5 hours today which still leaves plenty of time for me to:

1) Randomly amuse myself on the internet.

2) Continue reading "Paradise Lot: Two Plant Geeks, One-Tenth of an Acre and the Making of an Edible Oasis in the City"

3) Respond to or reject any virtual suitors who have popped up

4) Attend free showing of Wes Anderson movie at the library.

5) Take a nap.

My point here being that my day would actually be LESS ideal if I only did the sort of activities I put on the second list. I can even do something like substitute teach or spend all day at a distant book sale a couple day a week and keep a pace/balance that feels close to ideal to me. It's kind of like how runners will have different kind of days in their training schedule.

[George the original one]

I don't think it is the mere fact of monetizing an activity that makes it feel like "work." I think it is a matter of finding the right pace or balance or flow and challenge/learning curve and people have a tendency to push themselves past the level of enjoyment and/or challenge when they are also earning money.

Exactly!

Externally imposed deadlines, quotas, and demands remove the fun. Someone else's emergency is not mine. As long as you can remove those burdens, then the monetization is not likely going to ruin the hobby.

[jacob]

Example: When I was 20 I spent much time playing Magic the Gathering. I also liked trading the playing cards. I had the official price/value list completely memorized (back then around 3rd edition, there weren't so many cards) and would usually trade up. Even better, I would buy people's cards at far below market value. Then I'd flip these cards for computer games and other stuff at the local gaming store. Overall, accumulating a rather large card collection (from the cards I didn't get rid off) cost me nothing. If I sold my remaining shoebox (provided I can dig it out of my parents' attic), I would be net positive.

A consumer might have been happy just buying booster packs and playing. That would have been a supremely expensive way to play.

I don't see "work" in the sense of "you just have to find something you're passionate about because then it's not work". To me, work is a matter of whether you need or are forced show up to turn a dime.---Whether the work becomes a job. I'm fairly sure that the local card market would have been size that would require vastly more effort if I actually had to make a living of it. As it was, it was something I spent a Wednesday afternoon doing, always looking forward to it.

The way I see it ... I'm picking something I'm going to do anyway. And then I do the apparently rare thing of taking an extra step that connects my value generation to other people and in return causes value to flow back to me. However, this step is maybe the last part of the journey whereas for much _work_ it is a large part of the journey or maybe even the entire reason.

[C40]

Jacob - in case you're not already aware - (some of?) the first few editions of MTG cards are worth a LOT of money now. It might be a good time to get and sell them, if possible.

[walker]

In terms of the actual process for monetizing skills, I'm wondering whether an online skills exchange would be workable. It would be like a Listia of services -- people could auction their unique skills for credits that they would then trade for others' services (legal ones only, please ). Bartering instead of selling could reduce the cost of getting the services, and make it more of a community than more transactional sites like eLance, TaskRabbit, fiverr, etc. However, there would be ratings and feedback to make it more organized than Craigslist and other free sites.

There would have to be a LOT of moderation, good data analytics, screening, policing for fraud, etc. to make it work, and of course some editing to make sure members were quality people with interesting skills. Still, I'd be interested in working on something like this as an ERE project. Maybe it's already out there?

[Dragline]

www.score.org is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people start small businesses of all shapes and sizes and find mentors, etc.

Or you can volunteer -- they have volunteer mentors in 62 industries: https://www.score.org/about-score

[Devil's Advocate]

Some really wonderful inputs and ideas here!

And on a conceptual level, Jacob once again (in his post just above) comes up with a great conceptual input, by underlining how the ERE approach to work is so very distinct from the usual find-your-passion-and-make-it-your-profession approach. That lovely Chateaubriand quote he likes to quote comes to mind.

Really great specifics from everyone here! It would seem, after reading this thread and thinking about what people have said, that no one can have the excuse of not being able to monetize their interests (without “working”). The only thing holding them back is just their imagination!

Except :

This does not really help me find my own particular window of monetization. (Without “working”, that is.) I’ve thought on this, looked at this every which way. I can think of many ways in which I can earn money, sure, but then when I think the specific idea through I find I would rather not do them in the way that money might come in, given the option. And since I do have the option, I shan’t do these things.

With one exception, of course : Finally writing and publishing one’s magnum opus, which becomes a bestseller, and brings in pots of gold. That option is probably on everyone’s radar here. (So many people here on these forums—and that includes me—seem to have literary ambitions!)

I’ve thought about why I can’t think of anything fun that’ll bring in money. Speaking for myself that is.

I don’t know, perhaps it is my extreme self-centeredness? (Not a very nice thought, that. Not at all a nice trait, I suppose. But one is what one is.)

Teaching … that should be a clincher, be it in a gym or in a university, but somehow there too I would be extremely uncomfortable and unwilling to actually presume to “teach” unless I were something approaching an expert. I am fairly good in two areas. One is my profession, and in that field I do teach part-time already (for money). The other is Hatha Yoga, Pranayama and Guided Meditation. But I’m constrained from earning money from my Pran-ic breathing classes and spiritual writings because I have this (purely personal but very strong) aversion to linking these “higher” pursuits with money (to me personally the monetization of things of this nature carries the stench of a con job). It’s one thing to instruct people in forms of self-development that may or may not bear out their lofty promises (over and above mundane physical benefits), but to earn money from doing it? Not done, not for me.

Just thinking aloud here …

Truly, going through this thread anyone would say, it would seem that only an idiot would find himself unable to find some way to earn money (without “working”). But I seem to be that idiot.

Perhaps I’ve just not thought enough, simply not explored everything I like and can do, considered all options … let me give it some more thought and see if something concrete doesn’t come up.

Oh yes, there’s always that bestseller-in-the-making that’s slowly coming to life. (Kidding! I mean it is indeed coming to life, but we all know what the chance of its being a bestseller is!)

[Ego]

He's how Jim Henson did it.

http://blog.longreads.com/2013/09/18/on ... d-his-art/

[7Wannabe5]

Devil'sAdvocate said: Teaching … that should be a clincher, be it in a gym or in a university, but somehow there too I would be extremely uncomfortable and unwilling to actually presume to “teach” unless I were something approaching an expert.

How about an elementary school? The fun thing about substitute teaching for me is that I randomly have to brush up my low-level generalist (as opposed to expert) knowledge on a variety of topics such as the growth cycle of a pumpkin, the Native American tribes of Michigan, the development of the Pythagorean theorem or the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. I am also free to improvise to some extent so, for instance, I even gave a group of 7th graders a brief stern ("I will likely be dead but you...") lecture on the topic of Peak Oil after they destroyed some free-distribution plastic toothbrushes by attempting to turn them into weapons. Since my other major source of income is derived from being a rare book scout/dealer, both of my flexible income sources require broad generalist rather than specialist knowledge. Actually, this is true of all three of my means of survival since being a frugal home economist/gardener is also a broad generalist way in which to employ yourself. So, I am finding that the way that these activities overlap is very perma-culture-ish in the sense that each activity supports or feeds the other rather than directly competing for my resources in a way that a more specialist/expert assortment of activities might.