For those of you who sell kids for breeding stock or milking - talking registered goats and not just yard pets - what are ways you go about finding the best homes possible?
Up to now, Craigslist has been the only option for us in our location, and we found our first Nigerians that way. But I am a little uncomfortable (perhaps just paranoid) about selling goats that way. I know once you sell them, you can't control what happens to them. I just want to know that I've done everything I can to find them a really, really good home.
We've had luck on CL so far - found a WONDERFUL pet home for 3 wethers and an infertile doe that I reeeeeally didn't want to see go for barbecue, and they only live a couple hours away so I get to see them sometimes. But I would love to hear from people who've been doing it longer than I to know what are better ways to do this.
I would venture a guess that websites play a significant role, since the top-notch buck and doe we since added to our herd we found through website searches. Does anybody advertise their herd/farm/website anywhere so that people will see it?
I found out about a 'Nigerian Dwarf goats for sale' Facebook group, that is just for registered goats. I like that idea a lot better than CL. There must be avenues out there that I haven't learned about yet.
I am just thinking out loud and planning ahead since this will be the first year we have more than only a couple kids to sell. Perhaps some of the resident experts might share their thoughts and/or experiences?
Replies
Thank you, Glenna Rose!! That is very helpful!
I appreciate how thorough you are in your responses Glenna Rose.
Glenna Rose said:
As I understand it, you want every photo, etc., to begin with "NigerianDwarfGoatsInTennessee" and whatever else you want to call that photo. The name of the file itself would be: "NigerianDwarfGoatsInTennesseePhoto01.jpg" "NigerianDwarfGoatsInTennesseePhoto02.jpg" etc. (That is zero one and zero two not the letter "o"). Those are not visible to the web site reader but are picked up by the search engines. If the files are other than jpg files, that would include their extension (.pdf, etc.).
It has nothing to do with any caption on the picture itself; that is a "different animal" and is visible when viewing the web site. On the caption with the photo, you would not, of course, want to run words together like that as it would make it difficult to read.
I hope that better clarifies it. For this discussion, photo name is the file name; the caption has nothing to do with the file name but what is visible to the reader. As you described it: "The actual name you save the photo as in the technical nuts and bolts part of the site."
Not knowing how you name your photos, I can say that perhaps you could add that to the beginning of each photo name. In doing that, I would add a space or hyphen between that "leader" and the rest of your name. That might be the simplest way to do it to be able to match it up with the way your files are stored in your directory on your hard drive. My photos are named by the date taken with the camera-assigned number at the end of it, such as "2015-0130-088.jpg" so if I were going to use this to try to increase hits, I would re-name it to upload it to the web site "VanEdenGoats 2015-0130-088.jpg" Though I did not ask that question, it seems logical to use those names before you upload them (versus renaming them on line) so there is no doubt as to what the name is as seen by the computer and search engines.
I would suggest that, if you talk about this to others who do web sites to not refer to them as "key words" as they will likely interpret it as key words as they were used in the command line in the past rather that what you are actually doing. In the dark ages, when I first created web pages, that was the way we did it to get hits but the search engines have since been changed considerably so the "old way" is basically useless.
Rachel Griebenow said:
An hour away from here DHIA in Salem had a class for getting certified to do testing. I wonder if you could find your nearest DHIR facility and get some questions answered. You can also 'owner sample' once you are certified. But the entire process is much more complex than that!
Rachel Griebenow said:
I'm sort of there too. I would love to show just for the enjoyment of it, but there's no way I could afford to travel far enough to get to a show. There's nothing around here.
I want to get into milk testing, but even that seems to be a sticky wicket. I've been searching for where to go to find the people to do it (it sounded like you have to have someone official come out to your farm and do it, unless I misunderstood), and haven't found anything within a reasonable distance. Reasonable, in my case, meaning anything closer than a state or two away. I have got to be missing something.
Karen said:
Ok...let me see if I understand correctly. That is something I have been wondering about but I haven't been able to figure it out.
So having your key words in there would look like (for example): "NigerianDwarfGoatsInTennessee"? And when you say "photo name" do you mean as in a caption? Or the actual name you save the photo as in the technical nuts and bolts part of the site?
Glenna Rose said:
Glenna Rose said:
Thank you for that information, Glenna! I have a lot of updating/editing to do to my site now, based on your suggestions. Fingers crossed that it will help. :)
And I do hope maybe they found a new home with someone else. It's certainly not impossible!
I also use FB groups and forums. I do after all have to pay for my feed bill.
What hurts me the most is that I have real nice quality Nigerians, but I don't go in the show ring. So very few people know about me. (I do LA and I test my milk, but am not 'on' test.) SW Oregon
Rachel said: :"... I guess I'm not doing the SEO settings right somehow, because my site never shows up in Google search results unless I search my actual farm name. I've tried setting it up so that "Nigerian Dwarf goats in Tennessee" or similar searches list my webpage, but so far, no beans. I don't know if it has to do with settings or site traffic or what."
Recently, my son taught a WordPress class at the library. In it he mentioned how to get more hits on your page by the way you name photos (and other files). I had been told this about three years ago and forgot it! Regardless of what the photo is, in your files on your website, include your key words (in this case "Nigerian Dwarf goats in Tennessee") in the names of your photos - do NOT have spaces. Capitalize to separate words for human eyes but no spaces as the search bot stops at a space.) You can have whatever else you want in the file name (photo name) but have that key phrase in each name. It will look odd, but the search engines will find it. If you have 50 photos on your site, you want all 50 of them to begin with that series of words/letters. Those of us who made websites in the dinosaur age were taught to put in "key words" which, as I understand from an expert web designer (not my son in this case) are not no longer used by the search engines - that they stop at a space if they can find it at all. We used to actually have "key words" identified as such - that no longer works which explains what is happening to your page (or not happening). Another thing that scores you higher on the search engines is how many hits your page(s) get, so have all your friends, families, etc., go there often and Refresh or Reload so it counts as a new hit and not from their own computer cache.
On another note, I hope that doe and her wether were picked up by someone who took them home to be their own pets. I can see someone doing that if they knew the goats were getting out a lot and being concerned about their safety with woods close by. I like to think of them all snuggled up in their own little shed in someone's back yard.
Oh, I want to add, I have never haggled. However, I sold that wether for $50, which I now feel is too low. In the future I plan to raise the majority of our wethers as meat, but any I do sell will not be $50. I agree with what others have said -- a $50 goat is not going to be valued as highly as one someone paid more for, in most cases. I think, generally speaking, people care as much about something as they have invested in it, be that an investment of time, money, effort, or what have you. I know a lot of people care for gifts as much as they do for things they've worked for (myself included), but for a lot of people things that cost little also mean little to them and are considered replaceable. But that's just my two cents. :)
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