People who read this blog and know me in real life are sometimes surprised by my choice of possessions. On one hand, I can be seen frugally squeezing life out of a 6-year-old smartphone, sharing a single used vehicle with my wife, and typing this blog post from a secondhand laptop. But when it comes to frivolous hobby items, I often opt for the finest — snapping photos with a $6,000 camera* through a $2,000 lens and shuffling $15,000 decks of trading cards at my local game store (yes, I actually own a $15k deck of cards).
Despite their high cost, these just-for-fun addictions to things like photography and Magic: The Gathering have actually helped me and Lauren get richer over our lifetimes. They’re hobbies that make money — if you know how to approach them the right way.
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3 Criteria for Money-Making Hobbies
If you wanna get paid to have fun, the first step is picking a hobby with some upside potential. Look for something that meets at least 2 out of these 3 criteria:
- Cheap or appreciating supplies — It’s easy to turn a profit with a hobby that costs almost nothing to start (like writing this blog!), but if you have to spend some money up-front, it’s better if you’re buying non-consumable items that maintain stable or increasing resale value.
- A market for the end result — A lot of hobbies involve creating things. The most profitable hobbies involve creating things that people will actually want to buy.
- Achievable payoffs for excellence — The most satisfying part of developing a new skill is striving to get better at it. If higher levels of performance have cash payoffs (like tournament prizes, sponsorships, or the ability to to fetch premium pricing for the results), you’ll stay motivated to become the best you can be. Not only can this make you money, but it makes the challenge way more fun.
Let’s see how a few of our own personal interests stack up against these three criteria…
Hobbies That Make Money: Photography
Nice camera gear is expensive, and while it holds its resale value better than sports cars or designer clothing, I’ll be honest and admit that it’s neither cheap nor does it appreciate in value. Photography fails the first test.
Now, don’t tell anyone this, but we would be willing to photograph weddings and portraits and all sorts of stuff without getting paid, just because we like doing it. But fortunately, we don’t have to. A few times a year, people ask to pay me and Lauren for the thing we love doing — and it’s more than enough to scratch our itch. Photography passes test number 2 with flying colors.
The better we get at taking pictures, the more people are willing to pay for them, too. The first wedding we ever shot paid $200. The last wedding we shot brought in $5,100. This keeps us motivated to constantly innovate, improve, and try new things, which makes our hobby way more challenging and interesting. Photography definitely passes the third test.
Score: 2 out of 3. ✅
Hobbies That Make Money: Trading Card Games
Remember the $15,000 deck of Magic: The Gathering cards I mentioned earlier? Well, here’s the thing: I didn’t pay anywhere near $15k for it. I bought most of those cards over a decade ago for pennies on the dollar, and as collectibles, they’ve almost continually appreciated in value over time as I’ve continued to enjoy using them. Aside from that, I know the Magic market pretty well, and I’ve made a lot of money over the years trading, buying, and selling expensive cards.
Better yet, you don’t even need these expensive cards to play Magic. In fact, our favorite version of the game is called “Pauper,” which uses only common cards (most of which cost a few cents). Depending on how you play Magic, it can either involve very little up-front cost, or a cost that gets fully recouped as long as you efficiently get rid of cards you’re no longer using. Magic passes the first test.
Unfortunately, Magic is just a game. It produces nothing. Unless you decide to become a gaming content creator, you’re not really providing value to anyone (other than fun for yourself and your opponent) when you play, so Magic fails test number 2.
Luckily though, there are literal cash (or cash-equivalent) prizes for winning Magic tournaments. It’s a game of skill, so with enough dedication, you can outshine the competition. While neither Lauren nor myself is good enough at Magic to compete professionally, we’re both good enough to consistently win back all of our tournament entry fees and then some.
On average, we actually make a small profit whenever we attend events. In this way, Magic passes the third test for us.
Score: 2 out of 3. ✅
Hobbies That Make Money: Online Content Creation
When we started Trip Of A Lifestyle in the middle of a very long road trip, we had no plans to monetize it, but we also didn’t need a plan to monetize it, because it costs pretty close to $0 to run a website and a few social media accounts. Online content creation passes the first test since it’s basically free to do.
When you make valuable content though, you can sell it. If we wanted to, we could create a paid personal finance or travel course, and this website would start making sales — people do it all the time. Personally, that was never our goal, and we decided to give away all of our content for free, forever. But in principle, online content creation passes test number 2 just fine.
Surprisingly though, you don’t actually have to sell anything to make money at this. Once our content gained traction, we started getting unsolicited emails for brand partnerships and affiliate programs (which we turned into a money generator for charity). When our YouTube channel started to pop off, we were invited to join the YouTube Partner Program to start getting paid when we publish our free videos (crazy, right?). We also qualified for Facebook and Instagram Bonuses as well as Google AdSense revenue. It pays to become popular online, so online content creation also passes the third test.
Score: 3 out of 3. ✅
Creator Consumerism: A Word of Caution
This all sounds pretty rosy until you consider the following: How many of your friends who bought expensive cameras, collectibles, or professional podcasting equipment actually stuck with their newfound passion long enough to make a net profit as a result?
For a lot of people, the most exciting part of starting a new hobby is buying stuff. If you find yourself lusting after fancy gear and using the preceding parts of this blog post to justify entering your credit card information into a checkout screen you have open in another tab, please slow down.
People who are successful at developing hobbies that make money usually share one thing in common: It’s not the stuff that excites them. It’s the challenge of getting better — or creating something new.
For a prospective new photographer, spending hours researching which camera to buy is a huge red flag. On the other hand, spending hours learning techniques to take better photos is an extremely positive sign.
My best advice is to start every new hobby with the cheapest possible setup cost, and spend a lot of time squeezing the best results you can possibly get out of that starter-level gear. Prove yourself — to yourself. If you’re starting to achieve excellent results with a thrifted camera, or some free trial software, or the content you recorded with your phone — and you still feel excited after that — it might just be time to level up!
— Steven
* I didn’t actually pay the $6,000 MSRP for my Nikon D5, by the way. I bought it used on eBay for $3,000 in 2019, when it was already 3 years old. It’s still my primary camera in 2025. Even professionals don’t really need “the best that money can buy.”
** I asked Jon if he wanted a link to his business in this post. He declined, stating that he has plenty of work, and he doesn’t want his hobby to “drift into the dreaded realm of responsibility” — a solid reminder that the FIRST goal of every hobby is to have fun!
