Currently, my most profitable side hustle is selling plants online. This I do mainly by selling plants on Etsy. I am based in Europe and have been selling plants to all EU countries, including the UK, during 2020. I started this side hustle in late spring/summer of 2020 and have made a reasonable income next to my real job.
For those who do not know what Etsy is, it’s a platform for handmade items. Basically, it is distinct from Amazon and Shopify as you can only sell what you have created yourself — either by your own hands or your own design. I am not an expert on what you can and cannot sell on the platform, but selling plants is definitely possible.
Generally, if you sell something that requires more work, there will be less competition. This I found to be very true on Etsy. I started my Etsy journey trying to sell art prints. In one year, I sold about 5 art prints in total. The competition is just too big, and the profit is very low per sold art print since there are many sellers that manage to keep the prices of their prints very low.
My next idea was to start selling house plants. At that time, I had ZERO plants in my apartment, and my husband would complain about me not adding life to the place due to lack of plants. It was his complaints that got me to go to some plant shops in our area. I live in Germany and must say that plants here are generally very cheap, especially when compared to online prices.
During this new interest for plants I came across a video on YouTube of a plant seller talking about how the Monstera Albo Variegata was like “gold dust” and that no seller could really keep up with the demand. She also stated that it was very hard to get your hands on one of these plants.
A couple of days later, I went to my local plant shop and found a huge Monstera Albo Variegata for €200 and, against the wishes of my husband (who thought the price of the plant was ridiculous), bought the plant with the aim of trying to sell it online.
The plant was actually 4 plants growing along one moss pole with a total of about 30 leaves. I started selling cuttings of these plants on Ebay: a leaf with a node that, if kept in water, can develop roots. I started on Ebay mainly because I was scared of the shipping process and liked the loose responsibility of being a private seller rather than a business. I sold some cuttings on Ebay but while browsing the internet for how much a cutting sold, I noticed that the prices on Etsy were a lot higher than what I was getting for my cuttings on Ebay. So, I decided to start selling on Etsy.
I registered an account and a business. Once I had my store opened, I started selling my Monstera cuttings there. I took some fancy photos and wrote a description. I took inspiration from other peoples’ stores for important things like return policies and shipping costs and made sure to include these in each of my listings.
After my first month on Etsy I started looking into buying other plants. I compared what they sold for in my local garden stores to the prices available on Etsy. The profit margins could be as high as over 300–500% on some plants, compared to the price I could buy them for locally, so I gave it a try. At this point my husband had noticed that things do sell and was much more supportive of my ventures.
I started buying popular plants from my local garden stores, replanting them and propagating them. I would start by undercutting sellers since I was new and did not have many reviews -this was easy since the profit margin was so high. As more plants sold and reviews came in, my shop grew.
How much did I make? Let’s have a look:
Unfortunately, the currency shown is in Swedish krona, but I will convert all my values as I go along.
I started selling on Etsy in May 2020. I sold two items in my first month and made a total of $88. However, I had some outstanding costs for previous marketing attempts of my art print posters that made my fees & taxes $41. Furthermore, the sales and credit number does not take into account the cost of shipping nor the costs of the plants sold. I had bought a plant for €200 ($240) with 36 cuttings my cost was $6,7 per cutting. The buyer paid for shipping which was $18 within the EU and $6 within Germany (where I lived). Out of my two orders in May, one of the plants was shipped within Germany and one was sent to France so my shipping costs were $24 and the cost for the plants was $13,4. However, the taxes and fees are already removed from the total of $88 so my profit was $88–$37,4 (shipping and cost per plant). Leaving me with a total profit of $50.
After my $50 profit in May things started looking a lot better. In June, my sales and credits increased tenfold from my previous $88 to a whopping $1 125. I made 10 sales this month and my costs were $6,7 per plant, and while I don’t have the specifics of shipping let’s assume half went to the wider EU and half sold in Germany, that means that five orders cost me $6 and five orders cost me $18. That is a total cost of $120 for shipping and $67 for the plants. Leaving me with a total profit of $938. I used some of that money to invest in more plants and in July I had almost tripled my June income:
I will not go into much detail for July since the principle is the same. My sales and credits (the money that Etsy pays me) for July ended up at $2 988. I think I averaged 5–7 sales a week but Etsy stats do not give a good overview and with these many sales it is hard to keep track.
In August, my husband and I went on a vacation abroad for a week, during which I kept my shop closed. After reopening my shop, it took another 7 days for the search engines to start showing my items in Etsy search, but once that was fixed my sales went back up again.
After the summer, sales started slowing down since selling plants is very much a seasonal business. On the 2nd of December 2020 my husband and I went on a two-month vacation, so that is why the stats are so low at the end of the year. Furthermore, in October and November my focus was to sell off my stock since I would be traveling for over 2 months and would not be able to take care of the plants, which also contributed to the lower revenue.
In total, I made $9 549 on selling plants on Etsy from May 2020 to December 2020. It was fairly easy, the tricky part for a new plant owner was to keep them alive and healthy.
