Can Your Hobby Make You Money After Retirement?

It’s great to have a hobby.

For some people, it’s an outdoor or social activity, while for other people it means some serious alone time.

But can you make money from your hobby during the golden years?

Yes. And in this article, I’ll show you a very practical way you can do this regardless of what you are into.

Turning Your Hobby Into Profits

You absolutely can choose a hobby, interest or passion of any kind, and turn this into a reliable income using the internet.

There are many ways you can do this, but one of the best methods is affiliate marketing.

The idea is to start with a topic that interests you, and build a website where you discuss this topic in detail. You then learn how to attract people to your site who are interested in this same topic, through search engines like Google. The beauty about this is, when people come to your website through Google (in the way I show you) it doesn’t cost you a cent!

Anyway, when you have people on your site you can make money by promoting other people’s products as an affiliate.

This is a very simple business model and means you never need to stock any products or “sell” anything. You simply direct people who are on your website to products they will happily buy.

There are millions of products you can promote, and it costs you nothing to do this. For example, companies like Amazon pay you to promote their products on your website, and there are many more great companies you can partner with.

That’s the basic idea, read on to see an example of how this works.

Example Hobby – Golfing

There are many different hobbies this method can work for, but for the sake of this article I decided to choose golfing. No particular reason, it’s just a common example of a hobby.

Ok. So rather than trying to cover the topic of “golfing” on our website, we want to get a bit more focused to give ourselves the best possible chance of attracting visitors.

The more targeted and relevant we are, the lower our competition and the easier it will be to rank you “hobby related” content in Google. Remember, when you have visitors on your website, you can make money as an affiliate.

Some broad website ideas:

Golfing Accessories: Accessories such as clubs, apparel, bags, balls etc

Golfing Tips: All kinds of golf-related tips for different styles of golfing

Golf Buggies: Comparisons, reviews and tips for people looking to purchase a buggy

You could create a successful website on any one of the above three topics.

But that would require a considerable amount of time and effort because of how broad those topics are. As a beginner, you really want to start out by choosing a topic that is more targeted.

This will mean lower competition and a much easier task of getting into profit. The idea is to start broad, and drill down to come up with much more targeted ideas for your website.

Some targeted website ideas:

• Golfing Accessories
  • Golf Cooler Bags
  • Golf Clubs For Seniors
  • Golf Swing Training Aids
  • Golf Swing Tempo Metronomes
  • Home Golf Launch Monitors

As you can see, we came up with a bunch of great ideas within “golfing accessories” alone and each of these would make a great website.

So, we went from our hobby of “golf” into “golfing accessories” and I highlighted “golf swing training aids” because this is an awesome example of a targeted website

How did I do that research to begin with?

It’s not difficult, but it is a process. I’ve already published a useful article on this topic to help you find a niche. It may be worth reading that article and watching the video to get some more insight into this.

Other Profitable Hobby Ideas

Not everyone reading this will be interested in golfing, and fair enough.

I’m not either, but I did think it was a worthwhile example.

Here are some other popular examples of hobbies you could use this exact process with to come up with a website:

• Photography
• Model-Building
• Fishing
• Gardening
• Quilting
• Antiques
• Many more ideas…

Each of the above ideas could be turned into a profitable website that makes you money.

There are TONS of other ideas out there so try not to limit yourself. People make money doing this stuff in all kinds of niches like brewing beer, building home kit airplanes, knitting, hiking and pretty much anything you could think of.

Choosing a topic that interests you has many benefits when it comes to this business model. For one thing, you are going to be WAY more interested in writing content that people actually enjoy.

I couldn’t imagine researching and writing about “organic makeup” but I can guarantee you that there are plenty of people who will, and that there is plenty of money to be made in that niche.

The most successful sites are run by people who simply love the topic they are writing about. That’s it!

You’ve Chosen Your Topic, Now What?

Once you have chosen your topic, it’s time to write some useful content.

Don’t let this scare you though, it’s really not difficult and you do not need to be some kind of expert writer. The most important concept when it comes tow writing content Google WANTS to rank is making sure it is useful and relevant.

Of course, there are many other things you will learn through reading, watching and practicing, but this is the most important aspect. Not how “fancy” the writing is.

You see, you are not actually selling anything, so you are not writing sales material.

You are researching and writing useful and relevant content about your topic, that others who also love that topic are going to find valuable.

For example, say you are in the ‘model building niche’. When someone types “model building tips for beginners” your website can show up and since you know model building, people are going to learn from what you have written.

It’s that simple.

You publish useful content, get it ranking and then you will have visitors on your website.

So, How Do You Make Money?

There are a variety of ways you can make money from your hobby based website.

Some people use ads, some sell their own products, I love affiliate marketing because it’s nice and simple. Not to mention, potentially very lucrative.

You make money by recommending products to those who visit your website.

For example, I have a site in the pet niche and promote Amazon products as an Amazon affiliate. So, if you visit my site and click on any of my affiliate links and make a purchase, I earn a commission. It’s really THAT simple.

I also earn commissions on products and services people buy through this site.

I don’t own any of these products, I simply directed people to where they can buy them.

And I make sure it’s stuff I have bought (or would buy) myself.

Granted, only a percentage of people will buy anything from the above banner since this is just one article. But you see the point.

If you wrote 100’s of articles over time and directed ALL of your visitors to ONE page where you placed a similar banner of your favorite product (and explained why it was your favorite) then you can make some serious money this way.

Getting Started

Just like there are many topics you can build a website about, there are many ways to get started doing this. Some are better than others.

I’ve spent a LOT of time and money trying different programs over the years, but there’s really only one I recommend. It’s a platform called Wealthy Affiliate.

It’s free to sign up and they show you how to build your business from scratch through step-by-step video tutorials. They even give you a couple of free websites so you can follow along with the training and apply what you learn.

The platform also doubles as an interactive and supportive community of like-minded folks who help one another succeed. It’s a mix of beginners and experts who have started where you are, and gone on to see amazing results. There’s a live chat, you can message people privately and ask people for help whenever you need it.

This is how I got started doing this so I know it works. It does take time and effort to learn the ropes and develop your skills, like anything worthwhile does. But by applying yourself to the training you will see results.