Make Me Rich! (With Knowledge :P)

So, I've got my scrapper to 50 now, and I'm trying to get money so that I can IO him out. (Yadda yadda, everybody is, I know)
But when it comes to making money I can't quite grasp it. A good day of 7 hours put in left me with approx. 8 mil. in influence, and I was very disappointed. Especially since some of the Numina's set I'm going for costs 30mil and above. I've heard that it should be easy to farm AE because I'm a regen/scrapper, but in order to get to the farming point I desire, I need those delicious IO's.
Now, could somebody provide me with a sureproof method of making money? Not anything like buying enhancements of WW's and selling for 1000 extra, like a way to make serious dough. I understand the recipe rolls for level 30-34, the off chance that you'll get a good one, etc., but I've stuck with this method for a while now, and it's VERY time consuming and so far I have nothing to show for it.

Thanks so much!

Actually, check out this thread, which is current, and someone is asking a very similar question. I'm thinking it has the kind of advice you're looking for. Let us know.

Hanks for the extremely helpful advice, its also always pretty good to hear a strtegy that starts with, "just forget AE". As to picking a story arc, what constitutes a good one?
Like how Manu missions, how many merits awarded per, etc. Thanks a million!!

If you are just starting out, I actually recommend a regular run in AE for tickets to use on level 10-14 bronze rolls. 1500 tickets will almost always net you at least 10 million for a recipe once it is sold on WWs.

Kismet +acc, steadfast -kb, karma -kb, steadfast +def, basilisk's gaze acc/hold, blessing of the zephyr travel and travel/end, regen tissue +regen, and I think a couple others all sell for 5 million+ when crafted and sold. Most of those even sell for more than 5 million as just a recipe.

Quote:

Not anything like buying enhancements of WW's and selling for 1000 extra, like a way to make serious dough.

Well this is the way to make serious dough, you just need to find niches that make more than 1000 extra Touch of Death : Chance for negative damage, various Doctored Wounds and dozens of other possible niches exist to be mined for profit.

Wow, what an extremely helpful thread!
Sorry, I typed my last post on my iPhone on the bus, so it was a bit sloppy and short, so here goes now that I'm on a real computer:

So, I'd accumulated about 181 merits and last night I spent them on random rare recipe rolls. I DID manage to get another in my Numina's set, which I want to keep for myself, as that's what I'm saving for, but the other 5 or so rolls I got were for Mako's, and then some other crappy oranges that didn't sell for more than maybe 10,000 a pop.

I've heard that if you save up 200 merits you can just outright BUY Luck of the Gambler + Regen, which sells for a good 100 million on Protector server, and sounds like it sells for alot on the other servers as well. Is this a good strategy? I mean, 200 merits is ALOT to accumulate for one recipe, what are my odds of spending that on a random roll and getting the same thing or even multiple IO's that are worth just as much?

Lohenien:
I very much like how you listed the recipes to keep an eye out for, that's extremely helpful and I appreciate it. Is there something that constitutes Bronze 10-14 a hotspot for recipes? It seems like you ask 10 people where to roll, you get 10 different answers. Like up until now I've been rolling silvers 30-34 jsut because some guy in-game told me that was the sweetspot of random recipes. I've read the drops and such on ParagonWiki, but without knowing which enhancements are worth money, and without really understanding too much about it, it's all Greek to me.

Miladys_Knight:
Thank you for answering my question regarding an arc to pick. I'm sorry for not giving much info, but the character in question is a level 50 Spines/Regen scrapper, slotted out for AoE attacks, but not very powerful yet as I'm still trying to get all of my IO's. What kind of enemy is very very weak to Smashing/Lethal/Poison? I wouldn't even know where to start finding that one out.
And as far as Othe difficulty settings go, sorry I'm still very new to the game, I know how to change my difficulty, bosses, etc., but what do you mean by -1/x8? Sorry for being such a n00b :P

Thanks so much for all your helpful posts so far guys!

Ahh, thanks I had no idea markets were cross server :P But that certainly does explain alot.
Now, what I meant by buying stuff off the market and selling for 1,000 extra was dumb, it was just something I heard on the forums where you buy a SO enhancement for like 500, and sell to the appropriate Tech/Magic/Mutation/etc. vendor for like 15k a piece. This was a slow and tedious process, and in the end it turned out to be completely useless, as a whole day spent doing this would rarely yield 500k.
But as far as flipping things on the market, I'm just really bad at it I guess. I buy something for 1,000,000 Influence, for example, who's going to buy it if I put it back up there for 1,500,000 Influence? I mean, as long as the other people are selling it for 1,000,000 still? :P

I've read countless guides about the market place, and finding a niche, etc etc blah blah blah, but I just can't seem to grasp it. Is there some step by step guide anyone can offer, like first buy THIS enhancement, then make THIS one, sell for THIS much, repeat?

