This pandemic has certainly unleashed our creative and entrepreneurial sides. A lot of us are discovering other talents we didn’t think we had and exploring new hobbies we never thought we’d love!
It’s definitely a healthy and fun way to while away the time when quarantined at home. Not only do they help us manage our stress levels, our hobbies also help us forget about things (even for just a little while) that worry or scare us.
We also nurture new skills that will teach us to be more innovative, efficient, and even interesting!
But more importantly, our hobbies can give us new opportunities to earn money while doing something that we love or we’re really good at.
If your hobbies are on this list, maybe it’s time to consider setting up shop!
Baking
You’ve probably seen lots of delicious and mouth-watering posts from your friends and family during quarantine. It seems that everyone has turned into a home baker overnight. Good news is so can you!
If you’ve always enjoyed baking, you can sell your home baked goods, even if you’ve never won a baking competition, and even if you don’t have a top of the line oven.
Novice bakers just need to practice more often to perfect the little mistakes and get the right consistency.
Unlike cooking where you can make adjustments to your measurements as you cook, baking requires more precise measurements.
Read your recipe more than once, and get familiar with your ingredients, your oven, and your oven’s temperature.
Make sure that you have the right tools as well. Baking is more fun and stress-free if you know you have everything you need and you know your baking equipment will not let you down.
Start off with bestsellers and crowd pleasers like cookies, brownies, bars, muffins, cupcakes, pastries, breads, pies, and biscotti.
You can even include dog treats so customers’ furry companions can enjoy something delicious, too!
Cooking
You can also make a profit from the dishes you prepare at home. Especially if you have the talent and your dishes have that uniquely delicious flavor.
Food retail continues to thrive in this pandemic, especially now that people are still wary of dining out.
Share your culinary talent not just with friends and family. Partner up with food delivery riders to reach more customers.
You can also offer your culinary expertise as a personal chef to people with more discriminating tastes or dietary restrictions.
If you have the social media following, you can offer online cooking courses as well. Students can have the option to one-on-one instruction or just download instructional videos, depending on what they want to learn.
Needlework
If you don’t possess impressive cooking or baking skills but are good with needlework, you can turn this hobby into a profitable endeavor as well.
Show off your work on your Instagram or Facebook page. Whether it’s crochet, cross stitch, embroidery, knitting, patchwork, quilting, or applique you’re good at, there’s a niche market for that.
There are people who love collecting knitted dolls, crocheted coasters and placemats, or quilted keepsakes.
If you want to offer something extra, you can also sell patterns for those who want to learn needlework with an easy, illustrated instruction.
Art
Your paintings, sculptures, calligraphy, or even doodles can also be a profitable venture. Showcase your work on your social media accounts.
Artists prefer to use Instagram for this because of the huge artist community, not only in the Philippines but all over the world.
Take high-quality photos of your work and include creative and well-written captions to complement them.
If you can post videos about your creative process, that will also increase your engagement and promote more sales.
Also, make sure that your art is discoverable online by using the relevant hashtags.
Plants
Green thumbs can also peddle their wares online, not just in garden centers and in the landscape section of big supermarkets.
Beautiful plants are all the rage now, especially for people who want to add some green chic to their home office setups.
Growing your own herbs and vegetables is also more popular these days. There’s something so special about eating vegetables and crops grown from your very own garden. Not to mention it’s very healthy and saves you money.
If you want to grow and sell your own vegetables, you don’t need a massive space to get started. Even a small backyard or pocket garden will do.
Grow what you want to eat or what you often use in your recipes. Be diverse in vegetables you want to plant so that you have a bit of everything.
If you want to focus on indoor and outdoor ornamental plants, you can start with aloe vera, spider plants, or Chinese evergreens, just to name a few.
Put your plants in cute baskets and different sized colorful pots to make them stand out to buyers. This way, they can easily visualize how they will look in their own space.
Vlogging
It seems that everyone with an internet connection and some YouTube know-how can be a vlogger these days. But what will set you apart from these dime-a-dozen vloggers is the quality of your content.
You don’t need to have the most sophisticated setup. You can vlog just using a smartphone and a selfie stick. The trick is making your vlogs reach the right audience, make them subscribe to your channel, and watch your videos from start to finish.
If you have a fun, genuine, and interesting personality and are confident in talking in front of the camera, and even sharing your private life with the public, you will be stellar at vlogging.
Share tutorials, test and review products, make people laugh — there are so many things you can feature on your vlogs!
Blogging
If you have the knack for writing, you can also turn it into something profitable. There are many online platforms where you can get paid to write or websites where you can submit articles and get paid for them.
You can monetize your blog, get a writing gig as a side hustle, or even guest blog.
Have you finished the manuscript of your book? Whether it’s a pop fiction or an adult fiction novel, an anthology of stories, a collection of poems, or just a practical guide on something, you can publish and sell them in different online bookstores.
Did you know that you can even collate blog posts and turn them into an ebook? Explore your writing options because there are a lot!
Teach music or crafts. Have an online storytelling hour for kids. Be a pet sitter or dog walker if you love animals. Your hobbies can be another income stream if you’re willing enough!
Which hobbies are you enjoying these days? Are you considering earning money from it? Share us your thoughts in the comments!