How To Make Money Growing Succulents (8 Methods)

Who doesn’t love decorative succulents and cacti in the house?  If you live in the right climate, they make for excellent landscaping and garden options.  They’re hassle-free.  Kids get a kick out of cacti, that’s for sure. I bought my oldest son a cacti box and he loves it. It’s still going strong after three years.

The question is, how can you make money growing succulents?  Is it possible? 

Answer: yes, it’s very possible to make money growing succulents and cacti. In fact, if you’re smart about it, you can make a ton of money.  Let me explain.

The 7 ways to make money growing succulents and cacti

1. Sell succulents at farmers’ markets and other local spots

Succulents make for fabulous indoor “plants”. I say plants tongue-in-cheek.  They’re like plants except in most cases they’re less work.  Since they make such great “houseplants” there’s pretty good demand for them year-round which means you can sell your succulent creations at farmers’ markets or word-of-mouth.

You can run a dedicated succulent booth or sell them along other wares such as basil, other herbs, veggies and whatever else you grow.

Can you really make a profit selling succulents?  You bet you can.  You add value in arranging succulent boxes and pots so that they’re attractive to buyers.  Moreover, you can enhance the offering by sourcing and using attractive boxes, terrariums, planters and pots so that the entire package looks fabulous in any home.

Here are some great examples of attractive miniature succulent gardens:

2. Sell succulents online (i.e. Etsy)

Whatever you create to sell locally and at farmers’ markets, you can sell online. Etsy is a great place to sell your miniature succulent gardens.  You can sell individual succulents and cacti as well.  

Before you start shipping, you’ll want to source packaging that will ship/deliver your succulents to buyers undamaged.

• Here’s an example of a succulent terrarium for sale on Etsy for $35.
• Here’s a cacti cluster listed for $30 on Etsy.

You aren’t restricted to selling on Etsy.  Additional free platforms to sell are:

• Facebook Marketplace
• Craigslist
• Amazon (yes, you can open up a store on Amazon and sell whatever you want as long as Amazon approves it).

3. Offer succulent growing and landscaping services

If you become skilled in planning and growing succulent gardens, especially larger gardens and landscaping outdoors, you could offer your skills as a service to homeowners and commercial real estate owners.  These could be large, lucrative gigs, especially if you source the succulents for the job, hire the crew to do the work and so on.  Jobs like this could easily get into 5 and even 6 figures.

4. Create and sell gift baskets with succulents included

If you like curating gift boxes and can source “gift box” products to create something special, you can include succulents in your gift box creations.  Once you have your gift box items sourced and created, you can sell locally as well as online.  The following is a simple gift box with cacti listed on Etsy for $17:

5. Teach local courses on how to grow succulents

Growing and arranging succulents, whether in miniature indoor gardens or creating entire landscapes is a skill you learn over time.  Once you are adept at it, you could offer courses locally and teach it to others.  While offering weekly courses won’t make you rich, if you can get ten students for $200 each for a 5 session course, that’s not bad money.  You make $2,000 doing something you love.

However, you can leverage all that effort by taking some of that money and video recording your classes.  Armed with the recording, you could create a top-notch series of videos that make up a digital course or excellent YouTube videos… which I get into next.

6. Be a succulent wholesaler to local nurseries and other retailers

If you enjoy growing succulents from nothing, you can grow and arrange them and then sell them wholesale to local retailers that sell succulent and cacti arrangements to customers.  One or two retailers could have enough demand for you to turn your hobby into a nice little business (or maybe a big business… depending on how much demand they have).

7. Create and sell online courses teaching how to grow and care for succulents

If you really know your stuff and can offer tips that aren’t found for free online, you can create a digital course (video is probably best) and sell it.  Selling digital courses can be insanely profitable because there’s no cost attached to the course. Once it’s made, it costs nothing to scale it up.  

In fact, if you decide to sell a course teaching how to grow/arrange succulents, you should put your course on an online course platform. I use Teachable which is quite good.  That way I don’t ever have to do anything. Teachable collects the money and pays me.  Teachable handles taxes, course delivery… everything. I do nothing.  It’s a great way to make some extra money.  

What you might not know is that for many course owners and sellers, it’s not just a cool side income but instead a 6 or 7-figure per year business.  Since there are no costs associated with selling digital courses, all that revenue is profit.

8. Publish a blog and/or YouTube channel about everything succulents

If you don’t think people will pay $30 or more for your course, another option is to start a blog and/or YouTube channel all about growing and arranging succulents.  They already exist but there’s room for more. It’s a popular topic that can be covered from so many angles.

If you’re up for it, do both a YouTube channel and blog.  That way you will leverage all your cacti knowledge and content creation effort.

I publish many blogs on a variety of topics (including this one) and I can tell you that if you grow them to hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors or more, you can enjoy a very good full-time income.

Here are some examples of very successful succulent blogs / YouTube channels:

• SucculentsAndSunshine.com | YouTube Channel
• DebraLeeBaldwon.com 
• Succulents Box (YouTube Channel)

What about opening up a brick and mortar succulent store?

That’s a tough one.  Something so niche might work in a large urban area or as part of a florist shop.  The problem with brick and mortar is there is so much overhead and startup costs that if it fails, you could lose a lot of money.  The other options for making money growing succulents set out above have almost no startup cost and very little ongoing investment required.

However, if you’re confident there’s enough demand in your area for a succulent shop, by all means, go for it. That could be a very good way to make money growing succulents.