Last year I was at the Santa Rosa County Fair selling honey and talking about bees and showing my Honeybee Observation Hive. While I was there, I was fortunate enough to be able to walk around the exhibit building. There were many exhibits that could have been classified as hobbies and businesses. Example, there was a model train layout with houses, cars, small people strolling along flower and tree lined streets and sidewalks that were lit up with little street light posts.

There was an industrial park in the center of the layout with trucks and forklifts. Right in the middle of this area, there was a train yard with work engines having the capabilities of moving cars to each of the 10 main line tracks. There were 10 trains moving at the same time, with 2 going right through the town and several going around the display on three different levels.

I asked the man if he made money with his trains and he said no, he just showed them at the different fairs and festivals. This was clearly a hobby and I estimated that the whole layout cost over $10,000.

Later, I went to a model airplane park and talked to several of the participants. They just come together to fly their models and socialize. Again, I asked if they ever made money with their planes and they said no even when they were invited to exhibitions. Again just a hobby.

Raising honey bees can be a hobby also. Just spend you money for woodenware, essential equipment, and bees. Then you have to get buckets to collect your honey in after you extract it. You can only eat so much honey and cook with so much honey, what are you going to do with the rest of it? Buy bottles and jars and give it away to family, friends, and neighbors. This is called a hobby.

What do you do if you want to at least break even with your hobby? That is the main question that should be on your mind if you want your hobby to pay for itself. Even if you don’t want to declare the income from your hobby, you need to treat it as a business.

Think about this for a while and then read the following post.