Tips and Tricks from a newby: A market blog.

heffroncm · 08-13-2010 04:13 PM

My Rules for Easy Newby Marketing:

Don't pay any attention to costs less than 1% of your total wealth. When you have 1 million, spending 10 minutes to save 9 thousand is costing you more money than you are saving. Likewise, when you have 1 billion, 10 million is nothing to you.
Never end a bid or listing in 000. If you are bidding 1,000 on a piece of salvage, spend 1019 or some such. I use 123. This habit will save you money, get you your "buy it nao" items faster, and make your listings sell for more when they are close to the market value.
After you make your first million from vendoring recipes, start crafting generic IOs. Even buying the recipe from the table and paying for salvage at Buy It Nao prices, you can make a very nice return on the high volume IOs.
When crafting, don't worry about the market value. It is mostly irrelevant. Rather, pick a profit percentage, apply it to your cost, add 10% for listing fees, and list for that amount. For example, if it costs me 1M to make an enchancement, I list it for 2.2M no matter what the market price is. That's 1M cost, 1M for my 100% profit percentage, and 200K for the 10% sale fee.
Don't invest in anything with a market value below your profit point.
Seems like a no brainer, but it cost me 5 spaces at the consignment house for two days because I hadn't implemented this rule yet.
Don't let yourself get clogged up. If you buy so many recipes and salvage that you run out of Consignment slots and fill your inventory, just e-mail the extra to yourself. It's a little tedious if you have a lot of extra saleables, but it's worth having a character that can play the game again. You can store up to 20 e-mails in your inbox at a time. I'd leave a few open for anything that might be sent to you by other players.
When you find a good investment, see if others in the same set at the same level are selling for more than your profit point. They might not have the margin of your main focus, but it's still good to craft them if they are worth any kind of profit. People tend to buy IOs in sets, and it can mean the difference between moving 5 enhancements that day and moving 30 enhancements.
Once you have a significant amount of money, spend some money on getting these badges. Most of them are really cheap, and they will increase your ability to make money efficiently. credit to Archie Gremlin for this tip
Never list a sale for less Inf than you'll be satisfied getting. It may take more time to sell at the higher price point, but it probably will sell eventually.
Never drink and market. Typos can cost you a lot, especially early in your career when 100M is still an important number.
Try not to invest in more than 5 of any single enhancement and more than 10 of any particular set. This way if it tanks, you're minimizing your loss. Diversify for maximum returns.
Look to sets in the Defense Sets, Endurance Modification, Healing, Melee Damage, PBAoE Damage, Ranged Damage, Resist Damage, and Targeted AoE Damage categories first. These are the high demand sets, the ones that move quickly, and where you're likely to find something worth your time. credit to Fulmens
When bidding on multiple stacks, or listing multiple stacks, alter your listing by 1 inf each time. Do not try to buy 50 of an item at 100 inf. Rather, buy 10 at 100, 10 at 101, 10 at 102, etc. This prevents your slots from being clogged up by all your stacks partially filling. Credit to common sense, delivered via Fulmens
Above all else, have fun. This is a game you're playing. If you're not enjoying yourself, you're doing it WRONG.

FourSpeed's Tips

Type Fast BUT click SLOW! *personal note, I've flushed around 500 million from clicking too fast after a typo. don't do it.*
ALWAYS start with a ludicrously low bid on anything you're buying - it
works more often than common sense or logic would predict. Ramp up to
normal bids if it doesn't fill immediately, but the 5 seconds it takes to try
it first can save millions.
With our "new/improved" market UI, work from the bottom up when
listing items (that helps prevent you listing the wrong item for the wrong
price when the UI "helpfully" shifts items around in the list for you)

Archie Gremlin's Tips

buy in bulk to minimise the number of slots used for buying
use a base to store excess stuff
use multiple toons
stick to niches that buy and sell fast
check the market more often (every 3-4 hours is good)
work more niches at once and only list 1 IO from each niche
temporarily abandon niches when the prices drop

Built a simple spreadsheet to make my marketing life easier. Here's a link to it. Any questions, just ask.
Google Documents Link

Started: 08/06/2010, fresh account, no outside help
First Billion: 08/20/2010
Inf Cap: 8/25/2010

heffroncm · 08-13-2010 04:13 PM

Today's pic. No real news.

