How to Make Money Selling Succulents
Selling completed succulent arrangements is a great way to make some money doing what you love! This post will help you learn how to get started.
While there are plenty of ways to make money online, you may have a unique opportunity if you've caught the succulent bug.
Hundreds of people are shopping for succulents online each day, and many of them would prefer to buy a beautifully composed arrangement rather than individual plants.
If you're starting to run out of room for all of your amazing plants, selling them might be a great way to boost your income and have some fun too.
Platforms for Selling Succulents
There are a few different places you can sell succulents online. Each has their benefits and disadvantages. Let's look at a few together!
This platform is a great way to test the waters and see if you enjoy selling succulents, and see what resonates with people. You can join a variety of succulent selling Facebook groups. Simply post a photo of your arrangement, along with the price and you'll get feedback and customers.
You'll need to have a way to accept payments, so setting up something like PayPal or Venmo is a great option.
Here's a few of my favorite succulent selling groups:
- B.E.S.T (Buy Exchange Sell Trade) Succulents and Containers
- Cactus – Succulents – Buy – Sell – Trade
- Succulents and Tropicals Marketplace
Etsy
If you're looking to start your own shop, and want it to be as simple as possible, I'd highly recommend selling succulents in your own Etsy shop.
Etsy takes care of all the hard stuff for you: taking payments, sales tax, well designed sales pages, and even an audience!
The setup is easy to do and doesn't take very long. Simply choose a name, input your information, and start adding products! They've made the process of getting started simple and easy to do.
Another great thing about Etsy is visitors to their site are looking for items to purchase. Yay! But… there are a lot of other shops out there too so you need to make sure your shop has some uniqueness.
You'll still need to promote your shop in order to generate sales. You can't rely on Etsy to do all the work for you.
Amazon Handmade
Similar to Etsy, Amazon Handmade is an online shopping platform that allows makers to sell their creations. Amazon is a huge platform so there is definitely an audience there if you're able to get ranked in the searches.
Getting setup on Amazon isn't quite as easy as Etsy's, but there are lots of tutorials to help you get started too.
Having very professional-looking photos is going to be a huge part of your success on any platform, but it's especially important on Amazon.
Just like with an Etsy shop, you'll want to make sure you're doing your part to promote you shop in order to generate sales.
Start Your Own Website
This is definitely the most complicated path of the rest, but it's also rewarding because it's completely your own.
There are services like Shopify that make it easy to setup your own shop on your own URL.
There are two big advantages to setting up your own website. First… you are likely going to be the one driving most of the traffic anyway, so it's nice to have people going to your own site instead of someone else's (Etsy, Amazon, etc.).
The second advantage is your customers only see your products. They aren't shown related products from other vendors that might distract them or take them away from your products.
Any of the platforms above, along with many others, can help you build an online business selling succulents. But, there's a few more things you'll need to know too!
Where to Buy Wholesale Succulents
In order to create your amazing succulent arrangements, and keep your shop constantly selling, you'll need a great source to buy succulents!
There are two places I highly recommend purchasing from if you can't find a good selection locally.
First up is Mountain Crest Gardens. They have an amazing selection of succulents and their prices are fantastic.
To get the most for your money, I highly recommend purchasing their mini plug trays or regular plug trays. While these may not be as big as you need them for your arrangements, they will grow very quickly into the 2″ size you might normally use for an arrangement.
The second source is GoSucculent.com. Their cuttings are some of the best I've ever purchased, and are an amazing price too.
You will have to mail in a check to make a purchase, but the quality of the cuttings is well worth the wait. He only ships on Monday and Tuesday so make sure your check will arrive earlier the week before.
Once you have been making arrangements for a while, you'll likely have a collection of your own from which to take cuttings. This will help lower your costs and you'll have a gorgeous garden to look at too!
Be unique, be you!
It's important that you are true to yourself as you're selling succulents online. While you should look at other vendors for inspiration and ideas (even looking outside the world of succulents), you need to have your own look and style.
The more arrangements you create the more your style will develop. There's a lot of ways you can stand out, so try a lot of things and see what works!
Maybe you plant everything in a specific type of pot. Maybe you only use certain varieties of succulents. Maybe you add a special sign or piece of decor with each arrangement.
Just be you! Copycatting or mimicking other sites won't help you build a loyal customer base. While people are buying succulents because they want to decorate their home or office, they will also buy because they like you and your style. So stay true to that 🙂
Package and ship things well
I have bought thousands (Yes, thousands! Crazy!) of succulents online. I have seen a wide variety of shipping methods and ideas.
Some of these work much better than others. A lot of the success of your shipping will depend on the type of arrangements you're selling, but most of it will be determined by how you package them.
My friend Mimi, of I Dream of Succulents, has put together a course to show you step-by-step how to create, package and ship succulents.
Mimi ran a successfully Etsy shop for over 5 years, shipping over 2,300 completed arrangements!
While many people don't think shipping completed arrangements is possible, Mimi has proven them wrong and has done an amazing job at getting her creations delivered in amazing condition.
And she has over 400 five-star reviews to prove it!
If you're ready to sell succulents online, you'll definitely want to take her course and save yourself the hassle of figuring out the best ways to ship succulents. She'll give you all the tips and tricks she's learned throughout her time running her Etsy shop.
Have Amazing Customer Service
This is a big one if you want to have a steady stream of customers. All of our favorite succulent sellers we work with have incredible customer service.
Bonsai Jack, for example, has hundreds of five-star reviews across all the platforms they sell on. He is dedicated to making sure his customers are completely satisfied every single time.
Decide ahead of time how you'll respond to customers who aren't happy about their order, those that get damaged it shipping, or never arrive.
Obviously you'll take care to avoid all of those things up front, but having a clear plan of what to do when problems arise will help you and your customers stay happy.
Price It Right
One of the biggest problems I see with people selling succulent arrangements is arbitrarily setting their prices.
In order for your shop to be profitable and worthwhile, you need to actually be making money, not just selling a lot of stuff.
Make sure you take into consideration your time (driving to get supplies, making the products, setting up products on Etsy, etc.), all the supplies you use, plants that die, water to keep plants alive, etc.
Benefits of Selling Succulents Online
It's possible you've already been selling locally at farmers markets or local craft fairs, and you might be wondering why you'd want to go to the effort of selling online.
One of the biggest benefits to selling online is the flexibility. Rather than being tied down to certain dates and times when markets or fairs are going, you can sell any time!
If you want to take a vacation, just put a notice up in your shop that orders won't be shipped until you get back.
You may also find that it's nice to only make arrangements when they're ordered. With a market, you have to make a lot of arrangements and hope they all sell while you're there.
Anything that doesn't sell, you have to bring home and keep well maintained so you can sell it again.
That doesn't happen with online orders. Simply make an arrangement when an order comes in!
Now that you've learned some of what it takes to sell succulents online, it's time for the hard part… doing it! You can totally do this! Have fun with the process and learn as you go. It's an incredibly rewarding journey.
This article originally appeared on Succulents and Sunshine.