Do Hobbies Make Good Business?

Here's my take on the subject. My main question is this:

Are you in it for the money, or the hobby?

Now let us look at the characteristics of a hobby and a business:

Hobby -
- Something that you are personally interested in
- Something that you are willing to sacrifice time and money for
- Something that you do for the sake of its enjoyment
- Something..of which it's 'essense' is very important
- Something that you have passion for
- Dictionary definition: an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation: Her hobbies include stamp-collecting and woodcarving.

Business -
- Something..of which it's purpose is to make a profit
- An entity that supposedly brings a product to the market place to make a profit
- An entity that supposedly solves problems to make a profit

Do you see what I see?

In summary, a hobby is an activity you do for pleasure while a business is there for the purpose of making money.

Well, that's great you say.. doesn't that mean I'm mixing pleasure with money making?

Yes...and no...

That's what makes this question so important - are you in it for the Money, or the Hobby?

If you are in it for the money, then I guess you'd have a problem. If you look past the rosy picture of people earning money doing what they love, then you'd notice that most hobby-based start-ups have one thing in common.

They start small and more often than not, remain small.

Read: I'm not saying that hobby based businesses are not profitable. I'm saying that more often than not, they stay small.

So if you are into Money, or Big Money for that matter, then I suppose you'd be better of looking to start a Big Business as opposed to a Hobby Business.

Well ok, why can't I have a Big Hobby Business?

Not that you can't...it will be difficult though.

Why? Well, the focus of a business is to make profits, not pleasure.

So, in order to make a business big, certain sacrifices have to be made in order to keep profits high. And that may be a problem for one whose focus is on the Hobby.

For one, you notice how certain hobbies nowadays seem a little...commercialised? It's as if they lost their flavour...their essense...that 'thing' that made it special. You can feel and almost taste the profit-making decisions made for that product. That part that was replaced because it was not 'cost effective'. Another modified so that it will appeal to the larger market segment. That rule changed so that more people will participate.

Let me use a real life example: the Buggati Veyron..the world's most powerful car.

It is a symbol of passion and engineering excellence. It is however, not very good business. Each car, costing approximately £5,000,000 to manufacture, is sold at a loss.

So, who pays for the passion? Volkswagon.

Well, Volkswagon's focus is to make money. So that they do, and because they do, they are able to fund the passionate endeavour of making the wold's first 1000 horsepower car.

Arguably, it makes business sense because Volkswagon will improve it's prestige by being the associated with Bugatti.

However, the point is, not that you can't make big money with hobbies, that you need to know what you want so you'd know what to expect. So, don't be surprised when you're not making as much money as you like in a hobby based business and likewise, don't be surprised when you're making a lot of money but realised that the hobby itself has lost it's essense because of it.