Sales Speculation

How do you make money merchanting, please tell me!

KawaiiJen - Heavens Tear wrote: »

If that is a serious question. Look at what every other catshop is doing and copy it. Laziness = success.

Figure out a high demand item that's trending and buy/sell it. Now what exactly you can invest into merchanting varies per person. Different amounts of capital = different items to buy/sell etc.

Though your question is irrelevant to this OPs topic.

I know some people buy gold with coins, then things from Cash Shop, then re sell, but how do they do it?

I once bought 100 packs recently and I barely made 10 m out of it, and I was lucky I got a wring trophy lunar grade that I sold for 50m, plus 2 HP Plat Charms and 1 Best Luck, all others were tokens!

And I know now buying packs is really risky, because 44x1.5=66m and tokens only sells for 20m

I only have 140m, I can't buy-sell big things, what should I focus on

How long has it been since a useless hyper stone sale??? Or maybe they realized how useless they were since through tokens they were usually still cheaper...

Charms is a good bet though.

Olbaze - Sanctuary wrote: »

Personally, I would put my money on a charm sale. Not literally, of course.



That's only really applicable when you have significant capital. And 140m is far from significant.

And it really depends on the competition too. For example, when I was selling dyes during the last sale, I was able to undercut everyone else by 25-100k, still sell at a massive profit (~30%) at a very high rate (1,000+ dyes in a week), all because my competition was clinging to trying to sell every single dye at a profit, not to mention way overpricing the "popular" colours.

In comparison, I was completely outdone by multiple people during the Dragon's Fire sale, which was partially due to scoring lower-than-average and me deliberately pushing the prices to near-cost point.

On the other hand, while I'm selling packs, there's always a few shops that go 1-20,000 coins below me just to try to make a sale, but I've still managed to sell about 200 packs a day, which is pretty good considering I'm selling them at a 4% profit.

your welcome on the dyes, shame the blog is pretty much dead :P

i moved about 2k of them last sale, did well

and just to comment on what kawaiiJen said originally, copying catshops is not a good idea most of the time

the better merchants tend to plan ahead, and sell things once they go off sale, for larger profits

Olbaze - Sanctuary wrote: »

That's only really applicable when you have significant capital. And 140m is far from significant.Depends what you buy and sell. You could do quite well with tokens / chi stones / other low costing large quantity items.

And it really depends on the competition too. For example, when I was selling dyes during the last sale, I was able to undercut everyone else by 25-100k, still sell at a massive profit (~30%) at a very high rate (1,000+ dyes in a week), all because my competition was clinging to trying to sell every single dye at a profit, not to mention way overpricing the "popular" colours.
I agree it always is about competition
In comparison, I was completely outdone by multiple people during the Dragon's Fire sale, which was partially due to scoring lower-than-average and me deliberately pushing the prices to near-cost point.

On the other hand, while I'm selling packs, there's always a few shops that go 1-20,000 coins below me just to try to make a sale, but I've still managed to sell about 200 packs a day, which is pretty good considering I'm selling them at a 4% profit.I try to avoid doing packs for that reason. Almost everyone does packs.

Pyrostormz - Raging Tide wrote: »

and just to comment on what kawaiiJen said originally, copying catshops is not a good idea most of the time
While granted yes there are some things not worth investing into but generally it is an easy way to start (even if the profits aren't significant at first)
the better merchants tend to plan ahead, and sell things once they go off sale, for larger profitsI'll agree to disagree with you on this. I'd rather continue buying/selling during the sale and making some profit and then sell the rest of the inventory in the aftermarket (off-sale), that of course requires more time invested into watching the other shops / value of the product which not everyone can or wants to do.

