What the Heck is Market Price?

[sorraia]

I can't speak as a seller, because I haven't sold any snakes and am probably a ways off to being there, but speaking as a buyer:

I want to see pictures. If the ad doesn't have pictures, I will probably pass it up. They need to be quality pictures too, nothing too blurry or in the wrong lighting. If it's an ad with a number of animals listed, the pictures don't have to be of the specific animal I am interested in, but there need to be pictures of some of those animals in the ad, and the seller has to have pictures of the actual animal I'm interested in available to send me.

The price needs to be competitive. When I've added animals to my collection, I've searched through dozens (or more!) ads looking for the best deal. "Best deal" doesn't necessarily mean the cheapest. I might pass up a cheaper snake if the morph quality isn't good enough (i.e. a browned out pastel vs. a bright yellow one) or if something about the ad doesn't look right. But considering all factors, I want competitive prices. When it comes to hets, I'm looking for a really good deal. Can't really speak for anyone else, but I personally tend to buy visual over het because it gets me to my end goal that much faster. If/When I buy a het, I'm not going to shell out hundreds for it. Others might disagree with me, and that's fine, that's their opinion, and this is mine. I would probably pay a little more for a het than a normal (depending on what it was het for and how common that was and what the visual is normally priced at), but I'm not going to pay hundreds. Again, just my personal opinion.

Shipping being included in the price can be a factor, as can group discounts. For the most part I've picked up locally or paid shipping, but a few times I have gotten a discount on an animal for paying shipping (basically shipping was included in the animal's price, even though that was not listed in the original ad), or discounts for buying multiple animals at a single time. This isn't going to make me buy a particular animal, but it may encourage me to buy from that seller.

Key words are big. I don't browse ads one at a time, I search for key words, i.e. specific morphs I'm interested in. Now most of the time that morph should be named within in the ad, but think of variations in that morph's name too. For example, "yellow belly" vs. "yellowbelly" vs. "yb". I generally don't search for abbreviations, so if you are using them in your ad, consider making sure the morph name is spelled out at least once so the search function can find it. If there are variations in how the morph name is spelled, or other names for the morph, consider incorporating those into your ad, or if allowed, include a "key words" section at the end of the ad where you can list all of them out.

I'm very cautious about buying animals off craislist, but I do search there just to see what locals have. If you haven't already, consider listing your ad there, just be cautious of who may contact you, and beware that potential buyers may be cautious of you as well (and they should be!). I also casually search the ads on this forum, as well as fauna and kingsnake. I haven't bought any snakes from kingsnake, only fauna, but I do search there. I have liked several facebook pages for snakes, but I don't really search there too much when I'm actually considering buying something. Other people may do it differently, this is just me.

That's all I can think off at the moment... hope it helps!