Websites based on your hobby/passion?

[Xed]

I am curious as to how many websites you have that are based on your hobby or passion or anything that you can write content without getting bored or discouraged. And how many websites that are not?

Is there a correlation between passion for the subject and success?

[Selkirk]

Passion and Success? How about this (http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/08/stardollcom-from-little-things-big-things-grow/):

Inspired by a childhood passion for paper dolls, Scandinavian born Liisa started drawing dolls and accompanying wardrobes, uploading them to Geocities. The personal page grew, evolving to Paperdoll Heaven in 2004.

Now calling itself Stardoll.com, the site took $4 million in Series A funding from Index Ventures in February 2006, and $6 million in a B Series round lead by none other than Sequoia in June the same year.

[Xed]

lol, maybe not something so rare and super-successful. I mean more like gardening as a hobby.

[deronsizemore]

Working on one, but have two more idea that I'd like to get started eventually based on my hobbies.

[Chris]

Almost all of my sites grew out of interests of mine, however slight. Only a couple (maybe 3) I really am not interested at all in and made purely based on monetary reasons.

[Xed]

I read somewhere that if your hobby is not that "hot" to monetize, IOW it can't get much traffic... then to sort of stretch to a parallel subject that can pull much more traffic and has more potential to create income. The idea is that you still have some interest in this topic because its close enough to your hobby. Whatsmore, you can even link it to your original hobby-site to get more traffic. Did anyone do this?

[Giles]

My photography site came from me wanting to get into and learn about photography. With play-flash-games an interest in flash games grew out of having the site. Once I've learned a little more I'm going to make a site about synthesizers, electronic music and composition.

[mails]

Most of them I'm really interested in...but there are some in progress - that I'm not very into... :lol:

Mails

[Johnny Gulag]

Yes all the sites I have tend to be related to my personal interests. :)

[Cutter]

If you are trying to learn, absolutely. Later on when you have the capital to pay someone else to do the work, its not nearly as important.

Also, you don't have to go directly after the thing you like, but you can use it as a stepping stone to a related subject.

Unrelated to any of my current projects, but stepping stones would be like: economics -> investments -> private equity. This is also the best way for building up expert knowledge on subjects (at least from personal experience.)

[ses5909]

i would say the majority of mine are related to topics I am interested in. When you don't make any money off of them for a while, sometimes it can be hard to stay motivated to continue developing them without that interest. at least that has been my personal experience.

[Emancipator]

every site i have is a topic i know about and am passionate about. helps to know your topic.