Few people realize that you can actually make money as a prepper. They think prepping is just a way to prepare for potential disasters (or merely a hobby for the super-paranoid).
Well, it is, but at the same time, you can earn a decent amount of money as a prepper. In fact, there are multiple ways to make money as a prepper, to the point that it’s not unrealistic to make a few hundred extra dollars a month…if not a few thousand, depending on your circumstances.
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Here are the top ways that you can make money as a prepper:
1. Make Supplies and Sell Them
This is one of the most common ways to make money as a prepper. Hundreds–if not thousands–of people are doing it through eBay, Etsy, flea markets, and so forth.
For example, you could make your own soap bars and sell them to your neighbors or other people in town. Granted, you probably couldn’t earn very much per soap bar, but you can still earn a decent amount the more you sell.
And of course, soap bars is really just one example. You can make virtually anything you want to as a DIY prepper. For example, you could make candles, charcoal, papercrete, infused oils, firestarters, emergency stoves, and all sorts of other things.
2. Start a Blog or Youtube Channel
Start your own blog and/or YouTube Channel on prepping, and you can make money through advertisement revenue and affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is where you act as an affiliate for products on certain sites such as Amazon, and then link to products on your blog or website. Each time someone buys the product after clicking the link, you will earn a small commission of around 5-10% or so.
With ad revenue, you can earn a few cents each time someone clicks advertisements, on both your blog and YouTube channel. This is why YouTube videos that get thousands of views a day can make decent money. Here’s an intro to making money on Youtube:
But granted, this won’t happen overnight or else everybody would be doing it. Starting a blog or making a YouTube channel needs to be treated like a business and has to be built up over time.
It can be several months or years before you begin to see decent revenue coming in. Regardless, a blog will be a good thing to run if you enjoy writing and want to share your knowledge with others, while a YouTube channel will be good if you are into video production and don’t mind being in front of the camera.
Just check out all these Youtube channels on prepping and survivalism. A lot of the people running these channels are making extra cash every day. Some of them are doing it full time.
3. Write and Sell Books on Prepping
Another idea would be to write an eBook and sell it through Amazon Kindle. The book can be either fiction or non-fiction, but in the case of non-fiction, you can write about your knowledge and tips on prepping.
The outdoors and disaster preparedness niches on Amazon Kindle have a sizable audience, so if you write a quality book and get a quality cover for it, then it’s not at all unreasonable to expect a few sales in the short term.
The more books you write under the same author name, the more of a reputation you can begin to build for yourself and turn Kindle Publishing into a business.
Also, your books don’t have to be very long. Several of the bestselling disaster preparedness and survival books in Amazon are only twenty to thirty pages, which translates to around five thousand words or so in Kindle format.
Here are some of our favorite books on prepping and survival.
4. Teach a Skill Set
We’re all good at something, and if you’re a prepper, you can probably teach other preppers something.
You can either teach people in person or you can set up an online course such as on SkillShare. Examples of areas of prepping that you could teach include:
- Target Shooting
- Firearms Maintenance
- Survival Caches
- First Aid
- Sewing
- Stockpiling
- Map Reading
- Using a Ham Radio
- Woodworking
Of course, you’re not just limited to survival or disaster preparedness things either. If you’re good at anything, you can teach it.
5. Make Money From Your Hobbies
Sewing, woodworking, crafts, writing, and so on are all hobbies that you can use to make money on the side.
In fact, there are very few hobbies that you probably can’t make money from, if you think about it. We’ve already covered some ways already that you can make money from your hobby. For example, we’ve covered how you can turn your writing hobby into blogging or Kindle publishing.
But you can always take things a step further. If you like woodworking, then teaching other people how to woodwork isn’t the only way that you can make money. You can also make money from it by selling your woodworking creations to others.
The point here is that you can take virtually any hobby that you have and devise a way to make money from it.
6. Hunt and Sell The Meat
If you go hunting for deer, hogs, elk, moose, or whatever, you will probably find that it’s very easy to find people who would be willing to buy the meat from you. In fact, your friends and family members would likely be willing to buy it from you, and for prices that should sound very good.
It’s no secret that meat from the grocery store rarely tastes as good as meat that’s been freshly hunted, which is why people should be very much willing to buy it. You could even sell fish that you catch as well, though obviously for a lesser price point.
Here’s another thought: You could take the meat and make beef jerky.
7. Sell Your Crops
Besides hunting and selling meat, you can sell your crops a well. This is especially viable if you have a large garden and can spare to sell a few fruits and veggies.
Just go to your local farmer’s market and you should find no difficulty in getting customers to come to you. There are a large number of people who would much rather spend their money on organic fruits grown at home versus what they can buy at the grocery store.
As with meat, homegrown fruits and vegetables just have a richer and more unique taste than what you can buy at the supermarket. Even organic fruits and vegetables at the supermarket may not have the same flavor, which is why you should find a large number of people willing to buy from you.
Another thing you could do is turn your fruits and veggies into jams, jellies, pickles, condiments, and other things.
8. Sell Old Supplies
This one may seem obvious, but a simple way to make money as a prepper is to sell old items and supplies that you don’t need anymore, and at discount prices to amplify the number of sales that you get.
What are some examples of supplies that you could sell? It varies pretty substantially: old gardening equipment, old camping equipment, an ATV you no longer use (maybe you upgraded), old ammunition, firearms you no longer want or need, and so on.
9. Rent Out Yor Bug Out Retreat
Yes, if you have a bug out retreat, you can rent it out. In fact, it doesn’t have to be an official bug out retreat. If all you have is a cabin out in the woods, for example, you can rent that out as an AirBnB.
Many preppers may not like this idea, and understandably so. The idea of revealing the location of their secret bug out location is definitely not very appealing.
But still, you can make money from it. Renting out a cabin for a hundred dollars a day is not at all unreasonable, especially if it’s in a private and beautiful location. In the summer and winter especially, you can expect the demand for a cabin like that to get much higher, in which case making several hundred dollars a month is very realistic.
10. Rent Out Hunting Land
Do you have any land available for hunting? If so, there are many preppers who would pay top dollar to have exclusive rights to hunt alone on private land, and especially land that has a large population of game animals.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are a very wide variety of ways by which you can make money as a prepper. Hopefully, this article gave you some ideas you hadn’t considered before.
No, you may not be able to make a living as a prepper, at least not right away. But still, you can easily make several hundred dollars each month on the side. Just put your creative thinking cap on.
I thought this list was insightful and well thought out. I hadn’t thought of one or two of these ideas. Thanks for making me think!