How Some Preppers Make Money While Doing What They Love (Prepping)

Once you decide what you want to do with your life, you must take the steps required to make it happen.

Start doing what makes you happy, say your passion for writing stories, blogging, or creating dresses, then make it a business. I have listed some ways to make money while doing what you love.

1. Sell Your Homemade Preserved Food

After you have grown and harvested your food, there is the process of storing and preserving it. Most crops come in glutes, a period when all of one crop or certain types of crops are mature and there is an abundance. 

If you are unable to consume all of it simultaneously, you will need to store and or preserve it so it can be sold as well.

One of the oldest methods of preservation, curing can be done with various food preservation and flavoring processes of foods.

You can do it on meat, fish and vegetables, by the addition of combinations of salt, nitrates, or sugar, with the intention of drawing out most of the moisture from the food by the process of osmosis.

In addition to salting, many curing processes also involve smoking, spicing, or cooking the food, particularly meats or fish.

Fermentation is one of the oldest methods of food transformation and preservation in the world.  It is the process of converting or cooking food through the process of bacteria converting acids and other compounds to sugars.  One of the most recognized products of fermentation is sauerkraut.

When you love experimenting with food, you can try selling your own products to your family and friends, and when it becomes popular, you start your business big.

2. Making Cheese and Bread

The bread is versatile; it can be toasted for jams and butter, cut into cubes for stuffing and croutons, broiled with vegetables, meats, and cheeses to produce the delicious tartines (open-faced sandwiches) that are so popular in cafes today.

How to make traditional French bread

Ingredients for traditional French bread are:

1. 5 1/2 to 6 cups of all-purpose flour
2. 2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
3. 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
4. 2 cups warm water (110 degrees F)
5. cornmeal
6. 1 egg white
7. 1 tablespoon water
8. The recipe for French bread:

In a large mixing bowl, combine 2 cups of flour, yeast, and salt. Add 2 cups warm water, and beat with an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook on low to medium speed for 30 seconds.

Beat on high speed for 3 minutes. Turn the mixer to low and add the remaining flour (cup by cup) until incorporated.

On a lightly floured surface, knead in enough flour to make a stiff dough that is smooth and elastic. Knead for about 8 to 10 minutes total. Shape into a ball. Place dough in a greased bowl, and turn once. Cover, and let rise in a warm place until doubled.

Punch dough down, and divide in half. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Cover, and let rest for 10 minutes. Roll each half into a 15 x 10-inch rectangle. Roll up, starting from a long side. Moisten edge with water and seal. Taper ends.

Lightly grease a large baking sheet. Sprinkle with cornmeal. Place loaves seam side down, on the prepared baking sheet.

Lightly beat the egg white with 1 tablespoon of water, and brush on. Cover with a damp cloth. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Let rise until nearly doubled, 35 to 40 minutes.

With a very sharp knife, make 3 or 4 diagonal cuts about 1/4 inch deep across the top of each loaf. Bake for 20 minutes.

Brush again with egg white mixture. Bake for an additional 15 to 20 minutes, or until bread tests are done. If necessary, cover loosely with foil to prevent over-browning. Remove from baking sheet, and cool on a wire rack.

How to make your own cheese

We have been experimenting with different aspects of home economics in order to make our house an engine of production rather than a house of simple consumption; this means learning new homesteading skills.

While I plan to learn more cheese-making techniques, I thought it best to start with the easiest, queso fresco or queso Blanco.  This is a semi-soft cheese that melts slowly and can be fried or used in Mexican dishes when a bright, slightly salty cheese is called for.

The technique is quite simple: warm the milk, sour the milk by way of acid to separate the curd from the whey, strain the whey, season and cure the final cheese.

Bread and cheese are a match made in heaven! This sideline would enable you to follow your passion for baking! Why don’t you give it a shot?

3. Learn to sew, hand sew and mend

Buying a few yards of fabric is significantly less expensive than buying a new shirt from a department store, or even a discount store. 

Knowing the basics of sewing with a machine or by hand is the essence of thrift and you can make this a business by creating hand-sewn dresses and selling them to your friends or start to put up your own online shop which features your designs.

How to sew by hand

If clothing or household linens were thrown away because of a small hole or a loose hem rather than being repaired, what a waste of resources and money. Learning to hand sew can preserve clothing, and keep treasured linens rather than tossing them out.

Here are a few stitches that are used in creation and mending. Try practicing on a spare piece of fabric until you have reached a good level of proficiency.

