The Truth About Not Turning Our Hobby Into a Job

In 2019, just before we moved to France for the first time, Maria and I started making content together as The Francofile. Nearly four years later, the three motivations we listed in our very first YouTube video for sharing our life in France on social media still ring true. Firstly, The Francofile is a creative outlet for us. We enjoy doing the research, writing, photography, videography, design, and other artistic exercises that make up our Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, blog, and YouTube channel. We also value documenting our adventures as Americans living abroad – having a detailed account of everything we’ve experienced in France means that we have endless memories to look back on whenever we want. Finally, we love being a resource for others who hope to accomplish similar things, whether that’s learning French, teaching English with the Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF), studying in the French higher education system, or finding full-time work in France.

If we put so much time and effort into The Francofile, and we enjoy creating content and interacting with our followers, then why don’t we make it our job? As our audience has steadily grown, these are the types of questions we are asked increasingly often – especially by fellow Americans.

• How much money do you make from The Francofile?
• Why don’t you do The Francofile full-time?
• Don’t you think you should charge for the useful content you make?

Many people are surprised to learn that we aren’t actively working towards making money via our social media presence. Yet, there are many good reasons that we’ve decided to keep The Francofile as a hobby and not a job (or even a side-hustle).

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American Grind Culture

We grew up in the United States, where grind culture reigns supreme. We were always encouraged to strive for more in every sense of the word – more streams of income, more hours at work, more asset accumulation, more wealth building. American culture wants us to believe that getting rich (or trying to) matters more than anything. Accordingly, we’re never surprised when fellow Americans encourage us to monetize The Francofile. The truth is that we’re pretty far removed from the grind mindset as Americans living in France. We’re content being gainfully employed in our professional fields of choice at jobs that generate enough revenue to fund our lifestyle. We simply don’t feel the need to turn everything we do into a money-making venture.

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Passion Project

When you’re doing a hobby just for the fun of it, you can make your own rules. For example, we write blog articles and make YouTube videos without worrying whether they will perform well enough to make ends meet or whether we will lose followers for discussing certain topics. We allow ourselves to take breaks from posting content when we feel like it and make changes to our platform as we wish without having to consider how it could affect our income. This means that when we’re making content on The Francofile, it doesn’t feel like work. There aren’t any numbers to crunch, deadlines to meet, or mouths to feed. We’ve kept the passion in passion project by actively choosing not to turn it into work.

@the_francofile Perfect night in our favorite city. 🇫🇷🥹 #untilifoundyou #americaninfrance #expat #expatlife #reims #france #frenchlife #lifeinfrance #moveabroad #liveabroad #date #datenight #couple #couplegoals #interracialcouple #interraciallove #pizza #wine ♬ Until I Found You

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Work-to-Play Ratio

Maintaining our work-life balance is important for us. We always planned to work nine-to-fives – that’s why we completed six years of higher education to get the jobs we have now. Ever since we began to work around 40 hours per week, it’s more obvious than ever that scheduling in time for rest, self care, and hobbies is a must. We never aimed to make The Francofile our full-time career, but we also can’t imagine trying to cram a side hustle into our current routine. The amount of time and effort that we currently put into The Francofile just isn’t enough to generate meaningful revenue, and we value our free time too much to create more work for ourselves. We’re happy to count The Francofile among our leisure activities rather than our sources of cash flow.

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Non-Financial Returns

Cliché as it may be, we believe that money isn’t everything. We’ve gained so much from running The Francofile, even if we’ve never earned a cent for our content. From forging bonds with the most active members of our community, to making a real difference for TAPIFers and foreign students in France, to getting to collaborate with Campus France as E-Ambassadeurs, we’re thrilled with the non-monetary benefits we derive from The Francofile. We’ve been guests at the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (twice!), been recognized in public by followers, and gained countless skills like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), creative writing, video editing, and more. For all of these reasons, we don’t need to make money from The Francofile for our efforts to be worth something.

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French Working Rights

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, even if we wanted to monetize The Francofile, we can’t. We’ve always been transparent about the series of residence permits that have allowed us to live in France. During our year with TAPIF, we had temporary worker status, and were not permitted to work outside of our teaching contracts. As master’s degree students with student status, we had the right to work, but not the right to be self-employed. After graduation, we gained job seeker/new business creator status, and we had to choose between getting full-time jobs or becoming self-employed, but not both. Working within the parameters of our residence permits matters to us. Even if other foreigners flout the rules by making money from their internet presence, the cons far outweigh the pros for us.

@the_francofile A day in my life as an American grad student in France who gets paid to go to school. 💰✅ #alternance #workstudyprogramme #internationalstudent #americaninfrance #frenchlife #moveabroad #lifeabroad #studyabroad #mastersdegree #gradschool #france #reims #expat #immigrant ♬ Lazy Sunday

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From our rejection of the rise-and-grind mindset, to our desire to keep our work separate from our hobbies, to our commitment to respecting the limits of our French residence permits, it’s obvious that we’re in no rush to make The Francofile a money-making venture. Perhaps in the future, under a different set of circumstances, we’ll add “making money” to the list of the things we enjoy about The Francofile. But, for now, it’s just our passion project. What are your thoughts on monetizing hobbies? Have you ever turned a hobby into a side hustle? Let us know in a comment!

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