Do you really need your own personal website or are you well off from selling off of facebook and/or instagram?
I have a facebook and instagram page. You are not supposed to post prices or sell animals outright on there but ppl do but can lose their page if reported.
Would you recommend a website too? Does a website bring in more sales? Where do you make most of your sales from?
Do you have FB. instagram and a website to bring as much sales as you can?
I know most sellers on MM make most of their sales on MM. I would imagine once reptile shows are back many of the big guys will sell a lot there. I wouldn’t use FB or insta over MM tbh. I personally don’t go on either so you would never get a sale from someone like me. Personal websites aren’t always easy to navigate like MM and unless someone has heard of you or they somehow stumble on your website, I doubt you would get a lot of business.
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They can’t possibly hurt. I would say social media presence much more important but once you have reached a certain footprint of course a professional website can be big.
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Does not hurt but it does not help all that much either while I still own my domain I no longer pay to host it, made that decision 3 years ago. A month ago I simply redirected to wordpress which is free and only to provide details on terms and payment plans (no update, no sales), but have done well without a site at all.
The reason is simple SOCIAL MEDIA, that where everyone is, where people get their news and updates, people don’t go on 10 different breeder websites anymore they go in one place where they can see everything from everyone.
So Instagram, Facebook Twitter are the place to be and what’s great is you post on Instagram and it shares automatically on other platforms so you don’t have to post multiple times.
As for sales I do 80% of my sales on MM and before that it was other classified platforms.
Note: I do not sell on social media I only market/promote myself and update some of my exciting project (not all just some)
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I’m new to the scene but I’ve built up quite a few followers on Instagram already and I know @akmorphs is killing it on the social media side.
As Deb said, the fact it allows you to post to multiple social media sites in one go makes life a lot easier.
Now as a buyer, I am very unlikely to purchase straight from your FB/Instagram page… Or even your personal website. I’ll check it out, then look for your MM store and go from there.
Saying that though, If you don’t have a FB/insta I can check out I’m unlikely to buy from you from just a MM store.
You have free tools that you can use to help make your business grow, use them.
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I finally broke down and made one when FB cracked down harder, though my business page has not, knock on wood, been impacted yet. I’ve made maybe 3 sales off it? I’m terrible on keeping it up to date, which is why I’d preferred the FB page, as that is super easy to update. I sell about 50% on FB, 15% on Fauna and about 30% on MM, so far. Rest is website, word of mouth, etc. I’ve just started using MM and it’s so far my favorite classified site.
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I would not buy from a seller who did not run his/her own website. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t buy thru MM or other sites, but my due diligence would include perusing a proper domain.
Facebook and Instagram are not good places to sell animals anymore. I used to do it before the major crackdowns started but now it is just a nuisance to go on there and try to advertise in a coded manner. I maintain business pages on both platforms, but that is mostly to make sure that nobody else can have my business name. I do occasionally post updates, and I think Instagram is much better.
When I was getting started, most big breeders had websites. The next generation of breeders didn’t seem to put that much emphasis on them because of FB. The thinking was “why have a website when everyone is on FB?” and it did seem to be that way for a while. Then the crackdowns started and entire groups got blown away. Then you add all the scammers and fake accounts and the fact that the platform has already peaked, and all of a sudden a website that you have control over seems like a much better idea.
MM changed all of this. I do all of my business on MM and at reptile shows. But the majority of my sales are on MM because I don’t have the patience for all the lowlife show promoters who treat their vendors like crap. Let’s be honest - prior to COVID19, you could vend a show every single weekend. But who really wants to deal with these guys? I certainly don’t. I have a handful of promoters that I work with, and that’s enough for me, thanks.
Without MM, I would definitely have a website by now. But the pricing levels and plans offered by MM are just awesome and they truly allow for scaling up/down the service based on how much you would like to use it. For a small breeder like me, there is no point in paying for/maintaining a website when I have a MM store and can change my subscription level any time I need to.
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I have 4 websites, and 4 Facebook’s/ insta. One for each company that sells live animals. We get tons questions on all formats. Since you can’t do sales on either Facebook or instagram all of our sales come from our websites and shows. Since we have a wholesale division we have no choice but to use our website.
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It certainly helps you look more professional as long as the page is well curated and maintained. People still put a lot of trust in a .com
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I’ve noticed that some buyers wont even interact with me through their morph market page, or will direct me to their personal site. I don’t bother wasting my money with those people anymore.
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@akmorphs Not to mention that a lot of places that do that don’t always have pictures of individual animals and won’t send you any. I don’t buy animals I can’t see. I just go through MM for animals now since many websites aren’t as easy to navigate and rarely have individual animals pictured.
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Yea, I’ve seen that. It’s small things you start to notice. Some of these listing will have a quantity on their listing, and I don’t think people realize that.
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