If it's too good to be true....

[snake lab]

Heres a couple things to consider. If your looking at kingsnake classifieds then look at the ad first by is it by a buisness or a person, if its by a buisness the buisness is verified through ks. Now that doesnt make it a failsafe but it does show there is some recourse because that buisness has to be verified through the county the buisness is operating out of. Another thing to look at is if you pay through paypal you have more recourse cause you can always dispute and get your money back if you keep a good email record. Again its not a perfect failsafe but it does give you some recourse. As far as prices go, for example if pieds normally sell for 850 it doesnt mean they are selling so if you see someone selling em for 650 it doesnt mean a scam, it simply may mean they are aggresive to sell. Also the person selling may need to come up with quick cash to fund another animal that they are desperate to get and dont want to loose. There isnt as much scamming going on now as there used to be. I personally would buy from ks versus a free ad site like fauna any day. Also keep in mind if you do a search on the fauna boi it doesnt always tell the entire truth. Or not everyone is gonna do a good guy thread but they sure as heck will do a bad guy thread way before the deal is even completed so ya got to take that with a grain of salt. Heres an example of my point, i sold a breeder male pied male for 700 bucks on ks and i got so many emails accusing me of asking way to low on the price so they didnt trust it. I sold the animal, shipped the animal and they guy was so happy on the deal. He never did a good guy thread or did any feedback. The reason i sold him so low was cause i wanted to sell him fast so i could raise up what i needed for an adult calico female and i didnt want the calico to get away. Theres nothing wrong with asking for refrences as well if you have doubt dealing with someone online. Anyone would be more then willing to give refrences to close a deal.

[Jessica Loesch]

Julie, I know what you are trying to say, but this is a completely different world. If you end up selling your snakes for that cheap, unless say to a close friend, you may get a lot of negativity in the reptile community from other breeders.

As JLC has mentioned, you need to price you animals closer to the market. As AK said, it would be best to give a small discount and not a 66% off discount. That is far too extreme, and why not make a little more money off of it to help you out some? There is NOTHING wrong with that.

Unfortunately a $100 male albino will only throw up red flags. Unless I was a good friend of yours getting a spectacular deal, I would never buy an albino priced that low.


To both you and Kinra
I say if you want to sell for that low, make sure you only do it with close friends. You seem like great people and I don't think you'd ever build a good reputation with prices that low. All it does is scream "Hey, I want to move my snakes out, they are cheap, and the quality sucks." As we all know, you both aren't like that. But that is the message you will put out with a price like that.

I say if you want to price them lower, go ahead, but only discount them a little. Even for members here, we will be more likely to get a "forum member" discount of $50 on that albino, but a $250 discount is going to push away any REPUTABLE customers. You may have some creeps buying from you at that point. No offense to anyone, I just know that cheap stuff might attract cheap people that will NOT take good care of the snakes.


Just my .02.

[JulieInNJ]

All it does is scream "Hey, I want to move my snakes out, they are cheap, and the quality sucks."

That is a good point. If I looked at someone selling a bunch of morphs at WAY too low of a price, I'd wonder why too.

Selling at a discounted rate is one thing, but going too low could definitely have and adverse effect on what I'm trying to do.

[snake lab]

You would not crash any market if you sell a couple animals that low. Now if you put a couple hundred animals out there at those prices you may shake up the market a little but i wouldnt worry about it. The market in a whole is geared as a sellers market. There is a reason you see some animals posted for weeks and dont sell. A market can only be made if the product is selling. The market is dictated by the price the product sells for not what the product is being priced at. I saw 2011 pieds being sold for 600 bucks the other day. Unfourtanatly thats what they are selling for now. The people trying to sell them in the 800 range arent moving em. Unless you are a big name and then people are buying the name. Now there is a question of quality as well and you have to look at that as well. But i dont see anything wrong with lowering prices on a few animals. Your not gonna even give the market a hiccup.

[Adam Chandler]

Julie, I know what you are trying to say, but this is a completely different world. If you end up selling your snakes for that cheap, unless say to a close friend, you may get a lot of negativity in the reptile community from other breeders.

As JLC has mentioned, you need to price you animals closer to the market. As AK said, it would be best to give a small discount and not a 66% off discount. That is far too extreme, and why not make a little more money off of it to help you out some? There is NOTHING wrong with that.

Unfortunately a $100 male albino will only throw up red flags. Unless I was a good friend of yours getting a spectacular deal, I would never buy an albino priced that low.


To both you and Kinra
I say if you want to sell for that low, make sure you only do it with close friends. You seem like great people and I don't think you'd ever build a good reputation with prices that low. All it does is scream "Hey, I want to move my snakes out, they are cheap, and the quality sucks." As we all know, you both aren't like that. But that is the message you will put out with a price like that.

I say if you want to price them lower, go ahead, but only discount them a little. Even for members here, we will be more likely to get a "forum member" discount of $50 on that albino, but a $250 discount is going to push away any REPUTABLE customers. You may have some creeps buying from you at that point. No offense to anyone, I just know that cheap stuff might attract cheap people that will NOT take good care of the snakes.


Just my .02.

Jessica nailed just what I was going to say. If you advertise your morphs for well below market value you, even as a small breeder, hurt the market on that morph. People will see that as a sign the price for that morph is dropping, Other breeders will see your advertised price and lower theirs to try to compete, you can end up hurting many breeders, and then you may not have many other breeders as friends afterwards.
If you want to sell your animals discounted thats fine, that's your business. But when you advertise at these low prices, that is when you start to affect other breeders.

Colin Weaver wrote a pretty good article on the subject: http://ballpythonbreeder.com/2009/04...price-animals/

[Chris633]

I am new to the whole idea of breeding and selling. I've got some fun projects planned for my first couple of seasons and would also consider myself a soon-to-be hobby breeder. I know my first couple of seasons I will be holding back a lot of what I make, but I'd like to sell off what doesn't fit into my projects. And right now, I have zero rep as a breeder. But because I love what I'm doing and my animals, I'm getting addicted to this online community. So hopefully, by the time I have babies to offer, community members will be willing to take a chance on me and things will take off from there.

So to answer your question, if I didn't know you as a breeder, but did recognize you as a good member member of the community, I think that I would buy something from you if had something I was looking for. However, exceptionally low prices would be a red flag to me as well. I'm willing to pay for quality. A super low price would cause me to wonder why it is so low and none of the answers I come up with would be good.

[JulieInNJ]

Colin Weaver wrote a pretty good article on the subject: http://ballpythonbreeder.com/2009/04...price-animals/

That's a fantastic article. Thanks for posting!

[Jessica Loesch]

I would like to point out what snake lab said. Selling a couple snakes that low won't crash the market no, but it will make certain people unhappy unless you do it privately with, as I mentioned before, good friends that won't tote about, advertising what they paid, and ruining it for others.

[snake lab]

Who cares if it makes someone in a competing market unhappy. Its a buisness. Unless you are doing this with hundreds of animals you are not hurting anything. I gaurantee not one person who gets a great deal is going to sit back and say, oh im mad that i got a great deal. I wanted to blow out a couple clutches this year of bees. I had 3.5 of bees and i sold the females for 300 and males for 200. Not a single person lowered any prices. The market will never be dictated based on what one person does. Now if every person selling bees came down to that price then that would be affecting the market. This is an industry of depreciating products. Every year the animals will drop. It just is what it is. no breeder is gonna be upset if someone who produces a couple clutches a year blows the animals out. Especially single morph stuff.

[Jessica Loesch]

Well, I don't think Julie wants to feel that way. So it's up to her if she wants to sell her animals that low, but she is worth more than that.