Architect Archive
Thread: What To Charge
Regretably there can be no definitive answer to this question.
There are a number of reasons, principally:
a) There are a whole bunch of different medium harvesters/houses, houses are basically the same except for perhaps some differences in value of generic vs planet specific. This does not hold true for harvesters, the resources used to make them and the value to the potential customer vary widely.
b) Server economics have developed quite differently, as is to be expected, no 2 servers have the same pricing. Without knowing which server you are on nobody can even hazard a guess as to prices on yours.
c) Different models are used by different architects for setting their prices, some use a cost plus profit margin basis, some calculate based on return customer will get on their investment, some will simply try to price at lower than the competition and others will use different criteria.
At the end of the day the only way to find out is to trawl around every vendor on every planet on your server, but that will probably make you none the wiser at the end of the day. So check vendors near to you, check the trade forum for your galaxy, ask a few architects on your planet. Then when you've got some idea of what the market will bear try it out, sell a few, see if you are happy with that price, lower or raise it if need be until you reach a level that you are happy at, but don't fall into the trap of trying to undercut the opposition, that does not usually help anybody in the long run.
Good Luck, but don't expect to find a simple answer to your question, I'm afraid it is not as easy as it might have at first appeared.
Check out the FAQ stickied at the top of this board, there is quite a good section on pricing.
banny018 wrote:
the best way to find out costs i've found is to check the area you live in for vendors and see what others charge but remeber nmot to be too high priced or they don't sell.. i've found a general price for medium haresters is about 19k and houses 25k- 30k
I don't know where you got the idea that the general price for medium harvesters is about 19k on Bria. It costs 3 times that to buy the resources and more than that even if you harvest them yourself !
banny018 wrote:
the best way to find out costs i've found is to check the area you live in for vendors and see what others charge but remeber nmot to be too high priced or they don't sell.. i've found a general price for medium haresters is about 19k and houses 25k- 30k
Manipulative wrote:
banny018 wrote:
the best way to find out costs i've found is to check the area you live in for vendors and see what others charge but remeber nmot to be too high priced or they don't sell.. i've found a general price for medium haresters is about 19k and houses 25k- 30k
If only there wasa way to buy these items on Bria, and sell them on Shadowfire. I'd love to find a vendor so stocked/priced. It sure would save me a lot of time over actually making the stuff myself!
LMAO, if there was a way to buy these items on Bria, period.
I am on Bria, I would buyall those 19k mediums, it is cheaper than the resources, I woulddrop them on my vendor at 50k per andsit in the sun sipping pina coladas all day instead of making them myself !Seriously though, on every galaxy there are 1 or 2 selling this cheap, it could easily be that these are not BER 10s or they are a newbie making his first attempts to sell without an idea of the market. 19k is certainly not a 'general' price.
i need to no because i need to buy 1 and i dont want to get ripped off
Guild halls require around 60k of raw materials. You can figure out the ballpark costs based of raw materials costs and factor in a profit.
But understand that a PA hall can represent a pretty large investment of time and materials for an architect, so we'll generally want a pretty good profit out of one. Otherwise we could just make other smaller items with higher profit margins.
I personally don't build them cause they are just a big pain.
I am not trying to flame anyone, but why do folks continue to ask others what they should charge? Does anyone actually figure their expenses and then come up with a price based on thier costs plus value added or an acceptable profit margin?
What difference does it make what others charge? If they charge lower than you can afford to sell your wares, does it mean you are going to sell everything at a loss? If they charge substantially higher, does it mean you are going to charge a premium?
The only way to answer these questions is to see what others on your server are charging and how much it costs you to do the same work. If you can sell for less than the market rate for your server and still make money, you are golden. If you cannot, time to find another profession or evaluate your business practices to be more efficient.
Me, I charge a small percentage over what it costs me to make the items. Thats it. I don't care what others charge. I get enough business to support myself. If people tell me "Wow.. thats a lot. I can get the _______ from ______ for a much less". I usually tell them, that is a good deal, I cannot make them for that. I suggest buying from them. In some cases, were someone REALLY does sell for an undercut price, I buy some myself and then resell them at my rate.