How to make money selling homemade soap

If I left out something that you want to know, feel free to ask in the comments below! I determined that I would have to learn to make my own bars, free from the fragrances and additives that caused him problems. Once I successfully tackled soap making, I started looking for other homemade products I could make for us.

My favorite discovery was learning how easy calendula balm was to make. HERE is the recipe. I had been paying a small fortune for a brand in my local health store, so this was empowering indeed! After a while, I felt comfortable enough with my soaps and salves to start giving them as gifts.

Some people make a great living from it, while others barely break even. I know this, because it happened to me at one point! Good record keeping will allow you to sit down each quarter and see how your numbers are adding up.

The handmade soap market is heavily saturated right now. Instead of focusing just on soap, I tried to develop unique products, such as my popular lotions and lip balms. When I first started thinking about opening an online shop, I looked and looked and looked for information on insurance.

I asked in various blogging groups I belonged to and people were strangely silent on the topic even when asked directly.

Including a very large shop owner. My conclusion was that: I had become a social pariah in the blogging world OR b. Logic dictates that the second answer is most likely. I could write more on this topic, but I found this article HERE from TeachSoap. Should you get insurance? I took one accounting class in my life and hated it so much, I almost flunked. So, I am not the best person to ask. A good accountant is worth every penny and then some.

I turned in a list of income and expenses from my blog and shop each year with applicable tax papers. See this IRS link for more info. THIS SITE has an excellent list of each state and its corresponding agency that can give you more information about that. All of these options will charge you a small percentage fee for each sale, so keep that in mind when figuring out pricing. They have a great selection of dried herbs, essential oils, salts, clays, butters, and so much more.

I love Bramble Berry because they hands-down have the absolute best customer service around. I think a requirement to work there must be an extra gene of niceness.

They also have pretty much everything you could need or want to make soap, salves, and all sorts of goodies. They have some great prices, especially on lip balm tubes and supplies.

I also buy waterproof labels from them, which I use on lip balms. Has the fastest shipping around! I was so pleased about everything with my order. Lots of great projects on their site too! If you make a lot of soap and buy in bulk, this is the place to order oils from! Shipping is fast too. They have a huge selection of ingredients and supplies for handcrafters plus lots of helpful information and recipes on the site.

They have a really informative newsletter too. Since they have shipping centers in two parts of the country, orders arrive fairly quickly and always in great shape. At first, my biggest source of customers was my own family and friends. As they started giving my products as gifts, I would get emails from friends of friends wanting to buy more. Always put your web site or email on the label!

You would provide the blogger with some free samples to try out and another set of goodies for them to give away. Sometimes you may have to pay a sponsored post fee to the blogger. You never know about other bloggers though, until you ask! Tie everything up with a pretty ribbon and make sure your shop link is on it somewhere.

Instagram is a fabulous place to start showcasing photos of your products along with behind the scenes shots of products in progress. What I did was go through Etsy and search for people that had similar products as mine. I looked and compared what they were charging with what I needed to charge to turn a profit. I grabbed a random invoice from my soap making notebook from for this example.

Prices will vary from vendor to vendor. Dividing by 16 ounces in a pound, that makes shea butter. HOWEVER, you must not forget shipping! I ordered a total of ounces of various oils altogether. So, my shea butter actually costs.

For each recipe you make, look at your master price list and figure just how much money you have into it. Etsy and PayPal will take a percentage plus I have to remember to allow for at least On top of that, be sure to add in an allowance for the time you spend making, labeling, photographing, listing online, packaging, and driving to the post office. You can see how the hidden costs start to add up! Figure shipping in a similar way.

Look at what other sellers are charging and match them. International shipping can be difficult to calculate. I lost money on pretty much every overseas order until I started having those be custom orders only. I figure out rates using the online USPS postage calculator HERE. I always make tweaks and adjustments to a recipe so that it becomes my own. I fully expect you will do the same. The exception to recipe use is if you copied my entire post, word for word, and put it on your site or Facebook page or in an ebook pretending you wrote it.

Making labels for my products was probably the most challenging for me. I had to do a lot of experimenting! Many of their features are free, but I keep a running subscription so I can have access to all of their tools.

