side hobbies that have paid off or started a business

[Eli]

I've always been into electronics, batteries, alternative energies, cars/engines, etc.

Bumblebee Batteries will do over 1M in sales this year, with a bright future indeed as we transition into a full service automotive shop specializing in hybrids. 🙂

 

[Possessed Freak]

Your mom liked running trains on the weekends and well... that hobby became a profession.

So she became a

Spoiler

engineer

.

 

[holden j caufield]

I am so old... I don't have the patience for that anymore. Aside from a new SSD and some ram, the rest of my system is at least 4 years old. And I have no plans to properly upgrade (i.e. mobo, CPU, GPU). In fact, I've been thinking about moving entirely to a laptop system and getting an Xbox One.

For me, I've got a fairly recent website and YouTube channel set up. Got lucky and stumbled on some keywords, built it around that. Income is beer money at this point. Bad part is that most of my traffic is from search engines, so traffic levels change every time Google decides to change their algo.

so for every 1000 views how much do you get paid? I see cute dog/animal channels that get 500k+ views a video. What's the monetary value of a 500k viewed video?

 

[nageov3t]

all through high school/college, I built computers and did tech support for friends and people in the dorms.

paid off after I graduated college with my English Lit degree but was able to use that hobby to get a job in IT working at a NOC; big part of that job was fixing server hardware problems.

 

[Keeper]

I work in IT because I had to figure out how to get games to work on Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 in the 90's.

You kids today an' yer X-Stations an' Wii-Cubes. Back in my day, you had to know how to finaggle a config.sys and an autoexec.bat file if you wanted to play Wing Commander! Not to mention settings up yer IRQ's for your sound card and initiating IPX/SPX to play against your buddy over a phone line!

OMG this brought back memories......
Yes, I had a 3.5 inch boot floppy SPECIAL for Wing Commander.
Crap, I am old.....

 

[iGas]

My brother inlaw & I had a computer hardware and service company in 89-91, because we love electronics and technology. It was an absolutely pain the ass that we have to deal with illiterate users. I ended up with a degree in IT after that, then found that the majority of the corporate people (specially people with MBA) are technologically illiterate and are unreasonable.

I hung up my IT hat after a few years of working in it because it was more enjoyable working with my hands (helped built my mom house over a summer). I turned my hobby of construction into a career (shipbuilding) that I have been in for a decade now and still enjoying it.

Conclusion:
Electronic hobby turned into owing a company, and then worked in IT (network security admin, and DBA).
Building house & toys out of wood, bamboo, mud, metal work, casting, plaster, and working on cars into a shipbuilding career.

 

[Platypus]

I started hacking/breaking Android phones in 2009 for fun and I turned it into a full career in security. I could not be happier with where I am right now and the kind of research and talks I'm able to do. Every day I get to learn something incredible and work with some of the brightest minds in the industry, all from a hobby.

 

[Fritzo]

My brother inlaw & I had a computer hardware and service in 89-91, because we love electronics and technology. It was an absolutely pain the ass that we have to deal with illiterate users. I ended up with a degree in IT after that, then found that the majority of the corporate people (specially people with MBA) are technologically illiterate and are unreasonable.

I hung up my IT hat after a few years of working in it because it was more enjoyable working with my hands (helped built my mom house over a summer). I turned my hobby of construction into a career (shipbuilding) that I have been in for decade now and still enjoying it.

I'm in that same boat (no pun intended) but never made the transition. I take on awesome projects at home, but i'm stuck in my IT career because I'm at that "paid to much to start over" level.

 

[ponyo]

I've always been into electronics, batteries, alternative energies, cars/engines, etc.

Bumblebee Batteries will do over 1M in sales this year, with a bright future indeed as we transition into a full service automotive shop specializing in hybrids. 🙂

That's pretty amazing. And it all started with the used Honda Insight you bought. Best of luck to you and wish you continued success.

 

[Platypus]

I'm in that same boat (no pun intended) but never made the transition. I take on awesome projects at home, but i'm stuck in my IT career because I'm at that "paid to much to start over" level.

I took a pay cut to change careers and hesitated for too long to make the jump. It was tough for a bit but now I'm in a place where I get paid better without the ceiling I had in my UNIX/SAN system engineer life. There's really no limit now. Life is too short to settle in my opinion, but everyone has different life constraints so I won't pretend to know yours.

 

[Imp]

so for every 1000 views how much do you get paid? I see cute dog/animal channels that get 500k+ views a video. What's the monetary value of a 500k viewed video?

Highly variable. Depends on if you get any clicks, the price of those clicks, ad bidding.

Just do a google search on "adsense" and "rpm". Everyone's different but there's a general range.

 

[MongGrel]

I work in IT because I had to figure out how to get games to work on Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 in the 90's.

You kids today an' yer X-Stations an' Wii-Cubes. Back in my day, you had to know how to finaggle a config.sys and an autoexec.bat file if you wanted to play Wing Commander! Not to mention settings up yer IRQ's for your sound card and initiating IPX/SPX to play against your buddy over a phone line!

"Memmorieeeeeeeeees ........"

:awe:

Yeah, used to use Kali to drop with people in Mech II.

