Marketing by Dummies (A 30 Day Marketing Challenge)

Twice now Organica has shown us how she (assumption on gender) can take a fresh newbie character and make them awesome in just 30 days. The first thread inspired me, though I didn't do anything with it at the time, maybe just a tiny amount of marketing that didn't lead anywhere. Then when the second thread came around I *knew* I had to take this opportunity to try it for myself.

Now my thread isn't going to be as pretty, with all the nice screen shots, but I think it's a good thing to have around since I'm probably right in the target group that Organica was writing both of those threads for.

A little about myself in CoH:
-I'm a long time player, since Issue 2 (I remember the Rularuu Invasion from some of the first times I played CoH)
-I've had a few 50s in my time, probably more than 5 but less than 10
-I have less than 2 billion Influence across ALL of my characters, and most (99%) of it has come from the game systems, or selling drops on the market at what the "last 5" were going for (ie not crafting a purple, but throwing the recipe on the market)
-I don't have an IOed character to speak of, most of my characters are pre-IO 50s or have "planned builds" that are full of SOs right now
-I have a personal SG full of common salvage and that's it, not a treasure trove of rare salvage to sell off

What I really want out of this is to see what I can do in 30 days with one character, with no influence transfers, no additional merit usage on other characters, or usage of marketing slots. So pretty much my character will be on her own, minus usage of whatever is currently in my base, and I'll be playing this character exclusively. (Or trying too, well not transferring things from other characters I may play at least. )

Also I'm NOT comfortable enough with the market to actually post what I'm doing when I'm doing it, so there's going to be about a 2 week delay between what I post and when it happened.

So I decided to do this challenge with a Stalker named Verlassenen Hoffnung, my forlorn hope of being awesome in 30 days!


Day 1: Thursday July 19, 2012
Didn't have a lot of time to play, more specifically, only had about an hour, but I was really pumped about Organica doing another one of these things and just "Had to start!" That's usually how I do things in CoH, get an idea, get real excited, and just "start doing it!" only to have things peter out later on as the initial excitement wears off or the mid-grind really starts to wear. (Or of course a NEW! shiny plan presents itself )
So I rolled up my Stalker, skipped the tutorial, and promptly remember that I needed that tutorial for some bank-roll... Doh!
Go to Ms. Liberty and save off my costume, delete my stalker and start again.
Finish the tutorial and drop my Large Green on the market for some instant large green. 200k to be exact. Place a bunch of low bids on level 50 Generic IOs and log off.
Literally had no real time to play, so no time to start up.

... you've been playing for 7 years but never posted on the forums? o_O (though I guess "doesn't post to the forums" would be a majority of users...)

Anyway, good luck with this project!

I'll be interested to see what you manage. ^_^

For me, the fact that I'm documenting everything I do is one of the ways I motivate myself to keep working on the same project. Otherwise I have lots of projects and I don't always stay focused on the same ones for even a few days in a row. So I hope to see you keep at it!

Although I guess if you're posting 2 weeks after the fact, you've already kept at it for 2 weeks, hehe.

Heh, BY dummies, hilarious.


Anyway, good luck! Stalkers are a ton of fun these days, so have a blast with it!

Hurrah, a thread to treat my Zero to Awesome withdrawl symptoms!

Good luck, I look forward to following your activities here.

Happy to see my little thread drawing attention.

Day 3: Saturday July 21, 2012
Vendored recipes I purchased overnight
Played a bunch, sold a bunch of recipes, didn’t sell my Proc yet, crafted a bunch of 25 IOs to sell on the market, placed some lowball bids on Efficacy Adaptor recipes with some hope, need some more liquid cash to get something more going.

And this would be the biggest regret about the way that I've done things, since I working about 2 weeks behind on posting, I'm not sure if what level I'm at, or really what influence level I'm at, though I'm quite sure that it wasn't very high at this point. I know that most, if not all, of the 2-3 million influence I have at this point is tied up in postings, with that balance between doing low-cost high slot and high-cost low slot dealings. This is where a more seasoned marketeer would be able to jump into a good intermediate spot and make some faster cash, but with what little knowledge I have I'm kinda groping around at what Organica's done, and what I know kinda works.

The one thing I really know is that the faster you get to higher level, the better the opportunities can be, and so I really throw myself into leveling while getting what influence I can.

Day 4: Sunday July 22, 2012
All my level 25 Generic IOs sold, still not my proc, no recipes filled... Gonna build some more Generic IOs to sell as it’s the weekend and people apparently buy stuff on the weekend, or so I've heard on the Marketing forums before.

Played a bunch, did my first 5 Hero Tips, Positron 1, got to level 22, yay for SOs! That is of course except if you've been running lowbie trials, then you're loaded on SOs.

Slotted some Generic IOs, keeping AS free for ATO set, crafted/sold lots of Generic IOs, mostly for the half-million price point.
Crafted some more Generics, only stuff I had the Salvage for, put some bids on salvage I needed, and listed what I had to sell, including an Overwhelming Force: End/Rech from the Summer event.

Later in the day I come back to check and Overwhelming Force sold for 10 million, probably bought up by Organica on a lowball bid (did you see how many she was bidding on?), and most of my Generic IOs. And just to make clear, most of those were created with just the salvage I was getting from drops, I'd pick the common ones, Accuracy, Damage, Endurance Reduction, Recharge Reduction, and Endurance Modification, craft as many as I could, then craft whatever else I could, and just list them, and they moved fast, usually within the hour.

Got a second Achilles’ Heel Resistance Debuff, which I wasn't so excited about since the first one is still holding a market slot. I craft it anyways, hoping that they'll move eventually.

