Architect Archive
Thread: Architect Pricing guide
I'm looking for a good price guide, especially to furniture and installations.
Can we put our heads together and hammer one out, if one doesn't already exist?
-Kyoshi Wavingstar
Architect, Wavingstar Enterprises
Division of Intergalatic Outfitters
Tempest
I didn't notice your name there.On Tempest prices are pretty good...3-4 c/u on houses gets me business. 4-8 c/u on furniture, depending on what goes into it. I don't sell master level furniture for others, but if I did, I would sell it for much more than that.
I don't do installations so I couldn't quote any price rates on those.
Iset myminimum priceat 1 credit per unit more than I can buy the resources for off the bazaar. This is just the very least I will charge for friends, repeat customers or large orders. My normal prices are a little more and go up depending on the size and complexity of the building.
I do this because it makes no sence to sell a building for less than whatyou could sell the resources for on the bazaar with less effort and no work involved. How much it costs to mine the resources is irrelevent to pricing in architecture, what is relevent is the market value of the resources.
Just a suggestion since you asked. Follow it if you like. If not, good luck!
Hey! It's a tempest arch convention! 
Vivienne here, N of Mos Eisley, near Osamei's lil town.
Consider the difficulty involved:
- are factory parts required?
- are bulk resources needed?
- are rare/specific sub-typeresources needed?
- how much time will it take to make?
- How badly do I really want to make the sale?
I always factor those into price.
On Tempest, I've been pricing like this:
HOUSES: Small 10k, Medium 75k, Large 150k
Factories 50k
HARVESTERS: Personal 1.5k, MMI 20k (The med. chems/flora take 3 walls instead of bricks, so i price the mediums like factories at 50k), heavies 150-175k
POWER: Wind 2k, Solar 25k, Fusion 150k
FURNITURE: Nothing less than 400-500 for anything tier 1.Torches go rapidly at 1-1.5k,Small Beds at 1500, Large Beds at 3k. I generally price everything in that 1-3k realm for furniture.
Just an idea. I've found that I can actually charge more for some things, though demand and inquiries have slowed on Tempest as of late.
I have my entire pricing list (along with many pics) available at this site http://canda_vespin.home.comcast.net
I'll admit to being a little higher than Dollar Tree ARchitects... but I feel my prices are fair considering current market values or raw resources. Feel free to use it if you like it.
I have an entire list of prices also. Generally I charge 5 cpu and a little more for the resources I need to put into a factory to make factory parts.
Ever wondered what the average prices of some items are? Here's a very good link to start your pricing. Don'tforget, some items takeHigh Qual resources and others take identical factory crated item. Let's not forget the time we take for crafting and providing a quick turnaroud.
If you want some advice on pricing, check out the FAQ.
I really do think this is a good idea. While supply and demand does play a part in prices, having a general guide to start from is a good thing. It helps level the market out to a place where we can all be happy. Hologrinding has destroyed much of the market and it may take a while to come back from it, but we as a community need to stick together in order to bounce back. If the working architects remain firm in their pricing methods, the hologrinded goods will start to phase out rather quickly.
Even in RL, different industries have standards that they go by as far as pricing goes. Some are more than others and some are less than others, but it's rare to find extremes on one end or the other in most cases. Think of the SRP you see on assorted items in stores.
The tailor forums have an excellent pricing guide stickied. Many tailors use that verbatim and others tweak it here and there. The droid engineer forums do as well. Admittedly those classes have more options for variety, but the principle is the same. It helps the profession to have a standard, even across servers.
It's impossible for everyone to agree ona system of pricing, but this is one of the biggest roadblocks for those just entering the profession. It's possible that many of the hologrinders really don't have a good idea of what they can actually sell something for, and they are not going to take the time to evaluate the current market on the server and visit other architect's vendors (considering the high volume of empty vendors across the universe).
I think the above link has a very good start. I do agree that there should be some variation depending on the BER of harvesters, though, and there are no prices for furniture there. I have a list of my prices on my city's website (http://annespage.com/forums) and I'd love some feedback as far as how those prices compare to everyone else's out there. I could also post it here if that would be helpful.
Ok, so here's the problems that I see with the idea of a price guide...
What should the price be for a medium BER10 mineral harvester?
30k? 60k? 100k?
You might think that obviously 60k is the right answer. Or you might think that nobody in their right mind would think anything less than 100k would do. But its possible that you think 30k is the best baseline price. And I'm sure we'll getsomone that thinks we're stupid for charing more than 20k. If you can get us to all agree on a price then this would be easy to do but I just don't think we'll get anything close to consensus on the topic of pricing.
Then consider the impact that cost of materials has on our profession. Most of our costs are directly tied to the cost of resources. i.e. we sell a house for 3 cpu or 5 cpu or whatever.
Well if I can buy ore for 2 cpu then that changes my pricing model compared to a server where ore goes for 3 cpu standard.
The market has such a huge impact on our model that you really can't set a standard price that will be usable across all servers.
And of course you do have to look at the individual server economies and see what has influenced them up or down. If you've had someone pumping out +42 crafting station by the crate for 10k each for the past 4 months then Its not easy to start charging 42k for those nor is it smart to charge 42k if stations are in short supply on a server and currently fetch 100k each. THis is all about supply and demand and a price guide can't give any insight into that.
Ok, to change tact on this topic a little bit...
I realize that one goal of people asking for a price guide is just so that they have a basic idea of what the going rate is for prices. If I started out as a new architect I wouldn't know if I should consider charging 40k or 80k for a factory and so the goal is just to at least tell people "I charge 45k and that seems to work ok, but bear in mind it varies like 30k to 75k for different architects".
If thats the intention here then I think we can accomplish the same thing with a list of example price lists.
So what I propose is in the FAQ in addition to the explanation from Zen on how to determine your pricing I could give some links to known price lists that individual players have posted. I think that will give people enough to go on without trying to do too much.
The other possibility is if we have a thread here where everyone posts their prices and then we sum it up with an average and range for each item. e.g. Medium mineral BER10: average 29.4k, range 20-85k.
That would give people a quick idea of whattypical prices are. If someone wanted they could just pick the average or thereabouts and decide to use that as their price list.
Course I still think the best way is to put some work into it and guage the market on your own server.