My thoughts in red.

in truth, it depends on the items

but at least on RT, merchants flock to the more popular items during the sale

so in my mind, i can either
a) recycle that item over and over at a very small profit, while buying gold at a high price
b) sell that item once, but at a much higher profit, and stock up on cheap gold when there are no good sales

the difference is, i always have things to sell, even if the current boutique sales arent worth merchanting

for example, i stocked up on ( lets say a number ) 3k dragon orbs during the last sale.
the cost of the orbs was in the area of 90k each on my server, assuming you got the proper percentage from the dragonfire packs.
on Rt, people were selling these from 93-97k during the sale.
Taking the middle amount, of 95k, you see 5k profit per orb
now, after the sale, i am making approx 6-7x that amount of profit

so in your theory, i would have had to recycle from 18k-21k orbs over the course of that time in order to get the same profit.
assuming the downtime in buying gold at the price that made it worth it to merch, i think it would be very hard to move that amount of orbs, with all the competition around.
and even if you can, the amount of time you need to put into it is far more then my way, where i set up my shop, go to work, and come back 10 hours later

and of course, during the actual sale, i was selling something else, again at a nice profit margin

so i do agree with you in a sense. at a lower amount of capital, the day to day sales is the way to go.

but long term, and for more profits with less work, i think you have to invest with a 3-4 week window in mind, instead of day to day

Wise merchants of pwi, please predict when you think 10* orbs will be on sale, and fr how much each?

For my peace of mind, sanity and something to pin my hopes on, please guess!

For Zorish - http://pwinsider.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/warrenwolfys-guide-to-merchanting-part-0/

Some advice is very similar to what other people have said in this thread; the main thing no one is saying though is, you're not going to get 'rich' over night; it takes time and patience, just like everything else in life (real life and the PWI version). But this guide is a great guide to being merchant in this game. Good Luck

Simi_P - Dreamweaver wrote: »

For Zorish - http://pwinsider.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/warrenwolfys-guide-to-merchanting-part-0/

Some advice is very similar to what other people have said in this thread; the main thing no one is saying though is, you're not going to get 'rich' over night; it takes time and patience, just like everything else in life (real life and the PWI version). But this guide is a great guide to being merchant in this game. Good Luck

Thanks, I've read it already xD

I was doing good. I went from Perf Stones to Mirages to Cannies. I still make money, but not much. I mean doing 3m when you have 140 doesn't feel right. Since I'm not high lvl I'm still not sure about that high level people need.

And I was still afraid of dwelling into Cash Shop+Gold Buy and selling packs, I'll start doing it now with a small investment of 50m if I Can.

Advices are great and I know there's not formula. Even if you copy cat, you will lose. Hell, when I saw I wasn't buying any cannies I discovered no one was selling Hypers and started selling those and made another 3-5 m but soon people was there and for a profit of 2k hyper it was not worth it considering the fluctuation of Tokens.

KawaiiJen - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Watch the buy/selling of packs. Also look at what the competition is selling the product at and do the math to see what they are getting in profits from average. Right now on HT Drake packs are selling at 666k each and gold is at 1.4~1.5mil. After Fees and everything they are breaking even or at a loss. That's another thing you can to do see if it is worth doing some marketing in. I remember (and sometimes STILL) sell the book sets from advance mystical pages. A lot of people don't realize how many amazing skills come in the complete bookset. Easiest example is for the Assassins. You get their Dagger Devotion as well as Bloodpaint and other skills.(Averaged around 5~10mil profit per bookset and only took a few days to sell considering the vast amount of sins) More people may be more aware of it now. I would personally hold off and if gold is relatively cheap buy it not and hoard it for a good sale to invest into. (Like tomorrow hopefully)

Yes, I'll start stockpiling a bit of Gold and see how it goes in the Sale. Having coins and doing nothing with them feels wrongs, because I can't spend them either. I have those coins to make more coins!

Dragoneast - Sanctuary wrote: »

So how can u even predict a price for an item of an event? Take Celestial Tigers, idk how much ppl on Sanc do it, but i don't see the mounts from that event as often as mounts/flyers from packs

Well generally, people buy a ton of gold and stock up when it is cheap.

Then when a good sale comes out, you do a little math figure out what is the best profit from an item that you know sells frequently. Sales in Volume > Sales by Price 80% of the time. No point in trying to make a 5mil profit on an item that takes a day to sell, when you could easily sell items at 10k profit per few minutes and net game in excess of 10mil in a day. This is purely hypothetical and for example. There is to many factors to determine what kind of profit you'll obtain from an item during a sale / offsale to make a formula for it. The best thing to do is buy/sell during the sale then stock pile a bunch during the last day or so, then resell it during the offsale while you buy more gold to stock up for the next event. (This is one example of method)

So you aren't predicting the price of an item, rather you're buying the item undervalued and reselling it at current value making a slight profit gain.