Breeders are advertising and marketing pet birds on the web.
So how do you start marketing birds online?
There are several different paths, and some of the breeders I interviewed used most of them. T
hey also use more traditional forms of marketing, as well.
The best on-line, and off-line, marketing is still the recommendation of a satisfied customer.
We view on-line marketing as one more tool for introducing ourselves, disseminating information and maintaining customer contact.
Online Marketing Options
Forums : Internet forums can be very general or very specific.
You can subscribe to them.
They are free, and whenever you log in you will see any new postings.
Mailing Lists: Another way people frequently advertise is through mailing lists.
A mailing list is more private, and you need to subscribe to it. You will then get all the posts on the list through e-mail. Most of them have digest formats, which are easier to handle.
Subscribing is free and involves sending an e-mail request to the list manager.
Lists are usually friendlier and more personal than newsgroups.
People tend to get to know the members on the list, as well as their birds.
The more a breeder interacts and becomes well known online, the better.
It's very easy to tell, by reading lists, which breeders are very caring and careful with their babies.
It's also a great way to exchange information.
Advertising Web sites: There are lots of opportunities to advertise on a web site without setting up one of your own. The major search engines also include classified ads.
Use specific classified web sites for birds and the personal home pages of others to advertise.
There are also some web sites that deal only with birds that have advertising sections.
There, you can either have a small free ad, or some sites charge for a larger ad.
For example, Birds n Ways (http://www.birdsnways.com) has four types of ads.
Basic ads, up to 4 lines, are free.
Premium ads contain a small graphic, up to eight lines of text and begin at $5 per month.
More complex ads can run up to $50, or you can buy a banner, which is a large, graphical ad that rotates through all the pages and is displayed at the top of the page.
The price for a banner was not listed, but of course you can use the e-mail address to find out.
Your Own Website
There are some great web sites on the Internet that breeders have put together.
These sites include not only advertisements, but also lots of useful bird-care information and great pictures of birds.
Get your own web site
If you do not want to construct your own website, you can have a consultant do it for you.
Web sites are like a brochure that shows potential buyers what you, your birds and your facilities are like.
Have your own domain name, and make it catchy and easy to remember.
Establish a warm personality on your page with lots of pictures of birds.
Show what your birds and your facility looks like with pictures of your pet birds
Include lots of information.
Articles about bringing home your new bird, nutrition, basic bird care and articles about the species of birds you sell are good ideas.
Once you have your web page up, you need to promote it. Include the url (universal resource locator—the address of your web page) in any other ads that you having in magazines, on other web pages, mailing lists and newsgroups.
Offer lots information on your page.
That way, other people will begin linking to it, and you will start getting customers as a result.
You can hire a designer to do the initial design so that it looks good and is easy to read.
Once you become familiar with the process, you can probably learn to do your own updates.
It may be best to have an experienced site designer create your first site. Thereafter costs can be minimized if you are able to maintain and expand your site, which is very easy if you are computer literate.
Based on estimates, the price range for a simple web page is $200-$500. More elaborate web pages can cost lots of money - the sky is the limit.
Even so, the price should usually not be more than $2,000. Updates can cost $50 and up a month, and expect to pay $30 to $50 a month to have the site hosted on the web.
Personal Communication with Buyers
It's important to establish personal communication with your customers. All the breeders ship birds, so they may never meet their clients.
Send digital pictures every week to people that send deposits for babies and I also send pictures to people that are interested in breeders.
This really eliminates the 'sight unseen' purchase.
Is Online Marketing Different?
Most of the breeders think there were no major differences.
Internet marketing offers the same courtesies and services as local or any other marketing.
This includes a guarantee of health and support as it is needed. Internet marketing is really no different than any other method of marketing.
Reputation, a quality product, confidence of the buyer and support are all important.
Everyone likes online marketing because of the instant notification, the waiting for publication is removed.
The other side of that is that many people do not know of the sites or domains where what they are looking for is offered.
That is slowly changing, more and more people are using the 'net' for their birds and related stuff.
On the Internet you do reach more people but you cannot get the same prices you can get through other means.
For example, there are many people on-line selling Goffin's cockatoos so I can sell one on-line for $700 to be competitive.
But in the pet stores they are $1200, so I can sell one to a non-Internet friendly person for $900 and they think they are getting a major deal over pet shop prices, which they are.
Problems
Most of the breeders found that there were no problems inherent to online marketing.
Buying and selling blind means trades or purchases from other states are risky - you could get a very sick bird or none at all.
I have also run across shipping problems since the Internet usually causes you to find buyers in other states.
Be careful - get everything in writing. Costs, vet checks, health guarantee. It's harder to know who you are sending a bird to if you've never met them and most likely you'll never see that bird again. It's not something to be taken lightly! But it can give you world-wide exposure as a bird breeder/aviary.
In summary, it seems that marketing online is a successful solution for many breeders.
Post what you have to offer, build a good reputation and be patient - just like with raising birds!
This article should give the reader an indication of the covert nature of this organism, enabling it to exist without disease signs in many pet birds and aviaries. To fight an infectious disease, you must never underestimate the enemy and you must understand its many characteristics. The purpose of this article is to allow the reader to gain a better understanding of the Chlamydia psittaci organism and the effect it has on the pet bird industry.
