How to Earn Money as a Skilled Prepper – 4 Strategic Tips

| Last Updated: March 29, 2021

After communicating with people in our community, we've come to the conclusion that having enough money to be efficient in prepping is priority numero uno.  This is the one thing that has the ability to limit most everyone in what they're able to do for themselves and their families when it comes to increasing their disaster preparedness.

This may seem like a remedial article, but this is our attempt to gauge the interest level in this particular area, if you'd like to see more of this content please share it and leave us a comment letting us know "yea" or "nay".

Imagine what you could do if you had an extra $200-$500 dollars per month coming in the door. If your family relied on medication, you could stockpile extra medical supplies each month. If you're just starting out at a later point in your life, you could afford to make up for lost time by purchasing would be diy tasks. If you don't want to see another canning apparatus, you could afford to buy a 30+ year supply of pre-made food that only requires you to eat it.

We could go on and on, but you see that having more money could help out, right?

So How Do You Make Money as a Prepper?

There are many ways to do this, and thankfully there are some entrepreneurially minded people on the team that have a way of making things happen, so let's get into this!

DISCLAIMER


This is not a financial mastermind website, the suggestions made in this article are merely thoughts and suggestions made by those who want to help solve a problem. Don't risk money or time that you could not afford to lose. Talk to your spouse or financial counselor before making any decisions regarding spending money. These are not guaranteed successes, only recommendations based on what is working for other people. Make an educated decision based on your circumstances.

1. Selling Your Services

There is no more immediate way to generate cash flow than to sell a service that you do well, and others are willing to pay for. This way of making money is mutually beneficial, and that should always be the case, because the person paying you is receiving a service that would have cost them time that they don't have, and you're being paid which is a resource you don't have.

How Would This Work?

Sounds great and practical in theory, but what does this actually look like in practice. Let's say that you're an exceptional canner, which I'm sure more than one of you are. You would market your services locally to those who might need it.

Source

The best place to market the types of skills that we have is at a farmers market or local produce shop. These are people who are interested in natural foods and are willing to trust their community to give it to them. So hang a flyer, stand at the door, or do what you have to to get your face out there.

Now this will take you getting out of your comfort zone if you're a natural introvert. But you'll need to weigh which is more important, the money you could use to help your family or your comfort? You get to choose.

2. Teaching a Course

We've all heard the ancient proverb, give a man a fish and he eats for a day, TEACH a man to fish and he can feed himself forever. If you take the time to share the information you have in your head of a particular skill your gifted at that other people want, you can do very well. Whether it's teaching marksmanship, canning, or food storage basics for beginners, find the people who want to learn and can pay and you'll be glad you did this!

How Would This Work? 

Let's take the canning example again (but you can substitute for your own skills gardening/archery/hunting etc.). You're the canning master and can do it in record time, you might have already sold your services to some loyal patrons that want to try their hand at it. This is an opportunity to provide benefit and receive a little more from already loyal customers.

Now you're going to want to realize that you're training your own competition by doing this, and that means charging a little more is certainly acceptable. It's up to you to determine your rates (look at other home based courses in your area to get an idea of pricing, in LA freelancers earn about $55/hour and in NY they get upwards of $85. Do your research). Set up your classes for a time that won't interfere with your schedule, and if needed meet in a special location.

Your home may be a great place to start, but if you grow in popularity the charm of your home might not be enough to convince those who don't know you to write you a check...

3. Making a Product

Please don't take this as us encouraging you to make the next Shark Tank mega product, but if you do please give us a shout out! This can be as simple as buying multiple small items and packaging them in a unique way that allows you to sell them for more than their worth to those who don't have the time to do it themselves.

Amazon is an amazing example of this. If you look up bug out bags on Amazon you'll see loads of different sellers who are selling different versions of the same thing, but what you'll soon notice is that most of these bags have the same things in them....coincidence? nope. It's just a matter of finding a need and selling it to those who don't have the desire or time to do it themselves.

How Would This Work? 

Ok so you're an amazing canner who  has all the best canned foods in town, you're teaching a class to well meaning folks who want to do what you do, and you're selling this product to people who might want it. All you need to do is introduce a new version of the same best selling product that people might be interested in.

Notice we used the phrase"best selling", this is because you want to take something that's proven to work and find a way to make it work just a bit better. No need to reinvent the wheel folks.

Let's say pickled pigs feet is your best seller and you can't keep them on the shelves (a strange thought, but I didn't want to lose your attention). So to make a bit more money without having to make a ton more pickled pigs feet, you would make pickled pigs feet packages!

This works best by combining a related product with the best selling product. So maybe pickled pigs feet and a lamp! Kidding. Pickled pigs feet and a diagram you use to maximize storage space in your home with limited shelves.

I know I would buy that!

4. Form an Association

This one wouldn't be a tactic that directly benefits one person, this would be a community play to benefit everyone involved. And if that thought scares you then you have your soul to worry about more than your money, friend.

Forming an association of like minded folks could offer a way to buffer the expenses of preps that might be too expensive for individuals. Like if you and a few others close to you needed a pressure canner, but money was so tight that not all of you could afford to buy your own. If you pool your resources you would be able to buy one that can be used by your association!

How would this work? 

Again, this strategy isn't so much about increasing the financial power of one individual, but allowing the resources of the many to be used to provide a solution. You'll need to have friends who are of the same mindset to make this happen as well. And that in itself is a large problem that most preppers or forward thinkers have, not being able to find many people around them with the same mindset.

However, if you're lucky enough to have some folks around you who are of the same mindset it would be a simple process of laying down the rules of how the resources of the association are pooled together. Likely you'll want to have a voting system in place to make sure that when items are purchased, it's a unanimous decision.

Now you could use the newly purchased resources to find a way to sell services of the group. Especially if everyone on board is mediocre at most things, when you put all your skills together you're probably pretty amazing and fast!

So let's say that there's a need for canning and organization of food storage, well if you have 2-4 people in your group imagine how fast that task could be handled. Then you could use the resources to benefit the association even further!

Wrapping Up

Remember that these are all suggestions to help you earn a little more wiggle room with your finances, using skill sets that you already have. You can stack some of these tactics together to get the best outcome, and you don't have to go in the order we listed. These are all suggestions that you get to pick from to become more independent and free to improve your families preparedness!

We here at Survive The Wild hope this helps, and look forward to thoughts and comments. Have a great day and stay safe!

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