cheap morphs worth breeding

[WingedWolfPsion]

If a person loves reptiles, and has some experience with them, I do not think there is a 'wrong reason' to get into breeding ball pythons, unless it is 'to make gobs of money super fast'. I think it's ridiculous to suggest that people who breed ball pythons in order to make money are doing it 'for the wrong reasons', because if money were not involved, none of the professional breeders would be in business.

So, I'm going to give the OP the benefit of the doubt, and make some actual suggestions.

First, don't skimp on your equipment. You can't make do with an aquarium and a heat lamp if you're breeding. Happy females breed, unhappy ones skip a year and reabsorb their follicles. So, get yourself a small rack, and get a herpstat Quad to control it. Why a quad? Because you need to control a hatchling rack and an incubator as well, so you might as well save a bit of money thinking ahead.

Now that you have that taken care of, you can shop for your snakes. Unless you buy local, shipping is going to factor in, so you're going to want to get them both from the same person. You're looking for an adult normal female, and a yearling male. With only $300, you really have maybe $210 to spend on animals...so you're probably looking at a male pastel or male yellowbelly.
If you raise what you can spend to $500, then I recommend you get a good male mojave. Mojaves are always in high demand on the market, because they can make potions.

Forget about the recessives, there is never a point in getting a het male unless you have het females (and even then, you're better off with a visual male--and some of the visuals have come down to a mere $150 as hatchlings, now). Possible hets sell for about the same price as normals, so why bother with that? Even 100% hets aren't worth very much, unless they're something at least on the level of lavender albino.

Now, the reality check--you will probably not make back your equipment investment anytime soon unless you put considerably more money into the projects in the next couple of years. You can't start with a few animals, and breed them. What you make from producing a clutch of mojaves is probably going to be around $650, average odds. Subtract feeding your hatchlings, feeding your adults for 1 year, electricity, bedding, cleaning supplies...and what do you have left? Not much. Your pair of ball pythons will eat maybe $96 in rats over the course of a year. Your 6 hatchlings will eat maybe $48 worth before you sell them all. Cypress costs perhaps $3.00 per bag, and you'll need at least one bag per month. So, that's $36. You have $470 left. That maybe covers the cost of your thermostat and incubator--if you go with a hovabator. If you assume your time is worth absolutely nothing at all, and you don't recoup the cost of equipment, that's enough to pick up a couple more normal females, but next year, mojaves will probably be going for $125 for males, and $150 for females.

I think you can see how very slowly this will go. It will take you somewhere between 3 and 5 years to cover the costs of your equipment to get started. After that, you can make a little money--but not very much.

If you want to actually make money, you need substantially more for your initial investment. Just as with any other business or investment, you have to have money before you can make money.