How to be a Honest and Successfull Marketplacer

[SpikeBolt]

This is my first post in the guild, I hope you apreciate it. They are just advises, adapt them to your life as you wish.

The Basics:

The biggest secret to save a couple of Gold when buying and selling items is to be patient. Gaia has 5+ million users and there are thousands of Sealed letters (for instance) for sale. If you wait long enough, you might just get one for a couple of k less. This also applies to real life.

Besides patient you need to be cordial and polite. If one person is selling a sealed letter, here's how you should haggle:
- Hello, i'm interested in Sealed Letters how much are you expecting for each one?
- I'm not really willing to pay that much for a Sealed letter, how about xxx instead?
- Very well, i'll send the trade. 3nodding / Thank you for your time, anyway 3nodding
No one wants to sell or haggle if you talk like a n00b. And no matter what, don't lose your calm with sellers. Why? They don't really deserve it and this is just a game. A game where there are no winners and no losers. Try to enjoy it, don't waste your life for it.
Knowing how to haggle is important. You should first read carefully the first post and try to see if the person is in the mood to haggle or not to avoid annoying the seller.

Don't pay more than MarketPlace Prices. If you value your offer for like 300k and the marketplace item is worth 150k then sell your items (if any) and then..... TRY TO HAGGLE! Be smarter than just buying the item in the MP. If you have the opportunity to haggle in the exchange forum just take it. Even if you just save 1k. Doesn't matter. If you save 1k 100 times you will save 100k. It DOES make a difference.

Study the marketplace before buying an item. Tektek has a great feature that detects how much the price varies. It auto-detects the products that are inserted into the market so you can compare if you are being robbed or not. Check it out: www.tektek.org

Small Items should be sold in Marketplace, 50-100k+ items should be sold in the exchange. Why? I will answer that question on the second post

Do not sell store items for more than it's store price. It's just not right. No one likes to be fooled. I consider it a small scam and I never do it. You can do it as you want but I think the honest way is to sell BELOW the store price. That's my personal opinion.

Price-Guides were usefull before the MP. The MP inflates prices so much and so fast (specially in Monthly Collectables and event items, which are what usually Price Guides are all about) that no Price-Guide can keep up the pace. Use tektek, it's automatic 3nodding  

[SpikeBolt]

Advanced:


So, why should 50-100k+ items be sold in the MP? Because if you accept offers with items you can profit more. Their items are always valued bellow the MP and you can value them as you want (be reasonable) meaning the buyer must offer a bit more than the actual value of your item. It is the most common way to make Gold. People do this often. Buy cheap, either in marketplace or exchange forum, and then sell for higher price. Loop this and you'll see that the bigger the item, the bigger the profit is.

Owning a Shop in the exchange forum might be a good idea if you have the patient (I don't, really) the run it. If you offer a quality service, if your shop is well organized and you get people to actually CHAT there then people will buy your items for higher price just because your are cool.

Auction your Heart Boxers/Panties once a year blaugh

When selling a big item (500k-1m+) be sure to keep the auction open for more than a day. It's a big item, many people want it but few can afford it. Give it time...

Own a Mini-Shop. Mini-Shops are where you sell like Pets, Drawings, whatever. If you have skills for drawing, programming, whatever just use them to make more Gold. Why? In order to buy and re-sell again! Like I told you before, the bigger the item, the bigger the profit...

Sealed Letters (or MC if you prefer, I refuse to call them that way) are a good way to get rich in long-term. If you buy 20 Sealeds for 15k each, after half a year they will be worth about..25k, for instance. That's a 200k profit without moving a finger.

Hang around the exchange AND the MP at the same time. I advise you to use firefox. I usually hang around 3 exchange threads and another 2 gaia items open + 3-4 windows of my work so Firefox is the obvious solution blaugh

Risk... there's always a risk in the MP. Always. But if you don't risk it, you'll never profit.  

[SpikeBolt]

Who am I:

I am SpikeBolt, i'm a 18 years old Programmer, I'm from Portugal and am currently working at Spain for a couple of months. I'm in Gaia for almost 3 years. When I started all I wanted was a Flame Shirt. That was my quest. After a lot of work in the exchange forum, buying and re-selling stuff, I bought my devil tail for 300k and later on NM minis for 900k. Unfortunely, a gaia rollback ate my minis. I managed to get a devil tail back for 600k with the help of my MiniShop and eventually I got everything I wanted in gaia (well, angelic sash is missing but that seems somehow impossible at the momment lol ) but with investement in Sealeds i'll probably get it in 2 years lol

Hope my guide helped you, have fun.  

[Oshousama_Raistlin]

Another thing to try out is watching short-term trends for rares, if you go on Gaia often and don't mind spending the time just watching the prices of things:

For example, you might get a feel for the price of a Kiki, and notice that they are starting to go up in price. So you buy one, and sell it again for a mark-up price.

Alternately, to avoid a major loss, you might notice that nitemare chairs /were/ going up in price, but are now staying pretty stable. This is a BIG indicator that the price is about to go down. (I know...it happened to me a few times. gonk ) It's when you notice this that you make your item the cheapest in the marketplace, so that you sell the item asap and cut your losses.

