How to Make Money Selling Houseplants from Home

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If you’ve ever dreamed about starting your own nursery and putting your green thumb to work, there’s no better time than now. 

Since the pandemic rolled across the world and most people found themselves stuck at home, the demand for fulfilling home-based hobbies soared. 

Houseplants, in particular, have enjoyed a massive rise in popularity – and home-based plant sellers and nurseries are still scrambling to fill the need. 

And yes, with courier companies that offer fast delivery in Florida, you can ship live plants locally or nationally. 

Here’s how you can turn your fulfilling hobby into a lucrative online houseplant business. 

Find Your Niche

There’s more to the online houseplant business than simply shipping plants to your customers – you’ll also need to find your niche to refine your offerings. 

You may choose to limit your products to plants that grow in your climate, and factors such as your access to wholesale nurseries and how much space you have to work with will also play a role. 

There are a few ways you can specialize your store: you can limit your offerings to rooted houseplants, seeds, bulbs, home décor items, or DIY terrarium kits. 

Rooted Houseplants

You should decide what you will specialize in depending on what you can grow or propagate reliably and what you can buy at wholesale prices in your area. 

Some ideas of what you can stock are succulents, air plants, tropical plants, rare plants, or aroids, to name just a few.  

Seeds and Bulbs

You don’t have to sell live plants to open an online plant shop – another option is to sell seeds or bulbs. 

Selling seeds and bulbs is logistically easier when shipping because they won’t perish while they are in transit. This opens your business up to a larger market because you can ship your products all over the world. 

Home Décor

You can sell trendy home décor products like decorative pots and hanging macramé planters, and woven baskets.

Plant décor items have the potential to become a lucrative part of your business when sold alongside live houseplants. You can make them yourself, source them from a wholesale supplier, or outsource their production to local crafters. 

Terrarium Kits

You can sell DIY terrarium kits online by supplying a combination of live plants and supplies – like potting soil, decorative moss and rocks, and various glass containers to assemble them in. You could have standardized terrarium kits or allow customers to build their own by customizing the options. 

Sourcing or Growing?

If you have the right conditions in your home – like light level, humidity, space, and temperature – you could grow your plants from seeds, bulbs or by propagating stem cuttings in your own yard. If you have the space but not the other conditions, consider investing in a greenhouse (or build your own).  

Remember that scaling your home business to grow plants on a larger scale will require a lot of space and technical know-how. The other option is to source your plants from local nurseries, greenhouses, and suppliers to sell them to you wholesale. 

However, there may be requirements to join a wholesale program – wholesale suppliers typically have order minimums and other requirements for a reseller to register.  To find suppliers in your area, check an online directory or join a plant grower’s forum to get recommendations.   

Build Your Brand

When building your plant business’ brand, you’ll need to think about how you can set yourself apart from other plant sellers. A good way to do this is to craft a mission statement.

Your mission statement should be the guiding principle of all the business decisions you make. It should be reflected throughout your brand – in your name, logo, packaging, about page, and marketing copy.

Because you are selling live plants and shipping them via courier, your mission statement should reflect the care and knowledge you put into your plants before shipping, during transit, and aftercare support.