Is the Agricultural Industry Saturated?
(Composting, Worms, Seeds, Seedlings, Eggs, Milk, Meat, etc.)

I’ve discussed the topic “Is the Agricultural Industry Saturated?” about a decade ago but only on social media, in short.

This is an article for all those who have a business related to worms, composting, gardening, and also related to homesteading and farmsteading. Maybe you’re thinking of getting into the agricultural industry from ground zero. 

Should you get into any of these industries? Let's discuss.

I Believe It Can Only Go North From Here

By now, you’ve probably asked yourself, “IS the Agricultural Industry Saturated?” Heck! It doesn’t even need to be business related either. It could be anything agriculturally related, but I wanted to share this as an article of encouragement & enlightenment.

I’ll begin with my humble beginnings because you might also start from nothing.

When I first started my website (WFR) in 2010 (yes, 14 years ago) I looked at many other worm-related websites. My jaw dropped. There were so many and so much competition! Immediately I became discouraged and felt that I would never be able to compete with those that had already beaten me to the punch! My dream of sharing my passion for a healthier and more fulfilling life was squelched.

There were so many websites selling worms and worm-related products that, what I had to say, was just going to be another voice in the crowd. My hopes became dimmer and dimmer as I slowly closed the screen to my laptop, shut the living room light off, and went to bed.

As I lay there, feeling my dreams were crushed, I prayed for an answer for guidance and asked if I was even doing the right thing or if I was supposed to start something like this. After a while I got to thinking about WHY I wanted to publish a website in the first place. I asked myself, “Are you stupid? What is your goal for sharing your successes and failures with the rest of the world?”

So, it dawns on me. The answer lies in the question - “To share my successes and failures with the rest of the world”. Okay then, what’s in it for me? ‘To share my successes and failures with the rest of the world’. That’s all I wanted to do.

To be honest, that’s not completely all I wanted. I did want some kind of ROI anyway I could. Who doesn’t want to make a living doing what they love the most? and what I love to do the most is help people. It’s EXTREMELY fulfilling.

That’s it! That was “THE MISSION”. So, I set my mind to figuring how I would help people solve a problem. That’s when the FREE worm farming guide was launched.

Some people are too anxious and passionate about trying to figure out what business to start up in order to make money. I was the opposite. I turned my passion into a machine that truly helps people. THE CAUSE/MISSION COMES FIRST, then everything else follows.

I put my blinders on, turned off the TV, shut down multiple web tabs and browsers, and concentrated on what I wanted to do. It took several weeks, many days of being up from 9 am - 3 am, then the weeks turned into months. Honestly, they flew by.

Fast forward to today, 2024.
It wasn’t easy but I had fun and still am. I rarely have many late nights now, but I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy the testimonials and smiles. I still have a lot of learning to do and what I learn from experiences, and everyone else, I will continue to share.

Remember the “competition” I mentioned earlier? After I was well into writing my free guide I received a huge reality-slap across my ego. I asked myself, “Why are you looking at other Sites as competition? Don’t try to compete. Join in and show the community how to do something healthy, fulfilling, and successful YOUR WAY.

Remember, the "cause" comes first, NOT the business. I don’t look at any of you as competition but as fellow advocates of a worthy cause. Yes, I understand that we need to make money in order to support what we do, but we can still merge together yet stand alone. What do I mean by this?

This goes back to our topic:

Is the Agricultural Industry Saturated?

For instance, let’s look at saturated industries:

• Would you build a restaurant off the main street where no other food chains are? Maybe, but hopefully not.
  
  
• Would you advertise for customers to come to your store and buy your product or would you rather have it picked up by Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, & Lowes? In the 90's you'd want dept. stores. Today, you'd want both.
  
  
• Would you say, “Don’t place my book in Barnes and Noble with all the other books! Gees! No one will ever see it!” You Probably wouldn’t!

Food courts, department stores, and libraries are all saturated. BUT…THIS is where YOU want to be.

We should be joining in and promoting one another as long as they’re like-minded and you trust them. No one has got it all together, but all of us together got it all.

