Grower vs Dealer: who should make more?

DoctorSmoke

Active Member
yea i see everyone selling dope today. apparently if someone can buy 200 oz they are gonna sell it for 10 per gram, or sell 0.9s.
i dont really want to see ppl going to jail but i dont want so many damn dealers. i was told one day by my dealer that hes waiting for someone to drop off to guy he buys from, wtf 2 middle men atleast.

another problem is everyones got weed to sell, but its mostly garbage. just because u can grow dope doesnt mean its worth 10$ a gram. some ppl cant help to sell whatever was dropped off, its up to us to buy it so we create the problem of shitty dope.
 

mcrandle

New Member
Growers should definitely get more than the actual dealer.

The grower has this plant growing for months either outdoors where risk of detection is greater, or indoors where it chews more of their power. Dealers usually have their network set up, the specific people & groups that they deal to.

A dealer obviously carries a lot of risk, but if the dealer is only dealing to regular customers then he/she lowers their risk. All they do is pick the marijuana up, maybe package it up, and then drop it off to their clients. They're not the ones putting all the effort into the crop, making sure everything is perfect.

Im not downplaying either role, or saying one is better than the other. I'd much rather grow then deal, but growers should be paid more than the dealer. They're doing a lot more work in most cases.


AGREED. A grower is stationary. If the heat is on the dealer, he can drop his shit and run. Dealers take less risks and they are the biggest pricks on the planet. And there is no argument to me of "what if he is set up and gets popped by an undercover?" Too bad, know your friends. Plus, I can't stand a fucking street dealer. They are scum and should be treated as such. And I am not talking about dispensaries.
 

Sunbiz1

Well-Known Member
AGREED. A grower is stationary. If the heat is on the dealer, he can drop his shit and run. Dealers take less risks and they are the biggest pricks on the planet. And there is no argument to me of "what if he is set up and gets popped by an undercover?" Too bad, know your friends. Plus, I can't stand a fucking street dealer. They are scum and should be treated as such. And I am not talking about dispensaries.
Agreed, the majority of street dealers have no idea what they are selling to begin with...most of which is seeded brick shit with poor genetics grown and harvested improperly.

I cannot think of many professions one can make $$ at with ZERO product knowledge/double-digit IQ's...black market weed distributing is an exception.
 

Dutchmast3r

Active Member
i think the grower shud make the most just because its an everyday job..i mean i put at least 5 hours a week into my garden and thts after its going..funds to get it started, etc. were waiting 120 days for a few oz or lbs when the dealers flip tht within a weeks time...grower def put more time into it and deserve to make more.
 

DoctorSmoke

Active Member
i think the grower shud make the most just because its an everyday job..i mean i put at least 5 hours a week into my garden and thts after its going..funds to get it started, etc. were waiting 120 days for a few oz or lbs when the dealers flip tht within a weeks time...grower def put more time into it and deserve to make more.
i can see the sarcasm in that. but theres a chance u may not be joking. a dealer has a full time job, it may not be much but he has to be home and awake on a regular schedule. they usually "work" 12 hour days like 10am-10pm, everyday. if not they lose customers and money, i know if my dealer is too lazy to come out and take my money or has better things to do then fine, i go elsewhere and buy.
the grower works very little, making sure nothing gets out of balance and tends to the crop when needed. even if u wanted to leave for a while u can keep all ur gear on timers. so...
 
as far as who make more percentage wise probally the dealer but it all comes down to volume how much is being sold. So over all the grower would get more but percetage wise the dealer the dealer can get maybe an once ($250-300 0z) n sell it for 15-20 a gram ($420-560 0z) but the grower typically grow multiple 0z :blsmoke:
 

AsianDude

Member
I see you've edited to add insults about my going to the library to do research on root aphids...

You know why I did?

Because I spent probably a whole damn week sitting here researching online only to find not even a single success story. And all the information is convoluted, no one really knows what they're talking about, it's all hearsay and guesswork and hippy mythology. Reading scientific books helps...

I beat them. The solution to the problem wasn't available on any forum, or in any grow guide or book.

