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Can a Hobby Become a Business?

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janoc:

--- Quote from: zeke. on November 02, 2022, 12:12:36 am ---hello all

I'm curious if there are people on the forum who turned their electronics hobby or some other hobby into a business. Anyone on hear have some stories to share? Just looking for some inspiration to start my own side gig or the reality of chasing your dreams lol

--- End quote ---

It surely can be done - just keep in mind that something that makes a lot of sense as a hobby could drive you bankrupt if you try it as a business. I.e. either because your gizmo solves a problem that nobody/only very few people have or because nobody will pay enough for it to actually break even or make a profit. A lot of people fall into this trap.

Your best bet is specialized gear or bespoke, made to order, products, not something that can be easily mass-produced for pennies. The margins on that will be pennies too, esp. once the cheaper Asian copies flood the market.

There is also a ton of upfront expense in electronics (unlike developing sw, for ex.) before you get your first euro/dollar - so keep that in mind.

Circlotron:
This is what I did:

Came across a guy that had a steady stream of customers and was a known identity is his field. Had some ideas for stuff he wanted and knew exactly what people would buy them, but didn't have the relevant skills to design and make them himself. Very smart guy in his own field though. I made a few prototypes and it grew from there. There were a few failures and dead ends of course, but we learned as we went along. 

That was 32 years ago come September. Still going strong.

If you sell your stuff to individual customers you will likely be forever on the phone, not actually making stuff. If you only deal with the one person you will make less money per unit, but life will be sooo much simpler. And you will have the time to make more units.

xbst_:
I turned my hobby into a business-ish. I'm not an EE, I have a business degree, but now my main business is designing and selling PCBs.

I started a YT channel about 3D printers in 2017. I started the channel when I got my first 3D printer, a Chinesium printer named Tevo Black Widow. It was a $500-ish printer which was very badly designed, apart from its rigid frame. The channel was mostly about modding this printer and making it better and better. But in 2019 I decided to give up on "improving" it and instead build a good DIY printer. I started with a Voron 2.2, and eventually built more printers like Voron 0 and Micron.
I continued with modding my printers and as a part of my wiring mods, I needed breakout PCBs. There wasn't anything good on the market, so in 2020 I started designing breakout PCBs. In 2021 I designed my first PCB with electronics. I open sourced these PCBs and my newer PCBs. (except the PCBs I design for other businesses)
2021 is also the year my "business" sort of started. I needed to register as a business for my YT income of a few peanuts, but this income allowed me to invest more on my projects. In late 2021 I moved to the US.
In 2022 I designed and released a few more PCBs on GitHub. One of these PCBs became quite popular with a ton of sellers around the globe selling it (the license I used allows this). Also in 2022, I started designing PCBs for a client. I also did and still do 3D printing and related work for this client. The PCB I designed for them was 90%+ cheaper than their previous solution when factoring labor in, so they were more than happy to hire me for more work. I think I designed 10-something PCBs for them so far.
In 2023, I decided to try my luck selling the open-source PCBs I was designing. I didn't try it before because they are fairly niche PCBs, but the number of sellers selling one of my PCBs made me reconsider. I'm glad I did. It quickly became the biggest part of my business, and it led to me restructuring my business as an LLC. I started selling on Etsy, eBay and Amazon, but later in 2023 I opened my own website where I do most of my PCB business. These sales allowed me to make more and more open-source PCB projects, which I'm still publishing on GitHub.
2024 has mostly been about growth of the PCB side of the business, with me investing in bigger and bigger projects, and collaborating with some big names in the DIY open-source 3DP community, most of which is still in the works. I still do contract work for PCB, 3DP and/or electronics work and I still have the YT channel. It is less active these days unfortunately due to me not having enough time, but I still release videos.

I wouldn't call this a success story of turning a hobby into a business yet, as I'm working 7 days a week 12+ hours a day and barely paying the bills, but the business is growing steadily and I expect the business to grow enough to hire someone in a few years.

The biggest thing I feel the need to do is to move PCB assembly in-house. I sell many low volume SKUs, so the assembly fees tend to be a big chunk of what I pay for my PCBs. I started by building a DIY reflow oven last year, and plan to build or buy a PnP and a decent stencil printer soon. I'm also looking for more clients for the contract work side of the business. I'm fairly new to the US and I'm in my twenties so I don't know many people which is the challenge with finding more clients, but my open source work on Github has been helpful. It'll take time, but I think this has great potential to become a "real" business in a few years.

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