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Somewhere right now, someone is doing energy healing... on a horse... and running a seven-figure business doing it.
That sentence sounds like a setup for a joke. The sales figures are not a joke.
We went looking through the businesses people have built on Kajabi, expecting the usual suspects: fitness, finance, marketing, the categories everyone tells you to pick. We found those. We also found a feng shui teacher who has done more than a million dollars in sales. A man teaching options trading in Yiddish. Someone earning a million dollars teaching people to draw animals with colored pencils. And, yes, an olive oil sommelier.
A striking number of these “unserious” niches are out-earning the serious ones everyone fights over.
This is the Million Dollar Hobby... the thing you do on weekends that the internet quietly decided to pay for. It’s a running list, and we keep adding to it, because every month another niche shows up that we would have bet money could never support a business. We keep being wrong. Happily.
Here is what the weird ones understand that the sensible ones miss.
Why the strangest niches win
The standard advice is to pick a big market. More people, more customers, more money. It feels obvious.
It’s also why so much generic “start an online business” advice quietly goes nowhere. A big market is a crowded one. Teach “how to be more productive” and you compete with ten thousand others teaching the same thing, plus every free article ever written, plus an AI that will summarize all of it in two seconds for free.
A hyper-specific niche runs on opposite physics. Fewer potential customers, yes. Also almost no competition, an audience that is genuinely relieved to find someone who gets their exact problem, and pricing power, because you are the only person who has packaged this precise knowledge.
We interviewed more than sixty experts for the Million Dollar Hobby series. Two dozen of them have each crossed seven figures in sales on Kajabi, in niches like feng shui, energy healing for horses, options trading taught in Yiddish, and drawing animals with colored pencils. Every one of them got there by going deep, not broad.
The pattern repeats so often it stops being funny and starts being a strategy. So we made a list.
The running list of Million Dollar Hobbies
A note on the rules. To make this list, a niche has to be (1) genuinely surprising and (2) a real business on Kajabi with a real, permissioned outcome behind it. No hypotheticals. No “you could probably.” Everyone here actually did it.
1. Energy healing... for horses
Renee Tucker teaches horse owners and equine bodyworkers how to do energy healing on horses, and she has built a business with more than a million dollars in sales doing it.
The audience here is the specific, devoted overlap of people who own horses and believe in energy work. Tiny on paper. Fiercely loyal in practice.
The lesson: the narrower and stranger the intersection, the less competition you have and the more the right people will pay to find you.
2. Drawing animals with colored pencils
One expert has done more than a million dollars in sales teaching people how to draw animals with colored pencils. Colored pencils. The medium most of us last touched in grade school.
The lesson: no medium is too humble to build a business around. Specific beats prestigious every time.
3. Feng shui, for the modern home
Dana Claudat teaches modern feng shui, and her business has done more than a million dollars in sales. An ancient practice, translated for people who want their space, and their life, to feel less chaotic.
The lesson: ancient ideas are wide open. People pay for someone who can translate them for the life they actually live now.
4. How to groom dogs
Another expert has done more than a million dollars in sales teaching other people how to groom dogs, a hands-on craft most people assume you can only learn in person.
The lesson: “you have to learn this in person” is an assumption, and assumptions are exactly where the open niches hide.
5. Options trading, taught in Yiddish
Chaim Ekstein teaches Yiddish-speaking retail investors how to trade options, from the absolute basics to advanced strategies, and has done more than a million dollars in sales. He serves a community no one else teaches in its own language, which makes him the obvious choice for the people in it.
The lesson: language and community are a moat. Serve a group no one else speaks to directly and you stop competing. You become the only door in.
6. The olive oil sommelier
Yes, that is a real profession. One expert has done around half a million dollars in sales teaching other people how to become olive oil sommeliers.
The lesson: if a profession exists, someone needs to teach it, and the more obscure it sounds, the more room you have to own it.
7. How to play guitar like Slash
Sam Holland teaches rock guitarists how to play, and sound, like Slash, and has done more than fifty thousand dollars in sales through his courses. The promise is precise: learn to sound like the specific legend you grew up worshipping.
The lesson: people pay for a result they can already hear in their head. Get that specific and the price takes care of itself.
8. Hymns, straight out of the hymnal
Phillip Goltiao teaches church pianists how to play hymns directly from a hymnal, and has built a business with more than eleven thousand dollars in sales serving them. Small? Sure. Real? Completely. And almost no one else teaches it.
