Horse owners all across the world have found success with a variety of horse-related business ventures. Horse ownership can be both one of the most enjoyable, yet most expensive interests. Horses need a lot of space, care, and food, with c certain horse breeds being substantially more expensive than others because of attributes like their intellect or appearance.
As your equine companions could be costly, you might need to acquire additional funds to cover the expenses. It doesn’t seem like the easiest thing in the world to make money with horses, seeing as husbandry and maintenance costs amount to thousands of dollars annually.
However, if you enjoy spending a lot of time around these magnificent creatures, as long as you are willing to commit, you can start some fantastic side businesses that could not only supplement your horse-care funds but earn and save you quite a bit of money.
You could even be able to turn working with horses into a full-time occupation if you have the resources and the time to dedicate to it. But keep in mind that caring for horses is expensive, so you’ll need to save up a lot of money to pay for the purchase price, upkeep, and other expenditures consistently.
There are many methods to make money with horses that don’t need a lot of time or equipment, whether you want to establish a horse business empire or just add to an increase in income.
How to Make Money with Horses
We’ve pulled together a list of ideas to get your equestrian business on its way. Here are 15 ways to make money with horses.
1. Establish A Stable For Boarding Horses
Why not board some more horses since you are already boarding your own? If you have the capacity, board horses locally as a simple way to earn a little additional money without exerting too much effort. Ample hay, a spare stall or two, and a secure area for the horses to spend time outside are necessary on-site facilities.
If you have additional stable space, you could rent out space every month to other equestrians for boarding needs. Boarding services frequently involve care for the horses, such as grooming, stall cleaning, and blanketing, through more sophisticated facilities, though a stable with simply extra space could exclusively offer to board.
So why is this a profitable business model? This is simply due to boarding horses being the most expensive part of owning them. A good way to approach figuring out horse-boarding prices is to simply research what other local stables are charging for comparable services. A business strategy by charging just slightly less than the competition, you may not only attract interested clients, you may even secure future business from them.
2. Offering Riding Lessons
Among the most popular strategies to supplement your income while still spending time with your animals is to offer horseback riding lessons. Young riders who are just starting out in working and playing with horses benefit from lessons by developing their riding abilities and building their riding confidence.
If a horse owner gives lessons, they should make sure their stable and horses are ready for guests. To build a clientele of loyal customers that trust you and use your services in the future, you need to make sure that every client has a great experience. These encounters will also help you and your company build a solid reputation. Keep in mind that the best and most potent kind of promotion is word of mouth.
Make sure you feel at ease dealing with other riders and speaking with them about what they need to do while on the horse before their riding lessons starting. Even if you are aware that you are somewhat undercharging, you should set your prices upfront and adhere to them. As your popularity in the horse lesson area grows, you can begin to gradually increase your prices.
Lessons on horseback usually charge between $40 and $75 for an hour’s worth of instruction. In the beginning, you can promote yourself on social media platforms, but as your business grows, you can think about building a website or an entire business plan splitting up the pricing model among multiple horse riding services that you make available to clients.
3. Offer Braiding Services
Horse enthusiasts who offer their braiding talents to owners at shows have discovered a terrific method to earn some extra cash without having to pay high upfront costs. Mane and tail braiding is essentially free, but you may make hundreds of dollars after a few clients used your services.
You will have to get expertise in braiding horse manes and tails for competitions in a variety of styles. Some events will call for fancier braids, while others might not require any.
To get your first few customers, you’ll need to sell your services to the right clientele. Once you establish yourself as a dependable and trustworthy member of the horse grooming staff, you may start accumulating clients and participating in local horse competitions.
Hair braiding as a side business depends heavily on time management. Make sure you have enough time to braid all the horses you signed up for in order to turn a profit. This may include moving around during competitions and attending to your clients’ horses at designated times.
Braiders often charge $40 to $50 per mane and roughly $25 for each tail braid. With expertise and different braid varieties, these rates may alter. More customers will desire to employ your services once you prove to be the provider of tighter, more intricate braids.
4. Renting Out Your Horse Arena
If you’re lucky enough to already have a great location for horseback riding, you could think about renting out some of your property to others for a small charge.
A friendly and secure environment to practice is commonly sought by owners who take their horses to competitions. Even recreational equestrians may occasionally prefer to switch things up by riding their horses in a different venue. Start by letting your community of fellow equestrians that you are willing to offer a fair-price rental of your property or stable for periods of time, with an applicable rate that can be charged by the hour.
