if you dont know this article already, then it will really help you a lot:

http://ballpythonbreeder.com/2012/02...thon-breeders/

i would say, first pick a project, and think about where you want to go with it. the easiest thing is to just pick dominant/codominant morphs and combos and combine them and recombine them into BPs that look better and have more morphs in them.

another choice would be a recessive project, like for example clown. now you dont want to just breed clown to clown and hatch clowns, you want to progress by breeding visual clown (maybe with extra genes) to 100% het clown with new extra genes. recessive projects are more difficult because it takes two generations to get a new codominant or dominant gene into a visual recessive BP.

generally its good to buy females first, and males one or two years later. so maybe spend 1000 for a really really nice and visually stunning female hatchling now, and save up the rest of the money. and if you really want to go forward with breeding, next year buy another female and a really nice male.

my personal opinion: dont buy anything that has pastel in it. its the most common and cheapest morph, and many breeders have pastel or super pastel in basically every BP they have. everything has been done with it.

Pied Het pastel
Pastel Het pied
Pastel Het clown
Clown het pied
Spider het pied
pastel isnt a recessive, and for the beginning, i would stick to dominant/codominant, and just one recessive mutation. starting out with two recessives right away is quite a challenge and limits your options. the most effective way to successfully run a double recessive project like clown pied is when you already have a clown project and a pied project running, and you already have visual clowns with extra genes and visual pieds with extra genes.