If you’re a nerdy AFOL like me, you probably think it would be great to get paid to build with LEGO bricks all day. Maybe you’re a great builder and could go work in Billund designing sets or at one of the theme parks. Or maybe you’re like me and your building skills are just average. As far as I know, the LEGO Group isn’t looking for mediocre to average builders. Maybe I could be a janitor at the LEGO House?
Besides working for the LEGO® Group, a number of fans have turned what they do as a fan into a full time business that pays their bills. I’ll bring up a few of them here and if you know of more, please let me know in the comments or email me at store@bricksforbricks.com.
Beyond the Brick: I posted about this YouTube channel here. My post has a link to an interview of them where they spend some time talking about how they turned traveling around the world to visit LEGO conventions, theme parks, and other events into a full time business that pays the bills. Pretty awesome if you ask me.
Brickset: If you haven’t been to brickset.com and you’re an AFOL, where have you been? Huw Millington decided in the late 1990s that there needed to be a database of all of the LEGO sets out there to include special edition sets and those sold in limited markets. It has since expanded to minifigures and individual pieces as well. Along the way he found that he could add advertising to his site and he used affiliate marketing (you buy LEGO from amazon.com and he gets a cut of the sale if you link through his site) as well. Once it started paying the mortgage, he quit his job and ran the site full time. There are a number of interviews with Huw online. I watched one from Beyond the Brick here. This one is a few years old and there are some newer ones so check around.
Brick 101: Another YouTube channel… this one is run by fan Dave Pickett. To be honest, I hadn’t heard of this channel until I stumbled upon a video he posted. Dave gave a talk at Bricks by the Bay 2018 about how he turned his love of LEGO and animation into a full time gig. You can watch the video here. He has videos where he explains how to build various creations, he reviews sets, and he does some animation work. He also does some work for non-LEGO toy companies… GASP!!!! (from the purists out there) The video is about 45 minutes long, but it’s interesting to see how he made it work.
The big recurring theme I saw from all 3 of these businesses I mentioned is that their success did not happen over night. It took all of them a few years to turn their hobby into a business. I’m not saying that there aren’t overnight successes out there, but something to keep in mind if you plan to be a full time brick fan starting tomorrow.
I only selected 3 to talk about here and I realize I’m missing a lot of people. I know there are folks that run BrickLink, EBay, BrickOwl, and other stores full time selling sets, pieces, minifigures, and other LEGO related items. I’m sure there are others out there too that Brick full time and don’t run stores. I will look to do an update to this post in the future with some others I find out there who went from hobby to business. In the meantime, happy building!