This is the very reason why I am taking a break from poker and thinking of restructuring my playing time. I have noticed that the time put in does not render as much as a proper side business. For fun its great but as another stream of side income - not so in most cases.
Yeah, it's much more fun to play poker while you have several sources of income and all of them don't consume your time. Years ago I've been playing like a maniac for 10+ hours per day at 8+ tables at a time in order to grow the
bankroll, cause poker was a single source of income... Today I'm playing
freerolls in the evenings while I'm drawing new 3d models or preparing g-code programs for my CNC machines, and I prefer to withdraw any winnings, even if it's 10 euro or 100 dollars, cause I'd better buy a new stepper motor or few engraving bits and will think about it as a gift sent to me by poker company, instead of having a chance to start risking again at high stakes and feeling that negative or positive TILT, and having a bad feeling that i'm a rake generating mule who actually works for the
poker site and falsely believes that he's doing something useful with his life.
There are hundreds of technologies that can be used for a startup, some of them require low investments for a start. Most of the people don't even realize that production line can be started at the table with $100 investments plus knowledge of the technology, larger and more automated types of item production can be started with like $1K investments and some space like a room or a garage. But people prefer to have a job, and spend their free time to watch some SHOW like TV series or sports, and spend $1K to buy a new smartphone so they can feel themselves better, instead of studying, learning new things and investing money and time in a better future.
Such is life. It's not quite obvious for majority that society is split into creators and consumers, and the way of the follower(consumer) is always the easy one. I wonder, what if all online
poker sites will post a banner in their software saying "what do you create by playing poker"?
Many players, including winning ones are thinking that they're smart, but they almost never ask such questions...