Traditionally, level 50 stuff sold for MORE than lower level stuff, even when it was no better (procs, for instance) even though there was 5 to 20 times the supply. This only seems senseless if you don't know about the Buy It NAO effect.
My answers are not necessarily typical- I don't run niches much- but keeping low inventory is usually a good idea in general. I put in bids for the rare salvage when I put in bids for the recipes, and prebuy anything that is selling for Jerk Prices . Everyone has their own definition of a Jerk Price- for me it's 100K for common and 200K for uncommon. I'll still PAY the Jerk Price, because I'm making 2 million or 5 million or 30 million, but I don't LIKE it.
I don't worry too much about liquid funds, maybe keeping 20% liquid.
If your niche has collapsed it may well be permanent, but I wouldn't stress too much until next Tuesday. Friday night, Sunday night and Monday night are big big shopping days. 400% is not usually a stable niche, but congrats on getting a lot of money while it lasted.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
I've level locked a pair at 30 and 35 to make a-merits and take the random 5 recipe roll.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
1) How much liquid funds do you keep?
My problem was, when I hit about 500M, that I couldn't leverage enough of my capital! It was very frustrating to only have the slots to utilize about 150M at a time, letting the rest just sit and rot. I'm sure I could have made a market alt, but my leveling time was limited and they aren't really useful before 10.
2) How much crafted inventory do you keep?
As little as possible. I buy things to move them in 24 hours or less. I keep my slots full of fast turnover items, and restock overnight with moderately low bids on recipes. Then again, I don't work niches. I set my prices to make a 50% total profit, or to make 55% the "going rate", whichever is higher. Almost everything has sold for the going rate, and I didn't kill any prices with these price points. I also move around a lot, rarely working the same enhancements more than 2 days in a row. Keeps it interesting 
3) How much salvage do you keep?
I don't keep any salvage. I buy it nao. Except for rares, salvage prices are such a minimal part of the cost that I'll tend to overpay just so I don't have to bid more than once.
4) Base setup?
I don't use a base for my marketing. I use e-mail to myself to store overflow enhancements that won't fit in the Consignment House. It's tedious to mail them one a time, 15 seconds apart.
I'm not as aggressive a Marketeer like some of these other guys, but I'll give you my perspective.
First off, I'll start by saying that my wealthiest characters are the ones I don't play much of anymore. With my active characters, I'm looking short term because I'm trying to slot out my builds. As such, I can't devote market slots to bid-and-wait or sell-it-high plays. My inactive characters have all the time in the world. I've got a few characters with just fishing bids out where I snag Set IO pieces that people are posting for almost nothing, then I place it back on sale. I also have a few characters working niches. If these niches suddenly crash, eh, I can wait it out. And of course, they don't have a need to spend for their own slotting.
My first Billionaire was a level 20 concept character, a henchmen-less Mastermind. It took over a year of steadily working a couple of niches to achieve it. A couple of other retirees have crossed the line since then. Meanwhile, my active characters are trudging along with around a hundred million Inf.
I may buy up a stack or two of recipes cheaply to have on hand and to try tighten up the competition, but I don't like to craft up too much inventory. Just a couple at a time as they sell. Frankly, for what I paid for the recipes, I can just vendor them without any pangs of loss if I want to move on.
As for salvage, I do have several characters bidding low to moderately for rare salvage. In terms of crafting cost, rare salvage overshadows pretty much everything else. I have some frequently used common salvages in my Vault, but I devote 2-4 Salvage Bins (per Base) to rare salvage. Now with the merged market and the ability to email between factions, so I can count both hero and villain side Bases together, I enjoy the capacity of 6 personal Bases. I have many enhancement bins, around 5-9 per Base, but those are for stocking enhancements for personal use. I'm a hoarder. Every year or so, I go through them an sell off stuff that I'll probably never get to using.
I don't really hold excess inventory though, again, because I don't pre-craft stuff I intend to market. Although, prior to the Market Merge, I was able to buy up a lot of pieces for a couple of niches I was working because someone was dumping. Scared about the Merge, I guess.
As for the Base Work Tables, other than using one to craft my Telepads, I don't recall ever needing to use them again. I sold them all off a long time ago.
Teams are the number one killer of soloists.
I have several toons that do very different things, so the answers to those
questions vary quite a bit for them.
One answer they all have in common is cash on hand - I keep it all (unless
I'm shuffing some to an alt that needs funding). It really depends on what
your goal is for the inf. Mine is for equipping my toons, so I like to keep a
lot of liquid asset on hand to be allocated where and when I want it. If
some of that cash is idle, it's less an issue for me than the case where I
want something NAO, but all my cash is tied up...
As for the other questions, for toons that are running in a crafting niche,
(ie. producing from recipes/ingredients crafted shinies to sell)the policies
they typically follow are:
1> Work in batches (usually in 10 or less based on specific IO). So, I have
a batch for sale at any time, a batch on deck (crafted in my enh tray),
and the recipes and ingredients on hand for the next batch waiting to
craft. That is kept in a continual process.
2> For storage, I typically don't keep any crafted on hand (other than
the on-deck batch in my tray). For salvage, it depends. If I'm working a
niche like say Karma -KB, I typically don't keep much salvage beyond the
batch stuff (because that niche can change easier). For common IO's, I
will typcially keep a full rack of 30 for each crafting ingredient needed (so,
for L25 Dmg IO - I'd have a Brass rack and an Inanimate Carbon Rod
rack). Common IO's always sell, so you can work that niche for months (or
even years). The racks are there to prevent the "batch factory" from
being interrupted during crazy events (new release, market merge, 2XP
wkend etc), and to protect your profit point if/when salvage spikes occur.
