Find a problem to solve and your play project will make a profit

Think about why you usually pay for goods or services. Why do you hire a mechanic? You do it because there is a problem with your car. Why do you buy a textbook? Because it can teach you something useful. Why do you hire a lawyer? To help you solve legal problems. Are you beginning to see the pattern? People tend to hire other people and buy certain products because they are seeking a solution to a problem. Therefore, if you want to make money doing something, it needs to solve a problem for someone.

Look at your play project. You already know that it’s something you enjoy and are good at. You’ve also identified your potential customers. Now think about these people. What kinds of problems might they have? If you’ve chosen to build a website because you enjoy doing that, consider all of the individuals and businesses who don’t have this skillset and need help building their own site. Perhaps you’ve chosen to blog about healthy eating. Again, your ideal customers may struggle with this themselves—their diet may be a big problem for them. You could be the one to provide them with a solution.

When you identify what it is that your target audience or consumer needs, you have found an area waiting for a marketable solution worthy of a paycheck for play, or a “playcheck.” Even if your project seems unrelated to any problems at first, keep thinking of ideas and researching these until you find one. For example, you may not think that there is much of a market for paintings, but did you know that many corporate office buildings need art for the walls? Your passion for painting could fill that need, and make money from it too.

Don’t just look for any problem at all; look for problems that you can relate to your own passion and talents. Write down a list of all the problems you can think of that might be solved by something you enjoy and can do skillfully. Finding the problems that people will pay you to solve is vital to finding work that feels like play.