Selling Leopard Geckos?

[M_surinamensis]

But what do you mean how to sell them is the difficult part?

I can't speak for Kelli, but I can give my thoughts on the topic.

How you sell means a lot of different things, some practical, some ethical. Starting at the top and listing some that come readily to mind...

How many and what types of animals you choose to breed matters a great deal. The markets for some animals are crowded and competitive, providing yet more of an existing product that is already selling slowly won't help. Predicting what will be in demand can be difficult, but it's a necessary step if you're going to produce animals for sale, otherwise they end up living with you for the remainder of their lives.

Which venues you choose to use in order to make sales. Local shops, mail-order using internet classifieds, wholesale to a big reseller, with a table space at the local reptile show. Making sure you have plans and arrangements that you thoroughly understand before you even put a male and a female together.

Marketing and business models, how you want to engage in breeding often dictates how you handle sales. Indiscriminate breeding for volume, highly selective breeding for quality or something in between, these will inform the practical steps you need to take in order to sell animals.

Having a thorough and accurate knowledge of the animals you're dealing with in order to ensure that the animals you sell are what they are advertised as being. This covers everything from health to genetics, you need to know the animals very well so that you can sell them accurately and honestly.

Honesty and ethics being the most significant factor involved. How you handle yourself, your animals and your customers while you're acting as a dealer. Integrity is the one quality that will allow you to sell your animals and sell yourself to your customers. Taking the time and making the effort to develop a positive reputation, to treat everyone fairly and to always be truthful and up front in your dealings. Being allowed to ship animals legally and safely if you're selling online, setting forth and abiding by a written guarantee that outlines the terms of every transaction, taking care of customers if something goes wrong.

In short, making absolutely certain that your contributions as a breeder are beneficial to the captive population of animals, to herpetoculture as a whole and to the public perception of the industry.