Ran the Summer Event again, Got the Overwhelming Force Quad, put it up for 10 mill, sold some more Common IOs. I know that I'm putting the Overwhelming Force up for really cheap, but I'm more interested in building up some capital to get things going than tieing up slots waiting for a good price.

Overall, lots of stuff done, Sundays are usually when I have a fair amount of time to get things done.

I'm on Virtue nearly 100% of the time these days. Unless you were asking Skifer that question, heh.

I was asking Skifer because the name Hoffnung was familiar.

Excellent.

I can remember, waaaaaaaay back when the game first came out, that if you had 640,000 influence you were, like, RICH.

Things have certainly changed.

Day 6: Tuesday July 24, 2012
Little bit of time to check in the morning and find I’ve sold the Red Fortune for 10 million. Always a nice way to start the day!
I've also bought my first Stalker ATO, the Dam/End/Rech for 4.1 million as well as 10 Luck Charms for 31k each, wewt. More Generic IO craftage!

Then off to work, not so wewt...

Over lunch at work I start planning out a build, which is to say start trying to plan out a build. I've often played around in MIDs making builds, but it was always theoretical, never actually something I'm going to really try to implement, so I've found it an entirely different proposition.

First Build Attempt: (Recharge heavy, no Purples)
http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...B2FE0F2174EE4A

Probably the main issue that I'm having is I don't really have a starting point on what set bonuses to aim for, I feel this is further complicated by the fact that with a Defense focused secondary I feel like I should be diversifying my survival traits, not focusing on hitting the Defense soft cap. This is a persistent issue for the next couple of days as I work out a build I'm happy with, but more on that later.

After work I've found I'd picked up the Dam/Rech Stalker ATO, sold some generics, which pretty much empties out my inventory, gotta make more and post stuffs!

The remainder of my night is just doing my Tip missions.
I'm high 20s at this point, with very little liquid influence, most of what little I have is tied up trying to get more things to craft and sell.

This is fascinating. I keep having advice for your two-week-ago self, far too late to do any good.

(I think I had a full set of SO's at 28, but that was from doing things like combining three 25 damages to make a 25++ . And I had a lot of resistance IOs which, I clearly remember, were gratifyingly cheap. In my late teens I was hunting L20 family by the IP entrance because they dropped a lot of DO's compared to level 19 guys... don't miss it.)

Day 7: Wednesday July 25, 2012
Backwards progress on influence, have it ALL tied up in stuff... Stuff that isn’t moving right now...

Ran Synapse Task Force, and like all it was a PuG, and like most it was surprisingly smooth and friendly. Since coming back again I've been consistently surprised at how good of a community is in this game. Everyone's helpful and polite, and I haven't even run into any "bad teams" like I used too. Anyways we missed out on Babbage's badge because he skipped out on us...

Chicken...

Hit 30 during the taskforce and I have a bunch of Hero Merits, but I'm low on influence so I'm going to stop converting Reward Merits to Hero Merits for a bit, well at least until I get some more influence to throw around.

Bought a Miracle +Recovery with Hero Merits, crafted it and posted for 80 million. I don't even have one in my build yet, but I'm feeling SO strapped for cash I'd rather suffer with my endurance issues than put off possibly getting some more liquid to play with.

Hopefully the morning brings something more than just Generic IOs sold (which have been working good, though low profit/slot).

I'll restrict myself to one piece of advice per day, plus one to start with.
YESTERDAY:
The "low end" things that I buy/sell are usually level 50 popular-but-high-supply sets, like Doctored Wounds, Scirocco's, Aegis, Positron's, etc. You can usually find something where your total cost is 1-5 million (depending on the rare salvage needs) and you can sell it for 12-20 million crafted. I list low and accept that I probably will get less, because there's a lot of supply, but even if you only spend 5 and sell for 10 (minus 10% for wents) that's still 4 million inf, which is a LOT of generic IOs.

TODAY:
The traditional things to buy with Hero Merits, if you're not going the converter or random-roll route, are Kin Combat (Dam/End or Dam/Rech) at level 35 (cost one HM, traditionally sell for 60-80 million inf) or ... it's a level 21 endurance mod that gives +End, don't remember the set name, also one hero merit and sells for similar, or greater, prices. But the market for that one is a lot smaller and easier to flood.

Fulmens, both of those are awesome, simple things to do, and would have helped me greatly when starting out, which was something I found hard to find when I've tried to do Marketing earlier in my play times. That simple straight-forward "this is a good thing to do at the start" was hard to find for the 5-10 million price per transaction point. Please keep up the suggestions!

Day 8: Thursday July 26, 2012

Finally something sold!

The Miracle went for 82 million, giving me a little more breathing room. Might be able to keep converting merits if I can keep selling MIracles! At least until I can run Purple Conversion or something like that. Though they do cost 2 Hero Merits each, which is a fair cost.

Also bought the Stalker ATO Chance to Hide, for 4.1 million, which seems to work out as a bid-point, though it does take longer to fill, like a couple days.

Re-listing everything I have for sale for lower, it's been a few days now, and none of them have moved, maybe if I was doing marketing across multiple characters with lots of slots I could wait for things to sell at higher, but I need turn over more than anything.

Put some bids in for stuff, I don't feel like I'm having a lot of success with things so far, hopefully something starts to click for me.

I decided to gamble a little and rolled 30-34 with my Hero Merit and got:
Unspeakable Terror: Acc/Fear/Rech
Touch of the Nictus: Acc/End/Rech
Impervious Skin: Res/End/Rech
Decimation: Acc/End/Rech
Executioner’s Contract: Disorient Bonus

All but the Disorient Bonus sell for 10-30 mill (by last 5) so craft and list them all for between 5-25 million, again hoping for quicker movement, not really sure if it was worth it though (rather than 2 Hero Merits for another Miracle).