When you start a new Franchise zoo in Planet Zoo, you’ll have $40,000 to play with. Whilst this sounds like a lot of money, it soon goes and risks plummeting you into debt.
Whilst it might seem simple, it’s actually hard to make money and not go into debt on Planet Zoo when you are first starting out in the game.
For example, staff buildings can cost $4,000 alone. Planet Zoo isn’t just about providing animals for guests to awe at. You have to manage your zoo, including its finances, guest happiness, and animal welfare.
Here are some of the ways you can make money quickly in Planet Zoo.
How to Make Money in Planet Zoo
1. Saving Money In Planet Zoo
Before you get ahead of yourself in Planet Zoo, don’t! You NEED to go slow at the beginning. Ensure you have one enclosure to start with and the basic necessities. Don’t try and expand your zoo unless you have a comfortable cushion to fall back on (around $5,000 – $10,000).
You’ll want to keep an eye on your big outgoings. These mainly consist of:
- Vets
- Keepers
- Power
You must maintain your generators. If they don’t stay in good working order, they’ll cost MORE money to run. Regarding your staff, you’ll ideally want one staff zone to service several enclosures.
If you can, place your keeper hut, vets, and enclosures all in the same workgroup. This ensures you can maintain efficiency and also means you need less staff to operate multiple enclosures.
If you want to keep saving money, I suggest NOT hiring any more keepers or vets until your existing staff are finding it too much. Generally speaking, you could get away with one keeper per 2-3 enclosures.
Of course, this may change over time as vets aren’t having to battle with sickness in the Planet Zoo Beta.
2. Profit From Exhibits
Exhibits are quick and easy to set up and maintain, and the animals that go in them are cheap to buy too.
Set up a couple of exhibits and add a breeding pair in, once they start breeding the money you will make can help to keep you in the black and out of the red.
3. Maintaining Your Zoo And Profits In Planet Zoo
Whilst there were many bugs and issues during the Planet Zoo Beta, you may find the game is slightly more intuitive than originally thought. Upon full release, I feel like the game is even HARDER.
I’ve collated some tips and tricks regarding how to maintain your zoo, and keep those profits rising. Remember, you’re managing a zoo, not just building it.
- Security & Caretakers: If you’re trying to increase your profits, it’s worth setting both of these staff to patrol heavy-traffic areas. When vandalism and rubbish occurs, guests become extremely unhappy.
- Educational Speakers: When you place down educational speakers (which the guests love) you’ll notice a heatmap. You’ll want to place speakers down in blue areas rather than red. If your speakers overlap, guests’ happiness will drop very quickly.
- Solar Panels: You can place these all around your zoo. Guests don’t object to seeing them like they do with staff buildings. Also as an added bonus, they don’t cost any maintenance.
- Water Purifiers: These keep lakes and areas of water clean. This will remove the “cleanliness from last water source” debuff that you may have seen.
- Guest Facilities: Don’t build any drink shops until you have at least 300+ guests. Food shops should be around 500+ guests, balloon stores 800+, and information stands at 1000+ guests.
- Water Requirements: Some animals like the Nile Monitor require a water source. The requirements are by square meter (quantity, not surface area). This means you can save money and space by building down into the ground. As long as there is a slope for them to get out, it doesn’t matter how deep the pool is.
- Enrichment Toys: Whilst these are designed for the animals, they’re also designed for guests too. If you place enrichment toys and feeders close to the glass, your animals will move closer to the guests. This means guests will be happier and make bigger donations.
4. Animal Upkeep for Profit
Though it may not seem obvious at first, keeping your animals well kept is essential to making money in Planet Zoo. If your guests deem that your animal’s welfare isn’t good, they will protest and NOT donate.
Water
Water is required in all animal habitats. Without water, your animals will perish and this will affect your guests.
Always make sure there’s a water source in each animal habitat. In Planet Zoo, you can build a water treatment building to ensure water sources are kept clean.
If you’re building an animal habitat that requires a large water source (e.g. for Hippos), I have a great tip for you. Build your water source down into the ground. This will save space; the requirement is per square meter, not surface area.
Enrichment
Enrichment toys will keep your animals (and guests) happy. Once you’ve created a new animal habitat, you can research the animal across multiple levels. This will unlock new enrichment toys.
The enrichment toys improve the quality of life for your animals. Setting your toys up close to the glass will mean animals will play near your guests. This increases the animal’s enjoyment whilst persuading your guests to donate more.
As I mentioned earlier, you’ll need some vets to perform vet research. This will unlock new features within the animal habitats. The happier your animals are, the more you’ll draw in the crowd, and the more they’ll donate.
Breeding
Breeding animals is a great way to make money in Planet Zoo. However, it’s not an easy task and can go wrong very quickly.
You’ll need to make sure the parents (breeding pair) are happy and living an enriched lifestyle. Once the babies are born, you’ll have to take good care of them to draw in the crowds.
Baby animals are big moneymakers. Be warned though; over-breeding can definitely be an issue. Don’t be afraid to use contraceptives as and when it’s needed.
Habitats
Guests are visiting your zoo to see the animals. Ensuring that your animal habitats are placed in optimal view is essential to maintaining guest happiness.
As well as placing habitats and glass panels close to paths, you can actually let guests enter certain habitats. This is a great way to let your guests get up, close and personal with their favorite animals. Not the lions though, that won’t work out too well.
Donation Boxes
Don’t feel you have to be conservative with donation boxes. Place them wherever you feel guests will congregate. Even if an area isn’t that busy, it’s worth placing a few anyway on the off chance someone passes by.
Placing them between a couple of exhibits or even next to an exhibit that is within an enclosure can often produce much more regular donations too.
Do you have other ways with Planet Zoo to make money or conservation credits? Let us know in the comments.
6. Keep an Eye on Guest Happiness
Encouraging your guests to make donations is just the tip of the iceberg. If you want them to spend more, and donate more, you’re going to have to improve your overall guest happiness and satisfaction rating.
Listen to your guest’s feedback and adjust your zoo accordingly. To make money in Planet Zoo, you may need to hire more caretakers to clean up trash or encourage more guests to visit your zoo, thus making it more profitable.
When you start to make a steady income, don’t be shy about splashing out a few bucks on a marketing campaign, or improving areas of your zoo that you’ve neglected.
Ultimately, your guests are what keep your zoo running, and if they’re not happy, you’re going to lose out pretty quickly.
