I've been thinking of starting a blog or a Twitch stream, which I want to dedicate all net revenue towards EA charities. I love my day job; it's impactful (improving access to US healthcare) and pays very well such that I can donate while living a comfortable life. Thus, I don't need the extra money that may come from my hobbies.
However, I'm hesitant since both activities are going to take significant time investment with minimal ROI in the beginning. I feel like it'll be fun to start, but it'll become a grind when I realize I'm not raising much money for the time I'm putting in. What if that time is better spent elsewhere for practicing EA?
I thought about doing freelance / volunteer work with my skills, but I think that's too close to work for me such that I won't enjoy doing it - yet, it would be highly effective.
I would think hard about what the relevant resources are that you're trading off against each other. Are your hobbies important for your well-being and relaxation? Is it possible that by starting to monetize your hobbies, you might get less enjoyment out of them? Maybe it will also create some imbalance as you spend more time on them than you otherwise would? Or perhaps it's the opposite and monetizing your hobbies would actually increase the quality of your leisure time? Perhaps you can run a time-limited experiment to find out.
Also, as a full-time online entrepreneur my opinion is that neither blogging nor streaming are particularly good income streams unless you have reason to think you would be exceptionally good in either of these.
Also, have you read this? https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3p3CYauiX8oLjmwRF/purchase-fuzzies-and-utilons-separately
My goal isn't to become a huge blogger or streamer. The purpose of them is for leisure and any money that I make, I donate to charity. I feel like this would increase the quality of my leisure time and give me more fulfillment and satisfaction - the warm fuzzies in that article. Meanwhile, my day job is optimized for utilons.
Thanks for sharing the article. It sounds like I was trying to optimize for both, while the best approach is to do separate.