You know why so many people grow cannabis? Because tehy have criminal records or otherwise can't get decent work (will test positive on drug tests, or just the rotten economy). Recently there was a job offer for a $10/hour janitor position in my town. It offered basic health benefits as well. Over 10,000 people applied, including laid off attorneys.
You are right, I am a disbarred attorney, trying to figure out whether I should enter the MMJ growing business.
 

bcguy01

Active Member
sell in bulk to one guy if possible and u have nothing to worry about but break it down and sell in pieces u risk all the bs that comes down with it. i try not to sell less than lbs but in my opinion the grower makes more off their product but the seller can make more if they move more in bulk.
 

Mr Strickland

Active Member
AGREED. A grower is stationary. If the heat is on the dealer, he can drop his shit and run. Dealers take less risks and they are the biggest pricks on the planet. And there is no argument to me of "what if he is set up and gets popped by an undercover?" Too bad, know your friends. Plus, I can't stand a fucking street dealer. They are scum and should be treated as such. And I am not talking about dispensaries.
WTF is wrong with you. Dealers are normal people just like you and me. True, most of them can be pricks, but they have to or people will rob, rat on, or even kill them. There just doing there job, alot of dealers don't have any other options and come from really fucked up environments and families and are just trying to escape poverty. I personally have a problem with wannabee dealers. All these fakes out here acting like there slanging and they smoke half there product. They saturate the market, drive up the prices, and take away sales from the real dealers. Ive never been ripped off by a real dealer, as in someone in this just for the money. I'm always getting played by stoner jerks trying to deal.

Anyone who thinks dealing is less risky than growing is naive. Dealing in most instances is more risky because part of the game is getting your name and face out there and letting people know you are a drug dealer. In some instances selling is not too risky. For instance if you live in an upscale suburb, or if your in a university, basically anywhere rich white people stay is a safe place to deal because the cops aren't complete cunts on power trips and there's no gangs. PLEASE try convincing me sell weed on the block is not risky. Boys get murdered on the block over $10 sacks over here and crackheads are always trying to rob the weed dealers cause they think there softer than the crack dealers. On top of that you got to deal with undercovers out the ass that look, walk, and talk like thugs, angry cops that want to take all there problems out on you cause your from a poor background and they can, and the dealers of harder drugs that have no problem killing you if you find a way to siphon $1 of there profit. In some places this is the environment weed dealers are forced to live and work in just to survive, the trap.

I would say in general, smart dealer vs smart grower, dealing is harder and more risky however there are variables. If you grew up on a country club selling weed to friends is easy, if your from the hood its VERY hard and dangerous.
 
Over here growers usally sell dealers bags of 100g. Dealers sell bags of 5g and 10g to smokers, usally there's no other middlemen.

An alright grower can give you prices like $1260 for 100g. That's $355 a ounce.
A dealer can easily get out 100g for $2530-$3370(if quality is good) here, $708-$943 a ounce.

The grower gets 50% of what the dealers minimum profit is, that's pretty fair in my book. :-P
Expensive as shit here, it's all location.
 

SFguy

Well-Known Member
first of all, as i mentioned above, how much the end product is worth has very little to do with what it costs you in energy to grow it!

Market value is determined by supply and demand, which is is to a large part dependent on where you are geographically. Even though electricity literally costs on average twice in california, what it does in north dakota, the price of weed is still probably going to be lower in california, because there is a legal/gray market industry in ca and a much better supply. If you're in mexico, again, there is so much pot grown outside, and the economy is so lousy, that once you factor in equipment costs and the value of your time, you literally may be able to buy commercially grown weed cheaper than you can grow it yourself indoors.

In terms of measuring your costs, you just use simple arithmetic.

A "quick and dirty" estimate of your power cost per crop would be the nominal power rating of your lamps x hours burned x cost per hour as an estimate of how much energy you're using.

for example, if you're growing under a 400w hps, then you're using roughly 400 watts per hour, or 0.4 kilowatts/hr. If your grow cycle is 30 days of seedling/veg at 24-0 then 60 days of flower at 12-12, then your lamp will be on a total of 1440 hours for that grow cycle. 1440 hours x 0.4 kw/h = a total draw of 576 kilowatts for lighting the entire grow.

If you're paying 12 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity (which is close to the national median) for power, then you'll have used a total of $69.12 worth of electricity over your 90 day grow cycle, or roughly $23 per month. Whether or not that extra $23 will be a noticeable increase in your monthly bill is going to depend largely on the size of that bill. If you're living in a small apt by yourself, you'd probably notice the difference. If you are living in a large house with several other people, probably not.

