How I Make Money While Living Off-Grid

I want to share with you my journey about how I make a living while living off the grid.

I am a solo homesteader and have been on my land for 5 years. 4 of those 5 years I have been alone, facing many struggles and obstacles. I’ve been living in a 9*12 shed with no indoor plumbing, no bathroom, and a makeshift kitchen. I have been unemployed and underemployed for several of these years, but somehow I managed to come out on top. Now I am debt free, my homestead is paid off, and I am building my new cabin with cash.  

I want to share with you how I did this because making an income in a rural setting can be very challenging. But there are definitely creative ways to make a living while going off grid, and it is very doable. I want to give you lots of ideas to think about that you can try out and put into practice. It’s not fun going off grid and being completely broke, so having an income plan is important! 

Watch My Video of this Article on YouTube! 

What I do Now to Make a Living 

Plain and Simple - I work a full-time job. I work as an IT support tech on a military base close to my property. I have now worked this job for three years. Because of my job, I have been able to payoff my land and bankroll my cabin build with cash and no debt. 

I was able to do this by living an extremely frugal lifestyle, going without so many normal luxuries like a flushing toilet, indoor plumbing, pavement, etc. 

I really think the magic happened when I got the position but consciously decided to keep living very frugally. I did not allow lifestyle creep to infiltrate my finances. 

Because I chose to continue living on a shoestring budget, I was able to bank a lot of cash from my 9-5 and build my cabin without going into debt. All I did was continue my lifestyle that I was already living for several years. 

I do want to rewind a bit and go over this bumpy ride and how I landed on my feet in the end. It was super tough at times, but I never gave up, and always kept hope. 

How I Saved Up to Go Off Grid

Before I went off grid, my ex partner and I worked on the oil and gas pipeline. We travelled all over the country installing pipe for hundreds of miles. It was what I consider a counter culture of a lifestyle. You had your road family that you travelled with and we all stayed in RV parks and hotels. We were like a mini travelling village, going to the most remote locations in America, putting pipe in the ground. 

I did this for six years, and in those six years I managed to get out of any troubling debt I had accrued in my 20s and 30s, and made a nice nest egg for myself. Unfortunately, my ex went the other way and managed to get into even more debt than he had before the pipeline boom. 

The pipeline is boom and bust, and it busted hard. Remember when oil prices went negative 20 dollars a barrel during covid? Well that is when we caught our layoff. 

We ended up in Southern Arizona chasing work, and we both thought that the world was coming to an end, so we bought property in basically a panic buy move. We were able to put a down payment on the land with the money I had saved from the pipeline and from the covid unemployment money. 

We moved on to the property, but I was still jobless. My ex got a good job but he got laid off unexpectedly two weeks after moving onto the property.  We were both unemployed and the covid unemployment money was coming to an end so we had to think fast. 

Luckily, the property note was only $300 a month and we had no utility bills. But we were living on a barren piece of dirt with no power, no water, and no roads. It was pretty wild. 

We hauled in our water and used a generator for power, which was subpar for our needs. We ended up buying a massive solar power system to power our humongous power hungry RV that costed a whopping $10,000. 

So our money was flying out of our bums at high speed, especially my bum took the biggest hit as I was the one who had the most money saved up. 

Before I knew it we had spent well over $15k on the solar power, fixing up the roads, gravel, fencing, water system supplies, and the garden. COVID bumped up the price of building materials pretty astronomically at the time but there was stuff we really needed and couldn’t put off so we just bore the brunt of the cost. Looking back I would have done things differently, but we put ourselves into an all or nothing situation and had to react to our situation. 

The money was bleeding out rapidly and we had no income so we had to think fast. We noticed a dire need for RV repair while living in the RV park before buying the property so we decided to bootstrap an RV repair business and it took off rapidly. The first month we made $6k and then after that we were pulling in $7k to $9k a month. 

However, because of the amount of debt my ex put himself into, the money flew out rapidly, and I only got a sliver of income from the business. I put in my fair share of work too. I did all the advertising and marketing, I was the one who got the business in the door. I did all the parts ordering, the bookkeeping, billing and customer management. I also assisted on-site in installing awnings (our biggest seller) painting roofs, and installing slide out seals.  

Off Grid Income Ideas - Mechanical Skills: 

1. Mobile RV Repair business
2. Mobile mechanic
3. Small engine mechanic
4. Roadside assistance
5. Mobile auto maintenance (oil change, tire rotation, fluids check)
6. Tractor supplier and operator - land clearing 
7. Diesel mechanic
8. Towing

These types of incomes will always be popular pretty much anywhere there are humans. If you live off an interstate, even better. You can get a contract for roadside assistance. 

