You Can Make Money Online Doing What!?

I love listening to podcasts. When I was commuting 2-3 hours per day between three jobs they were a lifesaver.  Not only did they keep me entertained and awake, but I was learning so much.  My car became a mobile classroom!  The one downside of my current 10-15 minute commute is I have such little time to listen to podcasts!  I’m such a junkie that there are times I’ll volunteer to run to the store just so I can squeeze in a few more minutes of a particularly intriguing episode.

One podcast I discovered a couple of months ago was Eventual Millionaire by Jaime Tardy.  She has interviewed dozens of millionaires, picking their brains to see how they became successful and the lessons that we can learn from them.  One particular episode that stuck out to me was with Scott Fox entitled “Knitting, Chickens, and Online Business – How Millionaire Scott Fox helps people build six figure online businesses”. It was fascinating to hear the crazy stories of how people turned a passion for something completely esoteric like raising chickens, remote control aircraft, and knitting into six figure businesses!  I was inspired enough that I had to check out his latest book, Click Millionaires.  Here are three stories from the book that stood out to me.

[Disclosure: The two books I recommend here are both fantastic! I’ve included affiliate links to them on Amazon which means if you decide to purchase either or both that I will earn a commission, at no additional cost to you.  Thank you for your support!]

1. Suburban Chicken Farmers

http://www.backyardchickens.com

Rob Ludlow started with a few baby chicks inherited from a kindergarten project. Those few chicks turned into an obsession with raising chickens without having to live on a farm!  Rob created a community where people could come to share ideas on how to raise chickens in urban and suburban environments – how to build coops, what to feed them, how to care for them, and much more.  This has exploded into a community with over 11 million page views a month by 160,000 chicken owners who add about 6,000 new posts every day.  That’s the kind of active, engaged audience most websites in huge markets would kill for and Rob has done it with raising chickens in your backyard!   Rob monetizes the site through advertisements, sponsors, and my favorite, selling his own eBooks on raising chickens and building coops!  (I love eBooks because they are almost 100% pure profit on something you created just by taking a little time to type up a Word document.)

2. Requesting Permission to Buzz the Tower

http://www.rcpowers.com/

Dave Powers loves remote controlled aircraft. He started out just posting videos on YouTube of him flying his RC aircraft around.  He also added in tips on how to build them, upgrade them, launch them, etc. Apparently other people shared his passion for remote controlled aircraft because his YouTube channel now has over 100 million views! Much like Rob, Dave realized he was on to something, so he created a website and forum where he could send his viewers and build a community.  He then began to create and sell his own eBooks and online video courses to help others get started including plans on how to build various RC aircraft.

3. If You Knit It, They Will Come

http://sweaterbabe.com/

The last example I’ll share is a website created by Scott’s own wife, Katherine.  Katherine started knitting back in Iowa when she was 8-years old.  Over the years she picked up new knitting techniques, as well as learning how to crochet and tat (a lace-making technique). She eventually decided to try and market her own knitting patterns. As you can no doubt guess, her patterns were a hit!  She sells them as PDF downloads for $1-14.50 each. Let me say that again – people are paying $14.50 for a PDF download that costs Katherine $0 to produce, just time.  Create it once and sell it over & over again.  I love it!
What do all of these examples have in common? Passion. They took something they enjoyed and ran with it. Their passion was not only contagious, it was prosperous! I’m sure you’ve experienced that feeling when you’re sharing something that you’re passionate about and the words just flow, you get excited, and then the other person begins to get excited. You feel like you could talk about it for hours. Whatever that something is, that’s the thing you need to tap in to. Of course there are lots of way to make money online (and offline) by doing things you may not love, but when you’re starting out, start with passion!

As a chemistry professor, I often tell my students to never pick a career solely based on what pays the most. Instead, I tell them to choose what they enjoy and what they’re good at because ultimately that’s what will make them happiest and successful. Why choose chemical engineer or nurse as your career just because it pays well!? Do you want to spend 20, 30, or 40 years of your life doing something you’re not passionate about? Life is too short. Instead, find what you love to do and not only will it feel a lot less like work, but it will blossom. I truly believe that someone who is passionate about painting turtle shells could make more money than most lawyers and have a better time doing it! For more on profiting from your passion I highly recommend a book I’m currently reading entitled Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk. Great stuff!

So how about you? Are you starting to feel inspired? No matter what you love to do I truly believe there is a way to make money online by doing it. Do you have a passion you’d love to profit from? Leave me a comment below and let me know what it is!