How to Succeed in Selling Animals for More $$

When you are trying to decide how much to sell animals for, you may think to check what other people are charging, but although this may give you a good price to charge, you may be able to charge a lot more and have people willing to pay it.

We regularly sell animals for up to 10 times what most people on Craigslist are charging! In this blog I will share some of the reasons we think we are able to do that, and what you can do to get similar results.

Put Up Good Ads

This is probably the most important thing. So many ads, especially on Craigslist, are just so bad, it doesn’t take much for your ad to look a lot better than most other people's.

The first thing is the pictures, good pictures sell animals. Sometimes, a weird angle can make an otherwise nice-looking animal look very unappealing.

Which picture do you think would sell these chicks better?

When we were buying goats once, we liked the one doe, whom the seller had taken nice pictures of, but we did not care much for the other, the picture of her was taken straight on and from overhead.

Not only did her coloring appear very plain (pretty much just black), but she also looked to be a full-grown goat. When we saw her in person, she looked totally different.

She wasn’t even a year old, and her coloring was actually very nice! So, an image that doesn’t accurately represent the animal you are trying to sell could make it much harder to sell it at the price you want.

Another thing is to provide a good amount of information, just putting “Six-week-old Nigerian doeling for sale” in the ad description doesn’t come across as professional, knowledgeable, or even friendly.

Not everyone reads the description, but for those that do, having even a little more information in the ad may convince them that you are the person they want to buy from.

What lots of people do...What you should do

You don’t have to write paragraphs, although that would be fine, a better ad could just be “I have a six-week-old Nigerian dwarf doeling that is ready for her new home! She was born 2-25-25 and is friendly and healthy!”.

See how much better the second ad sounds? But people aren’t doing it, we see so many ads with descriptions like the first one!

Sell Animals That Are Worth More Than Other People’s

If you even just have good ads you can probably sell your animals for more than most people, but you should also try to sell animals that are worth more than others.

This doesn’t mean that you have sell registered show animals, or very rare breeds.

It can be fairly simple things such as handling your animals, so they are friendly, or pasture rotating them, so they are healthier. We raise regular old unregistered Nigerian Dwarfs, but we handle them, we raise them naturally, and we pasture them.

One person actually told us that she picked our goats over someone else’s because ours were on pasture, and she didn’t see a blade of grass in the other seller's pen.

Have a Website

I have written a blog on why you should have a website for a farm business, so I will just link that here.

Farming in the Digital Age: The Importance of Having a Website

Be Knowledgeable

Know all about the animals you are selling so you can answer questions people have, the more you know about your animal, the better you will be able to convince others that it will be the right choice for them.

We now sell CA quail hatching eggs! Click Here for more information.