This is not really a post I ever expected to write. As a manifesting generator in human design, its in who I am to want to monetize everything I do. It feels natural! Especially as a freelance entreprenuer who exists solely off of side hustles. I’ve monetized so many different things over the years and the biggest lesson I’ve learned? It doesn’t actually pay to monetize everything.
I’ll share a list of things I’ve attempted to monetize over the years and the results I got from doing that. The stories will speak for themselves. Let’s get into it:
Things I tried to monetize, and what happened:
- Hemp jewelry: This was the first thing I monetized actually in middle school. I was able to tie some really cool stuff from my hippy childhood and considering I went to a school that was mostly full of rich preppy kids, what I made they could not easily get at the mall so it did somewhat well. And then I quickly realized I was pricing things badly and not even covering the costs of the hemp let alone the cost of the callouses that quickly formed on my hands from doing so. I tried reviving this in college, and had the same issue.
- Quilted Blankets: This was a hustle I actually missed though looking back it was my beloved high school librarians way of subsidizing my life without actually just giving me money. She bought the material after seeing me make my own quilt in home economics class, gave it to me and I made her two quilts she says she has to this day. She paid me like 100 bucks each on top of the materials she provided. I later tried to revive this with cheap mexican fabric post murder and that quilt promptly fell apart though I never heard about it from my customer who was probably not wanting to embarrass me.
- Vegetarian Meal Plan Food: I have REPEATEDLY tried to monetize my ability to cook and each time it went well. The problem was the profit margins when compared to other businesses with respect to time and effort spent. I first did this in college, doing meal plans for vegetarian people that I delivered to their houses. Really just people I liked to smoke with that were too lazy to cook. For this I at least covered costs, but it was miserable.
- Mulberry Jam: Then after college, by making mulberry jam from foraged mulberries. I was living off grid at the time and started making it on a wood stove and it turned out amazing! So my ex started taking it to his stage hand work at the Cleveland Pavillion and selling it to his coworkers and even at times the bands who rolled through. But let me tell you, canning and preserving food when you do not live in a house with standard utilities was a disaster waiting to happen.
- Urban Farming: Now this I know works for many people but when you’re in an abusive relationship, living off grid basically as a homeless person who wasn’t technically homeless, its a disaster. I had a urban farm setup on government land around my house in the East side of Cleveland, Ohio made of hay bales that were rotting with plants put into them and tire gardens. Most of what we used to start that garden was free. Realistically we grew a lot but because I was the only one doing the work for that I barely managed to grow the food let alone sell it.
- Drawings for Commisary: This one’s pretty niche but in jail as you know there’s that whole commisary system where family or friends put money on your books so you can buy things like paper, feminine products, food ect. No one put anything on mine until 2 days before I left, a total of 20 dollars that I spent and passed out to people who helped me. The girls there found out I could draw pretty well so they would pay me in snacks ect to make drawings for letters they were sending to family outside or guys in the jail. I survived on that, not actually a bad hustle.
- Acapulco Restaurant: When I arrived to Mexico without money or a plan, the whole first month or so was a mad dash to try to find a way to support myself in a community I was at the time only partially welcomed in. Out of necessity, I basically started a restaurant in the apartment I lived in which eventually moved to that house. I would set a meal plan, share it with local friends with the “minimum donation price” needed to cover the food costs plus a slight profit and then spend 3 days preparing, cleaning and the final day cooking. People would come to my house, eat and then pay. At times we did very well. And at times we lost money especially when guests took it on themselves to “help us collect payment” which happened a few times.
- Private Chef: Of the same vein but while I was in Acapulco, I did work as a private chef for some people where I’d go to their house twice a week to cook a meal for them fresh that night and meal prep several meals for the week. That lasted about 6 months and frankly was exhausting.
- Glassblowing: Glassblowing has been and in some ways will always be the dream long term. I loved glass pipes and got equipment setup a lot of it homemade and started producing bubblers, hand pipes and small bongs. Of course tho, in those days zero hobbies went without being monetized. Before I know it I was spending all nighters blowing glass by myself because it was too hot to work in Acapulco during the day just to make 50 pesos at most per pipe when you considered the cost of the glass, gas and my labor.
- Steemit: We intended to share our story the whole time, but when Steemit rolled around and we started to do well on it, it became pretty clear pretty quick that I would have to grind my way to keep it profitable and worth the time spent. I posted every day sometimes multiple times a day of full blown blog posts for YEARS until the murder in 2019. After that I lost access to that account and at the same time partially due to burnout and partially due to trauma, I stopped blogging. I loved sharing my daily adventures again, and even now 7 years later I struggle to even commit to share weekly adventures again.
