Making money with your side projects

With every side project there comes a time when you might wonder if you could start making money with it. After all, it makes sense to be compensated for your work if other people find value in it.

This blog is one of my side projects and it allows me to pursue my hobby–writing. It’s fun to put my thoughts out there and contribute to the web instead of just consuming content. In the process I’m trying to improve as a writer, especially since English isn’t my first language.

Like most other hobbies blogging requires some investment in the form of time and money. Since I enjoy spending time on it to improve my writing skills that’s not an issue at all. It’s necessary. As for the money, I’ve splurged a bit on this site to buy font licenses and migrate to Blot. The site is super lightweight and I don’t use anything fancy to compress images or optimise the performance. The only recurring cost is hosting in order to keep it online and the domain name which comes to about $50 per year. Compared to some of my other hobbies this is really cheap.

I’ve seen many content creators try to cover their running costs or even earn a little on the side with platforms like Ko-fi or Patreon which seems like a great way to monetise your work. Even I used to have affiliate links in my book reviews at some point.

But I didn’t want money to play a role–no matter how small–in the things I do for my enjoyment. I believe that as soon as your hobbies start feeling like work they’re no longer hobbies. Usually they’re no longer fun either because money now dictates what you do and how you do it.

I don’t write articles in order to make money or to sell something to my readers down the line. I just write because it’s fun and maybe somewhere someone enjoys reading my blog.

I’ll happily pay 50 bucks a year for that.