If you want to estimate energy cost/gram, you could take your total energy cost in dollars, then divide it by the total harvest yield in grams.

Now, realistically, computing total costs is a little more complicated than that.

and dont
forget the people on teird rating.. Who pay triple or quadruple if they go over a base line usage that is alolotted for each residence

in terms of true energy use, you have to also count the energy used by your lamp ballasts (which add roughly 10% more on top of bulb energy use), by fans or other cooling, by any timers you may be running, and by any pumps or other hydroponics devices. Together those could easily add another 15-20% to total energy used. If you want to know the exact amount of energy any device uses, there are meters you can buy that will directly measure current/energy draw of any particular device plugged into them, and doing it that way is a lot better than trying to read the amounts from your home electricity meter.

Also, if you really want to know your true material cost per grow, there is more to it than energy cost. You also have to include your cost for seeds, soil, pots, water, nutrients, light bulb depreciation, odor control and/or other security. You will also need to count your "setup costs" (ie costs of lights, fans, bulbs, etc), though that cost could fairly be amortized over multiple grows.

Total cost = your material cost (seeds, soil, pots, water, nutes, equipment cost amortized over number of grows, bulb replacement cost) + energy cost + value of your time x hours worked.

Divide your total cost by your total harvest yield weight in grams to give the true production cost per gram.

Note that if you're otherwise busy, or your time is really valuable, it may not "pay" for you to grow your own weed, again explaining why it makes perfect sense for some people to pay $400 an ounce for weed that on paper "could" be produced at only $30/oz materials and energy costs. If you want the stuff today, instead of 4 months from now, growing may not make sense. Also, if you're not regularly consuming large amounts of it, it simply may not be worth it for you to you to go to the trouble, take the time, and incur the startup costs of setting up your own garden and learning how to grow.

Again, just because its easy for some people to grow their own weed for only a few dollars per ounce, doesn't mean that its practical for everyone to do that.


my addition in underlined
 

SFguy

Well-Known Member
over here growers usally sell dealers bags of 100g. Dealers sell bags of 5g and 10g to smokers, usally there's no other middlemen.

An alright grower can give you prices like $1260 for 100g. That's $355 a ounce.
A dealer can easily get out 100g for $2530-$3370(if quality is good) here, $708-$943 a ounce.

The grower gets 50% of what the dealers minimum profit is, that's pretty fair in my book. :P
expensive as shit here, it's all location.
wow can i move there
 

themanwiththeplan

Well-Known Member
no offense but this is such a stupid question...

the grower of course should make more...no grower...no buds...dealers are a dime a dozen...growers are really the most valuable when it comes to mary jane.
 

tip top toker

Well-Known Member
no offense but this is such a stupid question...

the grower of course should make more...no grower...no buds...dealers are a dime a dozen...growers are really the most valuable when it comes to mary jane.
Not how the business world works.. and that goes for pretty much every manufactured good or harvested resourse there is. The further down the chain you go the larger the profit margins become. And i personally know more growers than dealers, these days growers are a dime a dozen as well, i mean fuck, so far as im concerned it's more risk being a daler than it is a grower. I stick with my initial statement though, there is fuck all relation, they can make as much as they want and it is no business of either party what kind of margin is being made, unless they are growing and shotting as a team kinda thing. the grower works out what margin he needs, and sels to accomodate this margin, as does the dealer, who makes more has fuck all relevance, either can charge what they like. As with any business the profit margin is based on what the seller needs to recoup to cover overheads and fund his lifestyle.
 

themanwiththeplan

Well-Known Member
Not how the business world works.. and that goes for pretty much every manufactured good or harvested resourse there is. The further down the chain you go the larger the profit margins become. And i personally know more growers than dealers, these days growers are a dime a dozen as well, i mean fuck, so far as im concerned it's more risk being a daler than it is a grower. I stick with my initial statement though, there is fuck all relation, they can make as much as they want and it is no business of either party what kind of margin is being made, unless they are growing and shotting as a team kinda thing. the grower works out what margin he needs, and sels to accomodate this margin, as does the dealer, who makes more has fuck all relevance, either can charge what they like. As with any business the profit margin is based on what the seller needs to recoup to cover overheads and fund his lifestyle.
im sorry to say but dealers do not dictate price. the grower does. if the dealer doesnt want to pay for it at the asking price then the grower can simply not sell it to him. dealers are becoming more and more obsolete these days (when it comes to mj) because mj is getting closer and closer to legalization and folks are growing their own. eventually (probably way off into the future) dealers of mj will be a distant memory like bootleggers of alcohol (during prohibition...now how many bootleggers do u kno of?).

