Ways To Make Money As A New Homesteader

When you are looking to start your homestead, you may be looking for ways to bring in an income. There are tons of ways to make money on a homestead that all depend on your abilities and skill sets. If you are unskilled at growing food, maybe setting up your entire homestead with that as the goal isn’t a great idea. That doesn’t mean that you can’t do it! But there are some things that you should consider before quitting your job and moving to the country. Below I am going to go over some considerations and ways to make money as a new homesteader

Considerations For Making Money As A New Homesteader

Before you jump in to your homestead, buy the first animal, or drop a ton of money on seeds, you should take some time to figure everything out first. It would suck for you waste a ton of money on seed starts and hate gardening. Or realize there is very little profit in raising goats.

Profitability

This is literally the most important part of making money as a new homesteader. We all want to quit the rat race, but if there is no profit in what you are doing? Why are you doing it? I have a great profit calculator that I use when I am researching a new revenue source.

The reality is that money is what makes the world go around. Sure, you can get away with the minimum but at the end of the day, you need money to purchase land, animals, feed and so much more. Rarely, are you going to be able to trade for these items right out of the gate.

Sustainablity

This is another tag word that we are all to familiar with in the homesteading community, but I don’t think people look at it from the “other” side. When you are looking for a way to bring in an income, you have to look at the sustainability of that revenue. If you want to start content creation, you need to look at your ability to stay consistent.

You also want to look at whether this revenue source is something you can sustain. Burnout is real on the homestead and dealing with the constant demand of marketing, creation, etc are really hard to keep up with.

Your Skills

There is always the ability to learn new skills. But if you are looking to start a wood working business and you don’t even know how, you are going to struggle while getting your skills up to speed. Again, this isn’t to say that you can’t do it, but you need to really look at what skills you have and if they are marketable.

Another option is to find a way that allows to use the skills you already have while homesteading. This can look different for everyone but doing blood draws for animal testing can bring in a fair amount of money if you know how to do them.

Multiple Revenue Streams

Much like “regular” business or wealth building, you don’t want to limit yourself to one revenue or income stream. But when it comes to homesteading, the reason is a little different. The reality is that you are probably not going to make enough money to cover your all expenses by selling eggs.

As a homesteader, you need to understand that your income will be seasonal. You may get $100/mo selling eggs between March and October. You’ll make another $300/mo selling cut flowers from April to October. Maybe you’ll make another $1000 selling a couple goat kids in March and again October. But having multiple income streams are really important to leaving the rat race.

Your Local Market And Regulations

Depending on what you are looking to make, raise, grow or sell, you need to look into your local regulations to see if you can. Up until here recently it was illegal to sell raw milk (for human consumption) in the state of Georgia. If I wanted to sell raw milk, I had to sell it for animal consumption. If I wanted to sell bread at the local farmers market, I would have to get a cottage license.

But other things that you should look at is your local market for these items. Where I live, it doesn’t make a bit of sense to sell eggs because everyone at the local farmers market sells eggs. I would have to go closer to the city to sell at a farmers market that wasn’t completely saturated with egg sales.

Making Money As A New Homesteader

Now for the information you really want!

Sell Your Abundance

Anyone who has livestock understands chicken math and goat-a-plication. But there is a benefit to the extra livestock. You can sell it. We have a lot of chickens and ducks. This means that I can sell eggs, chicks or poults. I love goats and their milk is one of the few that I can tolerate. But to get milk, I have to breed my girls and this leads to babies. So we sell goat kids after they are weaned.

This goes for your garden as well. We all know that you planted WAY too many cherry tomato plants, or zucchini, you can sell your abundance to friends or family and even local grocers.

Consider what you are already growing, raising, breeding, etc and how you can sell the extra. It won’t bring in a lot of money in one shot, but it can bring a several hundred dollars a year and that could be an extra mortgage payment.

Content Creation

This a big one for homesteaders, especially the generations raised with the internet and social media. **Raises hand** Content creation is a great way to bring in an extra income at any point in your homestead journey. You don’t have to be a pro goat owner, gardener, canner, etc. In fact, a lot of people are dying to see the real thing. People want to see real life people, doing real life things.

The main thing with content creation is to be purposeful, and research the topics or areas you want to talk about. Again, this goes back to market research. You also need to look at your niche and what you can talk about for years and years.

Selling Your Craft

This is one that a lot of people struggle with and I am one of them. I struggle with Why would someone want what I made, it’s not that good. But the reality is that there are people out there that want to buy what you sell. You just have to find them.

I would love to get back into selling my candles, because I really enjoy making them.

Jared is building my greenhouse so I can sell my plant starts and house plants.

I am getting back into making tea diffusers.

These various products have the potential to bring in a lot of money and could allow me to stay home, which is the goal.

You could sell handmade pottery, quilts, stain glass, and so much more. The sky is the limit and with enough business, could keep you from a 9-5 with ease.

Meat Animals

If this is not something that interests you, keep scrolling. But raising meat animals can be extremely profitable if you can get your set up right and source the animals and feed well. Pasture pork, grass fed beef, and pastured chicken are all high value animals for people that want to eat meat but don’t want to get it from the grocery store.

If you already know how to butcher animals, look into what it would take to open a processing facility. Seriously, there are more and more people who want to raise animals but can’t process them themselves. I can tell you right now, there are not enough meat processors/ butchers to keep up with the demand.

Or, you could set up a business were you travel around showing people how to process their own animals. This can be incredibly lucrative.

Find Something You Do Well, and Make Sell it

At the end of the day, making money as a new homesteader doesn’t need to be hard. In fact, it can be quite easy IF you can figure out a way to make it sustainable, profitable, and work for you. There are a lot of ways to make money homesteading. The issue comes with the hard work, time needed, regulations/local markets, etc. But once you figure that out? You can spend your days hanging out wth your goats.

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