Archie Gremlin · 08-13-2010 11:52 PM

Hi Heff. I like your list.

If you're looking for niches then you might like to check out the ones I used in my inf cap challenge. All my trades are listed here.

Here are a couple of extra tips for you:-

8. Get badges etc to increase your consignment house and salvage capacity. See this handy list on the wiki for details.

9. Get a base with an Invention Worktable, some Salvage Racks and an Enhancement Table. It really helps with point 6.

Have fun!

Nethergoat · 08-14-2010 11:51 AM

also, getting crafting discount coupons is handy. red side I do all my work at Sharkhead, so I just hop over to the docks to log out. Saves a good chunk of change on those level 50 IOs.

The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

heffroncm · 08-14-2010 01:10 PM

Invested in Numina's as I'm still trying to implement a higher investment to effect greater overall income. Maybe they pay off, maybe they don't. Moved from 291M Liquid and 332M Total Assets to 246M Liquid and 463M Total Assets overnight.

Took Archie Gremlin's advice and bought my way to some extra auction and salvage slots. I don't want to recommend the SG storage, because one active marketeer could easily monopolize all of the storage in a base and you may find yourself out hundreds of M if just one person with storage access decides to go rummaging.

Getting the discount tickets requires the Accolade, and I'm not sure it's worth adding a tip to go after that Accolade. It's not that large an effect. You get 1 25% discount every 24 hours logged out. The most expensive crafting cost in the game is 600K, so the most this Accolade can save you is 150K a day. As discussed earlier, once you hit 100M influence, 150K just doesn't matter anymore. If you can't manage 100M in the time it takes to get the Accolade (42 days (1,008 hours) total offline time), then you need to seriously reexamine what you're investing in.

Nethergoat · 08-14-2010 02:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by heffroncm

Getting the discount tickets requires the Accolade, and I'm not sure it's worth adding a tip to go after that Accolade. It's not that large an effect. You get 1 25% discount every 24 hours logged out. The most expensive crafting cost in the game is 600K, so the most this Accolade can save you is 150K a day. As discussed earlier, once you hit 100M influence, 150K just doesn't matter anymore.

This is very true.
Also it seems that the discount coupons cap out at 10, making them even less useful.
I just like getting day job badges and get a kick out of not paying full crafting costs. =P

The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

heffroncm · 08-14-2010 03:06 PM

I think the day job badges are totally worth getting. I just don't think you get enough of a benefit from the discount tickets to make it worth hunting that one first, or to make it worth logging at one of those places when you haven't finished getting all the other badges.

EarthWyrm · 08-14-2010 04:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by heffroncm

Invested in Numina's as I'm still trying to implement a higher investment to effect greater overall income. Maybe they pay off, maybe they don't. Moved from 291M Liquid and 332M Total Assets to 246M Liquid and 463M Total Assets overnight.

Those Numi's used to be hugely profitable. There was a time, 2-3 months ago, that there was one recipe for sale and no crafted versions. I had 2 crafted ones in my tray. That was nice.

I think I probably built 3-4 billion in profits using mainly Numina's Heal/Recharge over the last 7 months on a single character. But it's gotten way too busy and the margin has, if not disappeared, then at least become relatively not worth the effort. (Is it sad when the prospect of buying for 50 and selling for 70 seems too small? It probably is. I'm so greedy and ebil.) With that particular recipe being one that will be generated in quantity by random HAM/VAM rolling, I'm letting it go for the time being.

My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.

heffroncm · 08-14-2010 04:59 PM

Heh, you say it's not worth it, I say it's the highest profit per consignment slot I've come across yet :-D I need to spend an hour or two going through the whole house and find something really nice.

heffroncm · 08-15-2010 02:18 AM

So an interesting thing happened last night. Within 3 hours of posting my SS of the day, almost everything I had sold. That's not the interesting part. What's interesting is how much of it sold for almost exactly what I listed it at. Looks like someone decided it was worth flipping something they saw in this thread.

