Saturday, March 29, 2014

How to make extra money for your prepping supplies



How to make extra money for your prepping supplies


Most preppers I know aren’t made of money. We all wish we had more to devote to our preps. Some of us will have spare time we could devote to a money making project if we could only figure out what.

One thing about your time; some business gurus will tell you not to waste your time at a low paying endeavor because you only clear say $1 an hour doing it. I will advise if you would otherwise make nothing, $1 an hour will add up and allow you to put back preps you normally wouldn’t have been able to afford.

Start a Part-Time Business
People don’t like to work anymore, so a service business of some sort can be worthwhile. Find something to do that people don’t have time or no longer want to do. If you enjoy doing physical work, you should be able to figure out something people in your area will pay for.

If you are in reasonable health and in an area where people have lawns, a mowing business can pay enough over your investment to be considered profitable. Other things to think about are woodcutting, landscaping, painting and general hauling.

Use a SHTF skill
When you are practicing one of your primitive skills (and you are learning one, right?) make something useful and sell it.

Some people carve wooden spoons, chopsticks and other utensils. Others are into primitive pottery, brain tanning of furs, flint knapping and wildcrafting. All of these things create products that many are willing to pay good money for.

I personally like making cordage in my spare time. I can sell natural candle wicks or fine cordage to be used for stringing beads in jewelry. I can turn it into a dream catcher, or I can just list a three foot piece on Ebay and sell it that way. If I get ambitious, I can make some strong fine fishing line and create primitive fishing kits to sell.


Sell online
Selling online is easy with auction sites like Ebay and Etsy, or you can list on Craigslist  or trading posts on Facebook and the like.

To get things to sell, start hitting yard sales, Ebay and Craigslist looking for bargains. Freecycle is a great place to pick up things to sell, but be sure you are honest about getting them for resale.

List your own handicrafts, art or wildcrafted items for sale.


Run a Trapline
Fur trapping is a great way to learn about how animals think. It not only will pay you now with a monetary reward for the fur; it will pay you later with a valuable skill that will produce meat and fur in the event of a collapse.

Fur trapping is a skill that with modern technology can be learned mostly online. Not to say watching videos and reading books will prepare you completely, but they do provide a good tutorial that some of us had to learn through trial and error.


Write
If you have knowledge, you can share it through writing about it. You can start a blog or even do some freelancing on the side.

Start by joining an online forum that caters to the topic you want to write about. Start posting on the forum and work on your writing skills. If you start a blog, you have a perfect place to polish how you write. When you feel you can put together coherent information, start looking for other bloggers to exchange posts with and expand from there.

Don’t worry too much about not being able to write. I almost flunked out of high school English. When I started posting online it was mostly one liners. Gradually, I posted longer and more in-depth information. Now I write feature length articles, ebooks, and am working on a novel (isn’t every writer?).

Writing is a skill that can be learned by anyone, and like any other skill the more you practice, the better you get.

Any or all of these things can be used to earn extra income. If you are diligent in keeping the money separate from your regular income, you will soon find you have quite a bit of extra for building up your preps.