Merit badges are extremely tedious to earn.
AE tickets are both boring and tedious to learn, and I feel like I'm cheating because I'm getting them in a controlled setting, but at this point if that method is faster I don't really care.

6/6 Mako's bite set, 2/6 Numina's set, hoping to get 6/6 on both and then some!

Ticket rolls are generally best used at bronze 10-14 due to the high number of solid recipes vs the number of average selling recipes. Silver in the 30-40 range has alot of 1 mil to 4 mil recipes but also a bigger pool of possible recipes and no huge selling ones iirc.

Being that you can roll so many bronze rolls vs silver rolls , the odds of getting good bronze rolls is better, given the same time investment ( ie equal amount of tickets to roll).

Yet again, thanks for the replies.
Milads_Knight, I ver very much appreciate the fact that you included an arc you suggest, one that is ideal to my class and also shared the settings I should play at.
Just curious, about how long does this arc take for most people on average? Assuming you're not purpled out yadda yadda.

And as for the AE method, I think I'm going to give both of these a try, is there a similar AE mission to the one Miladys suggested as an Ouro arc? That is, something good for a moderately-crappy AoE scrapper?

How to make money in the market:

* Put in bids for decent recipes at the top level, and the expensive salvage. (list to follow of "Things I've Made Money On")
* Log in the next day, pick up whatever you got, craft and relist.
* Don't be greedy- most of these things have people working the niche, so craft a couple and then get out. Likewise, don't be greedy- buy a little high, list a little low. Most people round off to the million, the five million, whatever and most people listing stuff know that. So if the last 5 are 30 million, the person selling probably lists at 28,000,003 or something (So "28 million" bids don't pick it up cheap.)

I've made money on Crushing Impact, Doctored Wounds, Thunderstrike, Numina's, Miracle, Karma, Steadfast Protection, Impervium Armor, Regenerative Tissue, all "Stealth" travel items, Luck of the Gambler, Blessing of the Zephyr, Decimation, Devastation, Gift of the Ancients, Aegis, and Kinetic Combat. Off the top of my head. Some of those may not work any more; last time I looked at Crushing Impact it was getting killed on competition.

I've lost money on ... trying to corner the market on 20 different levels of Mako's at once, sudden price drops in really expensive items, trying [badly] to flip salvage, and Touch of Death. Also throwing in the extra zero and hitting "buy". Oh, and trying to flip Halloween costume stuff .

So how do you pick one of these things and go? Look at the top level. More stuff moves at the top level than all other levels combined. If you're looking at, I dunno, Serendipity (low-popularity, low profit margin, no competition defense set that ends at 40) you set your "lowest search level" to 40, type in "serendip" and see what shows up with "All" selected. You'll see the level 40 recipes, and the level 40 crafted. There are three important things in this window- the prices, the number for sale/bidding, and the last 5 sales.

For the recipes, you'll probably see it selling for like 100 K to a million, few bids and few for sale. Last 5 sales are on the order of a couple days.
For the crafted, you'll probably see it selling for 1 to 5 million, NO bids and a TON for sale. Last 5 sales on the order of a week or two. This means if you craft it, you'll get stuck with it.

Now look at level 50 to 50, Red Fortune: Defense. You're going to see that there are a lot of bids, a lot for sale, and the last 5 moved in the last day or two (both crafted and "raw". You'll probably also see that the crafted sells for a million or two more than uncrafted.

The problem with THIS recipe is that it costs you half a million to craft a level 50, you give up 10% of your gross to Wentworth's, and you could actually lose money crafting it. I don't know current prices, but last time I looked it was around half a million and 1.5 million. You make a couple hundred thousand and you're risking a million. You want something where you can come close to doubling your money, or more.

Look at Crushing Impact, Thunderstrike, and Doctored Wounds (all at level 50). Chances are one or more of those sets will have something that's "buy for a million, craft, sell for 5 million." At those prices you can bid a little high, and sell a little low, and make good money. Put in a bid for two different recipes, one of each type, and put in lowish bids for the salvage. Log off for the night, or go play, and ignore it.

Next time you log in (I log off at or near Wents, usually) check to see if you bought any of your recipes . Craft 'em, buying any salvage you forgot to pick up. Put them up for sale (remember: don't be greedy) and forget about them until you are ready to log off. Before you log off, collect any sales, put up new bids, and walk away.

Most people pick a niche and work it, buying/crafting/selling the same thing over and over, and if someone competes with them they defend it (buy for more, sell for less.) There are hundreds, maybe thousands of different niches.