Because believe me, many people will come to your website and leave just because they don’t like what you have to say, how you say it, your website layout, the content, the way you look, or the color of your hair…they’re just GONE! You may only have a few seconds to pique their interest. We all know this.

Most people that visit websites leave quickly to the next one.

But what if a visitor hates everything about your Site. I mean, what if I couldn’t sell ice to an Eskimo or talk a dog off a meat wagon, BUT they notice a cool looking book, a video, or an article about, say, Diatomaceous Earth, a product I'm affiliated with, or a course I promote.

I’ve spent thousands of hours building this website. How dare they leave! 🤬

But if I affiliate myself with others, a visitor purchases DE, books, or worms, then I’ve made a little money from them. I can continue to build great informative webpages (or improve on existing pages) and keep less people from leaving, and likewise, the other way around, send people to my most trusted friends. You may even decide to not affiliate and just send them to another website because you want them to have a great experience from YOUR Site.

That’s something your visitor might remember and have no clue how they got to the other Site and have to come back to yours. When they come back, they noticed something different and (this time) they like your specific content or product.

This is what I mean by joining together yet standing alone.

Some people/companies may not be the best at one topic but they’re GREAT with another.

Whose book was that? Oh yeah! my “competitor” I mean, fellow advocator, the late, great Mary Appelhof “Worms Eat My Garbage”, an old book yet still relevant to worm behavior, because worms don't change.

Is the agricultural industry saturated? YES!
Is the gardening industry saturated? YES!

Is the worm farming industry saturated?
A resounding ABSOLITELY YES!

This means there's a HUGE need to fill and what is that need? It’s a small niche (when starting out as a small company), or maybe it’s a very big niche/industry to fulfill. It’s up to you to find out who, what, and how it will need to be filled. You just have to start, apply yourself, and never quit.

I can tell you success stories from kids to grandparents of small start-ups that grew enormously, and only in the last 5 years too. The market was saturated then too.

They’re all in my Worm Directory pages.

You might fulfill a niche, within a niche, within a niche, and it can turn into a giant client for you who will tell other clients. OH! It happens! This was BEFORE the 2020 era.

Let me tell you what I mean about this topic, “Is the agricultural industry saturated?”

I predicted this long before the pandemic of 2020. Many people, like me, were tired of seeing how our food was grown, processed, and treated. It all started from the grass roots (no pun intended).

It's no different than EV cars. People wanted them on there own before the government got involved.

Many gardeners started growing naturally, we shared how successful we were, and it only grew from there.

Forward to 2019…

So many of us were already aware of how to grow healthy food, raise meat, milk, and eggs that we couldn’t help but share on our websites and SM platforms. I have long predicted that something was going to happen because we were just climbing out of the 08 housing bubble.

Losing your property means you also lose your garden or homestead too, but at least you hold to the knowledge of how to do farm and garden. I always say, “It’s best to learn in the good times so you will have already made your mistakes and learned from them. You can’t afford to fail in the bad times.”

By the time 2020 hit, everyone was sitting at home learning how to knit, crochet, bake sour dough, grow house plants (plant parenting as gen-z calls it), keeping chickens, raising goats, gardening, composting, worm composting, making worm tea, AND Tiger King too! 😒 AND the many other binge-watching shows (among so many other things, like Day-Trading💹).

The increased awareness in growing plants was associated with worm composting. People want the best soil for their plants. The spiked interest in 2020 was a no-brainer.  We were ready for a flood of hungry people wanting to know everything about anything “plant-related”.

This caused me to predict that each year would grow increasingly stronger in the need for worms and worm-related products (worm bins, books, videos, tea brewing supplies, techniques, etc).

Fast forward to the end of 2023

Need I mention how terrible it was for gardeners IF they bought seeds, seedlings, or “soil” in 2023? I personally know the struggles (because I had another month and a half late start, due to a long cold spring). Pepper plants were not labeled correctly. I grew Jalapeños rather than sweet peppers. Other pepper plants were not what the label said.