Every year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sponsor a Chlamydia psittaci compendium to review human and avian diagnostic tests and treatments. The CDC calls the human infection, human psittacosis, and the bird infection avian chlamydiosis. Since that is the official government designations, I will follow that format for this article and would encourage the aviculture community to do the same. Chlamydia organisms are nonmotile, obligate, intracellular, parasitic agents that have not yet been satisfactorily classified taxonomically.1,2 The most important fact that aviculturists and pet bird owners should remember regarding the description of the chlamydial organism is that it functions within the host's cell. The intracellular lifecycle makes it difficult to identify, especially if the bird is not showing signs of infection or if the infection involves a whole aviary.
How The Disease Occurs
A particular "strain" of the Chlamydia psittaci organism may live within a single bird or an aviary full of a single psittacine species. This organism can change its characteristics within the birds of an aviary over time, allowing the infected birds, say cockatiels, to become subclinical carriers, showing no signs of infection. If the aviculturist brings home a new psittacine species, such as an Amazon parrot, it may become infected and die within a short period of time once it is exposed to the organism in the cockatiel aviary. The cockatiels that were initially in the aviary may have adult death losses or chick deaths, especially in the second, third and fourth clutches, due to adult shedding from stress related to raising the young. This is a reason that aviculturists should always have birds necropsied if they are unsure of the cause of death. One necropsy now will prevent monetary loss in the future and help protect the aviculturist.
Once a bird is sold, the seller often provides a short time period for a health status examination by an avian veterinarian. This exam may be useful to determine any obvious clinical disease, sex or skeletal abnormalities, but it will be difficult to test and confirm that the bird is free of a Chlamydia psittaci infection. Since the chlamydial organism lives within the host cells and is shed through the feces and respiratory tract intermittently, diagnosis is difficult, if not impossible with the tests currently available.
If the bird is showing obvious clinical illness, it is much easier to diagnose avian chlamydiosis. A complete blood count may be the best way to determine a bird's health status regarding Chlamydia psittaci. For this reason, short-term post-purchase physical examinations cannot rule out the possibility of a new bird being infected with this intracellular bacteria. All bird owners must realize this fact and adjust their thought processes on post-purchase physical examinations. This is another reason that bird owners should quarantine all new birds and birds that have been to fairs and shows for at least six to eight weeks prior to allowing a bird to return to the main aviary .
The target tissue for the chlamydial organism is in the upper respiratory system. Bird breeders or pet bird owners who do not clean cages on a regular basis allow the organism, that is mainly shed in the feces, to aerosolize, thereby exposing themselves and susceptible birds. Maintaining a clean aviary will reduce exposure and illness to other birds and aviary personnel if there is a sick bird shedding the bacteria. Infectious organisms that can be transmitted from animals to humans are called zoonotic diseases. Pneumonia, high fever, sweating and general fatigue are the common associated with human psittacosis. It is recommended that all bird owners inform their physician of avian ownership, especially if they have the "flu-like" signs described above. This is a treatable illness, but if left untreated, may cause death in some cases. Human psittacosis is rare, and death associated with the infection in humans extremely rare. The aviculture community would like to keep it that way. So please do your part as responsible bird owners to keep all bird owners and especially new bird owners informed about this disease.
Clinical signs associated with the illness in pet birds include depression, anorexia, green diarrhea, difficulty breathing, choanal inflammation and nasal discharge. The chlamydial organism affects the liver and other major vital organs. Green diarrhea is associated with the hepatitis that occurs during an avian chlamydiosis infection. In large aviaries, especially cockatiel aviaries, neonatal death is common, especially before weaning, due to the shedding of the infectious organism by the immune stressed parents. As mentioned previously, young bird death occurs most frequently during the second, third and fourth clutches. If the aviculturist does not identify and treat the disease properly, it will become subclinical and affect future breeding success.
Once a bird or aviary has been diagnosed with Chlamydia psittaci, it is the responsibility of the owner to make sure that the bird(s) are properly treated. The chlamydial organism is an intracellular bacteria that makes it difficult to treat, and infected birds must be treated for a 45-day period. The drug of choice is tetracycline or a tetracycline derivative such as doxycycline. This drug may be administered in manufactured pellet form or in the water to treat a large aviary or difficult pet bird. For the single pet bird, oral medication or weekly injections may be given to treat avian chlamydiosis.
No other drug currently available has the beneficial therapeutic effect of doxycycline when treating this disease. One nutritional complication, calcium binding, may occur when treating with oral doxycycline. This is especially problematic when young growing birds are on long term doxycline drug therapy. Calcium supplement must be supplied between oral treatments or made available to birds within the aviary being treated in the water or pellets.
To realize breeding success and maintain pet bird health avian owners must understand the organism that causes avian chlamydiosis and human psittacosis. This is not only an important disease organism affecting avian species but humans, as well. Chlamydia psittaci is a difficult organism to identify, especially in the subclinical bird, so bird keepers must help their avian veterinarian and have all unknown deaths necropsied. Once identified, it is up to the owner to treat the birds properly. Currently, there are research investigations on better diagnostic tests and a vaccine for better identification and protection. Until the new tests become perfected and the vaccine is available, the bulk of the responsibility of controlling the organism lies with aviculturists, pet bird owners and avian veterinarians.
