How to make money off the TP?
Buy low, sell high. Predict what will have price spikes, or buy the whole TP out at low prices and control the market for that item.
It’s not easy, those who do it well have worked hard to get there. They aren’t generally going to share their secrets. If it was easy or everyone told you exactly how to do what works for them, then it would in turn destroy any profit to be made because everyone would do it.
The really laborious and somewhat middling risk way is to look at items that are hotly traded, or that you suspect are in high demand (such as berserker’s gear). Multiply the current “buy” price by .85, which are the net TP fees. Then compare that to the highest “offer” price and if there’s a favorable discrepancy between the two beat it by a copper.
This method has the disadvantage that most items that you can do this on have already reached an equilibrium where their offer price is almost exactly 85% of their buy price, if not much higher (approaching buy). The second disadvantage is that you can put 1,000 bids out on the tp, but other users will come and make your bids irrelevant by outbidding YOU by a copper, making all the time you spent clicking and placing those bids void (you have to go and update your bids to stay on top- effectively “babysit” your tp bids- creating a spreadsheet here helps). The third disadvantage is if the market swings against the items you’ve bought. Say you buy sword of stabbing at 10g seeing it sells for 15g. You think yay, profit. Then a day letter it’s selling for 10g, suddenly you’re losing 1.5g.
Other than that, what Lpfan said.
Note that if you deliberately “corner the market” on some item or items and inflate their price, what you are doing is inflating the prices that your fellow players pay for things.
Instead of being a dealer or market maker who’s making the market more efficient, you’re just gaming the system. You know, like certain Wall Street firms do in real life.
As a gamer and community member:
I support players who hold inventory to sell when prices get high. This tends to reduce price swings and stabilize the game economy.
I support players who buy for future use when prices are very low. This also tends to reduce price swings and stabilize the game economy.
This means I also support players who “play the market” by buying and selling modest quantities and earning a “spread” between bid and ask prices. This is the traditional role of the stock exchange “specialist” in a particular security. (Showing my age, don’t worry if this makes no sense.)
But to the people who go in and buy every one of some item, and turn around and put them all back up for double or triple the price they were: you are parasites and bloodsuckers in the economy in this game, and are getting rich essentially by manipulating the market price so that you are in effect cheating people who believe the Trading Post shows a legitimate, arms length price between willing buyers and sellers. I hope you suffer the same fate the Hunt brothers did when they cornered the silver market 30 years ago…
I know there is a method to buying low and selling high. What is it? How do you tell when something is low and or high?
Ever hear of Google? There are millions of how to websites and videos on u-tube on how the TP works and how you can make tons of gold in just 3 days
Another somewhat common sense way is buying up holiday items (such as packs of snowballs, Holiday skins, IE Temporary items) then selling them a few months after the holiday/event items have left the normal gettable means.
Example : Bought a pack of snowballs for 50c, sold it 3 months later for 5s 33c.
Devona’s Rest – [Tsuk]
Ajini – Thief – Commander
Ajini – Thief – Commander
If you are really keen on your marketing then this site can probably help you with predicting trends and such. You can search for whatever item you want:
As an aside, anyone who has invested in gems right at the start are probably making a killing now (click the little “all” button on the top left of the graph), it certainly is a slow burn compared to some other things though. :P
right now theres certain items you can buy for 4s and upgrade them to items you can sell for 90s each made 30 gold under an hour like that myself.
Silver Doubloons was a pretty good controlled market. Some guy buys out the makret every once in awhile and they can go up to 55 silver each. Its pretty good but somewhat risky. I’ve made plenty of gold off that buying at 30 silver and selling at 48 silver. Its much more competitive now since people are starting to catch on so it’s not as profitable anymore.