Can You Really Make Money Selling Homemade Soap?

A main takeaway from the FDA information is that making health claims about a product is a no-no. For example, I used to sell my Herbal Healing Salve on Etsy. We can sulk and grouch about it I sure did for a while! THIS POST about the FDA targeting a small business, brings home the point that you really need to follow the rules carefully, if you plan to sell your products.

How to Start Selling Homemade Soap: 11 Steps (with Pictures)

Some final advice I would impart is that running a shop or small business can consume much more of your time and attention that you would think. It can be hard to come up with the capital to buy the supplies you need to get your business going. I used our tax return to buy my initial batch of supplies and reinvested all of the money the shop made back into more supplies.

Did I leave anything out? Any tips or tricks I missed? Also, feel free to leave a link to your shop or site, if you sell products.

Links to Mountain Rose Herbs , Amazon. That means if you click on one and make a purchase, I earn a small commission for sending a customer their way. Thank you so much for this Jan! Congratulations on passing your final exam in herbal medicine!!! Hi Jan, Thank you so much for all of the information. It is very clear, honest and helpful. I love your blog and always learn so much and come away feeling inspired! Hi Julie, Thank you for the kind words! I love hearing that the blog offers inspiration to you — that makes me happy to know!

I am searching all over for ideas, information, recipes, and everything else I need to get going. I love your blog, and thank you for your information! It helps me a lot!! So happy that the information was helpful for you! I wish you much luck in your future handcrafted endeavors! I gotta be honest, blogging is tough! I really enjoy how your blog is written, can you provide some input on blogging? I could really use some tweaking ; Thank you and great work!

It is tough sometimes, but so rewarding and such a wonderful creative outlet. I do have a big long post on blogging that I want to write up to hopefully help answer lots of the questions I get, I just have to wrap up a few other looming projects first.

I hope to get it up here in a few short weeks though — so stay tuned! I am waiting on my refund to do the exact thing. My hubby insisted we use it to invest in me and my products! Yes I am a lucky girl. Supportive husbands are the best! Considering starting my own business and have a few questions. Just wondering about local health laws and regulations. I do realize we live in different states, but any thought would be helpful.

Yes, here too you have to use a commercial kitchen to make edible items. If you check out this link though: Sorry again about missing your comment and being so late to reply!! Every place is very different.

Local SBA is also a great resource! Have you tried http: They are great for buying single herbs or mixes. Aaand they grow almost everything they sell, most is organic. I love Bulk Herb Store. Thanks for the reminder to include them. Thank you for the help. I wish you the very best of luck in your upcoming business venture!

Thanks for your article, I am consider start making my own soap because of skin problem I am having. It seems like every commercial soap I use it irritates my skin. You never know maybe a business someday. Thanks for your guide. This was very encouraging and helpful! Here is my shop: Ohh, your shop and soaps are absolutely beautiful!

The photos are gorgeous and the name is so charming! Thank you so much for the valuable information and for your wonderful site in general. Good luck with your tea and skin care product ventures! I do my own taxes and accounting. My soap on top has white crystals on it but the bottom does not.

I can feel the lye when I pick it up. I really think I have to much lye in my soap. I think I need to water down the lye in my soap. Which recipe did you use? You can cube it up, put it in a crock pot, and add just a tiny bit of water.

Heat until it gets soft and stir it up really well. I re-batched my recipe and the oil came up on me. I over did it, again. I re-batched it again but adding more lye solution. I can see the oil coming up on me. But it was a cake mixer when I poured it into the molds. I hope this turns out this time. I used my own recipe. I did use a lye calculator. Please let me know what I did wrong?

Canola Oil 15 ounces For that recipe, the lye should be I think you may have gotten to the point where you might have to discard this batch. I know how frustrating that is. My first several batches of soap turned out horribly. One even leaked all over my basement floor and I almost quit after that! Hi, I am thinking about selling soap and other homemade products. I wanted to know if you have any tricks to keep lavender buds from turning brown in soap.

They will stay purple for a while when sprinkled on top, but even then after several months will start browning. I wish I knew a way to keep that from happening. Good luck with your business ventures! Thank you so much for sharing all the good information.

