Plant Lovers Are Making $11,000 a Month On This Fully Remote Side Hustle Do you have a green thumb, an internet connection and some hours to kill? If so, this side hustle could be the perfect way to grow thousands of extra dollars a month.
By Frances Dodds Edited by Mark Klekas
Houseplants make people happy, literally! They are scientifically linked to stress reduction and increased satisfaction. So what if there was a way that you could spend more time with plants, while making more money? That's what Sandi Liang is doing, and she's happy to share the wealth.
When Liang was growing up, her house was always full of plants. Her mom grew them to cook with: Chinese broccoli, winter melon, furry melon and bitter melon. "As immigrants, we have very different vegetables that we eat," Liang says. "So most Asians grow at home, and that's how this whole plant hobby imprinted in my brain." Decades later, when Liang was a mom of four living in Livonia, Michigan, that familiarity with plants — particularly rare or unusual plants — would come to serve her. Now, she can make $3,000 or more in just a few hours.
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Liang is an asset manager by trade — "managing money," as she says. But for generations, her family has been in the business of importing and exporting goods, from grains to steel. She wanted to get her own thing going, so she began importing wholesale olive oil, and then decided to try wholesale house plants. For a busy mom, selling wholesale was a relatively low lift. It was fast and easy to buy orders in bulk and have them shipped from one place to another.
Liang had always wanted to get into the retail side of things but was intimidated by the technology component. Building a website, running a social media account, figuring out digital invoicing — it all seemed totally overwhelming. And even though you make considerably more per item in retail than with wholesale, unless you have a physical storefront, the work that goes into posting and selling each individual item online is a lot.
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But then, through the wholesale plant grapevine, Liang heard about a live selling app called Palmstreet. It's like QVC for plant enthusiasts, where plant lovers can interact to buy and sell plants. The platform came out of the realization that there was a gap in the plant-purchasing market, since plant sales were increasingly happening online, but often resulted in unhappy customers. Buyers could only see pictures — and often they didn't even receive the plant they saw in the photo. Every plant is different.
On Palmstreet, sellers can "go live" and show off different plants to buyers, displaying the plant from different angles, sharing information about it and answering questions from buyers who can message the seller through the live chat function. If the buyer wants the plant they're seeing, they can click to buy it right then and there, and be assured that's the specific plant they'll receive.
When live plant sales took off, Palmstreet realized there were adjacent categories their audience was into, so now they also offer live selling of crystals, handmade pottery and even reptiles.
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For Liang, the platform's biggest draw was how much of the backend work Palmstreet does for sellers. "Palmstreet actually provides invoicing, which is huge," she says. "Part of the problem with retail is how to invoice a mass number of plants. Let's say you sell for three hours. Invoicing will take you two whole days. But Palmstreet resolved that problem."
Palmstreet allows sellers to list their items before going live. "What makes it so easy is that while you're showing, the product is already being sold," Liang says. "By the end, you say bye to your clients, and Palmstreet will send you a summary right away, nice and clear, of who bought what. And if one person bought like 10 items, they'll combine them [into one order] for you. You put it in a packing list, print out the shipping label they send you, and send it out."
Since Liang started selling on the platform in July 2023, she's sold over 35,000 plants. The average individual order is $50, but when she does a live stream for about three hours, Liang usually makes $2,500 to $3,000.
According to Palmstreet, the average plant seller makes around $11,000 a month on the platform, doing 5-10 livestreams. As long as you have some space for inventory, live-selling is perfect to do from the comfort of your own home.
Liang still has trepidation about dealing with new technology, but she has become so comfortable with Palmstreet and live selling that she's started offering consulting to other plant-sellers.
"If a person wants to make a side hustle out of this, or make it their mainstay, we actually consult with them and hold their hand through this journey," she says. "We'll show you where we made our mistakes. Let's bring more people into this hobby."
