Prove your market prowess

[Troyusrex]

There's an interesting thread in General Discussions where people are going to the Atlas kiosk and showing the number of villains killed. Now, we all know that good sales requires a lot of alts, so this is a bit harder. But most of us have one or two primaries. Here are my two.

 

I have to admit, I thought the numbers would be a LOT higher given how many millions of clicks and buckets of influence have been involved. 

 

 

  j

 

Edited July 31, 2020 by Troyusrex
Get rid of third image

[Yomo Kimyata]

That thread got me thinking as well.  I'm gonna hold off on flexing for the nonce, but wanted to give a reference level.  This is the character I used for my 24-hour billion inf challenge:

 

 

EDIT:  This character was entirely self-contained, started from zero, and played at double XP so that essentially all inf came from the AH.  I was surprised at two things. 

 

First, it seemed like I had made and sold a hell of a lot more than 700 IOs.  I would have guessed at least twice that.  That goes to prove that I may tend to exaggerate things in my mind sometimes!

 

Second, my net profit per IO at about 2mm per was, frankly, a lot higher than I expected.  Everything that I made was priced to sell within hours, if not minutes, so I expected it to be closer to 1mm.  My real marketing alts have higher profit targets generally, but then again, they aren't working against the clock.

 

I wish it would track how many converters I used.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Yomo Kimyata

[Ukase]

Yeah, but what that kiosk doesn't show is the inf! That's the metric by which any ebil marketer is measured, isn't it? 

I vendor salvage mostly. I just let 100's of inf blow away in the wind. 

It's the millions I chase. 

[Troyusrex]

11 hours ago, Ukase said:

I just let 100's of inf blow away in the wind. 

It's the millions I chase. 

I call that "pound wise and penny foolish" and I strongly endorse that thinking!

[FrauleinMental]

Edited August 1, 2020 by FrauleinMental

[Grouchybeast]

@FrauleinMental  Your character bio made me tear up a little!

[TheCentralElement]

To be fair I only really use like 2 characters to market on, so numbers inflated over people who spread it out over many alts.

[Dahle]

Here are a few of mine. I don't stick to one...

 

 

[Sir Myshkin]

22 hours ago, TheCentralElement said:

To be fair I only really use like 2 characters to market on, so numbers inflated over people who spread it out over many alts.

Even at the low end of assuming you are primarily selling common IO's, 45,000 sold still breaks double-digit billion INF values. I will say that puts an interesting target into view too: knowing what is primarily (75% or greater) being sold to put perspective on the net earnings. I don't think any of us should actually declare that though, just noting the speculation of what it could be is intriguing. The alternative measure I math'd out was an average assumption of 4 million per enhancement and that number, even if I assume 45% of it was "cost of doing business" still broke triple-digit billions.

[Yomo Kimyata]

6 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Even at the low end of assuming you are primarily selling common IO's, 45,000 sold still breaks double-digit billion INF values. I will say that puts an interesting target into view too: knowing what is primarily (75% or greater) being sold to put perspective on the net earnings. I don't think any of us should actually declare that though, just noting the speculation of what it could be is intriguing. The alternative measure I math'd out was an average assumption of 4 million per enhancement and that number, even if I assume 45% of it was "cost of doing business" still broke triple-digit billions.

Yeah, I love looking at these because there are a lot of assumptions, but it's interesting to ballpark what other people are doing.  Admittedly, that's based on my personal experience and patterns which may be more or less efficient or profitable than other people's experience.

 

I'll post this one here, since it used a strategy that I've mainly abandoned.  Old Guard primarily followed one strategy:  buy Titanium Coating recipes at level 41; craft them; convert once by Resist Damage to get either an Aegis or an Unbreakable Guard; if necessary convert within set to get either Resist, Resist/Endurance, or Resist/Endurance/Recharge.  Usually 50-100 at a time.  This was very profitable and high volume for a long time, and it may be again, but he's currently retired except for some bottom feeding flipping.

 

 

 

 

[Ura Hero]

4 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Yeah, I love looking at these because there are a lot of assumptions, but it's interesting to ballpark what other people are doing.  Admittedly, that's based on my personal experience and patterns which may be more or less efficient or profitable than other people's experience.

