Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Market Your Earthworms

Sell Your Worms!

Let's return to  my series Worm Farming Problems and how to get started worm farming right.  This post covers #6: Poor Marketing.
  1. Not paying attention to your worms
  2. Over selling your worms
  3. Under selling (not expanding your market)
  4. Expanding too fast
  5. Poor customer service
  6. Poor marketing
  7. Not delegating
There's no doubt about it.  Once you give your worms what they need to reproduce and keep them safe and happy, you will very soon be up to your armpits in earthworms.  You will continue to have worms up to your armpits if you don't do the next single most important thing in a worm farm (or any) business: Market your product.

Marketing simple means getting the word out that you have worms, getting the word out to the right people, knowing where to get the word out, and knowing the right words to get out. You have to find the buyers, sell those buyers, and sell those buyers what they need.

You can sell your worms locally and you can sell them online.  You may find most of your sales are online once you get a website up and traffic flowing.  This can take a little time, but it will probably be the biggest source of sales.  However, selling locally may be your best market, depending on where you live.

Market Your Worms As Fish Bait

If you live in an area with lots of lake and waterways with good fishing, you have a built in customer base.  You have two ways to go.  You can sell directly to the fishermen.  You can sell to bait shops. You can do both.  O.k., that three ways.

If you sell directly to customers, the profit is much greater, but if you can't reach enough customers,  the volume may not be big enough.  If you're not good at selling or don't have the time, selling wholesale to bait shops may be your best bet.  You'll need to sell a higher volume to make a good profit, but you only have to worry about selling a few buyers.  

Once you've acquired the bait shop as a customer,   the sales are pretty automatic.  Just make sure you don't take them for granted and keep in touch regularly and give good, fast service with the best worms you can produce.  Believe me, they  need worms from a dependable source. 

Market Your Worms To Gardeners and Vermicomposters

If you live in a rual area or an urban area that has a high interest in gardening, especially organic gardening, you can sell your worms to vermicomposters.  This type of composting is very popular now as gardeners are becoming aware of the benefits.  

Individual home gardeners will be a good source, but they generally buy smaller amounts.  But you can sell to farmers and they can use lots of worms for making their own rich fertilizer.  Municipalities also are beginning to use worms to convert the tons of organic waste produced each year. Many are beginning to consider the ecologically friendly practice of vermicomposting,

Selling Worms Online

This subject requires a lot of explaining, so I will devote an entire series on setting up your website and selling worms online.  A website  is an absolute must, even if you just sell locally.  It establishes in the minds of the buying public that  you are a legitimate, serious business.  It will help you find customers and keep those customers.

More on setting up an online presence later.

Worm Farm Manual

Worm Farm Manual

If your serious about worm farming, check out my Worm Farm Manual You find many other tips and how to's that will get you started worm farming.

Why make the mistakes that puts most worm farmers out of business before they even get started?  See what you need to do and what you need NOT to do before you jump into worm farming  business.

Download e-book: Start reading your manual immediately on your computer.

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