Architect Archive
Thread: The Pricing Debate
Protilious
Fri Feb 18, 2005 9:58 am
#14
Interesting responses... I see the range is all over the place.
The one thing I curse is the amount of materials we need. There are crafters of other types on my server, and I see they will literally hump the ground of a sweet resource and they can SIT on it for months.... the same resource might last me two weeks. So this means my time is money to me and I think that is the factor I have trouble with the most.
I've done quite a few crafting professions and I found Architect the most time consuming just based purely on the sheer quantity of items we use. Let's face it, we go through Ore like Jabba goes through those tasty frogs.
I've heard a lot of the arguments that go against us, no decay, etc, etc, but time is definitely a factor for me. So time is the factor I guess that I also use.... For instance, as a doc, I could sit in front of theed and pound out a 100k in profit a LOT faster than I can as an architect and that means something to me.
So either A) I've been in the wrong profession for quite a while (this is my second shot at it actually, and I enjoy building stuff), or B) I'll keep pricing my wares at their current rate, and if things become out of hand, or just plain not worth it, I become a loot bunny or something.... or as the poster above mentioned, why kill yourself? Just sell resources... I'm sure I could do that as well... with far less effort.
At the end of the day, I like being an Architect and I'll keep doing it until some patch forces me to put pricing at a level that competes with some guilded guy that gets free resources or the like of.
The one thing I curse is the amount of materials we need. There are crafters of other types on my server, and I see they will literally hump the ground of a sweet resource and they can SIT on it for months.... the same resource might last me two weeks. So this means my time is money to me and I think that is the factor I have trouble with the most.
I've done quite a few crafting professions and I found Architect the most time consuming just based purely on the sheer quantity of items we use. Let's face it, we go through Ore like Jabba goes through those tasty frogs.
I've heard a lot of the arguments that go against us, no decay, etc, etc, but time is definitely a factor for me. So time is the factor I guess that I also use.... For instance, as a doc, I could sit in front of theed and pound out a 100k in profit a LOT faster than I can as an architect and that means something to me.
So either A) I've been in the wrong profession for quite a while (this is my second shot at it actually, and I enjoy building stuff), or B) I'll keep pricing my wares at their current rate, and if things become out of hand, or just plain not worth it, I become a loot bunny or something.... or as the poster above mentioned, why kill yourself? Just sell resources... I'm sure I could do that as well... with far less effort.
At the end of the day, I like being an Architect and I'll keep doing it until some patch forces me to put pricing at a level that competes with some guilded guy that gets free resources or the like of.
RationX
Fri Feb 18, 2005 5:04 pm
#15
I too have a full-time job and family. I generally have about 13 hours per week online and most if not all is spent in-game. As you can see from the previous posts, there are quite a few factors that help architects decide what to charge for the items we make.
Now that you know just about every deciding factor, let me make a couple suggestions that may help ease the burden of being an underappreciated architect a little:
1) Join a guild - Being a guild member has been a truly rewarding experience for me. It seems I can almost always get help from at least one of the members whether it be a hunting expedition that gets me some hide to make paintings, an extra lot to place another factory so I can fill a large order quicker, a guild resource farm for a mineral resource that I need, or even someone to sell my items to. It's good to have friends.
2) Find a good miner - I have a relationship with a miner on Tattooine who provides me with 1 million units of ore for 1 million credits. It's not always the best stuff but you don't need good stuff to make aperfectly finestructural module. In return for his sservices, I provide him with harvesters ata 20% discount. I also know a good power supplier that gets me good radioactive at 1-CPU.
3) Put your vendor(s) in or near a high-traffic city/town - No matter how high you sell your items for, there'll always be someone desperate enough to purchase them. If you are located in a high-traffic spot, you increase your chance of connecting with Mr. Desperation every day. If you sell your stuff at a reasonable-to-cheap price, you will soon find it hard to keep up with demand.
