Turning a hobby into a business

What things should you think about before diving into this project? 

Can your hobby really become a business?

• What hobbies do you do that create merchandisable products? Are you a craftsperson who knits, crochets, leatherworking, tilework, scrapbooking?
• What other ways can your hobby contribute to a business? Does your hobby require supplies? If so, you can buy the supplies in bulk from suppliers at cheaper prices, use what you need for yourself, and make a business selling supplies to others like yourself who engage in that hobby. For example, as a seller of trading cards, I needed trading card sleeves and top loaders to use to ship to my customers. I buy in bulk, and sell them to other collectors, and ACEO artists who need them. Its become its own business segment in my overall scheme.
• Start small - eBay is an excellent way to get started, dipping your toe in the ecommerce water so to speak. Sign up for eBay if you don't already have an account, make a few purchases to see how things works from a buyer's point of view and to build up your feedback rating, and then list a couple of items for auction at prices you're willing to accept, and see what happens.
• Sign up for Paypal to accept payment for your items. Its very easy for buyers to make their payments using Paypal, as eBay has it integrated very well. You get your payment fast, and can even use the money in your Paypal account to pay for the postage to ship the items to your buyers, or buy more supplies or inventory.
• Check into the best way to ship your items - USPS, UPS, Fed-ex, determine how much it will cost to ship the items, and make sure you charge enough shipping & handling to cover those postage and handling costs (boxes, bubble mailers, packing material). While your business is based in a hobby, you aren't doing it just for the fun of it - you want to make money. Don't let yourself lose money on the shipping & handling part of the transaction.
• Is your hobby collecting things? If so, maybe you can sell some of the items you don't like quite as much as you used to, and use the money to buy more goodies for your collection? Sometimes a small business starts by cleaning up around the house, like I did, and letting it grow from there.