The lesson: a “small” audience with an urgent, specific, underserved need is a business. Size of market and size of opportunity are two different things.
9. Wilderness tracking and bird language
Ralf Greiner teaches nature educators and teachers wilderness tracking, bird language, and survival skills, and has done more than a hundred thousand dollars in sales. This is knowledge earned outdoors over years, the kind a search engine can summarize but never actually give you.
The lesson: lived, experiential expertise is exactly what holds its value as everything generic gets commoditized.
10. Mystery school, online
Katerina Satori teaches spiritual seekers a path that runs from simple “easy-yes” offers all the way to mystery school teachings, and has done more than a million dollars in sales. A niche most business courses would steer you away from. Her students would tell you it changed their lives.
The lesson: depth of belonging beats breadth of appeal. The more an audience identifies with the work, the more durable the business.
11. Turning your handwriting into art
Esté and Naill MacLeod teach a handwriting-to-art method and have done more than a million dollars in sales. A craft most people would call a hobby and stop there. They turned it into a teachable, repeatable method, which is the move that turns a skill into a business.
The lesson: a hobby becomes a business the moment you can package it into a method someone else can follow.
We keep this list running. If you build a business in a niche this list would never have predicted, that’s exactly the point. Tell us, and you might be next on it.
What the data says about “too small to work”
Across the experts we interviewed for this series, the surprising niches were the pattern, not the exception. Two dozen have crossed seven figures in sales, in categories ranging from feng shui to equine energy work to trading education in Yiddish. Plenty more have built solid six-figure and five-figure businesses teaching things most people file under “just a hobby.”
Zoom out from this series and the pattern holds across the whole platform. Kajabi experts have generated more than eleven billion dollars in sales. More than 2,200 of those businesses have each passed a million dollars on their own, spread across fifteen different categories rather than bunched in the obvious ones. Even the category Kajabi files under “lifestyle and hobbies” accounts for more than four hundred million dollars of the total. The Million Dollar Hobby is literal.
The takeaway we keep landing on: there is no such thing as a niche that’s “too small” anymore. There is only a niche that has yet to find the one person willing to go all the way into it.
That person could be you, which is the whole idea behind the Million Dollar Hobby.
How to tell if your hobby is hiding a business (in 90 seconds)
We built a short, free assessment as part of the Million Dollar Hobby series. Answer eight quick questions about your hobby and get your Million Dollar Hobby score, a breakdown of where your idea is strong, and your first steps.
No pitch, no trial, no countdown. Just your score, and the occasional new entry to this list when we find a niche too wild to believe.
Prefer to keep reading? Meet the back-pain expert who built an eight-figure business and the physiotherapist who turned mobility for the over-fifties into a global business.
Frequently asked questions
Can a weird or tiny niche actually make money online?
Yes, and increasingly it’s the small, specific niches that do best. A narrow niche has less competition and a more passionate audience willing to pay a premium for an expert who understands their exact problem. The experts on this list teach things most people assume are “just hobbies,” from modern feng shui to equine energy work, and several have crossed seven figures in sales.
What is the “Million Dollar Hobby”?
It’s the idea that the thing you do for fun... the skill friends ask you about, the obsession you’ve spent years on... can become a real business when you package the knowledge and sell the transformation rather than the information. It’s also the name of our ongoing series tracking the most surprising niches making money on Kajabi.
Do I need a big audience to start?
No. You need a specific audience, not a large one. Several experts here built profitable businesses serving niches most people would call far too small, because a small group with an urgent, specific problem converts far better than a huge, casual one.
Why would people pay for information that’s free online?
Because free information is everywhere and confidence is rare. People pay for the shortcut past the mistakes, the trust that they’re learning it correctly, and a structured path to a real outcome. The raw facts are free; that guidance is what’s scarce.
How do I know if my hobby could be a business?
Three signals: people ask you how you did it without prompting, someone would pay to skip the mistakes you made learning it, and the raw information is free but doing it well is hard. If two of those are true, you likely have a business hiding in a hobby.
Aren’t niche businesses risky compared to big markets?
The common fear is that a small market means small income. In practice, broad markets are crowded and price-competitive, while a well-chosen niche has little competition and real pricing power. The risk is less about the size of the niche and more about whether you go deep enough to become the obvious expert in it.
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