Architect Archive
Thread: Price guide: Appendix to 'Underpricing Archs' thread
cost isnt the issue- its value of the item you are selling.
All of our products are a 1 time sale.
That means that person will have that product for life until a) they forget to pay maint b) the quit this game.
Selling harvesters at 2 cpu is just unreal, and is a slap in our faces.
10 medium harvesters on 70% spot of a resource will bring the buyer about 1-2 mil a week in sales.And i see them going for 25-30k on my server. That in my opinion is way to low.
I see medium homes going for 40-45k, 5 weeks ago you couldnt get an architect to make them lower than 60-65k.
A small home that cost 5k will last that person forever-people pay 110-150k for a crate of canape /brandy/etc....... isnt our product worth more due to it lasting forever?
value of our product should come before cost to us.
Message Edited by KRONOS1974 on 06-05-2004 12:21 PM
wjkerr wrote:
I don't think I'm missing the point. All I did was question how the cost was determined, and that it is different for those who buy resources and those who mine their own. I pointed this out to show a reason why people might be charging less than what the original poster would consider cost, because they are charging above their cost, and providing a profit to them.
I made no comments about pricing, since I myself price based on what makes the product flow at a rate I am happy with. To say that my costs include anything other that what I lay out for materials, makes very little sense to me. A cost must be spent, not implied. However my prices need to reflect my time (ie the labor argument). I treat my Architect business as a small business, meaning I don't take a salary, but I get all the profit. So my time is paid for based on the profit from my business. I don't consider my time to be part of the costs, however I price so that my time is compensated for appropriately.
Like I said, I'm a casual crafter. I'm not here to make millions and millions of credits (although I have). I'm here to make structures, furniture and harvestors for anyone who wants to buy them. That's why I feel the argument of what I can get for selling the resources irrelavant (to me), because I chose to be an Architect, not a resource miner.
I'm sure I've rambled a bit, it's pretty late right now.
PS Your link links to your thread, not the base thread for this that Zen posted to...
Yes I know there was two threads I wanted you to read.. Here is the clicky for ZEN's Post..
Again it is not about the money or the pricing Heck I have over 200 mil in credits and probably another 100 mil in inventory .. and probably about 300 mil in resources.. What possibly could I want with more money? I probably could quit selling now.. and not have to run another mission or sell another item and still have the best armor best guns.. and do everything for a year..
I really dont care what you sell your stuff for.. sell if for 1 cpu.. It does not effect me one bit.. I have learned long ago to let how others price not bug me..
the only reason I am involved in this discussion is one No One that sells has the right to say what sellers deserve to make.. No one that sells can determine the true value of an item.. who can? the Buyer .. so to continue and argue about that is senseless.. because we arent the ones to determine that ...
The reason I sent you to my thread... Is to try to get more people to look at that way of thinking of the whole issue.. the majority of our products were meant to be VERY hard to obtain, that is why no decay and the large amount of resources ( I know that the hologrind which flooded the market has made the amount of resources seems small but I am sorry it still is alot of resources) We were intented to sustain our sells of of Fewer sales. So really whos fault is it that we are facing a market slow down on our products ? that to buy a house is as simple as running a 5 minute mission..?
I know that this isnt the reality of the situation.. but that doesnt change the fact that that is how the system was designed..
Dvnce wrote:
Again it is not about the money or the pricing Heck I have over 200 mil in credits and probably another 100 mil in inventory .. and probably about 300 mil in resources.. What possibly could I want with more money? I probably could quit selling now.. and not have to run another mission or sell another item and still have the best armor best guns.. and do everything for a year..
I really dont care what you sell your stuff for.. sell if for 1 cpu.. It does not effect me one bit.. I have learned long ago to let how others price not bug me..
the only reason I am involved in this discussion is one No One that sells has the right to say what sellers deserve to make.. No one that sells can determine the true value of an item.. who can? the Buyer .. so to continue and argue about that is senseless.. because we arent the ones to determine that ...
