So…my gold income is terrible, my guild doesn’t do much in the ways of money generation (or at least the big wigs don’t share their “wealth” of knowledge.) So i think It’s time I learned some more about economics on the trading post and replace the tedium of world bosses and rng within rng to fund my fashionista urges for all my characters.
So throw your tips and tricks here
And if there is a brave enough soul willing to hold my hand and teach me what all the numbers mean on GW2 spidy and how to spot treds and busts, you may mentor my poor dumb soul.
Small edit for those throwing out small investment tips: I only have 4g to my name.
Find something that you can buy for 3 or 4 gold and sell for 5 or 6 gold. Rinse and repeat until you reach 40 gold.
Then find something worth 30-40 gold that you can sell for 50-60 gold. Rinse and repeat until you reach 400 gold.
Really the trick is putting in buy orders at the lowest reasonable price (not just one copper above, but instead possibly below the lowest buy order). And then selling in the same manner. If there is 1 sell order at 42g, 1 at 44g, one at 46g and twelve at 50g, you should be putting your sell order at 49g99s99c. That way when it sells out, you’re in before the hugh stack, but not losing out on an extra 1 or two gold.
Paying attention is really the key to making money. If you find something you can flip like that, keep doing it until it’s not profitable anymore.
I made 25 gold last night flipping items that buy for 4 gold and sell for 6. And I did it while playing the game. I just stopped every 30 minutes to use the trading post for 10-15 seconds.
Find something that you can buy for 3 or 4 gold and sell for 5 or 6 gold. Rinse and repeat until you reach 40 gold.
Then find something worth 30-40 gold that you can sell for 50-60 gold. Rinse and repeat until you reach 400 gold.
Really the trick is putting in buy orders at the lowest reasonable price (not just one copper above, but instead possibly below the lowest buy order). And then selling in the same manner. If there is 1 sell order at 42g, 1 at 44g, one at 46g and twelve at 50g, you should be putting your sell order at 49g99s99c. That way when it sells out, you’re in before the hugh stack, but not losing out on an extra 1 or two gold.
Paying attention is really the key to making money. If you find something you can flip like that, keep doing it until it’s not profitable anymore.
I made 25 gold last night flipping items that buy for 4 gold and sell for 6. And I did it while playing the game. I just stopped every 30 minutes to use the trading post for 10-15 seconds.
^This^ It takes some time to get a market focus, but once you have a decent range of items you can basically turn your 4g into 40g almost overnight. I’d start small, pick some low margin items, say powerful blood (don’t use that since everyone might use it now, obviously) and see if you can make a couple copper in short order. Be frugal to start with, don’t dive right into buying 4g items that you might sell for 6 initially. Build up your instincts.
What he says is true. You certainly want practice before you start flipping high ticket items. You have to be careful not to get caught in a trap setup by a shark with thousands of gold.
You may also notice a certain timeframe change as you change items.
Personally, I tend to go for new goods, so you have to get out at the right times. For example, I don’t leave my money sitting on an item overnight just in case the price drops like a rock. Nothing sucks more than putting in a buy order for an item at 2g and finding it with a high sell order of 1g when you wake up in the morning.
More reliable goods can be left overnight. New hot ticket items sometimes will burn you if you don’t get in and out fast enough.
Level – the required level you need to be to use it
Rarity – the rarity of the item (look at gw2wiki if you’re confused here)
Type – the type of item (armor, weapons, trinkets, etc.)
Subtype – the subtype of the item (coat, spear, ring, etc.)
Min Sale Offer – The minimum price someone has posted it for. If you undercut someone it will be listed as the minimum sale offer. This is what you normally see when searching for stuff in the TP.
Max Buy Offer – The maximum price someone has bid on the item for. If you bid on an item at a higher price than anyone else, you now have the max buy offer
Supply – The number of this item that people are trying to sell on the TP
Demand – The number of bids on this item
Margin – The profit you will make if you bid on the item (at the max buy offer) and then sell it (at the min sale offer). This includes the 15% fee for selling something on the TP.
Don’t look for “get rich quick” things on here. There really aren’t any. If you do spend some time to learn the system, however, you can usually make a larger profit than the rest of the GW2 population.
When trying to flip items on the TP, your most valuable resource is time. Since you have only 4g, you don’t want to invest in an item and then let it sit there for a few months before it sells. I would recommend you run some dungeons and build up some gold before you start flipping.
After you have 10+ gold, don’t just look for the biggest “margin” or profit. Look at the ratio of how much it costs to how much you can sell it for. For example, you can buy low level crafting materials for 6 copper and sell them for 15 copper. While it doesn’t sound like much, it adds up quickly when you are getting 212% of what you invest.
Commander Logain Redwood – Isle of Janthir
Guildmaster of [CORE] Company of the Red Elite
Most of my trades are fast moving, low profit, high volume items. Buying tiger’s eye pebbles at 29c and selling them at 41c provides a nice income if you do it thousands at a time. Check for crafting items (totems, dusts, fangs, etc) with wide differences in their buy and sell prices. Good buys will be different every day, but there will almost always be one or two that you can make some money from.
Big ticket items are usually long term. I bought an unbreakable choir bell for 30g a couple months ago, and they’re on the trade house now for around 45g, and the price keeps going up. I’m going to wait until it’s 60g before selling. Items of limited supply are often your best bets. I wish I’d thought to invest in the Halloween skins back when they were just a few gold. I bought my halloween scythe when it was 10g. (and used it) They now sell for 80ish.