4)Astitch in time saves nine - One of the biggest compliments I get is that I can get orders completed fast. I am able to do this because I keepa bunch of cratesof mining units, walls, structural mods, storage mods etc. on hand. When someone needs a harvester, they usually need it right away to mine a currently active resource. If someone needs a house, they usually can't wait a week for you to put it together. When you're a fast builder, your customers will let others know, which is why 95% of new business for me is word-of-mouth.
It also helps to have more than 1 account but it's not necessary if you do at least 3 of the 4 things above. They have all worked for me. In fact, I'm able to sell my items at a pretty good priceand still provide my guildmates and friends a very healthy discount. Ireally don't recommend lot trades as it's real easy to get ripped off.
The above strategies have netted me millions and millions of credits over an 18 month period.Give one or 2 of the above suggestions a try and see how things work out for you.
Best Regards,
Ration Hawkeye <Smuggler's Alliance>
Master Artisan, Master Merchant, Master Architect
Politician, Rebel Alliance Pilot
Vendors Located at Cartelis, Corellia in the Bria Galaxy
KyberAntillies
Sat Feb 19, 2005 7:11 am
#16
I don't know if this helps, as I only sell furniture, but my formula is 13 cpu. (I just copied it over from my tailor pricing system.) This gives me a range of 1k for candles to 12k for a master couch.
My god dude, do you like ripping people off? I make mine go for about 5 cpu, and if I don't think it's just, I go below that. 13? People are just getting plain greedy. I also sell small houses for 6.5k each
Niklesnitz
Sat Feb 19, 2005 9:42 am
#17
KyberAntillies wrote:
I don't know if this helps, as I only sell furniture, but my formula is 13 cpu. (I just copied it over from my tailor pricing system.) This gives me a range of 1k for candles to 12k for a master couch.
My god dude, do you like ripping people off? I make mine go for about 5 cpu, and if I don't think it's just, I go below that. 13? People are just getting plain greedy. I also sell small houses for 6.5k each
I don't think its about greed, I think its about time and effort and thevalue to the customer. While I believe that 13cpu is a bit high myself, I certainly don't frown upon it. However, I do frown upon your 6.5k small house price. That is what newb archi's should be selling houses for, to perhaps make a few creds while they are grinding to master.
I believe that many archi's don't see the value in our goods. If not for us, resources could not be harvested. If not for us, people would not have houses to store things in. If not for us, people could not craft things in bulk. Those that do find the value in what we sell, price accordingly. Its not all about greed!
Jutewr
Sat Feb 19, 2005 12:05 pm
#18
Niklesnitz wrote:
KyberAntillies wrote:
I don't know if this helps, as I only sell furniture, but my formula is 13 cpu. (I just copied it over from my tailor pricing system.) This gives me a range of 1k for candles to 12k for a master couch.
My god dude, do you like ripping people off? I make mine go for about 5 cpu, and if I don't think it's just, I go below that. 13? People are just getting plain greedy. I also sell small houses for 6.5k each
I don't think its about greed, I think its about time and effort and thevalue to the customer........ Its not all about greed!
Thank you lol. I set my prices at that level not because I'm greedy, but because I'm a busy person and I don't really have all that much time to stock vendors. At high prices, things sell less often, and I don't have to stock my vendors as often. I still do sell a fair amount of furniture, although I still make most of my money off of clothing. I'm glad that your pricing system works for you, but I doubt it would work for me. To each, his (or her) own.
(Btw, check my sig. I'm not a "dude." 
)
)
Uthyr
Sat Feb 19, 2005 1:20 pm
#19
RationX wrote:
Ireally don't recommend lot trades as it's real easy to get ripped off.
I can most certainly imagine how that would be the case, now that you mention it, but just out of curiosity I was wondering if you could elaborate on this. Do people have any personal experience with this possibility?
