If you are a regular to this blog you may have noticed I have changed my online marketing focus. I am now sharing how my hobbies are making me money online.

Most of my adult life I have been a workaholic and took very little time to enjoy my family, friends or hobbies and interests. I was really focused on things that revolve around my career as a computer instructor and consultant.

I spent the years I should have spent with my wife and son working so that we would have better years in our retirement. My hobbies for the most part were put on the back burner.

I could see retirement on the horizon and life was looking great, then at age 50, just before my 51st birthday, my heart told me it was all over but the cryin’ and dyin’.

The doctors couldn’t even operate the damage to my arteries was so extensive, so they sent me home with drugs I would take for the rest of my life and I would either survive or I wouldn’t.

I spent the next four years seeing very little difference and was depressed a lot of the time, but in 2008 I started to get some life back into my body and…

… you guessed it. I started to enjoy some of my hobbies again. Life was starting to look better.

About a year ago, which was the time I noticed I didn’t feel quite so crappy, I started a blog about one of our hobbies. After a few months I was getting some traffic so I decided to put some ads on the blog and I started earning a bit of money right away.

I decided to try another blog on the same hobby but localize it more and it started getting traffic faster than the first blog, now it does better than my first blog.

Then I started a couple more blogs on a different hobby and waited until I was getting some traffic to them and then I monetized them as well. They also started to make money.

I have mentioned most of this before but I found the key to those blogs that started earning me money online was the fact that they were hobbies I already spent a good deal of money on each year. Well before I had my heart attack anyways, and I spend quite a bit on them this year, as I was feeling better.

I have been nervous to share any of the niches my blogs are in because in the past I have had a few ideas snapped right out from under me so I get a bit scared. So I won’t give the URLs for any of my other blogs but I will share the niche of a couple of my blogs.

Hobby #1 – Backyard Gardening. My wife and I decided to start gardening after we bought the property we have now. Even though we are in the middle of our city I still bought the lot beside our property so we would have room for a nice sized garden.

I figured I might as well share with anyone who would read it, the info we learn about gardening and that started a great thing which lead to two other sites on gardening. One was another blog while the other is a money site where I sell other people’s gardening products on eBay. I don’t even have to put up any sales pages.

eBay shares the earnings they get on the listing that I sell which is just fine with me and the more sites I have the more that income increases without me needed to do anything but share on my blogs.

Hobby #2 – Fly Fishing. I have loved fishing since it was introduced to me at age 8 and then fly fishing which was introduced to me when I was about 30. It is a great hobby and I get a lot of fresh air, exercise, enjoyment and every now and then a nice Atlantic Salmon for dinner.

Well my fishing hobby can cover so much I could stay with just one blog on fishing, oh no. I created a blog for fishing, fly fishing, fishing in my local region and a couple of money sites based on U.S. and Canada.

So now I have 6 fishing sites, 4 blogs and 2 money sites. A little network that is growing and earning me more money each month.

Hobby #3 – Travel. We are baby boomers and we love to travel and now that we are getting ever closer to retirement we are traveling even more so why not share our travle experiences.

This blog surprises me because when I started it I didn’t have any content yet so I started using (Private Label Rights) PLR articles and before long I was getting requests from people wanting to place ads on our blog.

This blog soon became my biggest earner and it was the site I worked the least at. That one had me scratching my head in wonderment.

I didn’t completely figure it before I thought I better get another travel site going. The second site is brand spanking new and I don’t have any travel money sites set up yet. That’s a project that will worked on over the coming months.

I have received comments on a couple of my make money online sites where I talk about my hobbies and most people tell me I won’t be able to make a go of it because hobbies don’t make money.

Well once I figured out that I could make money on the hobbies that I spend money on there was no lookin’ back.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Related posts:

  1. I Blog About My Hobbies But Blogging Isn’t A Hobby, It’s My Business
  2. Blogging For Profit Sharing My Hobby Experience
  3. I Don’t Blog As A Hobby To Make Money Online, I Blog About My Hobbies.
  4. Can My Hobbies Make Money For Me? That’s The Question!
  5. Focusing On The Riches In Niches

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Filed under: blogging for profitcreate a blogebooks resell rightsmake money onlineplrplr articles

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!