Another thing i did was buy a crap ton (over 50) BLSK when gems were low (under 90s) and i’m still turning tons of profit off them. I also, even now, buy keys and sell off skins (backpacks mostly) and get more kits as a small bonus. BLSK’s are probably the most profit margin you can earn if you get the kits dirt cheap. I won’t say how exactly but i turned about 16g using 3 kits (which is about 30g something to buy right now). Obviously buying them outright is a loser and mystic kits, if you get supremely lucky will net you a much smaller margin. There is a fairly high risk involved here, but i can guarantee you can make some good dough off a BLSK, especially if you get them for free.
Well I raised myself to 8g with my fractal dailies, and with that I decided to spend 4g flipping during the evening/early morning.
I’m proud to say I made a 2-3g profit while doing WvW to pass the time
However I ran into a few hiccups:
Item movement stagnating: Do you cut your losses and just sell them at buy order, or do you let them sit if the price isn’t fluctuating
Aggressive undercutters: Do you start a price war, or do you just match those guys throwing stuff below a decent profit margin if the amount of goods is huge.
Item movement stagnating: Do you cut your losses and just sell them at buy order, or do you let them sit if the price isn’t fluctuating
Aggressive undercutters: Do you start a price war, or do you just match those guys throwing stuff below a decent profit margin if the amount of goods is huge.
If I’ve got the lowest sell listing, but the items aren’t selling I’ll let the listing sit there as I’m usually confident that there will be eventual demand for them. Note that I’m talking about low-cost items with a reasonable volume of sales over time.
With respect to undercutters, it depends largely on volume. If it’s a small volume at a lower price, I let my listing stand. If it’s a large volume, then I’ll look at relisting, but it’s a judgement call based on my experience with how well a particular item sells over time.
Undercutting is kind of hit-and-miss. My guideline would be to only undercut if you see a huge clump of items waiting to be sold at the current price, or if there is a very, very small amount of items listed.
So if I wanted to sell cotton scraps and the current listings were at 80s with 2k listed, I would undercut to 79 because the price might drop and I’d be waiting for a few weeks. Also, if I wanted to sell an exotic item that only had 10 of them listed, I would undercut.
You should really only undercut 1 copper, unless you think the price for that item is super-inflated and that nobody would buy it.
Commander Logain Redwood – Isle of Janthir
Guildmaster of [CORE] Company of the Red Elite
Once you understand a bit more about flipping items on the TP, you should check out a spreadsheet I posted.
It is just an excel spreadsheet that downloads information from GW2 Spidy and adds some functionality (profit % instead of flat profit, advanced searching and sorting, etc). I also wrote up some documentation on how to use it.
Good luck learning the TP
Commander Logain Redwood – Isle of Janthir
Guildmaster of [CORE] Company of the Red Elite
Yeah, I just figured out that it had a problem. For some reason, it only worked on half of the computers that it ran on.
I’ve fixed the bug, it should work correctly now.
Also, it does have code behind it, so when you open it Excel will complain at you. You just have to click the button to enable the content behind (I promise no viruses or anything – just downloading junk from GW2 Spidy).
Commander Logain Redwood – Isle of Janthir
Guildmaster of [CORE] Company of the Red Elite
I would pick a number of gold you want to keep, and then diversify what you are flipping.
Now that you have much more 4 gold to work with, you can add some other markets or item(s) to flip. So still flip what you’ve been doing (since it is obviously working) but add some other things in because you have more gold now.
I’d rather not say specific markets or item(s) to flip, but I’m done writing the first section of a guide on how to choose markets to flip in. Essentially, one of the things you can do is look at Supply vs Demand – which can give you more information that can cue you on items that are good or bad to flip.
Commander Logain Redwood – Isle of Janthir
Guildmaster of [CORE] Company of the Red Elite
I’m having some bad luck using open office and the spreadsheet for profit projection
Is it just taking a while to download the crafting materials listing?
I’m not entirely sure if it works in open office, although I’ve had people tell me that it does work. I’ve never personally tested it.
When you “search” for something, it has to download information from GW2 Spidy. Crafting materials is a category that has the most items. So even on Excel, if I search for crafting materials during a time Spidy has a heavy load, it may take a few seconds. In Excel, there is a message that tells you it is downloading – not sure about Open Office though.
Commander Logain Redwood – Isle of Janthir
Guildmaster of [CORE] Company of the Red Elite
Friendly bump. I’m in the same boat as OP here and instead of creating a new topic, thought I’d just help spread the knowledge already in this thread.
I thought I would add that there plenty of ways making gold off the TP aside from flipping. For example, I bought a few items that came from one-time events. While they were semi-expensive (15ish gold) to begin with, the price on them is only going to go up as more time passes.
Don’t just look at flipping – look at GW2’s economic system as a whole. Figure out how supply and demand affect prices. Once you start to get how it all comes together, it really isn’t hard to use that knowledge to your advantage.
If you want to know more about flipping, though, you could take a look at my comprehensive guide for flipping. It is still a work in process, but I have quite a bit of useful info for those that are starting out.
Commander Logain Redwood – Isle of Janthir
Guildmaster of [CORE] Company of the Red Elite
Hmmm, 87g, I think my benchmark is going to be 200g, gonna use half of that to kit out a warrior and half for myself.
Sort of lost on what to flip now, I could gain bigger but the thought of putting myself back like that is terrifying, but feels like I could be moving up.
