9 Common Mistakes To Avoid With Your Hobby

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9 Common Mistakes To Avoid With Your Hobby Business

9 Common Mistakes To Avoid With Your Hobby BusinessTurning your hobby into a money-making business…sounds great, right? You can do something that you already enjoy doing and help others to learn more, all while generating some extra cash. Hold on a minute, though…there are a lot of mistakes that you can make when you take that step from purely having a hobby to attempting to bring in some cash with said hobby. Here are nine common mistakes that you definitely need to avoid if you want to have success with such an endeavor.

1. Not Doing Enough Research

One of the most important things to do before you charge full steam ahead with your idea is to research the possibilities and level of interest. If you take the plunge without doing so, you may find right away that there just isn’t as much interest in what you are offering to help you make any money. If you live in a smaller area and want to start up a hobby-related store, for instance, it had better be a hobby that has a lot of local participants! Otherwise, the internet is often a great place for those with “niche” hobbies, because there is such a large prospective audience, and geographic limitations mean little.

2. Not Treating it Like a Real Business

Even if you are not expecting your hobby to provide all (or even most) of your income, you should still treat it like a real business. If you do not, you will have a hard time succeeding. You need to have a certain amount of commitment to what you are doing, in order to market your offerings, develop interest in what you do, and eventually make money. If you do not put in the required effort or take what you are doing seriously, why will anyone want to give you their hard-earned cash?

3. Setting Too Low of a Price

A lot of times, someone who is starting a new business will make the error of underselling themselves when it comes to price. This can happen for many reasons. For example, you may worry that you won’t get enough sales, and you will need to generate interest by selling for a low price. You may also not have the confidence in what you do to ask for a fair price. Remember, if you sell for a lower price, your profit margin (the profit on each unit you sell) decreases.

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9 Common Mistakes To Avoid With Your Hobby Business

If you sell a product that costs you a dollar to make for $2 instead of $3, you now have to sell twice as many just to make the profit you would have made at the old price!

4. Not Being Organized

Once you get things going full speed, you will have a lot to think about and a lot to do. Therefore, it is important that you are organized from the word “go”, which means setting a routine when it comes to paperwork, ordering supplies, and other necessities. Otherwise, you will get overwhelmed, forget to do something important, or misplace items that you really need. Organization also keeps you from spending more time than you should have to on many tasks, which is also important when you are very busy.

5. Managing Your Time Poorly

This is an extension of the last tip, in a way. However, poor time management can mean a lot of things. If you are spending way more time than you should in one particular area of your business, the other areas will start to suffer. You may think that you can make up for poor time management by working long hours, but you are only human! Your productivity (and the quality of your work) will suffer when you work too long, so manage your time well and make sure to include some free time for yourself.

6. Not Knowing What Group You’re Targeting

Many people, especially since the internet has changed the way we do business, believe that they should just “put their product out there”, allowing people to find it. That’s a great way to do business, if you don’t mind not making any money for months or even years when you first start out. Otherwise, you need to market yourself, and the first step to doing so is to know what your target market is. Get specific- stay-at-home moms, college students, single thirty-somethings, and so on. Then, you can take the next step and start marketing your business directly to those who will be the most interested in it.

7. Not Truly “Knowing” That Audience

Whoa, you may say…wasn’t that the last mistake? Nope. There is a difference between knowing who you want to aim your products or services toward and actually knowing what those people are looking for. Just because you place an ad on a website that is popular with the audience you are marketing towards doesn’t mean that you will instantly connect with them and become rich! You also have to research that group and tailor what you do and how you advertise towards them. If you partner with other websites, make sure that you choose partners who have a common target market, too!

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9 Common Mistakes To Avoid With Your Hobby Business

8. Trying to Grow Too Big Too Fast

So, you’re doing a great job. You’re finally making a profit, and your website or store is starting to gain in popularity. What’s the next step? Double your advertising expenses? Open a new store, or add a slew of new types of items to your online storefront? Slow down, now! Trying to expand too quickly can be very dangerous, even with a small business. Take a little time to continue attracting customers, and expand to meet demand rather than in anticipation of demand!

9. Losing the Love for Your Hobby

Last, but not least, you can’t allow yourself to fall “out of love” with your hobby. The whole reason that you are doing this is that you want to make money doing something that you love, right? If that somehow changes, and your business becomes just another job, things will start to go downhill very quickly.

The quality of what you do will suffer, your customers will sense that you are just “in it for the money”, and you will begin to resent doing something that you used to enjoy. Only you can know what you have to do to maintain your affection for your hobby- whether it is hiring extra help to meet demand, taking some time off, or any number of other solutions. The key here is to enjoy yourself, though! Otherwise, you might as well be stuck in the old job that you could not wait to get away from.

It may seem like there are a lot of possible pitfalls to avoid when turning your hobby into a business, and in a way, that’s true. However, with effort, dedication and research on your part, you will likely be able to avoid many of these and other common mistakes. If you believe in what you are doing and you know that there is interest in what you offer, you can go very far with something that started out simply as a hobby. Why not give it a try?

Want to learn more? Visit: http://www.hobbydollars.com/ to sign up for the FREE “Cashing in on Your Favorite Hobby” online course.

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