 

I'll post this one here, since it used a strategy that I've mainly abandoned.  Old Guard primarily followed one strategy:  buy Titanium Coating recipes at level 41; craft them; convert once by Resist Damage to get either an Aegis or an Unbreakable Guard; if necessary convert within set to get either Resist, Resist/Endurance, or Resist/Endurance/Recharge.  Usually 50-100 at a time.  This was very profitable and high volume for a long time, and it may be again, but he's currently retired except for some bottom feeding flipping.

 

 

Aha.  You were the one I was competing against for those recipes.  Should have known...

[FrauleinMental]

Most of my enhancements were pack openings, though a bunch of them were from crafting common IOs to get the Field Crafter accolade, and later the Fabricator badge.  Much of the salvage is indirectly from pack openings, crafting rare salvage 100-200 at a time from Brain Storm Ideas and selling what I didn't need for around 500k each.

 

Most of the inspirations were EoEs left over from Hami raids (I'd usually have 10-20 left over from a given night), some sold as high as 15k, lately selling for no more than 100.  But I did make a little profit selling Ambrosia the last time the Woodsman Trial was the WST.

[Sir Myshkin]

11 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I'll post this one here, since it used a strategy that I've mainly abandoned.

Something I find interesting is the variety of approaches that exist to flipping in the market. There's some specific 'secret' choices that people find and and use, but I know there are very few that likely know every "sweet spot" on the conversion wheel. I know I discovered one very early on that had (and still has) very little/no traffic, but I found it a bit tedious to amass volume of INF from something that had a somewhat small--but consistent--gain. I also know it's a shallow well, so I don't ever say specifically what it is because it can't handle volume.

 

For some a 200-500k profit per unit is enough when talking about mass volumes (100+ transactions), others may not fully do the math and miss that. Back on Retail I used to focus on Pangean Soils primarily, among a couple other items. I did the math on what I needed to do to make 200k clearance from purchase to sell that didn't upturn the market, or result in a lack of movement. I have an excel sheet somewhere still that has the daily bids/sales and accounts for market fees so I could track the trends and see profit margins. It wasn't like I was making a ton per day, but it was consistent (and in Retail's Market, consistency was key). The whole process is so much less of a headache here on Homecoming than it ever was back then!

Edited August 5, 2020 by Sir Myshkin

[Myrmidon]

On 8/4/2020 at 8:54 PM, Sir Myshkin said:

The whole process is so much less of a headache here on Homecoming than it ever was back then!

This is the part that matters most.

[MunkiLord]

So apparently this also tracks how many times you've been on top of the Atlas Statue, which is nice because that is where I moved my market character after getting all the day job badges. 

Edited August 14, 2020 by MunkiLord

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 8/4/2020 at 9:54 PM, Sir Myshkin said:

Something I find interesting is the variety of approaches that exist to flipping in the market. There's some specific 'secret' choices that people find and and use, but I know there are very few that likely know every "sweet spot" on the conversion wheel. I know I discovered one very early on that had (and still has) very little/no traffic, but I found it a bit tedious to amass volume of INF from something that had a somewhat small--but consistent--gain. I also know it's a shallow well, so I don't ever say specifically what it is because it can't handle volume.

 

For some a 200-500k profit per unit is enough when talking about mass volumes (100+ transactions), others may not fully do the math and miss that. Back on Retail I used to focus on Pangean Soils primarily, among a couple other items. I did the math on what I needed to do to make 200k clearance from purchase to sell that didn't upturn the market, or result in a lack of movement. I have an excel sheet somewhere still that has the daily bids/sales and accounts for market fees so I could track the trends and see profit margins. It wasn't like I was making a ton per day, but it was consistent (and in Retail's Market, consistency was key). The whole process is so much less of a headache here on Homecoming than it ever was back then!

My heuristics (I've given up using the phrase "rule of thumb") are many and adapt over time, but a few of my rules include:

 

1.  I don't get out of bed unless I can make 1mm profit minimum per market slot.

2.  I don't generally play in sectors where I can't reasonably hope to score at least 10mm (and preferably 50+) in profit by the next log in for that alt.

3.  I don't generally play in sectors where the prices tank when more than 10 are offered at a time.

 

I think that at some point in the past year and change, I have at least dabbled in just about every thing available on the AH.

 

I can't even remember what the AH was like on Live!

[Sakai]

2 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 heuristics 

Thank you for making me Google and learn a new word today. 