Running Stitch

A basic stitch is called a running stitch. It’s used for gathering, mending, and tucking. Depending on its use, you can either knot your thread or take a couple of back stitches to hold it in place.

It’s also called a basting stitch because the stitches are closer together (<unk>4-1/2 inches). Place your needle through the fabric from the back (wrong side). Nock the thread into the fabric. Bring the thread back up. Make another stitch across the fabric.

Backstitch

Traditionally, the stitch was used before sewing machines to make clothing. You should always work from left to right when using this stitch.  Taking a small stitch, insert the needle in the previous stitch bringing it out past the point when the thread emerges.

Continue by inserting the needle into the end of the previous stitch for each stitch, this will lock the threads.

Blanket Stitch (Buttonhole Stitch)

Fashion and linens, such as duvet covers, need buttonholes. If you are making them by hand, you must learn the blanket or buttonhole stitch.

In order to begin, you must secure the thread on the wrong side of the fabric near the hole, then insert the needle from back to front through the fabric 1/8  inch from the edge of the buttonhole.

Take the working head and place it behind the eye end of the needle, then behind the needlepoint. Pull the needle through the hole, bringing the knot to the fabric edge. Then continue making closely spaced stitches and knots around the hole to secure it.

Hence, if you like to delve into the fashion industry, or just want to show your talent in making expensive-looking dresses or shirts, this field might give you an edge.

4. Custom Tie-Dye Shirts

If you like dressing up or creating trendy shirts, then this business is for you. Making custom tie-dye shirts is a great opportunity to express your creativity. You have to let the world know that you exist to attract customers, sell your products and pull in custom orders.

You can reach people who like tie-dying by letting them know about your store and convincing them to buy their first piece of custom-dyed clothing from you by using some clever color schemes and designs.

This requires you to know your audience and where they are likely to hang out both online and offline.

One way to do this is to create targeted Facebook ads that are shown only to people who like certain pages (such as other tie-dye pages). You could leave business cards at a beach bar where you often see tie-dye-clad tourists.

An effective and well-designed website will also appear in search engine results for people searching for tie-dye products halfway across the globe. There are many possibilities for advertising, but in the beginning, only a few that seem to fit your audience or that worked well for your competitors.

A tie-dye business is well-suited for custom orders, but you’ll need to market the options to help people figure out what they can get. Develop a portfolio that highlights different color combinations, materials, products, and designs.

You can display this portfolio in different ways, depending on your budget and where you want to advertise your business. You can choose to use a binder at your event booth, or you can use a Facebook album as reference material.

If you have the courage and the creativity to pursue this business, then this one is for you!

5. Bath Bombs

If you search online, you’ll find a lot of trending videos of people using bath bombs. They either use it to make their bath time fancy or experiment with it.

Bath bombs are colorful, dry balls that melt into water and release essential oils. They’re a luxurious treat that comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, and scents. Both kids and adults enjoy them, and their popularity has exploded in recent years.

Lush reported manufacturing 13.5 million bath bombs in 2014 and was on track to produce even more in 2015. Even though they’re just one company, and that the products sell for $4 to $10 USD each, that’s a huge industry!

A small business doesn’t have to have a big factory like the one Lush owns to compete in the market. A bath bomb is relatively inexpensive, easy to make, and anyone with a bit of time and effort can take advantage of the craze.

One of the most common ways for entrepreneurs to start making bath bombs is by making them at home, then moving on to a manufacturer or drop shipper through their business growth.

An online-only business also minimizes overhead expenses since you don’t have to invest in all the fixed costs of running a store.

The bath bomb craze is still going on online, and this is a great career opportunity for you if you love experimenting and creating bath essentials.

6. Create a YouTube video.

With everything available online today, it’s possible to make a profit. Being a YouTuber is one of them.

Make a video for YouTube, and if it becomes popular, you can run ads on it to make money. Youtubers are earning over six or seven figures by simply uploading their videos.

YouTubers need to create video content that is intriguing, unique, and educational for a specific audience. While creating your video, be mindful that you don’t want people to just start watching, you want them to watch the whole thing through.

And better yet when they’re done, start talking about it, share it with their friends, and heck, maybe even watch it again! As a result, you can accumulate a loyal following, lots of viewers, and even make money!

How to Set Up Your Youtube Channel

It is easy to set up a new YouTube channel, especially if you already have a Gmail account, which allows you to link it to your email address.

