Parakeet Slime is making $65k per month with the slime business and the monthly expense is $3200. That’s $61,800 per month in pure profit! This gives you a perspective on the potential of a slime business.
Slimes are not just a fun toy for kids and teens to play with. In fact, there are a lot of adults and kids making a lot of money selling slime!
Today, we’ll discuss how you can make money selling slimes on the internet!
Table of Contents
What is slime?
Slime is a sticky, gooey substance that is made with glue, borax, and food coloring as the main ingredients. Many kids love to play with slimes and many adults also find it fun and relaxing to play with. The slime craze started in 2017 although slime has been around for longer than that and it’s here to stay.
Although it may not be as big as it was in 2017 and 2018, the trend does show that it is stabilizing. People are still searching and buying slimes. It’s not only a fad.
Side note: I remember playing with slimes as a kid in the summer of 2009. Only we called it “Robot’s snot”.
How much money can you make selling slimes?
Many people have made a living selling slimes on the internet. There are even some people making millions of dollars a year by selling slimes!
Take a look at this screenshot above. It’s a video posted by Channel 4 talking about a 17-year-old girl called Marisa who started a slime business from her bedroom and is now making $65,000+ per month selling slimes (£50,000/month) to people all over the world. She makes 10 gallons of slimes per day, has made over 300 different types of slimes, and has sold more than 100,000 containers of slimes since the beginning. She sells 1000 slimes/week and all her slimes are priced $12-$16. At the time the video was released, she had 600k followers on Instagram, currently, she has close to 700k followers. She also sells merchandise in her store. Yes, she makes a lot more from slimes than merch.
Here’s another person called Jacob who started his slime business at 17-years old and has made over $1 Million in his career (< 3 years). This video is by CNBC Make It if you want to check it out.
There are plenty of others doing the same thing with varying degrees of success.
So how much money can you make selling slimes? Well, it depends on how many followers you have, how many views you get, how good your slime is, and how many people know about your slime business.
You can let more people know about your slime business by sharing videos of it on social media sites (ie. Tiktok, Instagram, YouTube, etc). If a lot of people know about your slime business, you open up more doors for potential profits.
If you’re doing well, you should expect an extra $500–$1000+ per month. You can also make a living with it if you can get your videos in front of more eyeballs.
What are the main ingredients in slime?
The main ingredient in slimes includes glue, slime activator, and food coloring. There are many different types of slime activators. You can use borax or saline solution (contact lens solution).
There are many different types of basic slimes and they each have different main ingredients but a lot of slime shop owners make their slimes with glue and saline solution as the base. Then, they decorate the slimes up with glitters, food coloring, charms, etc.
How to start a slime shop
In order to start a slime shop, you’ll need to get all the ingredients before starting. Depending on the types of slimes you want to sell, the ingredients you need would be different and the cost to start up the business would be different too.
Step 1: Get ingredients
Once you gathered all the ingredients (scroll down to see everything you need to start a slime shop and how much it cost to start a slime shop), you’ll have to start making slimes to test it out before you sell it to other people.
Step 2: Create prototypes
You’ll make some slimes and tweak the recipe to your liking while making sure that your slime is unique. Once you perfected the recipe, write it down to refer to.
Step 3: Get your logo designed and labels printed
You’ll need to think about a name for your slime shop and create a logo for your brand. Get a professional to custom design a logo for you cheaply on Fiverr. You’ll also need to print out the logo on the labels.
The labels will go on the container to let people know what slime it is and the name of the slime shop they bought it from.
Typically, the body of the container will require its own custom label with the name of the slime labeled and the lid of the container will include a label (sticker) of the slime shop name.
You can buy your containers at Amazon or Uline.
You can get your stickers and labels printed on Vistaprint among many other places.
Step 4: Set up your shop
You can set up your shop for free on Etsy (although each listing will cost you 25 cents).
Or, you can sell your slimes from your own site using the free WordPress site builder.
To install WordPress on your site, you’ll need a hosting service and a domain name. I recommend HostGator.
They give you a free 1-year domain with any hosting plan purchase. You can also ask their live chat service to install WordPress for you free of charge. Click here to see HostGator.
Some people also use Shopify to create their slime shop.
