How to sell reptiles
What to Know Before Selling Reptiles!
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just because my hair is shorter doesn't
mean i got it cut sometimes i just
decide to shower just so you know so a
couple years ago i co-created a company
called emerald scales uh where we would
take in rehome breed and sell reptiles
and amphibians to anywhere and from
anywhere in the usa and although it's
definitely not what i would consider a
successful company yet could still flop
at any moment and overall i still don't
make enough to even survive off the
company but with that said i think i've
definitely learned enough to at least
get something like this off the ground
so for that reason i'm going to give you
five things that i recommend when trying
to sell
pet reptiles amphibians fish inverts
pretty much any animal number one figure
out a goal
start with one part of that goal and be
clear about that goal um for example i
said emerald scales breeds rehabilitates
takes in and sells that's a lot of
things we didn't start doing all that
the only thing we started doing was
taking animals in we didn't focus on
selling we didn't focus on breeding
nothing all we were doing was taking
animals in and you can learn more about
this in another video called how much
money i've made selling reptiles where i
went over every little detail of what
we've done along with every number of
the
um profit and the expenses and the
revenue and i plan on doing an updated
one with that
spoiler the numbers are better
thankfully so but at first we did try
and breed at the same time of taking
animals in and doing a little bit of
rehab but that's just too much for two
people to do right off the bat i
definitely think it's better to
accomplish one skill and get really good
at one thing before you start to branch
out so once we started taking animals in
that were mostly in good condition we
were then comfortable taking some men
that were in worse condition and then we
were finally ready to start selling them
because the customer side is completely
different working with clients is very
different with animals and it's a lot
easier to work with animals and it's
hard to work with animals from there you
can then start to branch out and then we
started attempting some breeding
projects which failed but we were able
to actually spend time on it because the
other part was pretty streamlined and we
had a pretty good system so my point is
start with one thing once you are
confident with that thing then add
another and also make sure your goal is
very clear i think you should be able to
tell someone about your project in one
sentence and my sentence is usually we
take in breed cell
and rehab
reptiles and amphibians to anywhere in
the usa
i completely messed up my own sentence
but you can get the idea of what we do
very quickly and you don't want this
really complicated thing because at
first i had a lot of trouble kind of
describing
what we actually do even with youtube i
was like i mean i make like
videos on the internet and like
i they're usually about like animals
like exotic animals that most people
don't keep and like i do care videos
with them and i don't really know how to
describe it now i just say i make
youtube videos on reptile stuff usually
number two find
you can literally tell i'm reading it
off a note pad number two find your
market
before you find the animals what a ton
of people do is they take in a bunch of
animals breed a bunch of animals somehow
acquire animals that they're ready to
sell
and then they can't get rid of them they
can't offload them because they don't
have a market to sell them to the market
is the group of people that are going to
be buying from you and anyone that says
i'm going to buy from you
should be appreciated respected kept in
mind but a sale is not actually a sale
until they give you their money and you
give them the product and they don't
demand their money back
that's what i would consider a sale
someone's saying oh i love that i would
totally buy it that's not at all a sale
and that is not necessarily someone
that's actually gonna buy from you this
has definitely happened with me and i've
been that person where someone talks
about this project like well that
happens a lot is people that say they're
gonna write a book everyone wants to
write a book and i think that's great to
write a book but i'll be like yeah i'll
totally buy your book once it's
published or out or like an e-book or
whatever because sounds really easy to
make books you can anyone can sell a
book now you don't need a publisher and
then the book goes up and i'm like
do i really want to drop 10 to 20 bucks
of hard-earned cash on this item
no probably not and there's no
obligation for me too and for this
reason that's why it's hard to ensure
that you're actually going to be able to
start selling animals because everyone's
going to say they're going to buy from
you because everyone wants to be
supportive but the moment they have to
give up their money they're not really
gonna want to
for the most part i'd say the majority
will not actually buy from you so for
that reason i would recommend that you
start small do very few animals like
when we started we had three animals for
sale we had a huge announcement and it
was just those three and even those