Dealers have little room to haggle period.



i do agree either can charge their customers what they want and who makes more is just a matter of what each considers a reasonable profit margin. thats fair and true.

however if a grower and dealer were working as a team (one grows, the other deals) the i'd say the grower deserves a bigger share of the profit because without him the dealer has nothing...not money or bud...the grower might not sell as much without his partner but he'll be rich in terms of sticky icky.
lol

just sayin.. its like going to apple and saying i dont want to pay 200 for an iphone....i only want to pay 50. apple says: go make one yourself. the person = screwed. same goes for bud. the person who can produce it has the power and the one that doesnt know how or can't grow it (living situation, money problems etc) doesnt.
 

tip top toker

Well-Known Member
im sorry to say but dealers do not dictate price. the grower does. if the dealer doesnt want to pay for it at the asking price then the grower can simply not sell it to him. dealers are becoming more and more obsolete these days (when it comes to mj) because mj is getting closer and closer to legalization and folks are growing their own. eventually (probably way off into the future) dealers of mj will be a distant memory like bootleggers of alcohol (during prohibition...now how many bootleggers do u kno of?).

Dealers have little room to haggle period.



i do agree either can charge their customers what they want and who makes more is just a matter of what each considers a reasonable profit margin. thats fair and true.

however if a grower and dealer were working as a team (one grows, the other deals) the i'd say the grower deserves a bigger share of the profit because without him the dealer has nothing...not money or bud...the grower might not sell as much without his partner but he'll be rich in terms of sticky icky.
lol

just sayin.. its like going to apple and saying i dont want to pay 200 for an iphone....i only want to pay 50. apple says: go make one yourself. the person = screwed. same goes for bud. the person who can produce it has the power and the one that doesnt know how or can't grow it (living situation, money problems etc) doesnt.
I was never insinuating that dealers dictate price. Growers sell for what they have to sell for, dealers sell for what they have to grow for, who makes what has fuck all to do with anything. That is all there is to it. This thread is about who makes more profit, as simple as that. The very notion of asking who should be making more profit just about sums up the stupidity of some smokers, and i have no issue with saying that an awful of lof tokers are dumb as ditch water. The grower works out his overhead, and sells for the price he needs to sell at, there is as you say, no negotiation, the dealer can either buy it or shop elsewhere, and the dealer sells what he needs to sell for, and if the buyer doesn't like it he can also shop elsewhere.

I'm not sure where this notion of weed soon becoming legalized, remember, america is not the world, always good to remember that when basing an argument bcause elsewhere it is far from nearing legalization, courtesy of the US government ironically. And i actually know a hell of a lot of bootleggers :) Again, you are basing yoru argument on where you come from and paying no heed to where other people might come from.

But i'll never agree that the grower deserves the lions share because without him there would be no weed. Growing requires fuck all effort and with two brain cells, there is fuck all risk, the actual dealing and distribution is where the majority of the risk comes in, that is when names start getting spread around, you name it. Dealing is far more risky than growing if you know what is up and what is down. From the friends and aquaintances i have, not a single grower has been busted, maybe 50% of the dealers have been, because the moment you actually start making money it becomes fucking hard to keep a low profile, people are idiots, they'll share your number without two thoughts about hey wait a mnute, maybe my dealer doesn't want calls from unknown people in the middle fo the night.

It is all opinions, but the simple issue is that as individuals, there is no correlation between who earns what, they earn what they can or need to earn.
 

colonuggs

Well-Known Member
I sell my some of my topshelf to stores for $200 a ozer...they resell it for $12 a g or $336 or a profit of $136 then take out taxes....thats about the same as what I make a ozer after growing costs :)

On the street...the same strain goes for $300 a ozer... dealers resells it for $15 for a under g... 3 grams for $50... $466 a ozer thats $166 a oz.....

if they sell for $20 a g.... thats $560 or $260 profit ... about the same as the grower after growing costs.

As a grower I might get $300 a ozer but thats not all profit.... it costs me about $3-4 a g to produce
 
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