Hi, I’m Jess! I’m the one behind The Hobbypreneur and well, I’m a hobbypreneur!

I always love artsy and crafty hobbies and since I can remember, I wanted to have a business of my own. I tried several during the years. Some succeeded, some failed after a while, and some flopped immediately. But with all those attempts I learned many valuable lessons that I hope to share with you!

So what did I try, you may ask? Well, here’s the full list in chronological order from when I was 16 years old (I did not include the handmade friendships bracelets I sold when I was 10):

  • Customized portrait drawings: I always loved to draw and for a while I was very much into pencil portrait drawings. I did sell quite a few (for 5 dollars each) in high school until I realized it wasn’t worth the effort.
  • Designed promotional posters and flyers: At 17, I taught myself how to use Photoshop and became quite proficient in it. So I started designing promotional flyers and posters for events for a friend’s club. I learned a lot about how much I hated working for customers in that period.
  • Polymer Clay jewelry: It was the year 2007, I was 18, and polymer clay was all the rage (can you believe it?). I started making polymer clay dollhouse miniatures and sell them as jewelry on Etsy and on local markets. This was by far the most successful business I had in a while. It lasted a few years and earned me a good amount of money and knowledge. I won contests of DeviantArt (at that time it was incredibly popular), I’ve been interviewed for magazines, and asked to send jewelry for a TV show (this didn’t happen in the end but that’s a story for another time). The business slowly declined when I couldn’t keep up with the trends and let my personal life get in the way.
  • Polymer Clay teacher: Even though I stopped selling jewelry at some point, I continued the polymer clay journey as a teacher for a bit. And it was incredibly rewarding! I hosted in-person classes almost every week for groups of 6-8 people of all ages. I sold single tutorials on Etsy and on a polymer clay site, and I sold an Ebook for beginners on Amazon and on my own website. All these were amazing income streams until life got in the way.
  • Website design: As my main business trailed off, I started scrambling for income sources, trying many different things. The first was website design. Since I learned HTML, CSS and basic website design to create my own polymer clay website, I decided to offer it as a service as well. I did two websites for friends’ businesses until I decided it was too stressful for me.

Break. My twenties were hard and lots of changes happened. I had to resource to 9-5 jobs again to survive, but I never gave up on my dream and kept attempting many different ways to earn money with side hustles and with the hope to one day have my own business again. So here’s what I tried and failed. (Note: these are all profitable business ideas, but I failed for many reasons, the main of which being that I didn’t persevere long enough, simply because it wasn’t my passion. If you want to succeed at something, you need to LOVE what you do, enough to do it every day for the rest of your life.)

  • Resin jewelry
  • Watercolor paintings
  • Digital paintings and cards
  • Canva templates
  • Crochet stuffies/amigurumi
  • Youtube craft videos
  • Handmade Soaps
  • Pyrography
  • Stock photography

So what am I doing now? Since 2019, I found my main passion, which is writing, and have been pouring all of myself in it to turn it into a successful business.

  • Blogging: I started my food blog Cooking my Dreams in 2013 but I’ve switched from hobby to job mindset in 2019/2020. From then, it’s been a continuous climb made of learning, and improving.
  • Food Photography: I always loved photography, but selling stock photography didn’t bring me much joy. Learning food photography in particular, and applying it to my blog, has been incredibly satisfying and I’ve been using this skill to also shoot photography for brand and for other bloggers.
  • Ghostwriter: It goes hand to hand with blogging. When I left my 9-to-5 job to be a full-time freelancer, I needed to do some extra work since the blog wasn’t giving me a full-time income yet. Freelancing as a ghostwriter for other bloggers was the easiest and smartest decision I’ve even made.
  • Children’s books writer: I had my baby boy in October 2022 and since then, it was only natural for me to find many more business ventures that were kid-related. While reading picture books with my son I thought “I could do this…” and I did.
  • Novel writer: This is a passion project I started randomly in 2022. I always loved writing but never ever I would have thought I could write a full novel. Yet, I did. My romantic thriller is currently under the editing process.