Anthemion
Sat Feb 19, 2005 5:51 pm
#20
KyberAntillies wrote:I don't know if this helps, as I only sell furniture, but my formula is 13 cpu. (I just copied it over from my tailor pricing system.) This gives me a range of 1k for candles to 12k for a master couch.My god dude, do you like ripping people off? I make mine go for about 5 cpu, and if I don't think it's just, I go below that. 13? People are just getting plain greedy. I also sell small houses for 6.5k each
Good for you. I hardly think these prices will break anyone's bankroll. If players don't want to pay at this level, they won't. Everyone is free to price their items at any level. Do you ever pay $0.85 for a Snickers bar? Better yet, $1.25 for a bottle of soda. Imagine the cpu on that one, the bottle probably costs more to make than the soda.
TrellFalco
Mon Feb 21, 2005 8:01 pm
#21
Never really had a formula myself. When I started, I lokked around to see what other players were charging and based it around the medium of the rate comparisons.
I don't post much here either, but was rather surprised to read in another thread that some architects think that a small house at 12K is cutting the legs out from the rest of the architects. I thought 10K was a fair price.
Small houses - 10K (and THE lowest I've seen here are people who actually sell them on the bazaar for 6000).
Mediums - 45K (I usually see these priced a wee bit higher (60K) elsewhere)
Large Houses - 120K
Guild Halls - 260K (seen them reach 300K)
City Halls - 300K? (do not sell a lot of city stuff - am an independent - my town died a while back but I stayed on in my location.)
Gardens - so far I've made only small ones and have sold them for 12K.
Not sure if this is too low.
Factories - 37500 - am told they usually top out at 40K.
Tents - 10K (is this too low?)
I try to maintain at least 1 of each style of house guild hall, guild hall, and factory available on my vendor. Besides level and size of unit, things like wall requirements and components requirements factor in the price.
Harvestors - not really sure. I don't make really great ones to begin with (only recently found an architect's apron to help with experimentation). I've priced heavy 13BER harvestors at 100K and they never sell. Have sold some for 80K.
Crafting Stations - is 1000 per experimentation level fair? Again, I suck at the experimentation on these and wonder what the craptacular ones should be priced for. I have seen top rated crafting stations sell for well over 100K.
Furniture - the bread and butter of my sales. Don't sell anything above 6000, and the higher level pieces are up there. Architects who push out elegants on a factory run and sell them at about 1000 a piece get on my nerves. To me this is akin to a master armorsmith selling his or her pieces at novice rates. Pieces that require things that I must purchase form other players (hides, factory crates of synthetic cloth, etc.) get marked higher. And the white elegants which require specific materials also get priced at the high end.
Paintings (Bestine) - if I have extra scroll draft schemeatics to use - 4800 a piece. I know I can always make more and a mere ten make up my expenses in purchasing the scroll. If I have no more scrolls, I usually sell them for 6 to 8000. Have seen paintings sold for 15K. I guess I don't factor in the resource expenses.
BTW - I harvest mainly ore, radioactive enery, and metals for myself. I tend to buy the other materials from other players. I only run 8 harvestors but it is enough to support my architect. I know of players that somehow get tons of lots under their control. I'd get bored fooling with harvesting ALL of the time.
All pricing differences aside, what I have noticed that gets repeat business is (1) a consistently well-stocked shop, and (2) a nice looking shop. I don't have the time to stock and maintain 50 of each piece of furniture, but I can maintain a stock of 2 to four pieces of each piece of furniture out there. And that includes things like having two each of every street light in every available color. My good days are when I get players buying up stuff to decorate their entire house.
And real good days are when a group of players needs many houses to start a town. But those days have always been a rare occurance.
I don't post much here either, but was rather surprised to read in another thread that some architects think that a small house at 12K is cutting the legs out from the rest of the architects. I thought 10K was a fair price.
Small houses - 10K (and THE lowest I've seen here are people who actually sell them on the bazaar for 6000).
Mediums - 45K (I usually see these priced a wee bit higher (60K) elsewhere)
Large Houses - 120K
Guild Halls - 260K (seen them reach 300K)
City Halls - 300K? (do not sell a lot of city stuff - am an independent - my town died a while back but I stayed on in my location.)
