How To Turn Your Hobby Into a Mumpreneur Business

Many mums are looking for ways to earn a flexible income around their families. Some just want a bit of extra cash every month and others building a fully-fledged business. If you'd like to earn an income from your hobby, here are five top tips to get you started:


Will your hobby still be fun if you're doing it as a job?

It sounds great to get paid for doing something you enjoy doing. But if you turned your hobby into a job, would it become a chore instead?

Let's say you enjoy making jewellery. If you do it as a hobby, you can take as long as you like experimenting with different materials and designs. Once it becomes a business, you'll have to be much more disciplined about getting items made in a certain time. Would you still enjoy it?

Check you can actually make money from your hobby

To give you a really rough, back-of-an-envelope idea of whether it's worth turning your hobby into a business, try this. Add up the cost of your raw materials and your time (if you're stuck for an hourly rate find out what your national minimum wage is and pick a number above this) and then double it to account for your admin and marketing time and any other costs you might have forgotten about (tax, flyers, business cards, insurance...) Then divide that by the number of items you can make in that time.

That should give you an idea of whether you can sell what you've made at a price people are prepared to pay and still make some money from it.

Check out your competition

If you enjoy your hobby, the chances are that lots of other people will do too. So there could be plenty of competition plus people doing it for fun may be selling their stuff at a much lower price than you.

Don't give up on your idea though! You could adapt your hobby so instead of (say) selling jewellery, you teach people to make it. Or set up a website selling jewellery made by other mums. Getting creative about how you make a profit from your hobby could really pay off.

Think about how you're going to sell

Making your products is only one part of earning an income. You also need to think about how you're going to reach your customers. The good news is there are lots of low-cost options from craft fairs to setting up your own website and even hosting parties.

Make sure you declare your earnings

If you're earning an income or planning to, you'll need to make sure you pay the appropriate taxes; and you may need to register as self-employed or you could risk a fine.

Article by Helen Lindop
To find out more about boosting your income as a mum in business, visit Helen Lindop's website EarnWhatYouDeserveasaMumpreneur.co.uk

Posted in: Mumprenuers