Step 5: Promote
Post some pictures and videos of slimes on to the brand’s social media accounts. You should stick to Tiktok and/or Instagram and/or YouTube. Don’t try to be on every social media platform because you’ll quickly feel overwhelmed.
The best platform to be right now is Tiktok as most people are looking for short-form content.
Step 5: Sell
Start selling! Make sure you clearly state the refund policy, shipping time, slime care tips, etc on the product page to prevent some legal troubles.
You can get packing materials such as bubble mailers and boxes for free at most postal services. You’ll have to create an account with them online to order.
You’ll also need a shipping label printer to print out labels. If you use Etsy, it’ll be quite easy to create the shipping labels. Watch the video tutorial here.
If you are selling from your own site, you can use a plugin to help you print out your labels. Watch the video tutorial here.
Step 6: Maintain brand
Continue to market your brand on social media. Make sure you create new slimes every week or every month to keep your audience engaged.
Everything you need to start a slime shop
- Logo (Get your logo designed cheaply on Fiverr)
- Glue
- Saline solution
- Borax
- Food coloring
- Label (with your logo and shop name on it + label for the name of slimes)
- Slime containers (6oz or 8oz are the most popular)
- Boxes (If your customer ordered more than 2 slimes, you’ll have to use a box as a bubble mailer won’t work. Get it for free at most postal services)
- Bubble mailer (You can use a bubble mailer if your customer order 1–2 slimes. Get it for free at most postal services)
- Shipping label printers (you can use a normal printer as well)
- Tapes (to seal the boxes)
- A place to sell slimes
(You can do this through Etsy or you can sell on your own site using Hostgator as a hosting service provider. They give you 1-year of a free domain) - Food scale (to tell the post office how heavy your package is when you ship it out)
- Gloves (You don’t want the slime to come to your customer’s house with growing molds)
Optional:
- A room to store slimes and make slimes (you can do this at your garage or your room or rent a warehouse if your business grow too large)
- Mixer (this will speed up your slime business a lot)
- Bubble wrap (if your slime container don’t fit the box exactly)
- Packing paper (again for protecting your slimes)
- Care instruction manual (with borax attached. Slimes change condition when it arrives at your customer’s house. You can attach some borax with care tips for your customer to fix up)
- Website (You can sell your slimes from your own site. You’ll need a hosting service and a domain name. Go with Hostgator as they have a free 1-year domain name and affordable high-quality hosting. Hostgator is one of the best hosting service providers out there. Click here to see Hostgator)
- Charms
- Scent
- Clay
- Oil
- Sprinkles
- Shaving cream
- Foam beads
How much does it cost to start a slime shop?
Below are some of the most important items. Of course, depending on the particular slime you make, you may need other items such as beads. If you have the following items, you pretty much have everything you need to start a slime shop.
- Logo design: $30
- 1 Gallon clear glue: $30
- 1 Gallon white glue: $20
- Saline solution: $11
- Food coloring: $20
- Brand sticker: $136/120 round stickers (to be placed on top of the container) You can order your stickers from Vistaprint.
- Label: $108/100 rectangular stickers (to be placed on the body of the container)
- Slime container: $16 (18 6oz containers)
You can get it on Amazon but if you buy in bulk at Uline, you can get each unit for cheaper. Most slime containers are either 6oz or 8oz in size. - Boxes: FREE. Most postal services (ex. USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL) will give you shipping supplies for free. All you need is to sign up for an account with them.
- Bubble mailer: FREE
- Shipping label printer: $140
You can use a normal printer but you’ll need to make sure to tape over the entire sheet of paper to prevent water from messing up the label. If you can invest in a proper shipping label printer, you should. - Shipping tapes: $10
- Etsy: 25 cents per listing
- 6.5 Qt Mixer: $140
- Packing paper: $25
- Package scale: $50
Total cost to start a slime shop: ~$736
Save money, lowering the cost
I know that may seem like a lot of start-up cost but you can oftentimes find alternatives. For example, you can mix with your hands (should wear gloves) instead of with a mixer, you can design your own logo for free on Canva instead of paying someone to do it, you can pay 10 cents per page to print out your shipping labels at your local print shop instead of buying a shipping label printer, etc. There are many ways to save money and reduce start-up costs. Just reinvest the profit to get the proper equipment later on.