It can be very confusing starting a business and there is way more to think about than you think when you start. I too wrote an e-book on Amazon but I love the look and layout of your e-books, I was wondering what program you are using? For the PDF e-books, I use OpenOffice: If you go to SmartPassiveIncome. Best of luck with your ebook writing! Any information you can give me would be great. Hi Jan…Thank you so much for your reply. But I thank you anyway for your time and for your willingness to help me out!

Nancy Baby Love Diaper Cakes. I am so glad that you made this post! Anyway, my dream is to have my own small business one day. My greenhouse is almost built and I have most of my seeds. Ha my post was too long. Is there just a plain ole Mint plant? There are tons of varieties of mint — I think someone commented here before that they grow an impressive 22 kinds of mint in their garden! Your best bet is probably to check with your local nurseries or maybe your county extension agency, if you have one and see if they can help you figure out what kind you have.

I know for the longest time growing up, we thought we had peppermint taking over one side of the house, but it turned out to be spearmint. Which is still really useful and smells great too! Hi Jan, I found your blog while doing research for my small business management class. Excellent information to help me with a mock financial plan and forecasting. I am having difficulty finding first year revenue figures and sales estimates on the internet for this type of business. Could you point me in the right direction,please?

Thank you so much for this super helpful article. I recently started my own soap-making biz so this was great to stumble upon. I contacted the CPSC about it but have yet to hear back. Do you have any advice regarding this? I really appreciate it!

The Soap Queen has a perfect post on this: I was just curious did you have to become licensed in herbology to make and sell your balms and salves? Thank you for this information. The FDA thing stopped me in my tracks but after reading your article, am I understanding this correctly: And one other question, do you sanitize your containers before adding the finished product? Hi Rustic Diva Design! I did jot down from it that it was okay to use words like: Heat guns are excellent for smoothing down the tops of lip balms and salves too!

I have my products made and costumers interested. I am just trying to figure out the business logistics and your post has been very helpful. I was just wondering if you registered your business as a sole proprietorship? If so do you have to file quarterly taxes or you just file taxes once a year with your personal tax return? BTw I get my ingredients organic from Mountain Rose Herbs and love them!

I love Mountain Rose Herbs too — such wonderful quality! You are a wealth of information. Thank you for taking the time to share it. This post was super helpful! I would only be selling the products to friends. I did a quick search though and found this: I wish you lots and lots of luck in your business venture though!

I recently started making my own soap and skin cream. Now that I am going to craft fairs and festivals I notice that there are a lot of other soapers. I notice that they are selling Muscle Balm, and claiming that it relieves arthritis and soothes sore muscles. The other one has a salve and claims the same.

I thought that if you claim that it is a healing or medically relieving product that it would have to be cleared by the FDA is that true? Thank you so much for all the great links. I ran across several natural products to help with pain and threw some together for me to use. Thank you so much for your hard work and for sharing! Your salve sounds wonderful and I hope you have lots of success in selling it!

Hi I came across your article while randomly searching Google. Your article is really helpful since I just started my business about 3 months back and still swimming in shallow waters. Good luck with your new business — I wish you much success! I must write you that I LOVE your web, I found myself obsessed with your web page, every single information is just PERFECT. I wish you all the best and please keep posting because your page is definitely my new bible: I make soap just for me and my family.

I calculated how much it costs to make one and noted that the most expensive product to use is essential oil. Do you buy EOs in bulk?

If so, may I know where? And 1 lb is a small batch so, I think soap makers must buy in bulk. Also, where do you get your molds? Those like Bramble Berry does not seem to me for making soaps to sell. Apologies for the long post. Hope you can help! When you buy the large bottles. I do however have a question: Do I need a license? Any help would be great, thanks! You probably need a license to sell items, depending on where you live. In my county, we have to have a business license.

And before that had to be approved by the zoning board for a home business. I wish I had more solid advice for you, but good luck with your business ventures! Or if they tweak it and sell it. I would mind if someone copied my recipes, put them in an ebook and sold it though! Good luck with your etsy shop!! WE KNOW WE WILL DO GOOD. Thank you for providing this great resource. I have bookmarked this and will be returning to it quite a bit. I want to start my own small business out of my house.