It's a safety valve for a long-term niche...
3> As Fulmen's can probably recall, I have a major backside burr about
bases in terms of costs, implementation, and value/benefit ratio... For
marketing purposes however, the benefit ratio is better, at least enough
to be justifiable..
So, for long-running crafting niches, I'll use a base with just a workroom. Done.
In the workroom I keep a crafting table and whatever salvage racks I need.
You certainly don't need a base for marketing, but if you have one, it can
contribute to a smoother, more effective, marketing plan.
Regards,
4
I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is definitely better.
Light is faster than sound - that's why some people look smart until they speak.
For every seller who leaves the market dirty stinkin' rich,
there's a buyer who leaves the market dirty stinkin' IOed. - Obitus.
Today went a lot better overall. Skipping working in the niche anymore, I checked out a couple of decent churn recipes that were more expensive. I tried to keep my bidding on them low in quantity but enough to restock anything I sold relatively quickly. I'm starting to get the hang of things and feel that I'm steadily moving ahead.
I've set myself up with three goals to accomplish.
1) Finish my Ice blaster build.
2) IO out my PB (using Frankenslotting)
3) Hit 1 bil in influence.
They might not occur in any particular order but I'd like to finish all three by Thanksgiving (might seem a little long for some of you but I've been known to disappear for a month or more).
I keep my market funds mostly on my tanker since she only comes out in dire need. But since I ended up crafting more than a dozen enhancements I have moved a few to my controller's auction slots. This has caused a little bit of wealth transfer but that's okay since I normally buy recipes for slotting on my Fire/Kin.
Thanks for the responses. I'll keep checking back in.
Adversity
@Chilling Temper - L50 B
Candela - L50 PB
Caustic - L50 C
Crystallizing - L50 T
Crippling - L43 D
Animosity
Caex - L50 B
Psilencer - L37 F
Cooldown - L35 C
Q.Q - L19 S
I would suggest that you should at least start your shelved characters on memorizing some of the Common IO recipes. Crafting and selling crafted Common IOs doesn't take much time. You can do it while you wait for something interesting to form on your server's TF or recruiting global channels.
Teams are the number one killer of soloists.
Not sure what you mean by liquid funds. If you count bids that I can cancel, I probably have about 6 billion in liquid funds. Otherwise, I probably have a couple billion. Percentage of funds that are liquid? What would that be? Like compared to all of my inventory and everything I have slotted on every character? Idono, 25% liquid?
I probably have a few billion in inventory. I just sit on it if prices plummet. I don't worry about liquidating. Well, a few billion more if you count IOs that I'm hanging onto to use some day.
I don't keep salvage. The salvage costs are small compared to profits, so I mostly pay buy it now prices, or at least buy it in the next 30 minutes prices. But sometimes I'll bid on stacks of ten at buy it overnight prices if I think I'm going to do a bunch of crafting.
I basically have private bases for crafting and storage. One is a leftover from a collapsed supergroup, and now it's mostly just me. Another is just me and a couple other guys.
I don't have market specific characters, but I do have a couple characters that do most of the marketing. I don't have any merit specific characters.
"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
Videos of Other Stupid Scrapper Tricks
I'm relatively new to the market game. I've read up a lot on things to do and I have some questions. I know it's probably not the best time to get in with the volatility of the merged market but I'd really like to get a couple of my characters (namely my blaster) into purple nirvana. So, here we go...
How much liquid funds do you keep?
I seeded my tanker with 50M. At one point I was up over 150M but I'm down to about 90M. I know a lot of people have billions of INF to work with but I'm not quite there yet. So it's not really a number per se but more of a percentage of funds? I really only use WW on this character. But I have a few other characters that don't do too much and could be turned into primarily market characters once I get more INF.
How much crafted inventory do you keep?
I found a niche (mostly be accident) earlier this week and I was content with the margins (sold at 400% of cost) and churn (4/day or so). The recipe cost would fluctuate a lot so I put in a fair amount of low bids. Last night (and continuing through today) the price dropped a few million and now I'm sitting on a fair amount of the crafted enhancements and a fair amount of recipes (basically I'm overexposed). Should I try and clear the inventory? (I can still pull off around 150% of cost). Or wait it out through the weekend and sit on it a bit? Is it likely to recover with the A-merit system in place?
How much salvage do you keep?
I've mostly been buying salvage on demand now that I used up most of my stored salvage from across my characters. Do you guys keep a lot of spare salvage in the base? Or just buy it now?
Base setup?
The other questions kind of lead into this one. I have my own private base. Currently it's setup as a Tiny Hidden Plot (8x8) with a few workshops (4) and an oversight center. I've got 12 salvage racks and 3 enhancement storage tables. One of the tables is for Common IOs (I've been working on the crafting badges), one is for IOs/Hamis for slotting and the third is for market. Do you guys think this is enough space? Or will I likely need more if I plan on getting more active in the market.
Market/Merit specific character?
Is it still worth leveling up a character into the 30s specifically for market purposes? Or does the new A-merits make it meaningless? I thought I read you can select what level you want the purchased A-mert recipes?
Thank you in advance for any advice/help/answers you provide.
CT
Adversity
@Chilling Temper - L50 B
Candela - L50 PB
Caustic - L50 C
Crystallizing - L50 T
Crippling - L43 D
Animosity
Caex - L50 B
Psilencer - L37 F
Cooldown - L35 C
Q.Q - L19 S