FaunaClassifieds - View Single Post - Photos and price should be mandatory.
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Old 09-30-2019, 04:07 AM   #7
nickolasanastasiou
As the others have mentioned, not including photographs and not including pricing becomes a matter of negative seller self-selection. I have occasionally bought from people who have not included one or both of these, but it definitely hampers sales in general to not have this kind of information immediately available to serious buyers. I ignore such ads more often than not. I know that when I place my ads, I want photographic representation and pricing to be very clear so that I save both myself and prospective customers from wasting time (which respects myself and respects others by doing so). With modern electronic devices, almost everyone using the internet to place ads has a camera of some kind that can capture passable images of an animal being listed. For pricing, one might as well get things out of the way to select for seriously interested parties in advance (and select against "dreamers" who have beluga tastes on a tarama budget if you are dealing in the pricey stuff). Other conveniences offered in an ad might be information regarding the current diet (not what it can eat, but what it is eating), individual-specific behavioral notes, significant points regarding lineage, health history, and so on. As a buyer, I want all of that to the extent it is capable of being known and shared, but the images and pricing are especially critical. As a seller, I like to select my buyers as well, so I consciously limit my energy burn on explaining care and urge people to gain/have an idea of what is needed before they reach out. That means they spend time reading up independently and not expect some canned guide (which is often either myopically constrained by false authorities or outright ignored anyway). If a person does not have the initiative to form some kind of decent foundation via time spent reading around before grabbing at an animal, I do not want to sell to that person. I do not want to send my animals to a person who will spend a lot of money yet will spend no time.

It also depends on the type of seller. If a person is primarily into the wholesale game, either as a breeder or in association with a larger multi-species wholesale house/business, he/she often has a list which is strong on pricing details and weak on photos. Serious boutique breeders and resellers are more likely to devote the energy to getting better information to prospective customers in the hope that the time invested up front leads to a better signal-to-noise ratio from more serious buyers. While some guys are plainly lazy with pricing and photos, others do not really understand what goes into advertising and assume magical market response is simply owed to them for some reason. These guys tend to complain a lot when weak ads lead to weak sales, but that is their own fault.