Left in the Dust With No Job and No Money

Ultimately, my ex and I broke up abruptly and he took the business and the RV that we lived in with him. I opted to live in my 9*12 uninsulated shed instead of leaving the property because 1) I was too broke to really go anywhere else and 2) I felt like I sunk so much money into it, I was experiencing sunken cost fallacy and 3) I had something to prove!

Once that happened, I was immediately jobless with very little in the bank. That is when I had to get creative. I ended up landing an article writing job for an insurance company that had hundreds of websites. I wrote and wrote and wrote all day long. I made decent money too. 

This job kept me afloat for quite a few months but then came to an abrupt end when they culled dozens of writers. I managed to get some temporary writing gigs, but everything fizzles out in the end. 

Off Grid Income Ideas - Digital and Remote Work: 

9. Writing articles for websites
10. Webmaster (front end and back end)
11. Programmer
12. Video editor
13. Video creator
14. App developer
15. Voice over artist 
16. AI data trainer

I will say that these job ideas are really petering out. They were hard to break into 3 years ago and now they are super hard to break into. Working from home over the computer is fizzling out and there is a ton of competition. But it is possible, you just have to be really good and ready to hustle, then be prepared to get thrown out like trash when they don’t want to keep you around anymore. 

Pivoting Hard to Survive and Keep My Land

I was back to square one so I started perusing local jobs. I applied to all the usual suspects, Walmart, Ace Hardware, Safeway, etc. But absolutely no one called me back. And I have a very thick resume full of interesting skills.  

I then saw an ad for a network infrastructure tech and being that I have some years of experience in computer repair, I applied, and I got the job. The problem was that it was a traveling position which took me away from the homestead.

At this point I was desperate and needed to break into a better paying field so I went for it. I ended up leaving the property for six months doing network refreshes in various businesses, and it was actually a pretty horrible job which ended abruptly when the owner died in a gruesome motorcycle accident.

But it got me the experience I needed to land more work, and I ended up in a data center in Phoenix for 3 months building out the network infrastructure and let me tell you, it was insane. I do not recommend working in a datacenter unless you are desperate or trying to climb the tech ladder. 

Off Grid Income Ideas - Traveling Tech Work: 

17. OTR trucker
18. Rural delivery (USPS, Amazon)
19. Traveling PC refresh
20. Cell phone tower tech
21. Data center technician 
22. Hotel HVAC refresh tech
23. Solar field installer
24. EV charging station tech

Now all of these jobs will take you from your property, but you can make a lot of money in a short amount of time. You also collect "per diem" which are tax free dollars to cover living expenses. You can live very frugal on the road and save up a lot of your per diem to put into your property. Then you usually get a whole week off after working a few weeks, where you can spend time working on your land. 

Upskilling to Make More Money 

After nine months of being away from my land, I decided it was time to come home so I quit and went back to my property, but at that point I had some new technical street cred on my resume. 

I studied hard and got some technical certs and I ended up landing a job at the local military base only 7 miles away from my land.

For this position I had to get the COMPTIA SEC+ and COMPTIA A+ certifications which costed about $500 each. However, there was a program in town that paid for my certifications because I was so broke. I was also getting food stamps to help me along the way. 

Now it took me about six months to land this job so in the meantime I found a part time position cleaning AirBnB houses which eeked me by.  

Off Grid Income Ideas - Service Based Businesses: 

25. Cleaning for someone or starting a cleaning business
26. Rural trash service
27. Hauling water service
28. Dogsitting, petsitting, large animal care
29. Mobile grooming
30. Fence building and repair (big one)
31. Window cleaning/power washing/solar panel cleaning
32. Snow plowing/landscaping/driveway maintenance

Many of these ideas are great for rural areas where it is difficult to find good reliable help. Cleaning is always a go-to, and trash service is in demand everywhere that trash trucks won't go. 

Hidden Gems in the Country

Now being that I work for Department of Defense, I have to hold a secret clearance which means I get a pay bump just for holding and maintaining that clearance. Holding a clearance is a golden ticket because even basic jobs like cleaning and maintenance come with a higher base level of pay.  I basically fix computers all day, troubleshoot and repair Microsoft applications, reimage computers, and assign enterprise licensing to users. I would not consider this an entry level tech job, but there are entry level positions you can break through on a military base.

Off Grid Income Ideas - Remote Employers 

33. Military installations
34. Prisons and jails
35. Ranger stations 
36. Fish hatcheries
37. Border patrol (BIG in AZ)
38. Dept of transportation
39. Mines and mining operations
40. Electrical Substations

I will add National Parks to this because they have lots of positions but are typically seasonal. 