Gardens - so far I've made only small ones and have sold them for 12K.
Not sure if this is too low.
Factories - 37500 - am told they usually top out at 40K.
Tents - 10K (is this too low?)
I try to maintain at least 1 of each style of house guild hall, guild hall, and factory available on my vendor. Besides level and size of unit, things like wall requirements and components requirements factor in the price.
Harvestors - not really sure. I don't make really great ones to begin with (only recently found an architect's apron to help with experimentation). I've priced heavy 13BER harvestors at 100K and they never sell. Have sold some for 80K.
Crafting Stations - is 1000 per experimentation level fair? Again, I suck at the experimentation on these and wonder what the craptacular ones should be priced for. I have seen top rated crafting stations sell for well over 100K.
Furniture - the bread and butter of my sales. Don't sell anything above 6000, and the higher level pieces are up there. Architects who push out elegants on a factory run and sell them at about 1000 a piece get on my nerves. To me this is akin to a master armorsmith selling his or her pieces at novice rates. Pieces that require things that I must purchase form other players (hides, factory crates of synthetic cloth, etc.) get marked higher. And the white elegants which require specific materials also get priced at the high end.
Paintings (Bestine) - if I have extra scroll draft schemeatics to use - 4800 a piece. I know I can always make more and a mere ten make up my expenses in purchasing the scroll. If I have no more scrolls, I usually sell them for 6 to 8000. Have seen paintings sold for 15K. I guess I don't factor in the resource expenses.
BTW - I harvest mainly ore, radioactive enery, and metals for myself. I tend to buy the other materials from other players. I only run 8 harvestors but it is enough to support my architect. I know of players that somehow get tons of lots under their control. I'd get bored fooling with harvesting ALL of the time.
All pricing differences aside, what I have noticed that gets repeat business is (1) a consistently well-stocked shop, and (2) a nice looking shop. I don't have the time to stock and maintain 50 of each piece of furniture, but I can maintain a stock of 2 to four pieces of each piece of furniture out there. And that includes things like having two each of every street light in every available color. My good days are when I get players buying up stuff to decorate their entire house.
And real good days are when a group of players needs many houses to start a town. But those days have always been a rare occurance.
Pawlin
Mon Feb 21, 2005 8:10 pm
#22
TrellFalco wrote:
...
Crafting Stations - is 1000 per experimentation level fair? Again, I suck at the experimentation on these and wonder what the craptacular ones should be priced for. I have seen top rated crafting stations sell for well over 100K.
...
For crafting stations the market on your server will have a big impact on what you can charge. If you can hit 40+ range then you can fetch a premium. Depends a lot on who'sall making them and what they charge. If there are 2-4 other guys actively adveritising stations at +43 for 40k then that pretty much sets the price. If theres only one person making +42's and charging 100k then that might set the price. If you stations are in the 15-39 range then you might need to discount a fair amount since people usually hunt for the best and the 40 rating is the border point kinda between the best and the rest.
Paintings (Bestine) - if I have extra scroll draft schemeatics to use - 4800 a piece. I know I can always make more and a mere ten make up my expenses in purchasing the scroll. If I have no more scrolls, I usually sell them for 6 to 8000. Have seen paintings sold for 15K. I guess I don't factor in the resource expenses.
How many paintings do you sell? Just curious. I've been selling for 16k and have lowered to 12k recently. I don't sell many at those prices but I quickly recoup the cost of the schematic.
TrellFalco
Mon Feb 21, 2005 8:24 pm
#23
At 4800 each? - a fair amount. I've seen people sell them for 3000 or less on the bazaar sometimes. I try not to sell them all at once after a factory run - only a few at a time. I am surprised that you can sell them for 16K epsecially when people do sell them on the bazaar for substantially less.
I just wish the factories would put them in containers of 100 each - it would save on a lot of storage space.
One thing - are these Bestine schematics supposed to repeat? On Wanderhome, the 'residential house' schematic recently became available - AGAIN. I thought once a schematic was no longer avaliable, that was it.
