For a while now, I’ve been working at making my entire living from my amateur radio activities. I’ve had some success with my study guides, and I did well with my one-day Tech class at Dayton, but freelance writing for clients still makes up a sizable portion of my income.
I’d love to be able to cut those clients loose, too, but I haven’t been very successful in developing other sources of amateur radio income:
- I tried to buy the rights to publish AC6V’s books after he became an SK, but never heard back from the family.
- I contacted the family of Dave Ingram, K4TWJ (SK), about purchasing the rights to publish his books, but I never got a response from his wife.
- I tried to buy the CW Touch Keyer business after its owner passed, but after three attempts to contact them, I still haven’t heard back from the family.
- I thought that I could make a few bucks by purchasing a quantity of FA-VA4 antenna analyzer kits, building them, and then selling them at hamfests. I bought five of them, and to date, have only sold two. Part of the problem, I think, is that this product is not all that well known.
I haven’t given up, though. Here are some ideas that I’ve come up with recently:
- Teach one-day Tech classes at big hamfests around the country, including SEAPAC, HamCation, etc. If I could get 20 students to sign up at $75 – 100 per student, this could be profitable.
- Teach classes online in a webinar format. Using webinars, I could teach quite a few students and offer General and Extra classes as well as a Tech class.
- Teach some for-pay webinars on relevant amateur radio topics, such as FT8, DMR, etc.
- Develop an online Tech class that I would charge students to take.
- Develop other online amateur radio classes.
- Do webinars/videos that demo a product, then include a link to Amazon that would include my Amazon Associates id. I would get a small commission any time someone purchased the product after watching the video.
- Write more books. At one point, I had gotten No Starch Press interested in having me write a Ham Radio for Hackers book, and I had done a fair amount of work on it before shelving it. I really should resurrect that book. On another topic, every time Gigaparts places an order for my study guides, they ask when I’m going to write a DMR for Dummies book.
- Design my own touch keyers. I started doing some work on this, but then had to devote my time to updating the Tech study guide. I really wanted to purchase the CW Touch Keyer business, though, because they already had an established brand and customer base.
I know that I’m probably a better CW operator than I am a business man, but there must be a way that I can make more money in amateur radio. What do you think? Do you have an idea for an amateur radio product that you think I could produce? How about an amateur radio book that I should write? Or, can you think of an amateur radio service that I could provide?
I’m listening.