Although I don't think it is great advice, many people say that a person should follow their passion in life and in a career. Lots of people feel passionate about Esperanto. Therefore, how could someone turn Esperanto into a career or business? What does the Esperanto community need the most? What do Esperantists spend their money on the most?

Alkanadi:What do Esperantists spend their money on the most?

The answer to that might be 'not Esperanto'. The whole idea of share and share alike with regard to Esperanto doesn't tally with moneymaking enterprises, which is probably why all the projects for teaching it, meetings, book publishing etc are all small scale, partially (or totally) voluntary and not listed on the Dow Jones.

On the other hand people do make money from something similar: open source software. Google, for example, has made a mint out of exploiting open source code and they are not the only ones. When all's said and done it still comes down to whether people can spend money on something, not just whether they desire something. Esperanto has a reputation of being a 'gift' language, rather than something you need to spend a lot of money on. That's only teaching and learning, but to be honest that's the limit. I don't know of any lucrative areas that revolve around Esperanto.