I don't work a single niche, because I don't want to fight for my money. I grab a couple and move on. I actually like the extra work.

Thanks again, this is turning into quite the in-game manual on how to make money :P
So, last night a very helpful friend took me with him on an AE run in which I got over 1,000 tickets. Afterwards, I spend about half of them on the level 10-14 Bronze rolls as suggested, and got all yellows and about 1 orange. One of the level 30 yellows sold in the market for maybe 500,000 but crafted it was listed as 10 Mil. Can this be right? I mean it seems silly that somebody would pay nearly 20x the cost for something that maybe costs 100,000 Influence to craft. Needless to say, I crafted it and threw it up there (I wish I could tell you the name but I don't know it off the top of my head.)
Now, I still have another 15 or 16 recipes I haven't even STARTED looking at the prices for, it took me almost an hour to do the first 4 or 5, craft, and sell.

A few questions:
As for Ourobouros missions, do I get more merits for changing the difficulty at which I play? That is, if I turn off inspirations/travel powers/set a time limit, do I actually get more out of it? Or is that just to challenge yourself?

Far as the other recipes go, what do I do with a low demand recipe that sells for about 200,000, and costs maybe 3 mil to craft? Do I just vendor these? Also keep in mind the crafted one sells for only about 3 mil on a good day.

I've previously listed most of the good recipes from the 10-14 bronze category, and yes people do pay 20x the recipe price for crafted IOs : it's because they are lazy and don't have patience to get salvage and make it themselves.

generally I'll just delete recipes that dont sell for much, so I can keep rolling for more recipes.

Thanks for helping guys!
And yes, the market forums are very helpful, but it's hard to ask questions in some places, like I had a thread going about my controller where I got like 8 bad rep pings just for simply trying to learn.
So, I understand there's already threads for this whole niche thing, but they're awfully wordy and sometimes hard to understand, could somebody maybe elaborate a bit more (in a very dumbed-down waw), how to use this method? I think it's only fitting since this thread has about every other way to make money in it, and I personally would love to know, as it sounds like this has a big payoff.
I also understand there's different niche strategies, some involving crafting items that you've memorized, and some involving just buying multiple recipes and crafting them. Multiple methods would be great, I'd also love to hear different people's strategies!
Thanks for making this thread so information-packed, I plan on coming back here over and over again and using this plethora of knowledge as my how-to guide.

A niche is just buying and selling the same thing in bulk.

Let's say, and I'm making up ALL the numbers, a Doctored Wounds: End/Heal/Rech at level 50 goes for 1,000,000 or so- you can buy a stack of 10 (over a day or so) at 1,000,023. It takes two common and one uncommon salvage- you can put in bids on 10 of those as well at the same time and get 'em for a couple thousand per set of 3 .

Let's say the same thing crafted sells for 5,000,000 regularly and consistently. You put up ten of them for 4,100,000 and they're gone the next time you log in.

Let's look at the "hidden costs" on that item- 490K in crafting (or so) and 500K in Went fees on the sold item. So you've got a million per item for the recipe, and a million in crafting and wentfees, and you get to keep the other 3 million.

So if you went into the business of selling Doctored Wounds End/Heal/Rech, that would be your niche. (That may be one of the ones where the recipe has a different name- one might be End/Heal/Rech and the other one Heal/End/Rech . ) Every day or two you'd log in, collect your 30 million profit from 10 sold items. Collect your 10 recipes and 30 salvage, and make 10x Level 50 Doctored Wounds End/Heal/Rech and put them up for sale at 4,100,000 . Put in the bids for the next 10 of everything and go play.

If there's already someone selling Level 50 Doctored Wounds End/Heal/Rech, there are two possibilities.
1) They sell 10 a day and you sell 10 a day and 30 a day move through the system. Result: You sell all yours, they sell all theirs, and you guys may not even KNOW that someone else is in your niche.
2) They sell 30 a day (on a couple characters) and you sell 10 a day and 30 recipes a day drop (or people buy 30 crafted a day.) One of you won't get all your recipes, or won't sell all your crafted.

Let's assume it's "not enough recipes drop". If you're buying at 1,000,023 and they're buying at 1,000,022 you get your 10 and they only get 20. They start buying at 1,000,024 and the next day you get zero and they get 30. Then you see the 1,000,024 in the history and you start buying at 1,010,024 - that will show THEM. Then they go to 1,500,000 and start selling at 3,800,000. You don't get yours, AND you don't sell the ones you have. That'll show YOU.

If you both have more pride than greed, you end up buying for 2 million, spending almost 1 million on fees, and selling for 3 million. Eventually someone backs off and the other one proudly surveys the ruins of a good business.