three took a while to sell and uh that
was
a comfortable point where we could sell
those and then put more there was no
rush to have tons of inventory ideally
your supply and demand will be pretty
even but you don't want a massive amount
of supply with very little demand if you
have a ton of demand with little supply
you'll feel a lot of pressure to get as
much supply as possible but i think it's
better to play it safe and you don't
want people to impulse buy reptiles with
same merchandise you can get people to
impulse buy stuff and it's great because
if they regret buying it it's a t-shirt
it's not really the end of the world for
any party involved do a flash sale do a
limited quantity do like a late night
time post so everyone's kind of
delusional and don't know how to put
their money in the right place that's
fine with non-animals but when you're
working with animals you don't want
those impulse buys and so that's why i
don't think you should stress over the
demand
if there's more demand than you have
supply because
people should hopefully stick around and
buy and those people are usually going
to be the good customers that you
actually want to deal with because
customers are not always right next up
this one
is going to sound interesting
money is more important than the animals
it sounds bad right
understandably the idea behind this when
you hear it is probably
you're not doing it for the animals
you're doing it for the money
but you need money for the animals
and sometimes you have to make decisions
that actually do prioritize money over
the animals because if you have such
ridiculously high standards that you
can't get a single dollar in and it's to
the point where you can't sustain the
animals because you have so little money
you might have to make sacrifices i
don't like the word sacrifices because
it literally sounds like you're
sacrificing an animal
but i'll try and think of some examples
behind this idea
i didn't actually think of any in
advance for example cutting corners
usually cutting corners is not a good
thing
but if you are able to minimize expenses
the best you can and maybe sacrifice
little things like a little bit of extra
space for the animals let's take leper
geckos maybe like i like to keep
permanent adult leopard geckos in a 20
gallon enclosure or larger which is
about 30 by 12 by 12 inches but if you
have these massive finalized setups for
all these temporary animals it'll feel
really good and it's really satisfying
and we did this for quite a while but it
gets to the point where it's so
unsustainable that you're gonna start
running out of money and resources so it
really bogs you down and just slows down
the whole process and it also really
risks you running out of money and not
being able to sustain even the basics
for these animals so something like
shrinking these enclosures for temporary
animals is not a bad thing um like rat
systems for example people often harass
people with rack systems other people
often make fun of those who don't use
rack systems because they're just so
perfect
i think i'm kind of in the middle i
don't use rack systems for any personal
animals but properly sized tubs even if
they're not what i would keep a
permanent animal in could really benefit
with temporary animals as long as
they're healthy and happy have the
basics and even some enrichment i think
that is perfectly fine if you are
keeping animals temporarily whether
that's a few weeks or a few months but
if you were to keep an animal for its
whole life for many years i think you
should try and give it as much
enrichment as possible
but minimizing on little things like
that like not the perfect bowl not the
perfect hide nothing dangerous nothing
sharp that could hurt the animal but
just simple stuff cheap stuff stuff you
can buy a book
using tubs for example over like i've
never had problems with using plastic
enclosures and they are so much easier
than glass enclosures they're
lightweight they break less they're
uglier but they're overall just easier
and that's something i've learned and
now i don't use much glass for
the temporary animals and now the
permanent animals are usually in glass
enclosures because it's more of a
display something bigger something
fancier but the temporary just simple
tubs simple cheap plastic tubs they're
easier to clean they're easier to work
with and it saves you money at the same
time which is really important because
you need money for these animals and i
have a couple other videos on making
money i have a video on how i made money
as a teenager which is how i saved up
the money to actually start this project
so you can check that video out too
hopefully i remember to put it in the
description my next recommendation is to
prioritize your reputation
over money so almost in a way my list
goes reputation money
animals because the money you need for
the animals to make money you need a
good reputation examples of this you
need to go out of the way for people
even if your client or your customer is
annoying or disrespectful as long as
they can properly care for the animal
which kind of gives a spoiler to my
final tip as long as they are actually
the right person for the animal and even
if they aren't the perfect person you do
want to keep a good reputation you want
to go out of your way to put extra time
