should you monetize your hobbies?
everyone tells you to monetize your passions - should you?
everyone tells you to “monetize your passions” or “monetize your hobbies.”
i’m here to tell you not to do that.
this gets confusing because the internet advocates for monetizing whatever you love to do. where it gets blurry is understanding the nuance in that. when we do client discovery interviews, i ask them “what are your hobbies?” or “what are you good at?”
but the difference is that i don’t just take what they say, like, “i love playing video games”, and tell them to start streaming for money. i mean, if that’s your jam, i don’t have anything against it. it’s just not what this letter is about.
what i do instead, is take that passion and dissect it.
on the surface, playing video games is entertainment. it’s fun. but when you go beneath that initial layer and focus on the skill, everything changes.
take one of our clients.
when we asked what gets him excited, he told us he loves playing video games. specifically, he loves the complex optimization of character builds. he loves theory-crafting, data analysis, and breaking down complex math-related problems into simpler parts.
we didn’t tell him to start a twitch channel.
instead, we extracted the competence.
the underlying skill of optimizing a video game character build is the exact same skill required to optimize a messy business workflow.
so, we didn’t commercialize his passion for gaming. we monetized his skill.
we positioned him as a google forms and automation specialist. he took his natural ability to theory-craft and used it to build a custom diagnostic tool with conditional logic that automatically filters leads for our studio. he turned a hidden competence into a highly marketable service.
and he still gets to play video games strictly for his own peace.
my writing works the same way.
back in 2020, i didn’t write newsletters like this one. i wrote fiction.
during the pandemic, i had a lot of life (and darkness) to process. that’s when i discovered how much i loved building worlds. writing dialogue. crafting character arcs. i grew a dedicated fanbase for my stories.
but i drew a hard line. i refused to turn my fiction into a service.
the moment you put a price tag on a hobby, your relationship with it dies.
suddenly, you aren’t writing for creative freedom. you’re writing to please paying readers. i couldn’t stomach the thought of ghostwriting a fiction novel for a client either. following their strict guidelines. editing from their feedback. writing a story i didn’t even care about.
so i dissected the passion.
beneath the fiction, what was the actual skill?
writing isn’t just putting words on a page. writing is making people feel something.
my fiction stories made people cry at 2 am.
why were they so invested? because i knew how to pull their heartstrings. i could write chapters with 10,000 words and they wouldn’t get bored.
so i extracted that exact skill.
translated into what i do now, i understand how to make something land. you know that feeling when you finish reading something and you just sit there thinking, “wow. that was a great read.”
the core is storytelling. it follows the exact same arc. building the setup. introducing the struggles. synthesizing the whole story.
today, i don’t build fantasy worlds for clients. i build brand messaging. we take overwhelming brand ideas and strip them down to the core. i use storytelling to teach, just like i’m doing right now.
i didn’t commercialize my hobby. i monetized my skill.
and my fiction? i keep it hidden. completely free from client demands. i write it strictly for my own peace.
my co-founder, lana, did the same thing.
she loves drawing. but she keeps her art offline. she creates strictly for herself.
so what is the actual skill beneath the canvas?
an eye for design. a deep understanding of aesthetics. undeniable taste.
she doesn’t sell her drawings.
instead, she extracts the taste.
today, she translates that exact eye for design into high-value graphic design, social media assets, and website design for our studio.
and her deep passion for japan? her fluency in the language?
we didn’t turn that into a language school or a travel blog.
instead, she extracted the philosophy.
she takes her love for japanese simplicity and restraint, and translates it into the visual identity of everything we build. she uses her passion to elevate the entire monetization of our brand, without ever selling the passion itself.
she didn’t commercialize her hobbies. she monetized her skills and perspective.
when you build a business, the internet will scream at you to sell every part of your soul. to turn every personal passion into a generic product.
don’t listen.
you don’t have to sell what’s on the surface. you just have to look underneath.
take the passion. dissect it. extract the competence.
monetize the skill. build your business around the framework, the strategy, the eye for design.
but keep the passion hidden.
your business needs your skills to survive.
but your soul needs your hobbies to breathe. keep something just for you.
stay soulful,
jo from 要素 yōso studio
