losing money- help

[Kestrel]

any tips on making money? I have the facilites, an info center, and a tortoise habitat with donation boxes. Idk why im losing money

[Ohiobob]

check your finances tab and figure out what costing money, maybe to much staff, or very expesnive habitats to maintain, or alot of power, or ticket to cheap, can be alot.

[Admiral Ackbar]

Originally posted by KestrelKite:

any tips on making money? I have the facilites, an info center, and a tortoise habitat with donation boxes. Idk why im losing money

Check your finances page.

Make sure you have no extra staff. 1 keeper per habitat. 1-2 caretakers. 1 mechanic, 1 vet more as needed mid game.
Lower amount of animals for food costs.
Don't upgrade staff until MUCH later. Fire them if you have.
Make a drink and food store.
Make sure you have multiple donation boxes. Two for every place they congregate at Habitats.

[Nariel]

It’s based on animal popularity. Just tortoises in a zoo is boring to the guests as they want to see the "popular" animals. i.e. lions, tigers and bears (oh my) :p

Early game it’s hard to afford the “popular” species, so you'll need multiple enclosures with the less popular animals (at least 2, better with 3 species) to start your zoo

Peafowls are a cheap early game animal, you can also have guests walk into the enclosure for better viewing and the animals dont mind

[The Former]

How's your security? Many people lose a lot of money to refunds, and when I ask about security, they often didn't even realize it was necessary. It's an easy thing to overlook, but it can be costly if you don't have at least one security guard keeping guests safe.

[morph113]

The better the animals the more people you will attract and the more entrance fee you can set. My recent park I started with 8 chimpanzees in 1 habitat and that was enough to generate almost 1000 visitors and set the entrance fee to 12/6 instead of the 3/3 it starts at. Now for comparison, my first park I started with 2 habitats with 4 Hyenas and some Nyalas and I only got to like 500 visitors I think. Now if you only have 1 habit with tortoises then you may not get much visitors and low entrance fee which might be barely enough (if at all) to pay for your staff and running costs. Try and start the park with some animals that have a decent popularity. The best animals you can buy without CC (for cash) are good ones like grizzley or black bears or the lemurs are pretty good as well and reproduce very well and can make you a nice CC farm. You can of course also start with less popular animals, in which case however it's best to start with 2 or 3 habitats.

[Nova]

Add 4 or so exhibits with long lived lizards etc and don't over employ.

[TaskeNeron]

start off slow, get some zebras and tigers (they are really cheep right now because of the breeding challenge) stick with just them for a long time (I got about 250k with just them before I got more animals) Currently I have 350k and making 20k a year, with 6 animal species (Tigers, Okapi, and a tone of Safari animals)

Dont rush, take it slow, get at least 200K before you try anything new (so you have a good cushion for when you start to lose money) =) (Also ticket prices matter little, my zoo is FREE to get into, your money maker will be donations)

[Kestrel]

Thanks for all the replies. I have painted dogs now and im gaining cash

[Arylice]

YES. If you are running a campaign scenario, fire those 5 star employees! They drain all your money!
Also, don't forget to restart your map from time to time. Sometimes, the staff gets buggy.

[Narcslayer]

Gharials and Cheetahs are a good starter set to get your zoo up and running no fail every time. they aren't terribly expensive and they have lots of babies.

[GunRunner89X]

Originally posted by Narcslayer:

Gharials and Cheetahs are a good starter set to get your zoo up and running no fail every time. they aren't terribly expensive and they have lots of babies.

This. Although before long you'll be giving your gharials contraceptives ><

[shiggies713]

farm nile monitors and cheetahs for good donations and breeding programs for conservation points, maybe even get some puff adders or something like that for an exhibit, you can make some serious cash selling exhibit animals.

I almost always have a few albino gold rated monitors for sale for less than 100 CP when I'm on. With just 2 of them you can make thousands of CP, and then move on to cheetahs or Okapi or something like that.

I'm actually playing on hard mode and keep training and hiring new staff just to see how far i can push it before i actually start losing money...

[Kestrel]

I posted this thread in November haha. I have since figured it out

[Bonky]

My whole problem was donation boxes. Had four and was going in the hole like made. Added ten and now I'm in the green baby!