Some riders would need the space for just an hour, though others would prefer longer blocks. If your arena is easily accessible for horse trailers, customers might prefer to rent from you regularly if the price is right. You may want to put a cap on how many available hours you have in your horse arena for renting riders to use based on how much time you are willing to dedicate to this venture.
The majority of horse owners rent out their facilities for a few hours for well under $100. You might slightly increase the fee or come up with a strategy to suit their demands if customers want the arena exclusively to themselves for a sequestered block of time. Make sure the amount you ask for includes any overhead expenditures, such as energy or arena upkeep.
5. Exercise Horses
Horses need to be exercised as frequently as possible, despite the fact that it may be difficult to find the time to ride daily. For people who do not have that kind of time, but do want their horses to get daily exercise, you might consider volunteering to work with their animals for a little fee if you have sufficient time to do so.
You can exercise a horse if you know how to ride one. Horses typically require an extended and frequent walk, so when you offer to exercise a horse, you are really simply offering to ride it for some period of time. To exercise a horse, you don’t need to be familiar with any training techniques or orders. All you need is self-assurance and the competence to work with the animal which you might not be immediately familiar with.
Typically, horse exercisers bill their clients between $15 and $40 per hour. Your rate should reflect your riding proficiency and the level of confidence that you will provide about your ability to regularly and adequately exercise the horse.
6. Offering Horse Stable Cleaning Services
Every horse owner knows the importance of keeping a clean horse stable, but they are also aware of how much time it can take to accomplish this important facet of horse care. When a stable has to be cleaned, the matting needs to be removed and rinsed, the waste needs to be swept up and disposed of, the food and water bowls need to be cleaned, and periodically horse blankets need to be washed.
The duties required to maintain a stable’s cleanliness are often doable by anybody, a fact that often moves stable owners to hire teenagers to clean the stables for around minimum wage ($10 to $15).
Stable owners who run specialized services or board multiple horses in their stable, may certainly charge extra per hour and agree on a timetable to provide particularly specific expert services. Through a staff of trained cleaners, certain facilities provide luxury cleaning services.
7. Pasture Care
Horses need pastures for grazing and exercise, but they don’t maintain themselves. You can offer pasture tending services that include weeding and keeping the grass trimmed. Much like yard maintenance, pasture care should be performed 1 or 2 times every couple of weeks. To complete the task, transporting machinery across potentially large swaths of land is likely to be required.
To begin the process of pasture maintenance, you’ll need certain tools, especially a weed cutter and lawnmower. Even though your startup expenditures may be significant if you don’t already have these tools, you should be able to easily charge more than $20 per hour for your pasture labor.
8. Horse Transport
Offering to transport horses from one location to another, such as to large events, is another potential way to make money with horses, though it requires a sizable upfront investment to achieve. Transporting multiple horses to an event requires a large, specialized trailer. It is important to upkeep this trailer and keep it clean to assure that horses arrive at their destinations safely and comfortably.
Since all of the horses’ riders will be attending the event as well, transportation costs shouldn’t be prohibitively high. Make your pricing based on the cost of the trailer, as well as additional fuel or work required to draw the horses. Some carriers may bill by the mile or by transport hour, depending on how far the event is from the pickup location.
9. Horse Tack Cleaner
For the optimal longevity of the equipment, girths, bridles, breastplates, saddles, and martingales should all be cleaned regularly. Find a horse owner you can ride along with if you can, or establish a solid rapport with their go-to tack cleaner.
You simply need to know how to properly clean all tack items, and how to use the cleaning products to complete the job. You can work with just about anyone after you’ve mastered the cleaning tack and have experience using it.
There are many types of tack cleaning depending on the item of equipment that needs to clean. To clean and oil a saddle, some tack cleaners charge $50, while others charge $100 to thoroughly clean everything.
10. Horse Manure Cleanup Services
If maintaining a pasture or a whole stable sounds like too much work for your current capacity, you can choose to concentrate on the one aspect of cleaning for horses that has the most impact, manure cleanup. If you create a manure removal wing of your business that removes waste and delivers fertilizer, you might be able to dominate the not-so-great-scented market.
Manure removal and disposal are never pleasant, but if you decide to concentrate on it, you might be able to generate a sizable profit from all the horse owners who are sick of performing the unpleasant work themselves.
The challenging part is that even though it is simple work, it just isn’t something anyone wants to do. That means that owners hoping to pay someone else to do the manure cleanup jobs can allow you to collect a decent premium in prices. After all the demand is high, so it is more than reasonable to attach a price tag that suits the unpopularity of the task to it. Teenagers and young riders could supplement their income by providing this service to local pastures or stables. Manure may either be used as fertilizer again or entirely discarded after cleanup.