The reason I sent you to my thread... Is to try to get more people to look at that way of thinking of the whole issue.. the majority of our products were meant to be VERY hard to obtain, that is why no decay and the large amount of resources ( I know that the hologrind which flooded the market has made the amount of resources seems small but I am sorry it still is alot of resources) We were intented to sustain our sells of of Fewer sales. So really whos fault is it that we are facing a market slow down on our products ? that to buy a house is as simple as running a 5 minute mission..?
I know that this isnt the reality of the situation.. but that doesnt change the fact that that is how the system was designed..
I'll say this one more time...I never talked about what people should sell for. I've said a couple times, my prices are actually high for my server. For example, I sell small houses for 10k, mediums for 100k and larges for 250k. And they sell. I'm sure noone is going to say I am undercutting people at those prices. I certainly don't sell at 1 cpu as you seem to be implying.
And the hologrind hasn't affected my Architect as far as resources go. I've always mined my own. The ammount that harvestors can pull makes any item we can make not take too much time to get the resources for. So I disagree that things require a lot of resources. I'm stocking my city structures vendor, even though I probably wont sell the structures, because I already have a decent stock of other items, and way too much in the way of resources. What I would say though is that hologrinding has artificially raised the value of resources. Wait until publish 10 and see how much those same resources are actually worth.
Anyway, I'm not making myself clear, apparently. AllI wastrying to do is explain why what the original poster thinks is selling below costs, isn't in fact below their costs. Any attempt to try to raise prices across the board, by telling people they are selling below cost is going to fail, because their bank account will tell them they are not selling below cost. I don't care what people charge, I don't care if anyone else thinks I'm underpricing (or overpricing), I'm going to run my shop in the way that works for me. It's just a game, afterall.
well,
costs are no matter, the value is as some others said.
the value is difined by the pure resource prices on market value.
i have to disagree with dvince on the 2 or 3cpu tho, why? very simple
a house sure only takes grind style resources, BUT on what i put my harvetsers on is my choice any time, and i dont have to put them on grind quality resources, i could simply always getting high end resources, so that value would be actually the base for starting my calculations 
so lets say a very good to high end reosucre would sell for 6cpu, then that should be the pure resource value to start with calculation. period
means in other words everything i produce should be actually higher then that cpu wise, other then that you make minus, cause you could make more with same efford.
so all that low baller calculations are simply an imaginary win, yes they make money but not realy businessmen like.
this is not real life, but in RL such ppl would be fast unemployed
to our case, i am sure we will nevr see a proper pricing, sure many lowbalers give up by time, but always ew ones coming after.
so i think we got to live with this crappy architect pricing situation and well maybe also quit on it some day.
PS: what really ruined the resource market are the cross server lot trades, if someone got like 100 harvetsers (its not a joke, some got that) then sure they got plenty resources to wast them en masse on structures and sell them low. such wasnt intended by devs, otherwise we wont have a lot limit, but it hurts all normal players
Sadlateen wrote:
Feal free to price things at what you think you "deserve" nobody has a right to tell you other wise And Ill keep selling at what I consider to be a fair and honest price of 2xcost (3-5cpu) But I do get sick of the people (who I think charge way to much) coming here and puting down people like me who are yes not only selling but making good profit. As if we are doing somthing wrongby "undercuting" others.
I just wonder what all you who think you "deserve" so much profit would try to sell things for if you really had to buy your resorces from another person. its way to easy to say base your prices as if you had to buy your resorces (when you DONT) so you can keep that much more profit for yourself.
LOL. First of all, come on down off your cross, you're gonna get splinters.
Allow me to test your logic here ...if a friend of yours, who is also an architect, leaves the game and decides to give you all his resources and parts for free ... are you going to sell them for (a) free, (b) 1.5 cpu or, (c) at your current rate of 3 cpu? If you sell it at 3 cpu, aren't you cheating people? ... that is not your 'real' cost as you keep insisting. Do you 'DESERVE' to make 3 cpu and that kind of profiton those resources?
If this same friend also gave you all his left over structures, are you going to resell them for 1 credit? (closest to 2x 'YOUR' cost you can get without giving it away for free). Do you 'DESERVE' to make any profit from structures you had nothing to do with in making?