Building Side Hustles to Exit the System

Not only am I working my full-time job, and I am also busting my butt on side hustles and eventually I would like to be a full-time entrepreneur. Now I am not in any rush to do that because I am really working on getting my property setup and meeting my financial goals before I even think about abandoning ship. But ultimately, I think to embrace the full spirit of homesteading, making an income off your land is a pinnacle of success. 

I have plans on how I will do this. My first plan of operation is to reopen my rockhounding tours. Last year, I claimed a mine that just so happens to be located only 15 miles away from me, what are the odds! I started doing rockhounding tours to my mine, and it literally blew up overnight. I had no idea that so many people would be interested in digging for gemstones at my mine. For a while I was rockin at this, but I was also burning the candle at both ends. I was working all week, then every weekend I was doing tours. 

I really started getting burned out because I was now working 60+ hours a week working full-time, doing tours, bookkeeping, scheduling, marketing and networking. But that is what it takes if you want to build a business and have to also work full time to make ends meet! 

Well, I received an email from the USFS basically telling me that I could not operate without a special use permit. So I had to shut down tours. And they have been shut down for six months now while I am waiting on my permit. But I did find out that they plan on issuing me the permit so I will be up and running again soon! You can join the rockhounding tour waitlist at rusticskills.com/tours. 

I am also starting a beekeeping operation, and I plan to sell honey, soaps, and beeswax candles. 

I also am building out RV spots on my land for some residual rental income. 

So between the rockhounding tours, honey business, RV spots, and my YouTube channel I think I will be resilient enough to become self employed. But I want to be prepared with $50k sitting in the bank before I take the final leap and quit my comfortable and stable job. 

This brings me to my next point: diversity. Unless you are doing a boring business like cleaning, repair tech, mechanic, where you know the demand is there, then you probably want to have multiple income streams just in case one fails. 

I personally would not feel comfortable only relying on rockhounding tours. What if I get my special use permit revoked? What if the mine gets exhausted? What if there is a major depression and people don’t have the money to spend on an extracurricular activity?

What happens if my bees fail? They have a lean production year? Get sick and die?

I feel like if you are going to turn passions into businesses you want to have some diversity for resiliency. 

The downside to that is spreading yourself thin over multiple projects, it's not for everyone. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone.

Off Grid Income Ideas - Homestead Based Businesses

41. Farmers market operations
42. Beekeeping
43. Woodworking
44. Jewelry making and selling
45. Mead and wine making and selling
46. Homesteading workshops
47. Glamping operations
48. Raising and selling livestock
49. Gourmet mushroom growing
50. Nursery operations

Now, I want to say that you can make money from these types of businesses and many people do. I totally believe that you can do this! However, I feel like a lot of times, the dollars and cents just don’t add up. 

For example: glamping. Everyone wants to put a fancy tent on their property but let me give you a reality check: most of us don’t have enough of a desirable property to make this profitable. Glamping setups are expensive to bootstrap, it will cost you probably close to $10k to setup even one tent between the platform, the tent itself, all the furniture, let alone the infrastructure for bathroom, lighting, utilities, etc. 

Then, you really can’t leave a glamping tent up year around, most definitely not in AZ! It will blow away in the blink of an eye! So you have to set up and take down every time you have a guest. 

And really, how many times will you rent it a month? Unless you are somewhere really desirable, like by a national park or a special event area, it's probably going to sit unoccupied for a lot of the year. 

Are Farmers Markets Really Worth It?

I also want to touch base on farmers market operations. Yes it is doable and plenty of people succeed, but there is a huge amount of lift to start turning a profit on a farmers market booth.

I thought about doing pickled eggs for a while and I drilled down on what it would take me to be profitable with the operation. I figured out in order to make $1200 a month with finished jars being priced at $10 dollars, I would have to have 90 chickens laying about 80 eggs a DAY. I would then have to boil and peel the eggs and mix the solution and put them into the jars. It wasn’t realistic, so I think the price would have to be closer to $20 a jar to make it worth the time and effort. 

I know this is the stuff we fantasize about and want to monetize, but you gotta think about all the operating costs and the labor involved with starting businesses like these. 

Which is why I am choosing bees! Although they will take work, they are nowhere near as much work as livestock like chickens, goats, and any type of mammal. And honey doesn’t spoil! 

HOMEWORK: 

Overall I think this gives you a good starting point on how to figure out making money while living off the grid. Let me know what you think! What ideas do you have? Are you living off grid now and making money? If so, how? I want to hear from you! Leave a comment!