11. Leasing Horses
Allowing others to ride your horse for a few hours at a time is an intriguing and rather novel method to earn money with horses. Graduating riders looking to hone their abilities should be your target market for horse leases. Leasing your horse is a great way for a rider to transition from a pony to a larger horse. It is also a great way for you to earn a little more money.
One of the simplest methods to lower the expense of caring for your horse is to lease it. Before signing a lease agreement, review the rules provided by Equine Legal Solutions.
12. Horse-Related Affiliate Marketing
Longtime horse owners are familiar with numerous brands of horse equipment so a great (and largely passive) supplemental income stream idea is to join an affiliate network for a brand of horse supplies you enjoy using.
The majority of affiliate programs are commission-based. You post an endorsement link to a business’s website for particular goods, and if/when it sells to earn commission money. You will get compensated when customers click on that link to visit the product’s page and ultimately make a purchase.
Your success with this type of affiliate marketing method will be the pivotal factor in determining how much money you may generate from this effort. If you are a participant or owner of a platform that people use to converse horses, or even for any other social means, mentioning products when talking about horses can lead some interested parties to follow a link you post. This will not only increase brand awareness but will also teach new riders which brands are best for them.
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13. Offering Area Tours
In some of the most stunning regions in the nation, a very popular activity for visitors is to take horse-guided excursions and tours. Almost anywhere around the globe, you and your horse can volunteer to work as proprietors of “equitours.” In many locations, these horseback riding vacations are very popular and can prove to be quite lucrative. Horse-guided excursions are especially well-liked for nearby trails that are reachable by horses, even without an agency.
If you plan your tour, you should be able to recoup part of the cost of utilizing your horse and the time spent planning the trip. In general, horse tourism agencies charge high prices from their clients, which results in bigger earnings but also longer days.
14. Horse Photography
You may do well working as a horse photographer on the side if you have a quality camera and a knack for photography. Photographers of all experience levels will be able to take terrific pictures if they understand horses and can capture moments during shows.
Simply visit an equestrian event and attempt to take some pictures if you know how to use a camera. You will improve and take better pictures as you gain more experience so that when you are comfortable with your abilities, you may sell your images or provide picture sessions for riders and their horses.
Since this hobby requires a good camera and laptop for editing and sending images, it may have the highest upfront expenditures. As you continue to hone your skill and expand your clientele, you stand to benefit more if you have the appropriate equipment. For their services, some horse photography studios would bill up to $750 per day.
15. Purchase, Sales, And Reviews Of Horse Products
Our lives are becoming more and more influenced by social media in every aspect. Thankfully, there is a market there for almost anything, including horse equipment. Influencers on Instagram are individuals that have a significant following and may get extra income by reviewing and promoting merchandise from various brands. Influencers that promote a product and increase interest from potential buyers will earn from the exposure, just like affiliate marketers do.
The more people that follow you, the more money you can potentially make. Even if you currently have a small audience, you might grow it over time, especially if you are the only person rating the products. Even content marketing for equine-related websites has the potential to generate some extra revenue. The majority of agencies will bid no more than five cents per word.
Reigning It In
There are many ways to establish a side business while still spending time with horses every day, whether you opt to provide cleaning services, riding instruction, or other horse-related practices. The most committed and diligent people could even be able to turn their horse hustling into a full-fledged company.
Learning how to generate money with horses needs perseverance, innovation, and maybe some startup capital. But as soon as you identify your specialty, you’ll start to make money! You owe it to the horses you are around to always be prepared and to take extra special care of them.
If you’re currently exploring ways to make money with horses, our next article is a great complement! We’ll share the top 20 retirement business ideas for retirees looking to achieve financial freedom while pursuing their passion for horses. So, don’t miss out on the opportunity to explore new possibilities and create a thriving business. Keep reading for more inspiration!
Frequently asked questions:
how to make money with horses?
One way to make money with horses is by offering horseback riding lessons, trail rides, and horse training services. You can also consider boarding horses for owners who need a safe and secure place for their horses to stay. Another option is to breed horses for sale or offer equine therapy services.
can you actually make money with horses?
Yes, it is possible to make money with horses. Some ways to make money with horses include breeding and selling horses, offering horseback riding lessons, training horses, participating in horse shows and events, and providing boarding and care services for horses.
I’m Thomas, founder of Genie Dollars, a platform sharing proven strategies for making money online. With experience in affiliate marketing, print-on-demand, and freelance writing, I aim to inspire and guide others toward financial freedom through online entrepreneurship.