I grew a tomato plant rather than a pepper plant and a cantaloupe plant rather than cucumbers. I also heard of poorly made chicken feed. This caused hens to not lay as many eggs or not lay eggs at all for many homesteaders.

Luckily, I get all our feed from a local mill.
See my video Increasing Egg Production in Chickens

Now you see how some BIG corporations go for money rather than quality. Now you see where there’s a demand for you. There’s a need or a niche to fulfill. People are looking for you because they want local or small, trusted ma & pa startups, or just someone who knows what they’re doing and is in control from the ground up.

They want someone who’s not afraid to get out from behind a desk and get dirty. SHOOT! Most of us don’t even know what a desk is other than something that holds our worm bins and miscellaneous junk.

I would love to give you some stats on how the worm composting and gardening industry has grown in the past 10 years, but after comparing my personal experience and website stats to a simple word search on the Internet, it’ll bore you to death. So, I’ll let you dig your own grave below, but I think you already know.

Did you also notice how nurseries and big box stores kept their plant season open much, much longer this year? Because they were saturated and customers kept buying.

Since I can't resist, I'll still back my words (just a bit) by linking to a few outside sources.

See below how it began to rise before 2020. We did this!😁

Worm Farming Revealed Site Statistics

Because I’ve had a web presence in the worm farming, composting, and gardening industry for 14 years, here are my statistics for the past year (2023) and the last 9 years (pre-2020). It doesn't mean as much to me if my stats don't align with this phenom. So here it is.

Last 16 mos.
Visitors = unique or first time
Visits = returning

June 2023

Where Do WFR Referrals Come From? (the first 24 lines)

By Country, Dec. 2023 (first 5 lines)

Total Monthly Visits for December Only:

• December 2023 - Visits = 30407
• December 2022 - Visits = 23767
• December 2021 - Visits = 27105
• December 2020 - Visits = 24525
• December 2019 - Visits = 23518
• December 2018 - Visits = 23060
• December 2017 - Visits = 24809
• December 2016 - Visits = 25166
• December 2015 - Visits = 18980

I picked December because these are the driest months, due to winter and holidays. You'll notice that my numbers don't seem to climb much each year.

This is very good considering the facts:

1. I've created more offline content than online (books, videos, SM, etc.)
2. There are many more startups everyday in the agricultural industry, but more specific, the worm, gardening, and composting industry. These are many of my buzz words.

The more content I create, the more visitors I would generally get for keywords and longtail keywords.

Keep in mind that companies want to sell you something. They may overinflate their numbers and exaggerate in order to sell you something. I trust you know how to cut through the noise.

Understand, my stats will not be your stats. I may have over 750 online pages (not including offline books). Some webpages are up to 40 pages long. So, one page can be small books. This article alone is 8 pages. You just can’t compare my stats with other stats. You’ll need to keep up on your analytics with your website creator tools along with implementing GA (Google Analytics). FYI, I do not have GA on every page.

You’ll no longer be asking, “Is the worm farming industry saturated?” You know it is!

Saturation fears will be a thing of the past for you. It doesn't bother me. Nor has it changed for me. Keep plugging away, make connections, and be true to yourselves and the community. All the rest will fall into place.

I NEVER thought I’d write a screenplay (let alone any books) because I hate to read. BUT, here I am. I’ve beaten my own path, had fun along the way, and opened new doors for me and others.

Please don’t look at others as competition unless they have chosen to go down that path. Those are the Sites/companies that will not last. They stand alone in a bad location where no one goes. I barely remember some of those Sites and faces when I first started. They’re no longer around.

But you WILL be around if you remain true to the cause, true to yourself, and unite together to support one goal, to help others live a healthier, happier life and that TRULY takes a community.

The only thing that could stop us now is a governor, or an Act of Congress, but somehow I think we're bigger than them. 💪

I hope this will help you look at who you are and test why you’re doing what you’re doing, but most of all encourage you to KEEP doing it, put on your blinders, ignore the noise, and don't give up.

Stay True My Friends 😉

~Pauly