I would like more info on some business matters if you could email me. I shared the extent of my knowledge here and have no legal training to personally advise others, but you could try contacting your local Small Business Association and they should have some great advice for you.

Good luck with your business! It will depend upon what products you want to sell. I have a question for you about selling oil from Greece, our family farm produces a small amount of oil every year.

I receive about gallons of extra-virgin olive oil every year. I usually give most of it away as gifts to friends. To ship the Oil from Greece to the United States it is very expensive , I would like to try to offset the cost of enjoying our families olive oil by selling some online. Thank you for sharing all this information. I just started on Etsy and what you shared is pure golden! Hey Jan, Like everyone else I was thinking of selling my extra soap because I want to try so many recipes and only have 3 in my family and they will only use so much LOL… This insurance idea is scary and looks really expensive.

Do you not have to on Etsy sales?? When I ask around, very few people report that they do. It took years until I got to where I could actually afford those things and not have to take from my grocery budget to do so though, so I know how difficult a position that is to be in!

For a new and upcoming organic skincare line newbie, I have say this is some of the best information I have come across since startingthe production of my skin care line. I found this info golden. Keep doing what you are doing and I wish you all the success in the world: Thank you too for the kind and encouraging words!

Did you ever talk more about blogging for income?

My daughter and I are in the research stage of starting a business, which is how we found you. Thank you for all of the great information. Not yet — but I REALLY want to write up something about it soon. So, hopefully over the next month or two I can get something up!

Best of luck to you and your daughter in starting your business too! My sister makes honey soap and I love it, I bought a kit at hobby lobby just to play around with and I have really enjoyed creating with it.

Just fun and sharing with family and friends so far. Thank you for the information! Hello, Thank you so much for the wonderful information. I took a business course of Organic Skincare Business I also selling decorated wall letters. Thank you and I look forward hearing from you. That will vary depending on where you live. Are you in the US? If in the US, do you live in a county or city? I hope that you have lots of good luck with your skincare line!

My aunt used to have am eBay store selling soaps and lotions. I found some natural ones and she says there is no such things.. Any help or links would be appreciated. When I googled it this came up so why not see if anyone has info!

I hope to get that up this month or next.

Anne-Marie's Story - Soap Queen

Good luck with your lotion business too! Oh my goodness I just want to thank you so much for this and many other posts of yours!

I gave a bunch as gifts for Christmas and birthdays recently and have had wonderful feedback! Thanks again for all your wonderful posts, recipes and encouragement! Yes, you could definitely use milk instead — you would just want to freeze it before combining with the lye solution. I have a small fb page called Live Simple SL but I am wanted to grow.

You had a lot of great info and you were very open to share. This article covers pretty much all I know on selling handmade products, but for body butters, the main thing is that you can run into issues with shipping during the hottest months.

Thanks for sharing the wonderful info about everything to start bussiness from home. I am interested to start a skin care business too but no clue how to start. Do you think doing online course about the herbal products is a good investment?

Plus I am low on startup funds and want to minimize the initial investment, can you give me advice regarding this?

Hi Sha, Sometimes, an online course will save you lots of time and from making costly mistakes. On the flip side, I can completely relate to being low on startup funds! So, it really boils down to how much money you have to invest in your business. I imagine it involves clinical trials and all sorts of expensive things though.

Thank you so much for your suggestions I am going through all these websites which are really helpful but more I read more I get confused about preservatives. Do you have recommendations using safest preservative in lotion making? I wrote up a post on that just a few days ago, that you might find helpful: My company name is called the healing coconut hut. Probably one of the top experts on this would be MarieGale.

I hope you find the answer! This article was exactly what I was looking for. I wish you the best of luck in the future! Best wishes with your business!! It may be something you need to ask your insurance agent about, to see what wording they suggest. I hope that you have much success in your business!

I would say the earthly body book is definitely more folk-medicine oriented and geared for the casual hobbyist who just wants to make things at home.