You drop your harvester on resources that has high-900 stats and get 400K of it. You decide to sell half of them, what price are you going to sell them? All you did was mine it, do you 'deserve' 1.5 cpu for those resources if you sell them? (your mining cost would be around .5 cpu) Would you sell them at 3 cpu? At 5 cpu?There are people that would probably offer you 10 cpu for it - would you say "no, I don't DESERVE 10 cpu, I'll take 1.5"?
You do the corvette and already have an AV-21 speeder. Someone wants to buy the schematic and powerplant from you - would you say "Here, take it for free, it didn't cost me anything to get" or "Here, it probably cost me about 10K in buffs, 30K in stimpacks so I'll sell you all of it for 80K because thats what I 'DESERVE'" ... even though they are being sold in the millions?
You ARE undercutting - period. Do you have the right to do so? Sure do - it's your $$$ to SOE every month and you can do as you please. But that doesn't change the fact that you are not pricing what the market can bare - hence, you're undercutting.
... and I have the right to say so.
Message Edited by Dvnce on 06-07-2004 07:58 AM
Meh, feel free to follow your price guides all you want. But, I reckon it'd be a waist of time since I'm already not going to follow it.
The way I see it, true, someone will buy a house, and unless something unforseen happened, they won't be buying a second house. Now, we can mark these way up to make a good chunk profit on houses since they're selling once to a single customer, or, sell em cheap, lure people towards you by letting them know your an Archi, steer them towards your nicely stocked vendor full of harvesters and factories and all that other good stuff that you do sell at the average server price, and watch your vendor start emptying andthe credits in your bank account increase. Advertising, special sales and word of mouth is a powerful tool. It's being used in the real world, and it obviously works.
It's like shopping at a store. Something is half price. Is the store making money selling just that? Heck no, but, the hope is that the customers who go to the store to buy that half priced item, will also buy something else while they are there.
Also, I know I have no trouble making a decent profit selling houses at 10-12k (small generic ones anyway). If YOU have trouble making profit on this, then YOU are going about it the wrong way, not us. Change how you gather your resources, or find another miner that sells resources to you at an obviously better price. Your getting shafted, and I'm getting a good chuckle out of it.
SkyfireDL wrote:
Meh, feel free to follow your price guides all you want. But, I reckon it'd be a waist of time since I'm already not going to follow it.
The way I see it, true, someone will buy a house, and unless something unforseen happened, they won't be buying a second house. Now, we can mark these way up to make a good chunk profit on houses since they're selling once to a single customer, or, sell em cheap, lure people towards you by letting them know your an Archi, steer them towards your nicely stocked vendor full of harvesters and factories and all that other good stuff that you do sell at the average server price, and watch your vendor start emptying andthe credits in your bank account increase. Advertising, special sales and word of mouth is a powerful tool. It's being used in the real world, and it obviously works.
It's like shopping at a store. Something is half price. Is the store making money selling just that? Heck no, but, the hope is that the customers who go to the store to buy that half priced item, will also buy something else while they are there.
Also, I know I have no trouble making a decent profit selling houses at 10-12k (small generic ones anyway). If YOU have trouble making profit on this, then YOU are going about it the wrong way, not us. Change how you gather your resources, or find another miner that sells resources to you at an obviously better price. Your getting shafted, and I'm getting a good chuckle out of it.
Using a loss leader (like houses) to drive people to your shop and other products is actually a very good and smart tactic. It is marketing and promotional tactic used by every major retailer,
However, it kind of backfires when ALL your products are priced as loss leaders.
Sadlateen wrote:
Feal free to price things at what you think you "deserve" nobody has a right to tell you other wise And Ill keep selling at what I consider to be a fair and honest price of 2xcost (3-5cpu) But I do get sick of the people (who I think charge way to much) coming here and puting down people like me who are yes not only selling but making good profit. As if we are doing somthing wrongby "undercuting" others.