 

[iGas]

I'm in that same boat (no pun intended) but never made the transition. I take on awesome projects at home, but i'm stuck in my IT career because I'm at that "paid to much to start over" level.

IMHO, it is never too late, but things are a bit easier if your paycheck allows you to have hobbies that you enjoys.

The IT job that I had was good for the average people, but the work was a thankless drudgery job and I found no incentive to get out of bed in the morning. My current job in shipbuilding does have some low point as well, but I for the majority of it are awesome as well as the salary (3X to 4X higher than my old IT job).

 

[holden j caufield]

Yep.

A couple years ago I started dinking around with fixing cell phones. I mainly just wanted to see if I could do it. Well it turned into a pretty good side business until a bunch of low ball places started doing it.

Then a friend of a friend needed someone technically inclined to help at his business. My friend mentioned me because he knew I worked on phones. Long story short, I now buy phones and tablets in bulk lots, fix them, then sell them. Sales are averaging about $10k/week and its only getting busier. We are to the point where I want to start importing parts directly from China rather than buying them wholesale.

As we speak there are contractors building me a workshop. They ordered me custom workbenches, I have a corporate card that I am never questioned on and I get to work at my own pace. We have plans on expanding even further soon. If things fall into place, we could be doing $100k/week by next year.

All because I was bored and wanted to take an iPhone apart.

If sales are 10k and 100k sales/week what is the net? Also if you're the main guy wouldn't it be more lucrative to branch on your own.

 

[iGas]

How many devices that you must repare to gross $10K worth of bussiness a week?

IMHO, the very least would be 20 phones, but more like 50 units or more. And, to do $100K worth of business a week mean that you must repair at least 200 to 500+ units (16.8 to 6.72+ minutes per units in an 8 hours session). Unless you don't need to take break and can consistently repair a unit in 5 minutes or less week after week with out breaking down.

 

[brianmanahan]

I've never had a 9-to-5. I've always been self-employed since I was 15. I used to buy broken Playstations and cameras to repair and sell because this was way cheaper for me than buying new. I've done some programming too.

good thing that works, because i imagine nobody would hire you full time

 

[rudeguy]

If sales are 10k and 100k sales/week what is the net? Also if you're the main guy wouldn't it be more lucrative to branch on your own.

net varies

And no, branching on my own would not be good.

 

[rudeguy]

How many devices that you must repare to gross $10K worth of bussiness a week?

IMHO, the very least would be 20 phones, but more like 50 units or more. And, to do $100K worth of business a week mean that you must repair at least 200 to 500+ units (16.8 to 6.72+ minutes per units in an 8 hours session). Unless you don't need to take break and can consistently repair a unit in 5 minutes or less week after week with out breaking down.

Not all devices need labor intensive repairs. I buy bulk lots, some just need a factory reset and a spit shine.

As for the future...think more employees

 

[monk3y]

Starting looking after my friends rental for a year just to collect rent and manage the place. Kept at it and continued and now manage 4 properties getting ~$100 per unit a month.

Not much but good side money for enjoyment.

 

[MustISO]

I started repairing PC's as a side business and it did well for extra money. Nothing that I would quit my day job for but I typically made more than 4K-5K per year in extra income just doing one or two small jobs a week in my spare time.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Programming. Started as a hobby and turned into a career.

+1 (C, C++, Perl/PHP/Python). Not exactly the central focus of my fledgling career, but it helps me get a crap ton of stuff done in EDA / physical design that other people have to dick around with manually.

 

[Jeff7]

I work in IT because I had to figure out how to get games to work on Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 in the 90's.

You kids today an' yer X-Stations an' Wii-Cubes. Back in my day, you had to know how to finaggle a config.sys and an autoexec.bat file if you wanted to play Wing Commander! Not to mention settings up yer IRQ's for your sound card and initiating IPX/SPX to play against your buddy over a phone line!

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Or having different boot disks available with different settings so certain drivers could be enabled or disabled to free up memory or make all the hardware play nice with each other.

"I'm an ISA card and I'm locked down to be able to use only two different IRQs! I sure hope you don't have anything else that needs them!"

Or PCI cards that would projectile vomit if they attempted to share their IRQ. Then Windows would get all pissy if you attempted to modify the card's configuration.

 

[holden j caufield]

for those fixing phones can you give me any advice (I can't ask the guy as I'd be taking business from him). What is your advice? It seems like it would be fun, I'd learn a new skill that everyone needs, I'd get to dabble in the newest phones, and most of all it wouldn't take up any space in my place. I've seen blogs where guys barter from a phone to cars or fix appliances, bikes etc but the significant other won't have any of that as it will take up too much space and clutter.

 

[nageov3t]

for those fixing phones can you give me any advice (I can't ask the guy as I'd be taking business from him). What is your advice? It seems like it would be fun, I'd learn a new skill that everyone needs, I'd get to dabble in the newest phones, and most of all it wouldn't take up any space in my place. I've seen blogs where guys barter from a phone to cars or fix appliances, bikes etc but the significant other won't have any of that as it will take up too much space and clutter.

want to learn how to fix phones?

smash your phone against a rock. google everything you need to know about replacing the screen until you're able to do it yourself.

seriously, I'd guess that screen replacement is probably what constitutes 99% of phone repair (much like PC repair shops probably spend most of their time cleaning out malware)