And you know what? That's okay! I could have gotten an extra 9M out of the Numina's, given enough time... but I might not of. You cleared me out and made me my minimum profit in a shorter time than I otherwise would have had to deal with. So thank you!

This brings me to another rule: NEVER list something for less Inf than you will be happy with.

Currently sitting on 464M Liquid. Still have that l16 Steadfast Protection: Knockback Protection, it's not a very fast mover. Debating whether to go back on the hunt for something to make a profit today, try to buy up a bunch of something to resale after the merger, or sit on my capital until after the merger.

Archie Gremlin · 08-15-2010 02:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by heffroncm

What's interesting is how much of it sold for almost exactly what I listed it at. Looks like someone decided it was worth flipping something they saw in this thread.

I was worried that that might happen when I did my race to the inf cap. That's why I hid the niches in my screen shots.

Quote:

Originally Posted by heffroncm

This brings me to another rule: NEVER list something for less Inf than you will be happy with.

This.

Quote:

Originally Posted by heffroncm

Currently sitting on 464M Liquid. Still have that l16 Steadfast Protection: Knockback Protection, it's not a very fast mover. Debating whether to go back on the hunt for something to make a profit today, try to buy up a bunch of something to resale after the merger, or sit on my capital until after the merger.

I had a look at my niches yesterday and they looked a bit odd. IO prices were well down. I suspect that lots of people are dumping stock before GR happens.

EarthWyrm · 08-15-2010 06:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by heffroncm

Heh, you say it's not worth it, I say it's the highest profit per consignment slot I've come across yet :-D

Compared to buying for 30 and selling for 80+? It's good profit, but not as good as it was. And, like I said, I'm wary of these crashing hard if people take the attractive "5 random" option in large numbers once GR goes live, so don't want to be stuck with stock. I'm moving into premium Pool A and Pool B for a while.

Quote:

Originally Posted by heffroncm

So an interesting thing happened last night. Within 3 hours of posting my SS of the day, almost everything I had sold. That's not the interesting part. What's interesting is how much of it sold for almost exactly what I listed it at. Looks like someone decided it was worth flipping something they saw in this thread.

I wouldn't think there's much real "flip" room on those, given what they had to buy them at. Maybe they could get 80 out of them and pull a 5m profit. More likely, they saw a competitor showing precise sell points and decided to market PvP you to minimize your profits and try to drive you away from selling that enhancement. Advertising a niche on the forums will often get that kind of reaction from others who have been working it.

Quote:

This brings me to another rule: NEVER list something for less Inf than you will be happy with.

Indeed. A very good rule.

My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.

Fury Flechette · 08-15-2010 06:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by heffroncm

So an interesting thing happened last night. Within 3 hours of posting my SS of the day, almost everything I had sold. That's not the interesting part. What's interesting is how much of it sold for almost exactly what I listed it at. Looks like someone decided it was worth flipping something they saw in this thread.

It's definitely okay just getting your list price. I'm usually pretty happy when anything sells. Nonetheless, I would just post screenshots of sales not what you list it for. You can always tell us the list prices after the fact.

There's a small percentage of gamers that for a lack of a better phrase aren't very original or capable of creative thought. I have a guide in my sig using Crushing Impact and Triage as examples and I get feedback saying that too many people are using those recipes, even though the examples are just to illustrate the process. I mean you *could* use Crushing Impact or Triage, but the point was that you could use a variety of different recipes for the same effect.

The point is that no one is going to criticize you if you decide to take some minimal safeguards in protecting your profits. With that said, you could actually turn this into sort of an advantage. Free advertising never hurt sales either.

heffroncm · 08-15-2010 07:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm

I wouldn't think there's much real "flip" room on those, given what they had to buy them at. Maybe they could get 80 out of them and pull a 5m profit. More likely, they saw a competitor showing precise sell points and decided to market PvP you to minimize your profits and try to drive you away from selling that enhancement. Advertising a niche on the forums will often get that kind of reaction from others who have been working it.