1. Sign in to Youtube
2. Click your picture in the top right corner (desktop version)
3. Select “Create a Channel”
4. Decide if you want to use the name associated with your email address or create a custom name for your channel
5. Add details to the “about” section
6. Customize the look of your channel with a cover photo and profile picture
7. Upload your first video
8. Add playlists, fill out your profile with more details, and link to your other social media accounts

If you love sharing your life online, then you’ll love this platform!

7. Write a book.

When you publish a book, you can earn money from the sales once you publish it. You can always go the ebook route and self-publish, or find a publishing company that will take you on.

There are many ways to earn money by writing books.

You can publish on Amazon and market the book to earn passive income from sales.

But you need to follow this step:

1. The ebook needs to be written in format (if you are not a good writer, then you can do your work with sniplly.com).
2. You need to create an eye-catching ebook cover (Also you can hire from Fiverr OR if you want to create from yourself, you can go to canvas and you can create should create an eye-catching ebook cover (you can also hire from Fiverr OR if you want to create from yourself, you can go to Canva and you can do it).
3. You must publish your book on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing in both kindle format and paperback format.
4. The last step is to do marketing/advertising. (You can hire someone on Fiverr to do this).

By using this method, it takes a while to rank your book, but you’ll get sales whenever someone buys your ebook.

Writing is never an easy job, but if you love it, making money is just a bonus.

8. Start a blog

A common misconception about starting a blog is that you must be a great writer to be successful. This couldn’t be further from the truth. For the most part, people read blogs to get a personal perspective on things, so most bloggers keep it very informal and conversational.

The format makes it possible for many successful bloggers to write about a variety of topics under one umbrella.

In addition, you don’t need to be an expert on any of the topics you write about to have a successful blog.

Visitors to a cooking blog do not want to read a textbook from a food scientist; they want to hear about someone who has actually cooked some real meals, mistakes and all.

Spend some time building a website in an area that interests you and other people. Focus on topics that will never get dated (“how-to” articles are great) that people will use. Once you have a decent site with some good content, you can quit writing and make money from your old stuff.

The niche of travel blogging attracts many people who like to be on the go. If you have traveled a lot, you can share your experiences and advice that you have collected along the way and reach a huge audience.

As you engage your readers, you can get all kinds of sponsorship and generate revenue.

If you’re creative enough then you can start your own blog and make money from it.

9. Fun Candles

It is no secret that everyone loves candles, and the demand for them will only increase as the weather cools.

The candle business is one that is very profitable if you have good quality. It should be noted that 80 percent of homes in the United States use candles. According to the National Candle Association, sales of candles in the United States are valued at $2 billion yearly.

Also, profits from candle sales are high. The great thing about this business is that you can start it with little or no money at all and the production cost is also quite low.

Regardless of how much you pay for your materials, the profit margin is quite high. Consider factors such as seasonal demands on days such as Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving as well.

Can you smell your success through a candle business? If yes, well this is the right track for you!

10. Offer online services

It’s even easier to sell services at home than it is to sell products; the hurdle is allocating your limited time. “Time is money” is never truer than when you’re operating a  service-based business.

Service-based home business ideas include:

1. House cleaning
2. Freelance writing
3. Personal training
4. Virtual assistance
5. Dog walking
6. Marketing
7. Designing

It takes a lot of networking and word-of-mouth referrals to find suitable clients, but satisfied customers will likely stay with you for a long time.

Therefore, you don’t necessarily need a large number of customers to do well, as you do with a product-based business. Depending on the service you provide, you can support yourself full-time while working from home with a small number of high-quality clients.

There are many opportunities out there, you just have to spend time with it and really exert your effort in finding one.

11. Biogas

Growing your own gas is a method perfected by people in underdeveloped countries. We examine how they do it and how you can, too.

For countries like South-East Asia and Africa, blackouts, floods, and going without gas and power are expected daily. Their forms of creativity are perceived as innovations for those of us living in more developed regions, in search of green energy and off-the-grid living.

Throughout my travels in Southeast Asia, one household item that stood out was the DIY biogas digester.

The process of making a biogas plant is quite easy. I’ve done a test with a very small container and it worked quite well even though my system only used a balloon to hold a small amount of gas.

These materials are less expensive to make, easier to keep, and the only output they produce is high-nutrient fertilizer. That could be a game-changer. Let’s see how this works, and how you can make them.

7 Steps To Make Your Own Biogas

1. You are going to need some materials to start with. Some of these you might already have around the house, some you might have to pick up from a store or online.