There are several lotion and cream recipes and I had good results with the ones I tried! Thank you so much for this post! It was extremely informative and so nice to have all the answers to my questions in one easy to find place. Great information thank you for sharing!

I have a soap making question. What ideas can you give me? You might want to investigate cream soap. Your email address will not be published. I frequently get asked about how I got started making and selling handmade products. I started making my own soap because of this little dirt-loving guy: Is it profitable to sell handmade items?

There are two reputable organizations online, that I know of, that offer insurance to members: What about taxes and licenses? Where can I sell at online? The ways that I know of are: Etsy — has an article on how to set up a shop, HERE. Using PayPal buttons on your web site, HERE. Look into an online store or Facebook shop with Shopify , more info HERE. Start a subscription box with Cratejoy , HERE.

How can I get more customers? How do I know how much to charge? What about shipping costs? How do you know how much you need to charge to turn a profit? This is how I figured it out: Can I sell something I made, using a Nerdy Farm Wife recipe?

How to label products: Last words… Some final advice I would impart is that running a shop or small business can consume much more of your time and attention that you would think. April 24, at 2: April 24, at 9: November 13, at 8: Kristi The Mind to Homestead says: April 24, at 7: Bookmarking it so I can come back and review it as needed.

April 25, at 7: April 25, at 9: May 3, at 8: May 3, at 3: May 15, at 4: May 16, at 7: May 23, at 5: May 26, at 7: May 24, at June 10, at 6: January 11, at 2: June 8, at 4: Jan The Nerdy Farm Wife says: June 9, at June 10, at 8: June 11, at June 16, at 2: June 19, at 8: June 23, at 1: June 23, at July 4, at Love the photos of your soap, so pretty!

July 4, at 7: July 10, at 5: July 11, at 8: July 14, at 9: July 14, at Those are some excellent tips, Shari — thank you so much for sharing! July 23, at 9: July 24, at 7: July 30, at August 4, at 7: Hi Theresa, For the original recipe am I correct that you had: August 13, at 7: August 14, at September 3, at 3: September 4, at November 21, at 4: December 1, at 7: January 7, at 6: January 11, at 3: January 19, at 2: February 3, at February 8, at March 2, at March 5, at 9: March 9, at 5: March 11, at 9: March 13, at March 16, at 9: Rustic Diva Design says: March 17, at 9: March 18, at 8: March 18, at 3: March 19, at 6: April 9, at 2: April 12, at 7: April 23, at 9: Hello, This post was super helpful!

April 25, at May 7, at 7: May 9, at May 15, at 1: May 18, at May 20, at 8: May 27, at 6: June 9, at 8: June 12, at 8: June 21, at 2: June 24, at 3: June 24, at 1: June 25, at 2: June 26, at 9: June 24, at 2: June 25, at July 29, at 3: August 3, at 2: July 29, at 8: August 2, at 9: Thanks again, and have a wonderful day.

August 3, at 3: Glad it was helpful — good luck with your business ventures! August 12, at August 15, at 7: How do you or do you comply with the FDA regulations for topicals? August 17, at 8: August 18, at August 18, at 1: September 9, at 7: Thanks so much for sharing this information!

September 12, at September 10, at 9: Good luck with your Etsy shop! September 27, at 2: September 30, at 7: October 3, at October 8, at 2: October 16, at 5: October 19, at November 24, at 2: November 27, at January 6, at January 6, at 5: January 6, at 2: January 13, at 8: January 15, at 4: February 1, at February 3, at 1: February 3, at 9: Thank you so much for your response.

Can you please suggest any website or link where I can good info. February 4, at 4: Do you know or have an idea on what it takes to get a product approved by the drug admin?

February 10, at 9: February 10, at 2: March 14, at 3: May 10, at May 11, at May 17, at 2: May 21, at 8: May 23, at 2: May 23, at 9: June 5, at 4: June 6, at 8: June 8, at 1: June 14, at 5: June 15, at 9: Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. My Soap Making eBook. The information on this site is for idea-sharing only. While this site does its best to provide useful information, any reliance you place on such information is strictly at your own risk and not a substitute for medical, legal, or any other professional advice of any kind.

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