How to use a website to turn a hobby into a profitable business

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Your site gives you the opportunity to take your hobby to a new level and start making money with what you really like. The advantage of this approach is that you do not need to leave your main job, put all your achievements at stake and rush headlong into the maelstrom of entrepreneurship. It is enough to put your hobby on a commercial track in your free time.

If you've been doing any hobby for a long time, it's time to move from the amateur to the professional category. Making a hobby with the help of a website a source of income is not difficult. Should you expect instant profits and quick money? Unlikely.

But everything is in your hands. If you work hard on the creation and development of the site, the result will certainly come. Plus, showcasing your talents and skills on the Internet is an opportunity to show yourself, get grades, make useful connections and just get better.

You need a website that will tell you in detail about you, your products and services, attract visitors and interest them.

In the struggle for popularity, you have a trump card - this is your knowledge and your experience, that is, the content of your site. Representation on the Internet serves only as a tool for designing your hobby, and your hobbies will become a source of money. Let's talk about how to work with this tool.

Plan before you start

Hobbies are different, it is impossible to tell about one universal recipe for any hobby. Therefore, before you start working on the site, think about how visitors should bring you profit. If you collect the site "just to be", it will never bring you a single ruble.

Answer yourself a few specific questions:

• Who will come to my site?
• Why would a visitor want to stay?
• What should a visitor do in order for me to receive money: buy a product, follow a link, click on a banner, subscribe to news, call me and place an order, tell about me on a social network?
• How can I nudge a visitor to the right decision?

If you miss an important answer in this chain, the road will not lead to profit: either you will not have enough information and tools, or there will be interfering pages.

Look for simple solutions

Now there are many tools with which even a non-specialist can make a website. Take advantage of these suggestions. There is no need to order a project in a web studio: a website made with your own hands with the help of a constructor will cost several times cheaper, and it will look no worse than a website developed by a whole team.

When choosing, focus on ease of learning, look at examples of ready-made sites made on the basis of the constructor. Read reviews and pay attention to user experience. The site should not take more of your time than work and your own hobby.

Choose a suitable site format

The shape of the site depends on your hobby. Handmade goods and jewelry can be sold in an online store, a business card site will tell you about confectionery or the work of a make-up artist, and you can describe travels or give master classes in a blog.

Hint: there are ready-made website templates designed specifically for different professions and hobbies. See what opportunities they offer. Perhaps you will find among them what you need.

Benefit from someone else's experience

When you're just starting to go online, feel free to leverage someone else's experience. If you have a hobby, then you probably yourself visit the sites dedicated to the hobby. Think about how they appeal to you, and write down all of their benefits.

Maybe it's the quality of the information presented, the good videos, the usability, or the interesting community.

Write down separately what you are missing on your favorite sites. This will create a list of must-haves and set goals for your site's development.

Get started: domain and hosting

Without a domain name and hosting, the site will remain a set of pictures and projects on your computer.

Hundreds of articles have been written on how to choose a domain name, although they can all be put into one phrase: the simpler and clearer, the better. The task is difficult, because simple and understandable names have been occupied for a long time, but this does not mean that you can make the name long and difficult to remember.

Choosing a hosting is also not easy, especially when you still have no idea how much traffic will be on the site and how much disk space you need. Universal tip: start with free offers. Even if something goes wrong with you, you will not lose money.

Use templates to create a website

Do you know what is the plus of using ready-made templates for the site? You will not make elementary mistakes.

Of course, you know more about your hobby than the designers who created the templates, but there are elements that are required for every site, such as the home page, contact page, and so on. And the online store will initially look completely different from a business card site.

Professionals already know which models work best and build them into templates. The ready-made basics help you avoid mistakes while you master the basics of site building.

Use web apps

With the help of web applications, you can expand the capabilities of the site, install analytics tools and be able to set up interaction with social networks (without them nowhere), make a newsletter and add functions that will help to win an audience.

Focus on content

When you create a website about your hobby, you already have a huge advantage - interesting content. Everything new that you create, your knowledge and base are your advantages. Monitor the quality of the content of your site, constantly update it.

The best content is the one that answers users' questions.

Put yourself in the shoes of your visitors and think about what tasks the site helps to solve.

By the way, images are also content, and they must be of high quality and original. If you put the first picture you see on the site, then either you violate someone's copyright, or you use an image that everyone has seen. Do not be lazy to look for interesting photos on stocks, but rather take original pictures yourself or with the help of talented friends.

Learn more about promotion

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, seems daunting, but getting your site up and running will have to learn at least the basics. The principles of promotion, interesting content and concern for the audience will attract visitors.

After that, you can think about inviting advertisers and affiliate programs.

Make a mobile version of the site

More and more people go to the Internet from mobile devices, so let's say briefly: you shouldn't start without a mobile version.

Look for an all-in-one service

Assembling a site in parts, looking for hosting and a designer, communicating with technical support of various services and trying to understand how promotion works is not a matter of one week. Do not try to conquer Everest if you went to the mountains for the first time, it is better to use the tools that are thought out for you.

The best option is to find a platform that provides access to most of the features you need. Wix is an example. For beginners, here is:

• website builder;
• templates for different professions and hobbies;
• hosting;
• blog with useful information;
• knowledge base;
• opportunities for the development and promotion of the site.

A sufficient list for starting and developing, and everything you need is available for free. And hosting, and the choice of templates, and a website builder, with which you can easily turn any sample into a recognizable site.

So there is no reason to waste time and think whether it is worth making a website. Just start to make your hobby not only fun, but also money-making.