• The container: I would go with one of those 20-liter office water cooler bottles if you can get one. This is the smallest I would recommend as my small balloon experiment was pointless other than being a test. In southeast Asia, there seems to be a very abundant supply of water poly drums. I would say get one of those if you want to run a big supply of gas, otherwise, a moderate container would just be a simple water cooler 5-gallon bottle.
• PVC hosing to connect from the biogas digestor to the gas holder and valve
• PVC piping
• Gas tap valve
• T-valve (it should have three connectable points)
• Funnel (for the scraps and manure)
• Gasholder: most of the biogas digesters I have seen use a tyre tube (something you would use in the water when you go swimming). This can be unsafe depending on where you store it as eventually it is going to be full of gas so will become a highly flammable item. You should be considerate of where you place it as this is a safety issue.
• Superglue or an airtight sealant
• Saw to cut PVC pipe
• Black paint for the water container to stop sunlight

2. You need to measure the PVC pipe against the height of the container. Mark it off and saw it off at the same height as pictured above. This will be the inlet pipe.

If you are using the 5-gallon water cooler bottle you can also put your ingredients in through the top and then keep the cap on the top of it. At the start when you put your manure and water in this it would be the best place to do that.

You will also need to measure out an outlet pipe that would be running horizontally through the container. Measure the PVC pipe at half of the width of the container. This way you can use it as the outlet from the middle point of the container.

3. Mark the outline of the PVC piping onto the top of the container and on the side of the container. For the inlet pipe, you want to have it located on the top, in between the middle and the outside of the container.

For the outlet, it should be about 10cm from the top width of the bottle. You can use the picture below as a reference. biogas digester

Once you have made the markings, cut them out. There are various ways to do this depending on the material you are working with. The video that I have used as a demonstration from these kids used a soldering iron, however, a drill would also do the trick.

When you feed the inlet pipe in (from the top) make sure you leave 2-3 inches of space at the bottom. This is so inlet waste can drain through the pipe and if there are any blockages you have space to push the contents down through the inlet pipe.

You will also need to do the same process for the gas feed, this would be done in a position similar to the one below. Once that’s done, feed the piping through.

4. After you have fed pipes through we need to airproof our container. So we should be using a sealant like rubber glue or as used in this example, super glue with sand.

Make sure your pipes are covered on the exposed ends with caps. We only want to open them when we are feeding waste into the inlet pipe, or pouring our fertilizer out of the outlet pipe.

Don’t forget to seal your gas feed hose.

5. Remember that T-Valve that we had in the equipment list? Use that on the end of your gas hose. You also need another two pieces of PVC hosing. One of them will connect to the tyre or wherever you choose to store your gas reserve, while the other will be attached to the valve.

The valve is the end that you will use to cook, or to burn off if you are using this merely for the nutrients in the fertilizer.

For some people, having this near the kitchen window means that they can feed their gas piping through the window and into a camp stove or side burner so that when they want to cook, the gas is there ready to go.

6. Attach the middle part of the T-valve to your hose that connects to your tube. You should have an air nipple on your tube that you can use to feed the gas in. Just leave this on and will be full in a week depending upon the materials you use in the biogas digest.

One hack is to also sit a plank of wood on the tube and eventually set a stone on top of that. The extra weight keeps the pressure of the gas in the tube so that when you are ready to cook with your gas you can release the valve slowly for a good feed of gas.

7. The last step, use your fuel. I didn’t just put this picture of cow poo in here for nothing, it’s the best type of fuel for our biogas digester. If you don’t have cows around you can use any other sort of manure. Even chicken poo is good enough to get the bacteria working in our digester.

When you are using your fuel I would suggest using 1kg of manure with 1 liter of water. Let it sit for two days before you add any other things like food scraps or anything else.

As a small project, you can give this a go with hardly any cost whatsoever and then increase the size once you get more confident with the process. You can increase the size to however you see fit.

By sharing your knowledge in making biogas, or by making other people’s personal use biogas, this job will give you boundless opportunity to make the biogas industry known and to also profit from it while helping the environment. 

CONCLUSION

There are many ways to make money while doing what you love. Homesteading is one of them. Just make sure that you inspire, educate, or entertain others in order to make your craft unique and effective.

Above all, don’t be afraid of the unknown. Do whatever it takes, whether it’s taking on a new project or saying ‘yes’ to something out of your comfort zone. This will help you (and your company) grow.

Having said that, don’t be afraid to explore and try things that will make you happy and earn in your own ways. You are in control of your happiness and growth.

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