Raising Earthworms: Starting A Small Business

So you have an earthworm bed or two and want to make a profit from your hard work and start a business. You can put your earthworms in cups and sell to established bait and tackle shops or you can open your own shop or do both. My father started out by selling wholesale and eventually opened up his own shop.
In my opinion selling wholesale is a lot tougher with smaller returns. You have to establish a territory, visit the shops, convince the business owners to buy your worms and do a lot of driving. You have to sell your earthworms at a competitive lower price for bulk and you have to stand behind your product. That means that if worms die they have to be replaced.
I was a sales rep for a company when my father was getting his shop established and did a lot of local driving own my own. At the time, my dad had four large worm beds and an over abundance of earthworms. He got a business license and put up a sign on some property he owned and before you knew it fishermen were stopping by to buy worms. He put fifty in each cup and they couldn't sell fast enough. As a sales rep, I would run into fishing tackle wholesalers on the road and asked them to drop by my dads place and see if they could help get him into selling tackle.
He started selling cane poles, hooks, bobbers, leads and even bought a tank to sell minnows and shiners. But his main product were the earthworms. They were easy to maintain and the overhead consisted of buying Styrofoam cups and lids, bags of feed, water for the beds and paying someone to count and cup the worms. If he had known that people would actually pay for the casings he would have sold that too but he gave it away to friends. His shop gained a good reputation and was always busy. I worked for him part time maintaining the beds and digging earthworms. He got out of selling earthworms wholesale and sold strictly from his small business from then on.

11 comments:

  1. It is a very good advise both how to grow earthworms and grow it into a small business.
    Congradulation Ben and thanks for your advise.

    Mr Siengseu Pang

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  2. Thank you for all the info as I am just getting started on my own little bait shop you have a lot of valuable info. I will be refuring back to your sight time and time again.

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  3. hi my name is zoie I am 9 years old and me and my dad are gonna see if we can start our own earthworn farm so thanks for your information zoie anderson,

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  4. Hi Zoie. I'm glad that I can help. Let me know how well you and your dad do. Thanks, Ben

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  5. I want to stop buying worms and have my own supply for my tackle shop in Ireland. I have a stackable compost bin system. Are Dendrobaenas OK. Do they multiply fast? I sell about 1500 worms a week. How long does it take 1500 worms to become 3000 worms? Any suggestions.

    Thanks a lot

    Sean - Ireland

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  6. I looked at this website and it looked intresting and i wanted to start growing earthworms. I was looking for a way to earn some money and work with an animal i like, like earthworms and i wanted to know how much bait shops would pay for one worm?

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  7. Hi I own a small resort and my worm supplier has retired so I thought I might give it a try. Our resort is seasonal, may to sept and then it is too cold to fish. Can I let the extra worms go and start over in the spring? Would they come back to the surface so that I could dig them up when the ground thaws? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

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  8. Hi Roz, this is Ben. Being from Florida I'm not familiar with raising worms in a frozen ground.

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  9. I have been interested in raising my own worms for fishing, and to give to friends. This sounds like a much better idea. make a little profit, and still get my fishing in.
    thank you

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  10. Thanks Ben for your help. My two young elementary aged children are looking for an opportunity to raise "allowance" money during the summer. I teach school, 5th grade, and thought it might be a great learning opportunity for them to learn first hand about decomposers and how they benefit the environment. We live in a small fishing community in Central Louisiana and are excited about this new venture. T.

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  11. Hi Ben, I'm semi retired and seriously thinking about selling worms and possibly growing it from there. I live in farm country in lower NY state and have plenty of access to top soiland manure, currently I have a large pile of this soil that I have been digging worms from, but many of the worms are very small, I'm assuming their not mature yet. Can you tell me how long it takes for worms to become fully matured and is there a certain season when that produce offspring? Thanks for the info Mark H.

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