If you’re serious, invest at least $1000
Keep in mind, you may have to add a few things to the list depending on the type of slime you want to make. To cut the per-unit cost of stickers and labels you may also order more at a time which may cost more money. If you’re serious about starting a slime business, I would suggest you have at least $1000 prepared to set aside.
To reduce the risk of failing, you can start making slimes and posting videos of your slime on social media to gain a following first. Once you gain enough following (More than 10k to be safe), you can then set up a shop, get labels/stickers, containers, kitchen mixers, etc to sell your slimes. Make sure to reserve your domain name first (Typically <$20/year). Your domain name should be your username on your social media accounts.
How to price your slimes
The last thing you want is to price your slimes too low. Sure, you may get more sales but you’ll also not be making any money.
It can be very hard to calculate how much you should price each of your slimes. This is why you need to document every piece of spending that you made.
Take a look at this slime by Parakeet slime below.
It’s priced at $14. It’s 8oz and comes with a strawberry buttercream scent and a unicorn charm.
Every other kind of butter slime seems to be above $11.99 in the shop. You can also take a look at what everyone else is pricing their slimes at.
If you’re pricing your 8oz slimes at less than $10.99 or $11.99 you may be losing profit.
I would suggest you price your slimes at $11.99 the minimum. Cheaper doesn’t always mean better. In fact, lots of people would think cheaper means lower quality. Psychologically, they won’t value your slimes as much.
If someone can’t afford the $11.99 then those aren’t your targeted customer anyway. Don’t be afraid to charge what your slime and hard work are worth.
How to mail your slimes
To mail your slimes, you have to create a package for it. You can request free boxes and bubble mailers from your local postal carrier by creating an online account with them.
You’ll have to print out the shipping labels with either a printer you have at home or a proper shipping label printer like this one.
If you don’t use a proper shipping label printer with proper label paper, you’ll have to make sure you put tape all over the label so water doesn’t damage the paper.
You can print out the labels easily on your Etsy, Shopify, or personal store with a Woocommerce plugin.
You should include a rough estimate of how long it takes to ship the package to your customer’s house based on where they live.
Here, Kawaii Slime Company auto-calculates how long it’ll take to ship based on your location.
You can offer free shipping for orders above $99 to encourage spending. Otherwise, you can have the customers pay for the shipping themselves.
How passive is the income from a slime business?
With more customers, you’ll need more supplies and with more supplies, it’ll cost more money. It also takes time and can be quite labor-intensive.
A slime business isn’t exactly passive as you’ll need to make sure you keep on reordering supplies, maintaining social media sites, mixing slime ingredients, packaging products, handling customer disputes, etc.
Of course, you can hire people to do this for you once you get enough capital but before you get there, you may find yourself working 7 days a week from morning to night. This is the reality for Marisa (although she does love what she does).
If you want to be completely hands-off from this business model, you’ll need a social media manager to manage all the shooting videos, commenting, promoting, etc. You’ll also need 1–2 people to do the slime making, packaging, and sourcing supplies.
If you pay all 3 employees $15/hour, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, it would cost you $7200/month to hire people to run your business (doesn’t include the cost of supplies + gas fee to drive to and from the stores).
Unless you make more than $7200/month from your business, you’ll have to be highly involved in your business.
The health concern with borax
There are some environmental and health concerns with borax. Different sources seem to suggest different things. I would suggest you look into borax before deciding to use it in your slimes.
There are alternatives to borax such as baking soda, saline solution (contact lens solution), and liquid starch.
Some examples of great slime businesses
- Kawaii Slime Company
- Parakeet Slime
- Momoslimes
- Slime fantasies
You can check out your competition to know how you stack up and what you need to improve on. You can also go to their best sellers list to find out what kind of slimes are received better by customers. Make your own tweak to it. Don’t copy.
Study how your competitors shoot their videos, design their sites, what colors they use in their branding (bright colors are common), what do they include in their product page, how do they package the slimes, etc.
Final thought
Not everyone is a fan of slimes. If you made it this far, I’m going to assume that you are. Slime can be fun to play with and it can also be an additional income stream for those who are looking for ways to make extra money on the internet. Give this a try and who knows, it could become your full-time job!
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