... Wait, so you're telling me I can get near-instant sales on the bigger items by posting a SS here with prices? That's almost good enough to make the Tips list...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fury Flechette

The point is that no one is going to criticize you if you decide to take some minimal safeguards in protecting your profits. With that said, you could actually turn this into sort of an advantage. Free advertising never hurt sales either.

This is exactly how I see it. I set my prices not by the market, but on making a % return that I'm happy with. If I can reliably turn all of my investment into all of my investment x1.5 each day, then my only limit is on how much I'm able to invest each day.

Maybe I'll start doing just sales at some point, but honestly I'm pretty stoked that those big Numina's that I was worried about clogging my slots until after GR moved in a matter of hours.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm

Compared to buying for 30 and selling for 80+? It's good profit, but not as good as it was. And, like I said, I'm wary of these crashing hard if people take the attractive "5 random" option in large numbers once GR goes live, so don't want to be stuck with stock. I'm moving into premium Pool A and Pool B for a while.

See, there's a basic difference in market philosophy here. You actually know where things come from, what Pool drops what Recipe, what Recipes are in demand, and how available each Pool is. Me, I browse the market interface taking note of anything that's selling for my current definition of "a whole lot," then check the attendant recipes and salvage to see if I can make a profit on any of them. As soon as I find an acceptable profit, I'm pretty much done

EarthWyrm · 08-15-2010 08:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by heffroncm

... Wait, so you're telling me I can get near-instant sales on the bigger items by posting a SS here with prices? That's almost good enough to make the Tips list...

If that were the case, wouldn't your steadfast have sold?

As long as you're happy with the realized price, that's really all that matters. I'm not criticizing you at all (sorry if it comes across that way). I've seen some really interesting examples of Market PvP in this niche over the last 7 months or so. One (or more) of the people who works it is really competitive and doesn't like having other people fiddling with their profit margins.

There's also a conversation to be had (and I think it's been had a few times) about "outing" niches. I dunno if this is the thread to have it in, though. I do suspect that you'd get angry PMs from people with no lives if you routinely outed "big" niches with screenies.

Quote:

See, there's a basic difference in market philosophy here. You actually know where things come from, what Pool drops what Recipe, what Recipes are in demand, and how available each Pool is. Me, I browse the market interface taking note of anything that's selling for my current definition of "a whole lot," then check the attendant recipes and salvage to see if I can make a profit on any of them. As soon as I find an acceptable profit, I'm pretty much done

I think that's a difference in usage more than philosophy (the underlying philosophy would seem to be, "Buy low, sell high" for both of us), but I certainly see what you're saying. There's plenty of room for multiple approaches to getting rich.

My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.

heffroncm · 08-15-2010 08:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm

There's also a conversation to be had (and I think it's been had a few times) about "outing" niches. I dunno if this is the thread to have it in, though. I do suspect that you'd get angry PMs from people with no lives if you routinely outed "big" niches with screenies.

Well, I certainly don't want to step on toes, but I'm curious how to continue. If I'm not supposed to show what I've sold, then there is little point to the screenshots, which kind of kills the thread.

EarthWyrm · 08-15-2010 08:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by heffroncm

Well, I certainly don't want to step on toes, but I'm curious how to continue. If I'm not supposed to show what I've sold, then there is little point to the screenshots, which kind of kills the thread.

I think Fury's suggestion is probably the way to go. Post the final sale when you use screenies, not the initial listing. Anyone who's not math-phobic can still figure out what you listed it for, but it doesn't make the "easy-buy" price obvious to people who are just lazy and surfing for bargains.

My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.

heffroncm · 08-15-2010 09:04 AM

Right, I get where you're coming from. I'll start posting results when I SS.

Mini-update today, as I'm busy banging my face into the wall dealing with Paypal. Currently at 456M liquid after selling off most of my inventory. Still have the Steadfast Protection: Knockback Protection listed, but that's it. I'm slowly buying my way to the Power Seller badge by finding cheap common salvage, buying it for 512, and re-listing it for 11. Sadly, I'm actually making a minuscule profit doing this. Probably not going to do any more real market work until after the merge, so expect your next update then.

Gave away 10M to a newbie today. They were floored. It was fun ^.^

Fury Flechette · 08-15-2010 10:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm

I do suspect that you'd get angry PMs from people with no lives if you routinely outed "big" niches with screenies.

