TL;DR
- “Don’t monetize your hobby” is popular advice for a reason. Only 9% of American side hustlers now describe theirs as a passion or hobby, and most report burnout at least sometimes.
- The fear has research behind it. A meta-analysis of 128 experiments found that expected, tangible rewards reduce interest in activities people already enjoy.
- The same research shows the damage depends on how the money arrives. Rewards that feel controlling undermine motivation. Feedback that affirms your competence strengthens it.
- There are two ways to earn from a hobby. Selling the output puts your hobby on a production schedule. Helping someone start leaves your own practice alone.
- Beginners are looking for that help in record numbers. Google says searches for adult tennis lessons are higher than ever this year.
If you have gotten reasonably good at something, someone has told you it could be a side hustle. And someone else, usually on the internet, has told you never to do that.
“Don’t monetize your hobby” has become one of the most durable pieces of advice of the past few years. It surfaced again this year in Substack essays, in a student newspaper editorial on what we lose when everything becomes a side hustle, and in a Marketplace episode asking whether you can monetize a hobby without killing the joy.
The advice exists for a reason. It is also incomplete, and the part it leaves out matters if you are the kind of person a beginner would love to talk to.
Why are people so wary of monetizing a hobby?
Because the side hustle economy stopped being about passion. In a March 2026 survey of 1,370 Americans conducted by Cint for Omnisend, 80% of people with a side hustle said they started it for financial reasons. Only 9% described theirs as a passion or hobby, down from 14% in October 2025.
The workload is not light either. The Penny Hoarder’s 2026 survey of 1,000 side hustlers found an average of 13 hours a week on top of everything else, and 65% said they experience burnout at least sometimes.
Look at that picture as someone who loves their hobby and the conclusion is reasonable: keep money away from the one thing that is still just for me.
The advice is right about one way of earning from a hobby. It is wrong about the other.
Does getting paid actually ruin a hobby?
Sometimes, and psychologists have studied exactly when. In a classic 1973 experiment, preschoolers who drew pictures expecting a reward later spent less of their free time drawing than children who got no reward or an unexpected one. The activity had not changed. Its meaning had. Drawing had become something you do for a prize.
Researchers call this the overjustification effect, and it has held up. A 1999 meta-analysis of 128 experiments by Edward Deci, Richard Koestner and Richard Ryan found that expected, tangible rewards reliably reduced people’s intrinsic interest in activities they already enjoyed.
But the same body of research found something the “never monetize” advice skips. Unexpected rewards did not undermine motivation. Positive feedback increased it. And the way a reward was delivered mattered as much as the reward itself: feedback that felt controlling dragged motivation down, while feedback that read as information about your competence pushed it up.
Teresa Amabile, the Harvard Business School researcher who has spent decades studying creativity and motivation, made a similar point on Marketplace this year. Money tends to crowd out enjoyment when it becomes the reason you are doing the thing, and much less so when your attention stays on the work itself.
So the lesson is narrower than “money ruins hobbies.” It is closer to this: money ruins hobbies when it makes you feel controlled.
What are the two ways to earn from a hobby?
Most “hobbies that make money” lists describe one model. There are really two, and they put the pressure in completely different places.
Model one
Selling the output
What is bought: the thing you make. Commissions, prints, handmade goods, content.
Who sets the pace: orders, deadlines, the algorithm.
What happens to your practice: it becomes production.
Model two
Helping someone start
What is bought: your time and judgment about where a beginner should begin.
Who sets the pace: you, inside the hours you offer.
What happens to your practice: nothing. It stays yours.
Selling the output is where the controlled feeling lives. The painting you would have made on Sunday becomes the painting somebody ordered, in their colors, by Friday. Your hobby is now on a production schedule, and the research above predicts what happens next.
Helping someone start works differently. Nobody is buying your next roll of film or your next climb. They are buying a conversation with someone who remembers where to begin. Your own practice is never the product, so it never has to perform.
That does not make the second model risk-free. It moves the pressure off the thing you love and onto a conversation, which is a much easier place for it to sit.
Who is looking for that kind of help right now?
A lot of people. In late July, Google published a round-up of search trends showing that people really want to touch grass, and a striking share of the rising searches were not for videos or products. They were for a person.
People are searching for adult tennis lessons more than ever this year, and searches for the best tennis racket for beginners jumped 645%. Searches for mahjong lessons near me have doubled since January. Chess classes near me doubled in a single month. Floral arranging classes near me rose 850%. Walking club hit a ten-year high.
A fair caveat: search interest measures curiosity, not commitment. Plenty of those searches will end in a saved tab and nothing else. That is the point. The gap between searching for a lesson and showing up to one is exactly where someone a few years ahead is most useful, and it is rarely the kind of problem a formal class is built to solve.
We have written before about why you do not need to be an expert to help. People with intermediate experience are often better than experts at judging what a beginner is up against, because they still remember.
Does helping beginners make you better at your own hobby?