 

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/heuristics.asp

 

Funny how these days you Google a word while way back when  you hoped you could find the dictionary. 

 

Such is life.....for better and worse. 

Edited August 15, 2020 by Sakai

[Sir Myshkin]

On 8/15/2020 at 4:30 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

1.  I don't get out of bed unless I can make 1mm profit minimum per market slot.

I notice in a few areas on the market certain trends that indicate there are definitely people not adhering to this basic principle of profit margin. I've watched a particular set's recipes quadrupling in cost because of one auctioneer constantly increasing their bids to be "top dog" on sales, and it's painfully obvious what they're flipping it into and all I can think is how much they're eating into their own margins by bidding as high as they do. Once market fees and converters are taken out of the mix, the net return left over is terribly under valued, especially considering they've raked the recipe price up to be as high as the IO itself sells for crafted right now. The only reason I've even been keeping marginal tabs on it in the last couple of weeks was to make some "lol inf-is-ez" funds to throw away and I was baffled at the sudden and aggressive counter bidding on the pieces.

 

On 8/15/2020 at 4:30 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

2.  I don't generally play in sectors where I can't reasonably hope to score at least 10mm (and preferably 50+) in profit by the next log in for that alt.

I chuckled at this thought and the "I don't get out of bed unless..." because the back of my mind was like "If it isn't a quarter billion, I'm not bothering."

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

9 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

I notice in a few areas on the market certain trends that indicate there are definitely people not adhering to this basic principle of profit margin. I've watched a particular set's recipes quadrupling in cost because of one auctioneer constantly increasing their bids to be "top dog" on sales, and it's painfully obvious what they're flipping it into and all I can think is how much they're eating into their own margins by bidding as high as they do. Once market fees and converters are taken out of the mix, the net return left over is terribly under valued, especially considering they've raked the recipe price up to be as high as the IO itself sells for crafted right now. The only reason I've even been keeping marginal tabs on it in the last couple of weeks was to make some "lol inf-is-ez" funds to throw away and I was baffled at the sudden and aggressive counter bidding on the pieces.

 

I chuckled at this thought and the "I don't get out of bed unless..." because the back of my mind was like "If it isn't a quarter billion, I'm not bothering."

 

If this is something that is being converted to something more valuable (like in my example above of Titanium Coating recipes to Titanium Coating IOs to Aegis/Unbreakable Guard IOs), then it could be for a lot of reasons.  It could be a sloppy mistake.  It could be fat fingers (I had a doozy yesterday).  But even when I was running TCr -> TCio -> A/UGio, although I was buying the TCios as well as the recipes, I never really sweated it if one way was significantly more profitable.  They both were profitable!  If you could eke out a few more shekels by selling directly the intermediate items like the TCio, so be it, but I have found that focusing on the process is a lot faster.  Of course, it also makes sense to refine the process as time goes by and consumer habits change.

 

As to your last point, that sounds about in the ball park for my really working a market segment.  Back in the heyday last summer, TCr -> TCio -> A/UGio was netting me about 500mm a day, iirc.

[Sir Myshkin]

6 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

It could be a sloppy mistake.  It could be fat fingers (I had a doozy yesterday).

I would say it'd be a rather amusing mistake to be so specific, but the trend was there. I've watched the set for far too long to know that a few individuals appear to get in a squabble about it from time to time, and am generally thankfully that a) at least a marginal profit can be had out of it despite their efforts to mess it up, and b) I truthfully don't need to actually bid for the parts, I'm mostly just too lazy to collect the recipes from my surplus "warehouse" carrier toon. Gotta have something to do with 200 market slots 😉

 

It wasn't Titanium Coating's for the record. 😛

 

[Grouchybeast]

The modest amount of marketeering on my main.

 

 

I've never got into converter roulette, so all my marketing is either selling drops, or buying recipes and crafting them (very retro, I know!).  I've been on a break, but between the beginning of November and the end of April, I've logged just over 3 billion in IO sales across all my toons.

 

I really need to sell more inspirations.

 

ETA:  As I've been logging in to characters, I've been claiming outstanding sales, and since the end of April prices are definitely down pretty much across the board.  There's the odd thing which is stable, but I've been looking at current prices, and they usually somewhere between a half and two thirds of my sale price, down to a third.  The occasional thing is holding steady, but really not much.

Edited August 18, 2020 by Grouchybeast