I think that would be truly sad if it happened. No one *owns* any niches. And people are completely free to out them if they find them.

I have no issue about market pvp and doing what you can to protect a niche, but getting all hot and bothered about someone exposing "your" niche is silly.

Also, it's been proven time and time again that even when a niche has been exposed it eventually recovers and becomes profitable again. The effect is mostly short term, sometimes only a day or two.

EDIT: Sorry about the threadjack. I'll let this thread return back to its regularly scheduled program.

heffroncm · 08-15-2010 11:03 AM

No need to apologize. This is a blog as much as anything, and those require comments and discussion.

RagManX · 08-15-2010 11:19 AM

Quote:

There's also a conversation to be had (and I think it's been had a few times) about "outing" niches. I dunno if this is the thread to have it in, though. I do suspect that you'd get angry PMs from people with no lives if you routinely outed "big" niches with screenies.

I would be surprised if that were the case. When I was more active in the forums, I know I along with many others would routinely point out exactly what niches I worked in and never once did I have someone move in on a niche in any manner that I could detect was causing me to reap smaller profits. I spent over a year telling people every time they asked for a pointer on where to start that Numina's were excellent easy resources, and after telling literally dozens of people to work there I still kept getting big profits. I can't say it's true for every one of the ebil bastiches working the market that also post here, but for me I even often go so far as to post my specific buy and sell points on specific IOs/recipes/salvage items without worries of losing my riches.

RagManX

"if the market were religion Fulmens would be Moses and you'd be L. Ron Hubbard. " --Nethergoat to eryq2

The economy is not broken. The players are

EarthWyrm · 08-15-2010 11:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RagManX

I would be surprised if that were the case.

And I certainly could be wrong. I more often underestimate human behavior than overestimate it. Something about not wanting to be disappointed...

My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.

Pitho · 08-15-2010 11:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by heffroncm

I'm slowly buying my way to the Power Seller badge by finding cheap common salvage, buying it for 512, and re-listing it for 11. Sadly, I'm actually making a minuscule profit doing this. Probably not going to do any more real market work until after the merge, so expect your next update then.

My market game of choice tends to be lazy salvage flipping, so I get credit towards those badges in the process of making ludicrous profits.

Culex's resistance guide

Nethergoat · 08-15-2010 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fury Flechette

I think that would be truly sad if it happened. No one *owns* any niches. And people are completely free to out them if they find them.

as the 'outer' of the original SUPER NICHE (LotG recharges) I can report I never caught any flack for it, other than a couple of tongue in cheek complaints from market regs who suddenly had to get real jobs. =P

The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

runt9 · 08-15-2010 12:40 PM

There's not going to be a lot of flipping going on right now, I'll say that much. The prices are going to become much closer on just about everything because of stock liquidation before GR drops on Tuesday.

However, this is also a good time to stow away certain things in your base or enhancement tray...
-Sovereign Right and the Purple Pet Damage sets - Why? Cause there will be a crapton of Masterminds raising the prices on these, and given about 2-3 weeks for people to get them to 50, they'll be looking at IO's. Right now, when you can buy them for bottom-level prices, if you look at the red side prices, even when GR hits, you'll make a huge profit. I wouldn't be saying this publicly if I hadn't already bought up about 10 Sovereign Rights. The best one is the Damage/Recharge, if I remember correctly, because it sells for 20 million blue side, and 80 million red side.

Yellow salvage needed for common IO's, especially damage, accuracy, heal, defense, and resistance. There will be a huge number of people putting their basic IOs in, and uncommon salvage will SKYROCKET. Rare salvage won't see much of an increase, but stocking up on uncommon salvage will either do one of two things: Turn a profit, or decrease your crafting costs later.

I'd stay away from loading up on your orange recipes right now. If you have any, get them on the market before it's too late. Straight up, the new merits and the number of returning players will floor orange prices to a fraction of their current price.

Otherwise, I'd stay away from the market until Tuesday, probably Wednesday, so you can see the immediate effects of the market merger before you settle into the number of niches there's bound to be.