I just wish the factories would put them in containers of 100 each - it would save on a lot of storage space.
One thing - are these Bestine schematics supposed to repeat? On Wanderhome, the 'residential house' schematic recently became available - AGAIN. I thought once a schematic was no longer avaliable, that was it.
Pawlin
Mon Feb 21, 2005 8:56 pm
#24
TrellFalco wrote:
...I am surprised that you can sell them for 16K epsecially when people do sell them on the bazaar for substantially less. ...
I've sold about 35 paintings in the past month. I think most people on my server sell for 8-12k range on my server. At 16k I'm probably the most expensive. I assume most of my customers are buying from me out of pure convenience or just as an impluse buy. For people who have millions of credits a few K isn't a big deal.
LadyIllyria
Mon Feb 21, 2005 9:35 pm
#25
The prices in my shop reflect the ease of me to remember what is what price, and time consumption for restocking. Since I am the one primarily doing the stocking and restocking, convienence on restocking has become a large factor in my prices. Anything that I can group together as a single price makes it that much easier to restock later on with the method I use. For example, all my heavy harvesters are one price, mediums one price, and smalls one price (all maxed BER). While we all know each of those takes different materials, and some are especially cheaper (or more expensive to make), I prefer this method. Same with furniture. It ranges from 500 to 15000 on a few items (such as large beds and large master level couches).
We have two master merchants, and over 5000 items up for sale, with more stock going up each week. Since the other master merchant is my rl husband's character, and he works outside the home while I stay at home with the children, that leaves me with the time and ability to restock (note, restock, not stock) more often than he can (and so we can both still play the game too in other ways).
This is how I restock:
1) Empty personal inventory.
2) Go to first vendor.
3) Stockroom.
4) This vendor only.
5) Shift/Control select up to 80 items that will have the same price (was only 60 of course before the last patch).
6) Retrieve.
7) Switch to sales tab.
8) Enter one price, and start stocking said items.
9) Repeat as necessary.
When I have to sit down and do 2000 items in one day, the faster I can get through it, the better. For the most part, my prices reflect the market average. Some are higher, some are lower. As I said before in another post, I have seriously been thinking of raising my architect prices on deeds (and have already on some). Lately, I cannot keep them stocked. It might seem like a silly thing to base prices off of in part, but it works for me.
If we ever get a restock all button, or something similar, I'm sure that I will sit down and diversify my prices more.
I sell my 43.09 crafting stations for 60k each, and they sell like hotcakes. Someone is even reselling them now at a higher price. I asked him what sort of profit he was making, and it's not bad. He's made over 1.5 mil in profit alone from my stock at his last best guess, and I've made about 3-4 mil from him. Not that bad of an investment on his part, I don't think, and I've even lowered the price on my cratescrafting stations for him (more money for him and me).
Paintings, when they first came out, I sold for 10k each. As they got older, I raised the price up to 25k in 5k steps per 3 months. They still sold. I got tired of keep track of when to bump up the price, so I just put them all at 10k again. Now, because I have so many of them and I did spring cleaning of my warehouses and wanted to get rid of some extra stock, I've dropped them to 3k each. They are not selling as much as they did when the price was 10k. ::looks utterly preplexed at that::
In the end do what works for you, what you can afford to do, especially with regarding your time. I know people sell for up to half of what I sell for at times. And when the business profits are not tied up in other acquistions for the business, I quite happily purchase what I can and resell up on my vendors.
Mistress Kyphi Makarha
LonelyGhost
Tue Feb 22, 2005 10:12 am
#26
Just curious, but why do you retrieve your stock before re-listing it? It seems easier to just use the Stockroom "Sell Item" combined with the Enter key to put stuff back on the shelf....especially since large batches of things are the same price.
Man, I would LOVE a restock button. I cant believe it would be that hard to do, either. I have started making smaller batches of everything because of this. So many of our products are saturated in the market, I only make runs of 25 or so in any furniture, and I dont use factories to make anything outside of the furniture tree.