“It was an evening of wine and cheese at the Melee Vineyards in the Nippy Valley…”

Last Saturday, I went to a murder mystery party in celebration of a friend’s birthday. For those of you who don’t know what that is, the name pretty much says it all, it’s a party where the participants get to role-play a murder mystery. The mystery is usually pre-scripted. Depending on acting aptitude and the amount of alcohol consumed, the participants can go anywhere from reading their scripts word-for-word to all out theatrics complete with costumes and props.

The party I went to fell somewhere in the middle. By the time we got things started, half of us were already drunk. In the end, it was revealed that I was the murderess (I swear I’m innocent). But that’s not the reason I brought this up. The reason I’m bringing it up now is that it is a perfect illustration of the spirit behind obbies. So much so that I’m giving Jack Pachuta, creator of the murder mystery game we played, the Obbyist of the Month Award. Here is why.

Writing is a creative outlet that many people enjoy. Writing a murder mystery can be fun, but writing the scripts for a murder mystery party and hosting the event takes it to the next level (you should see the wine labels that came with the game). It turns a largely solitary creative process into a fun and celebratory event that brings people together. That is the essence of obbies.

Some lucky people are able to make a living doing their hobbies. They design jewelry, they write novels, they make computer games. The hard truth is that for every one of them who succeeds, there are probably tens or hundreds that remain hobbyists. Converting a hobby into a livelihood is already a tough problem. Unfortunately, what I have in mind poses some additional difficulties. First of all, I don’t want to make a living doing just one hobby. I want to be doing whatever hobby that strikes my fancy. Since I don’t know what I will fancy, say two weeks from now, how can I plan to make money with it?

The second difficulty is that my fancies don’t last very long: no longer than 4 months at a time (I call these short-lived hobbies obbies). In this day and age, people get paid for the expertise they develop in their chosen fields. Four months is not a long time to develop any kind of expertise let alone produce something, convince someone to pay for it, and get paid enough to make a living. But after much soul searching, I decided that nevertheless these are my terms.

Here is what I envision: I get into some kind of new obby like basket weaving. Then, I think about how I can make money doing it. I sell the baskets I make, I teach others how to make baskets, I consult for a basket weaving company, I write about basket weaving, I make an informative website on basket weaving and sell ad space on it…

It sure would be nice to have a comprehensive list of ways to make money. That way, every time I get into a new obby, I can refer to my big list and quickly come up with an effective way to generate income. This is my first step. Effectively, I will develop an infrastructure for monetizing obbies so that the turn around time from idea conception to income generation is minimized. Whether I can get the process down to under 4 months remains to be seen.

I did a quick brainstorm. Here is a starting point of ways to make money.

• Make and sell things
• Join an online affiliate program
• Make a high-traffic webpage and sell ads on it
• Develop material/service on a website and sell subscriptions
• Consult
• Teach (tutor, teach adult education classes, conduct seminars/workshops)
• Write and sell articles

Over the next three months, I will be adding to the list and fleshing it out. There are a lot of questions that needs to be answered for each of these models. For example:

• What’s the up front investment in terms of time and money?
• How soon can I turn a profit with this model?
• How much can I expect to make? (What’s my hourly rate?)
• How re-usable will my work be? (e.g. If I invest time and energy developing a website, can I develop similar ones quickly and make more money?)
• Will the steps involved in setting it up be fun, interesting, and challenging for me personally?

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please let me know.