Make Money From Your Hobbies

What are you into? Are you an expert at something? Do you have a hobby that you absolutely love? If so, you just might be able to turn that hobby into a few extra bucks every month.

We’ve all been told that “it’s not work if you love what you do,” but the problem is most of us are stuck in jobs we don’t love, working for people we don’t respect, and are worried about paying off credit card bills and making the rent payment.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could turn what you love — what you gladly spend your other 8 hours doing — and make money at the same time? Here’s how you can do just that.

Check out eduFire. They are a “live video learning” website where folks like you — people with a passion and an expertise — can teach others (or learn from others). eduFire provides the teaching platform; you provide the content.

Here are the two things you need to consider:

1. What can you teach? Before you say there’s nothing you can teach, take a step back. If you’re like me, whenever you hear “instructor,” you probably immediately get this vision of a leisure-suit-wearing stuffy college professor yapping about electrons and nuclei? Well that’s not an eduFire instructor, and it doesn’t have to be you either. Also, a single hour-long course is just fine — you don’t need to 12 courses over a semester.

Take some time to brainstorm your interests. Do you speak another language? Are you a marketing whiz? Have you mastered Twitter or Facebook? Check out eduFire’s website to spark some ideas.

2. How much can you make? According to Jon Bischke, founder and president of eduFire, top teachers make between $100 to $150 an hour (85% of the revenue goes to the instructor and 15% goes to eduFire). If you taught the same course a couple of times a month, you might pull in an extra $200 or $300. Not bad for doing something you enjoy.

The more students you get, the more you make. Tap into the 40,000+ students who have already registered for eduFire courses AND be sure to market your course to your own network for maximum impact.

Inside Tips:

Brand building. Maybe you want to build your brand, platform, or reach. Instead of charging for your class, offer it for free. Once you build a following and are in demand, you could then charge for classes.

Up-sell. You could offer free classes but then introduce your own services/products. For example, if you are a PR guru, you could teach a class on how to write a killer press release for free. For those students who are interested, you could help them build their media list for a fee. Warning: you must provide good, solid content. eduFire is not your personal infomercial network.

Differentiate. Check out the list of courses currently offered on the site. If there are other classes similar to yours (e.g., how to learn Chinese), review the course titles, descriptions, and instructor profiles and offer something different. For example, instead of titling your class, “Learn Chinese,” how about “The 10 Business Phrases in Chinese You Must Know,” or “Don’t Visit China without First Taking this Class.”

Prime time. Per founder, Jon Bischke, the majority of classes are taken from 5:00pm to 6:00pm. Try to fit your class around this hotspot.

Meritocracy. Classes are not reviewed first by eduFire. The community (your students) determines your success (can you imagine if College worked this way?). Provide good content and you’ll get better rankings. The better your rankings the more eduFire will market your class and the more students you’ll get.

Good luck and happy teaching . . .

By Robert Pagliarini

Tags: Bischke, College Professor, Credit Card Bills, Electrons, Extra 200, Hobbies, Jobs, Leisure Suit, Marketing, Money, Nuclei, Passion, Tap, Whiz

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 8:16 am and is filed under Helpful Hints. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.