I just wonder what all you who think you "deserve" so much profit would try to sell things for if you really had to buy your resorces from another person. its way to easy to say base your prices as if you had to buy your resorces (when you DONT) so you can keep that much more profit for yourself.
So you dismiss that others "deserve" to make X profit but you feel that making Y profit is "fair and honest". How do you come to determine what X and Y are? Isn't that just one persons arbitrary opinion?
Why is it "fair and honest" for you to mark up your items 100% over costs? Why is it not "fair and honest" to mark them up 200% or 250% or 125%?
Do you think that every weaponsmith in the game charging more than 250 credits for an FWG5 is not "fair and honest"? What about all the resource sellers asking more than 1 cpu for quality resources? Are they all gougers?
(Note that I am not disagreeing with your cost of 3-5 cpu and I'm not proposing a much higher nor lower cost. I'm just questioning your logic.)
Look at it like this: There are 3 types of buyers
Buyer 1: The type that is one the search for something and will buy it because he needs it now, regardless of cost. This is the type of person you will make the most or the least amount of money on. They don't necessarily buy impulsively, but they are not worried about cost vs. convience of getting it and using it.
Buyer 2: Impulsive buyer, these are the types that will buy it, because it's there. Not because they need it or even want it, but it's something they probably don't have, or they do and just want more of them for something to show off. Those impulsive buyers are the ones that actually keep everyone going.
Buyer 3: The Shrewd buyer, these types will check out every vendor on every planet and count the cost of everything. They won't buy something from you if your 1 credit more expensive than someone else. In our chosen proffesion, if they can buy an identical harvester for 40k cheaper, they are going to. They are frugal with their money, and look for every chance to save it that they can. This is the category that most of our clients fall under, not all, but most. They want the biggest bang for their buck. If they can get it cheaper at someone else, they will go to someone else.
So, if you use your theory, and put it into action, it will only take one crafter in each proffesion to break you. They will charge differently than you will, and people will buy from them, and in this proffesion, where BER 13's are as rare as water in an ocean, charging 200k or better for it vs. an Arhitect that will sell it for 80k, you can see where most people will go.
Honestly, our proffesion doesn't have the luxury of dictating price. Hell, we can't even control it. If we are to survive out there, we not only have to build with the big boys, but we have to sell a little cheaper than them too. Sure, alot of us could band together and say that xxx price would be the only acceptable MINIMUM price, but it only takes 1 person, 1 architect, to ruin it, and considering that it's good business sense to try to undersell your competition, you don't do it at your own cost. 80k for a large harvester, when you do mine your own resources, is a good price. 100k, 120k is great, but with your math, we'd not only be over charging them for something, but would be making it rough to make the sale. Remember, with several people in your proffesion on the same server, those people will do what they can to close the deal, and the expense of it's over all value, i.e. time, resources, credits for factories and harvesters and the fact that it doesn't ever have to be replaced, unless they don't pay their maintance, is not worth as much as that one sale.
wjkerr wrote:
I don't think I'm missing the point. All I did was question how the cost was determined, and that it is different for those who buy resources and those who mine their own. I pointed this out to show a reason why people might be charging less than what the original poster would consider cost, because they are charging above their cost, and providing a profit to them.
Come on guys, Bandola and I had this same discussion only a week or two ago, and it turned out we were actually in agreement. The problem the terms you are using you are saying cost, but you actually mean value and they are different.
Cost is how much something actually costs (to mine, buy, manufacture or whatever)
Value is how much something is worth depentent upon the market price of the resources and components and the value of the time that went into the production.
The baseline most of us pawlin, bandola, dvnce, etcwork on to decide on 'minimum' price is the value of the product. But you guys keep on calling that the cost, it isn't the cost and as long as you keep saying the cost (of resources for example) as opposed to the value you will get arguments like this one. Other people know that the 'cost' is not as high as you say it is and it isn't but thats because you should be talking about 'value'
Many of us (on both sides of the 'what is cost' argument) agree that pricing should be based on intrinsic value and on the value to the end user not on actual costs, but are arguing over meanings of words.