The sales process starts with exposure - putting your farm and offerings in front of as many people as possible. Openherd.com generates far more site traffic and exposure than any individual farm website can and is the best place to generate the exposure you need to drive your sales.

In order to take advantage of the substantial site traffic on Openherd and direct them to your sales pages, Openherd offers affordable advertising that will dramatically increase your exposure ("impressions"), and direct visits to your pages ("click-throughs"). Openherd also offers membership plans that allow you to easily run your own online auctions on Openherd.com and generate exponential exposure and opportunities for sales.

In order to give you the best chance of converting a visitor to your pages into a sales lead, Openherd gives you the best website management tools in the industry to easily create appealing, professional sales pages. Openherd also offers complete farm websites that automatically update themselves based on the pages you create and edit on Openherd. This allows you to have an Openherd presence AND your own farm website and keep them both updated from a single place!

Summary: Being a member of Openherd is good for your business because you will benefit from the greatest internet exposure, the ease of publishing professional sales lists and other pages about your farm online, and other tools that will help to drive your sales, all from the convenience of your computer, any time of day!

Yes. However, we recommend that every farm also have their own farm website. That's because you will increase your exposure in search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.), give your visitors a richer, branded experience of your farm and make it less likely they'll browse away to a competitor.

Unlike other group marketing websites that only offer a personalized color scheme and URL that isn't very easy to communicate, Openherd offers complete farm websites that are separate from Openherd and have their own website address (i.e. www.myfarm.com) but share the same pages and information that you upload to Openherd. This means that you only have to make edits in one place but both sites will update simultaneously!

Openherd offers a free account to any farm as a way for them to get up to speed and try Openherd out. To learn about the features and benefits of our paid membership plans, please take a look at our Plans, Pricing, & Features page.

Openherd offers a free membership that includes all of the same basic farm profile features as our paid membership plans. This gives any farm the opportunity to try out Openherd without risk.

Once a member is ready to upgrade to a paid membership and get the benefits of all the additional sales features, their credit card will be charged and their paid membership period will start right away. Paid membership fees are non-refundable. Openherd offers annual and monthly payment options to fit everyone's budget.

First you will select a membership plan. You will then create your account by choosing a username and password. After this you will be asked to provide your credit card and contact information. Once this step is complete, you will be taken to your new account where you can create your farm and/or store pages and begin uploading your sales listings.

During your account creation process you will be sent a welcome email with a link to click to activate your account. Until you complete this step, your presence and sales listings will not be viewable to others on Openherd.

For farms and for individuals just wanting to bid on Openherd auctions or participate in forum discussions, Openherd offers free accounts. For farms and vendors, Openherd offers a number of paid membership plans. For more details, please take a look at our Plans, Pricing, & Features page.

You can cancel your membership at any time but there are no refunds for unused portions of a paid membership period. If you want to downgrade your paid membership to a free account, you may do so but any features and uploaded information that are part of a paid membership will be lost. If you decide to close your account on Openherd, your account information will be lost.

No. You do not have to be a farm to advertise, however you must have an Openherd account and all advertising must comply with Openherd's Advertising Terms and Conditions.

No. If you feel challenged with a computer, then you're in good company - most people are! That's why we put so much effort into not only developing powerful marketing tools but making them very easy, intuitive, and even fun to use!

And if for any reason you don't find them to be so, we like to hear about it from you so we can make things work better. Websites can be impersonal but we're real people who care about helping you get what you need to get done. So if you need help with anything or want to suggest an improvement, just send us an email or give us a call.

Absolutely! Openherd's purpose is to help farms market themselves to the world. We stay up with the latest and most effective ways of marketing online and design our system to make you look professional and polished on the internet the instant you upload your information. This means that you can focus on the quality of your sales information and we take care of presenting it compellingly and dynamically to our site visitors.

Of course writing your sales text, determining your prices, and other things that are unique to what you are offering is your responsibility but Openherd puts helpful tips right on your editing pages to help you understand what to enter. We also have a Member Support page that can answer many questions. If you're just not sure or think we might be able to help, just send us an email or give us a call.

Yes. The last thing you need is to double your time and effort updating sales lists in two different places. Openherd's ListMirrorTM synchronization script, once copied to your webpage, will make your Openherd sales lists automatically show up.

Alternatively, Openherd offers complete farm websites where not just the sales lists but any other information and additional web pages, blogs, and articles uploaded to Openherd will automatically display and update. This means you can have your own complete farm website without having to make separate updates.

For more information, please take a look at our Websites page.