- Cannabis Edibles: Anyone who went to Anarchapulco knew about my gummies and suckers which were strong enough basically to send people to space. This was a fun hustle, and actually profitable albeit the fact that it involved a lot of labor and also care because Acapulco is humid and hard candy does not do well in humidity.
- Chicken Eggs: I had always wanted chickens and anyone who’s had chickens knows about chicken math where you end up with maybe ten and then they go forth and multiply and before you know it, 130 chickens. Between the upkeep of just food and water in the hot Acapulco sun by myself as well as moving their mobile chicken tracters and producing and maintaining said chicken tractors, it was another fail at monitization. I miss my chickens, ducks, quail ect. I do not miss my entire life being centered around them and being too exhausted at the end of each day to figure out how to actually market and sell said eggs. We did sell them through Verde Vegan but it was really only enough to cover the cost of raising them. Certainly not profitable.
- Kombucha: I got ahold of a kombucha starter from Kenny who used to go to Acapulco and started brewing and of course thought, I can monetize this. Before I knew it had like 15 giant jars of 5 gallons each. I did manage to make some money on that but ended up giving a lot away because the trend of that just hadn’t hit Acapulco in 2017. No one knew what it was, and I didn’t speak enough Spanish to explain it.
- Ghee: Yes I even had a ghee phase where I started clarifying and jarring up butter for money. As you can tell I was really in my throw shit at the wall and see what sticks era. I still hadn’t learned my lesson that food wasn’t very profitable.
- Crochet: This one was a beloved option for me and I did it pretty consistently for about 4 years. I can’t say it was hugely profitable but it was a good way to cover costs for my hobby that I was basically addicted to because it helped me manage my autism and adhd bundled with PTSD. But it got to a point where all I was making was the same octopus hats and the same plushies over and over and I was starting to lose my mind. Beyond that, I never got to make anything for myself when I was always selling to other people. For time put in combined with cost of materials as well as HUGE cost of shipping from Mexico to the United States, that one snuffed itself out. And I was so burnt out by the end of it that there was probably more than a year where I couldn’t bring myself to crochet. Im back at it now, only making gifts for myself and for loved ones. I could be brought out of retirement for the right project, but people would need to PAY.
- Circus: While I haven’t pursued a lot of money for circus I did put a lot of pressure on certain aspects of it including the annual shows we did here in town. I am grateful for all the opportunities I got through it AND I realize that the social stress involved in that really did kind of break me down for a bit. I am getting passionate about it again, but I mostly train alone or with just one friend instead of taking classes. I dealt with repeated injuries, inflammation from over training and also some social stresses as well that made it feel…well..exhausting. I am less concerned about performing (even tho I did as recently as February, very low stress and freestyle) and more concerned about feeling into my body and doing only things that don’t cause a week of inflammation after.
- Websites: This started as a necessity to build the Anarchaforko website in 2019 and ended as one of my favorite side hustles almost could be my main hustle if I wanted it to be. This one has a happy ending, clearly I love doing websites and I still do them to this day and I will for the forseeable future. Not everything we monetize is an issue.
- Rootless Renegade Comic Series: This one was intended to be a monetized thing from the beginning, a way to support the production of the project itself known as Rootless Renegade. Its too early to tell but ideally, this as well will be a success story. Stay tuned to rootlessrenegade.com as we are coming soon with some news for the next steps of that adventure.
- Event Planning: This is another one with a happy ending, my first experiences helping with this were the music festivals my aunt put on when I was a kid. I was doing everything from being a stage hand to running registration and everything inbetween. I got paid in snacks and goods from the vendors. In college, I started helping to run the raves of a friend of mine and also was doing things like working security at the Agora theater in Cleveland which is kind of a joke when you consider I was 100 pounds sopping wet in those days. Then Anarchaforko and now I coproduce Anarchapulco. I feel genuinely I was built for that.
- Human Design: If you follow my website closely you’ll notice I had a whole sales page dedicated to human design readings I promptly took down this year. I did some, people felt they got value. I owe three to a friend and have realized while I love doing them in the moment when being with friends, I hate doing them for money. At least at this stage in my life.
What originally turned out to be a post on why you don’t have to monetize everything has become the story of how I monetized everything and failed a lot, but found my true passion in the process. Not every venture has to be perfect for it to be valuable I am learning. What I lost in money time and sometimes sleep I have gained in experiences and often crazy stories.
Will I stop monetizing everything I love? No. But I think I’m to a point where I no longer have to depend on my low paying hobbies to survive and that’s pretty sweet.
And now for the shameless plug if you need help running events or want a website built, I got you.