Hobbies That Make Money for Retirement (2024)

One of the best things about retirement is that you can spend more time on your hobbies, right? What if I told you there’s something even better? Hobbies that make money!

Let me show you how you can boost your income and thrive in retirement by simply sharing your expertise and enthusiasm for your hobby.

Using your hobby to earn money has quite a few benefits, such as:

• Spend more time doing what you love
• Gain more freedom or independence
• Get some extra cash to spend in retirement
• Save up for a special trip or luxury
• Meet and connect with others who share your hobby
• Find a sense of purpose and joy

What Kind of Hobbies Can Make You Money?

Pretty much any type of hobby can make you money. Here’s a wide range of examples of people who have profitable businesses based on hobbies. I’ll then reveal the ways they make money, and how you can get started.

Earning Money From Arts and Crafts Hobbies

Drawing

One of my favorite sites is this wonderful website from Ivan Huska – Easy Drawings and Sketches. I used it a lot during the pandemic lockdown, teaching myself to draw trees and flowers. Ivan is from Slovakia. He now lives in Japan, which shows that you can live anywhere you like and make money from your hobby, especially when you’re retired.

Knitting

Make sure you have a box of tissues handy as you read this moving story of how Vickie rescued herself from years of abuse by turning her craft hobby into an online business.

Make Extra Money From Outdoor Pursuits and Sports

This fabulous site makes me want to retire to the tropics even more. I can see me getting one of Galen and Nicole’s great eBooks on snorkeling when I next visit my beloved Indonesia.

They got their Tropical Snorkelling site going while still young, and it will no doubt be a great income well into their retirement. It’s never too late to start to start a hobby-based online business.

Whether you’re into fishing, hiking, skiing or hockey, there’s bound to be a way to generate extra cash from your favorite outdoor activity.

Earn Extra From Your Green Fingers

Gardening is a great niche for budding hobby businesses. There’s such a wealth of topics to choose from for the green-fingered. Christine based her profitable site on her love of indoor plants, while Chase adored the plants from her local area of South Florida, which she had grown for many years.

Pet Hobbies That Can Make You Money

Keeping pets or raising domesticated animals like chickens or goats is also a great hobby that you can develop into your own website. Many people forget that the expertise they’ve built up over the years caring for animals is a skill that has a value.

Check out how Karen has developed her passion for breeding rabbits into a fantastic online business. Then see how Janice started a brand new life in a new town by creating a website around her love of small dogs.

Extra Cash From History and Mythology

Be inspired too by these amazing sites by Mike Belmont who turned a lifelong passion for mythology and folklore into a profitable site, and Jaime who is passionate about Aztec history.

Make Collecting Your Side Hustle

Danny Sandrik collected vinyl records over many decades. He created a content site to share his passion with fellow music fans as a hobby. He now frames and sells his records for really good prices as he has built up a reputation and relationship with his readers.

I too started my first online business based around my passion for collecting Bakelite Jewelry. When I was ready to re-sell pieces of my collection, it was really helpful to have all that free traffic generated by my information-rich website.

Just How Successful Can a Hobby Business Be?

What I love about all of the people above is that they had different reasons for starting their online businesses. They’re all ordinary people like you and me, whose success began with a passion for their hobby.

Nearly all of these examples are in the top 0.5% of all sites on the internet now, out of more than 200 million websites? That’s some achievement for individual “solopreneurs” following their dreams.

How Can Your Hobbies Make You Money?

There are lots of different ways that a hobby turned online business can make money:

• Teach your skills online via a platform such as Udemy
• Create a YouTube channel with “How to” videos
• Sell eBooks
• Build your own content website business

My favorite, and the one chosen by everyone above, is to create a content website based around a hobby.

Why do I think that’s the best way? Well, if you have your own site, you’re in control and not reliant on other people’s platforms. You’re also location independent should you ever fancy experiencing a bit of nomad van living.

You can build your own traffic and then use a range of diversified ways to make money from your content like:

• Vicky, who recommends knitting patterns and yarns from Amazon and other affiliate companies as well as selling advertising through Google AdSense.
• Janice and Karen, who recommend their picks of the best pet nutrition, pet portraits and animal accessories.
• Danny and I, who sold off our collections for the best prices as well as creating an affiliate marketing website for retirement income.
• Galen and Nicole, who wrote eBooks about the best places to snorkel.
• Mike and Jaime, who simply sold display advertising on their content pages.

There are many other ways how to monetize your blog or website:

• start a membership club for like-minded hobby fans
• market your own eBooks rather than relying on Amazon etc.
• create and sell your own information products
• recommend products or services and get commissions
• provide services or training
• write product reviews for tools or equipment for your hobby
• sell your own goods or related products

How Can You Get Started With Hobbies That Make You Money?

You might be thinking this is all too hard, that you’re not a writer or that you know nothing about building websites. Let me tell you: You don’t need to be tech-savvy or a brilliant writer.

You’d be surprised by just how much you know about your passion and how easy it is to communicate it once you get into it. Start small, and let it grow gradually.

If you’re looking for a place where you get everything you need for building a profitable online business based on your hobby, look no further than Solo Build It!. It’s how I began in 2009. It grew until my online business supported me when I had to give up work due to ill health. I love it just as much now, and it’s still going strong, ready to support me into my retirement.