There is decent evidence that explaining something deepens your own grasp of it. In a 2013 study by Logan Fiorella and Richard Mayer, students who studied a lesson and then actually taught it on video outperformed students who only studied. A week later, only the group that had taught still held a significant advantage. Preparing to teach without teaching helped briefly, then faded.
That study was about learning a science lesson, not a hobby, so treat the connection as plausible rather than proven. But the mechanism travels. When a beginner asks why you hold the camera that way, or why you start a climb by looking at your feet, you have to put words to something your body does on autopilot. That kind of effortful explaining is what the researchers credited for the lasting gains.
A three-question test before you take money for your hobby
The psychologist Robert Vallerand draws a useful line between two kinds of passion. Harmonious passion is an activity you choose freely, one that sits comfortably alongside the rest of your life. Obsessive passion comes with internal pressure: you feel you have to do it, and it starts to crowd out everything else. The question is not whether money ever touches your hobby. It is whether the arrangement keeps you on the harmonious side of that line.
Three questions get you most of the way there.
Who sets the schedule? If a client, a platform or a deadline decides when you practice, the hobby will start to feel like a shift. If you decide, and can say no without penalty, it stays yours.
What exactly is being bought? If it is your output, you now owe output. If it is your time and judgment, your own practice is left alone.
Would you be fine if it paid nothing for a month? This one matters most. In the Penny Hoarder survey, 53% of side hustlers said they would struggle to cover essential expenses without the extra income. Money you depend on changes how every session feels. If you need dependable income right now, a hobby-based side gig is the wrong tool, and that includes this one.
How the Buddy role is built around this
When we designed the Buddy role at Rekindle, the goal was an arrangement that passes all three questions.
You set the schedule. You publish your own availability. There is no minimum and no penalty for a quiet month.
You are paid for judgment, not output. A Buddy’s job is to help a Rekindler take a first step: what to ignore, what to try, what a reasonable first session looks like. You are never asked to make work for anyone or to perform your hobby on camera.
It happens on your terms. Spark Sessions run by phone call or text, whichever you prefer. A free 15-minute intro comes first, and longer 45-minute sessions follow only if the Rekindler wants to keep going.
We should be plain about the rest. Rekindle is a young marketplace, and demand builds one session at a time. This is not a replacement for a paycheck, and we would rather you join knowing that. And if you ever notice yourself dreading a session, that is the signal the research describes. Step back. Your hobby was yours before it was anything else.
Common questions
Does monetizing a hobby always kill the joy?
No. The research points to a narrower problem. Rewards that are expected and feel controlling tend to reduce enjoyment, while feedback that affirms your competence can increase it. How you earn matters more than whether you earn.
What is the overjustification effect?
It is the finding that adding an external reward to something you already enjoy can shift your reason for doing it, so you enjoy it less once the reward is gone. It was first demonstrated in the early 1970s, and a meta-analysis of 128 experiments found that it holds for expected, tangible rewards.
How can I make money from a hobby without burning out?
Choose an arrangement where you control the schedule, where you are paid for your time and judgment rather than a quota of output, and where the income is a bonus rather than something you depend on.
Do I need to be an expert or certified to help beginners?
No. For a first step, someone one to five years ahead is often more useful than an expert, because they still remember what was hard. Saying “I have not done that, but here is who I would ask” is part of the job.
Keep the hobby. Share the beginning.
People are searching for first lessons in record numbers this year. What most of them need is someone who remembers their own first month. If that is you, the Buddy role is built so your hobby stays yours.
Still wondering whether you are far enough along? Start with You Don’t Have to Be an Expert to Teach a Hobby. For the other side of the marketplace, read about why a September reset rarely restarts a hobby on its own.
Where this comes from
On the trend
- Google (2026, July 28). These Google Trends show people really want to touch grass. The Keyword. Read
- Omnisend (2026). 28% of Americans have a side hustle; most started one to cover everyday expenses. Survey conducted by Cint, March 2026, n = 1,370. Read
- The Penny Hoarder (2026). Side hustle statistics 2026. Survey of 1,000 U.S. adults with side hustles, February 2026. Read
- Marketplace (2026, March 12). Can I monetize my hobby without killing the joy? Listen
- White, S. (2026, April 23). What we lose when everything becomes a side hustle. The Science Survey. Read
On the research
- Lepper, M. R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R. E. (1973). Undermining children’s intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the “overjustification” hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28(1), 129-137. DOI
- Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627-668. DOI
- Vallerand, R. J., et al. (2003). Les passions de l’âme: On obsessive and harmonious passion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(4), 756-767. DOI
- Fiorella, L., & Mayer, R. E. (2013). The relative benefits of learning by teaching and teaching expectancy. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 38(4), 281-288. Abstract
Saji Kazemi is a co-founder of Rekindle, which pairs adults starting or restarting a hobby with near-peer Hobby Buddies for remote Spark Sessions. Featured photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash.
