Читать книгу Side Hustles For Dummies - Alan R. Simon - Страница 19

Whether it’s sports memorabilia, Pokémon cards, stamp and coin collecting, scrapbooking and crafting, gardening, homebrewing, or winemaking — or any one of dozens of other hobbies — there’s probably an opportunity for you to monetize your hobby by adding on some sort of side hustle.

Todd started collecting baseball and other sports cards when he was a kid and collected them all through high school. When he went away to college, he tossed all his cards — carefully, of course! — into the closet of his old room at his parents’ house. Fortunately, Todd’s mother didn’t throw out all his sports cards when he moved away, as many of Todd’s friends’ mothers did. Almost 20 years later, Todd rediscovered his old cards during a Thanksgiving visit to his parents’ house.

What did Todd do next? Sure, he began buying current cards for his personal collection at the local big-box retailers and also at hobby shops. But he also discovered something interesting: Some of his childhood cards were now worth a fair bit of money! He began reading blogs and listening to podcasts about the investment and speculation side of sports cards. He began bargain-hunting on social media, at swap meets and flea markets and estate sales, and anywhere that he might find cards for sale. If he found a good bargain, he would buy cards — sometimes lots of cards — with the intention of flipping them for a modest profit.

Then Todd had another idea. Sure, there were already lots of podcasts and YouTube channels about sports card collecting and investing. But he had some interesting and unique ideas about topics that he didn’t see covered anywhere else. By the time baseball season was underway, Todd’s YouTube channel was up and running. Several months later, Todd had more than 1,500 subscribers. At that point, he applied for YouTube’s Partner Program so he could begin monetizing his YouTube presence. (Just in case you’re not familiar with the term monetizing, it means “to make money from” and it’s a key element to many side hustles.)

Fast-forward six months to October and World Series time. Each of Todd’s videos was now generating a large number of views, and he was pulling in a couple thousand dollars a month from ad placement revenue.

Todd had taken his newly rediscovered passion — sports card collecting — and turned it into not one, but two side hustles: sports card investing and flipping, and also monetized videos about the hobby he had rejoined after being away for 20 years.