Another thing to look out for is large gaps between the prices of items:
say, when you look up an item and order by "lowest buy price", the cheapest item on the market is 1k lower than the 2nd lowest price. Buy that item, mark it up by 900 and you will not only retain your place as the cheapest vendor, but make a tidy profit of 900. 4laugh  

[Youkai_Girl06]

Here's a bit of my experience. Only yesterday, I bought a coon tail in the marketplace for only 1.7k. It was on auction, so I thought I had paid a good price for it. I tried to sell it just below 4k, the tektek value at that time, but no one wanted to buy it. Since I live in Holland I mostly have to wait till late evening here untill lots of Americans are online. Time difference is six hours. So when I checked after six hours, I found out all the coon tails had gone from 4k to 20k. I don't know how it happened, but I was astonished. So I sold my own coon tail for 15k. The buyer then tried to sell it for 19k and so on. When I checked this morning, the price on coon tails was back at 5k. I'm really glad I got to make some real profit from my coon tail, but I still felt a bit like I was cheating the buyer, since I knew the price on coon tails was extraordinary high...  

[Glympse of Fate]

Ah, I made a nice profit off of that coon tail influx. I managed to buy one in my buying thread for only 4k, while it was valued at 13k in the market. I didn't really expect it to sell quickly, so I put it in for 9k. It did sell quickly, and I made a 5k profit - more than twice the amount I paid for it.  

[typhoon863]

to be a good marketplace seller u must no witch to chooe i.e bid or buy if ur not sure dont pick both!
if its an item u no will sell well put it on bid some one will start at 1 gold and it will keep goin
if its a item u dont think will sell or u wanna get a specific tasrget reasonably put it up for buy only put it up for bth wen its an item not worth much i.e game items  

[JeanJacketJake]

to be a good marketplacer requires extensive expeirence. i have had 2 years expeirence selling and merchanting on the rough, crowded scam-infested streets of runescape and it has taught me alot. for example, always look at your trade screen!!!!i cant tell you people how many times ive seen a good trade go horribly wrong. more tips later^^  

[utsuro bune]

I make good money in the marketplace. I think you just have to be patient, and RESEARCH -- keep notes if you have to.

And if the market is not good for an item you are selling, wait until it IS good.

I totally agree about selling store items for more than their store price. That is just lame.  

[JeanJacketJake]

yea you always have to be honest with the client. if not, you loose credibility and a sale. its always best to stick to truth^^  

[yoshizuki-chan]

it's good to keep looking out for good deals for certain items.......
for instance i like casino items the best in terms of profit (slow to sell, but good if you are patient)
i bought a royal sceptor onyx once for 157k and sold it for 101k profit......  

[sohnyong]

Youkai_Girl06

Here's a bit of my experience. Only yesterday, I bought a coon tail in the marketplace for only 1.7k. It was on auction, so I thought I had paid a good price for it. I tried to sell it just below 4k, the tektek value at that time, but no one wanted to buy it. Since I live in Holland I mostly have to wait till late evening here untill lots of Americans are online. Time difference is six hours. So when I checked after six hours, I found out all the coon tails had gone from 4k to 20k. I don't know how it happened, but I was astonished. So I sold my own coon tail for 15k. The buyer then tried to sell it for 19k and so on. When I checked this morning, the price on coon tails was back at 5k. I'm really glad I got to make some real profit from my coon tail, but I still felt a bit like I was cheating the buyer, since I knew the price on coon tails was extraordinary high...

I bought a coon tail recently for just 3k, but I'm not using it anymore, because i acquired a fox tail. For no cost. X3 So I'm happy. And I'm thinking of selling my coon tail. any advice, people? X3  

[Rhireiah]

This is all fantastic advice! I'm going to have to try some of it 3nodding Thanks for posting ^_^ I know it's easy to lose patience with some buyers in the marketplace. I had a sealed I was auctioning off and one buyer kept PMing me to accept her bid of 500 gold gonk I ended up ignoring her and taking the sealed off the market. I've also had rediculously low offers for the letters when I know people will just turn around and sell them in the market for twice the price.  

[Masked Crime-Fighters]

I dont know if anyone has said this, but if you buy something from the marketplace, dont always try to sell it for more than you bought it for. You should check the prices first, and sell it for slightly cheaper than the cheapest. If you dont want to do this, you can always horde it.
And also, some people are probably against this, but try checking out the time remaining part of the marketplace. You could bid on something cheap and sell it later for more...  

[GinoLeTV]

RingleaderOfTheTormentors

I dont know if anyone has said this, but if you buy something from the marketplace, dont always try to sell it for more than you bought it for. You should check the prices first, and sell it for slightly cheaper than the cheapest. If you dont want to do this, you can always horde it.
And also, some people are probably against this, but try checking out the time remaining part of the marketplace. You could bid on something cheap and sell it later for more...

I used to do the bid thing, but it became too stessful. Especially with larger bids you're investing thousands of gold (while still slightly cheaper than the lowest buy price) and yet someone can easily outbid you by one gold 10 seconds, or even 3 seconds, before the bid ends.