into them for example when we had issues
with shipping and couldn't ship because
of i think it was too cold like last
year i did my best to hand deliver as
many as possible this could be a lot of
gas money a lot of time if you have
another job this time might be taken
away from that or other projects just in
general and we've had tons of cases
where we end up losing a lot of money on
a sale just for the sake of satisfying
the customer to get something proper
to them to keep them happy because one
customer can have a lot of effect
the other problem is a lot of customers
will still give you a bad reputation
even if you
don't think you're on the wrong and
customers like i said they're not always
right an example of this is someone who
i still see i just casually stumble upon
them on reddit sometimes and uh they
complain because we quote refuse to give
them an animal and refuse to meet up
with them in person there are tons of
different examples of criticism that
emerald scales gets that i don't think
is justified this is just the first that
comes to mind because i like just saw
someone send it to me and their
complaint is that they wanted a corn
snake but we wouldn't sell it to them
because we refused to meet up even
though they were local to us in north
carolina no matter how much they pushed
us to meet up we refused and we were
disrespectful and mean and it was stupid
and we wanted to risk the animal more by
shipping it even though they were in
north carolina too
but as we told them multiple times the
animal is located in new jersey we had
another location
with animals in new jersey that's why we
didn't do local pickups and uh no matter
how many times we told this they just
kept spreading misinformation so that's
just a given it's just something you
gotta deal with but at the same time
when you can go out of your way to
improve someone's experience it's
definitely worth it because that word
spreads and word of mouth is pretty much
the best marketing tactic especially
when you can get people to tell their
friends and family about it because
people trust friends and family over
advertisements and over online reviews
and that's definitely the best way to
gain someone's stress so even if you
lose money as long as you can afford to
lose it
it'll be painful in the moment but it's
worth it
for most of the time but obviously it's
case by case and then finally
please don't do what most sellers do
what probably 90 plus percent of sellers
do probably 99 of sellers do
and that is they simply want to unload
the animal from their inventory and they
don't care where it goes once the
animal's gone it's not their problem but
if we can start to
raise the standard of how customers are
actually vetted and verified as we say
uh the better off it's gonna be for
everyone the standards are so
low
right now there's no standards you just
go on a site you click add to cart you
click
um
checkout i forgot what button it is
and the animal gets shipped to you
sometimes they don't even look at the
weather i think it's really important to
definitely help set this new standard of
actually
having a little bit of liability on the
person buying and make sure they at
least know the basics we've gone through
so many different ways of is this okay
is this not okay where's our standard
how high is the standard is it too high
or too low and it's never going to be
perfect there's always going to be
customers that slip through the cracks
but
doing the best you can to at least get
the basics at least make sure they know
what species they're getting
and for us we personally require an
enclosure image uh and basic information
including their diet their lighting
their heating their temperatures and
then we can see the rest in the picture
like the substrate the size of the
enclosure and if they just seem to know
what they're talking about so you could
be way more specific some people
will ask to see like what veteran you're
using and they'll ask for references and
then other people won't ask for anything
at all so i'd say give some standards
for your animals because these are
animals they're not merchandise but i
think it's better to do your best and
try and verify customers but keep in
mind it's not going to be perfect and
mistakes are going to be made on every
side and that's simply part of it but in
my opinion
the
benefits and the good stuff that comes
out of it are worth those rare and
occasional
not so good experiences those are five
of my tips on what to keep in mind when
you're selling pet reptiles amphibians
or any exotics especially living animals
so
if you find this interesting i have
hours of content i can make on this
even though like i said emerald skills
is a long ways to go but until then i'll
try and keep sharing what i know and
what
might help you so let me know what you
think in the comments and i'll
maybe read them
if you're nice don't be mean also if you
want to support me on patreon you can do
that you get early access videos like
this one private discord server you can
message me directly and like instead of
just trying to harass me on instagram
you'll actually get a response through
patreon messages and it's also a great
way to support me in the videos so yeah
that's it for this video i'm alex and
thanks for watching
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