Architect Archive
Thread: Return of the lowballers !!!
exactly right,
I love what I do, when I stop enjoying it, I will do something else. I am not the richest Architect, not even close. The actual reason I do it this way is becasue of what I DONT like to do.
I dont like to sit in town andhawk my wares ( and I never do it )
I dont like advertizing a vendor ( I no longer use a vendor )
I dont like random tells asking about prices ( I have removed the master architect from my characters title )
I get nearly all my business via e-mail from former customers or people refered to me by former customers. I now consider myself a contractor. Most of my contracts are for mulitpule buildings and for cities. I got to this point by making myself known as someone that puts the customer first. Someone who will bend over backwards to get you a quality item at a low cost and then deliver it to you anywhere in the galaxy at no extra charge. Someone that gives away housewarming gifts to customers, someone that visits a customers new house and talks to them to make sure they are happy.
My way is not the only way, other ways work also, some architects make a lot more money than I do, But the 1 million I clear a week ( on avarage ) is enough for me.
Ok so nobody likes Dalyn's prices
What is the general consensus on pricing I'm speaking specifically of 10KG Meds and 13KG Heavies
I really fell for you.
What does the Title Master Architect mean these days? As far as I can tell, its meaning less and just gives you the right to whine about how others are; undercutting, lowball, or how ever you wish to say it, ‘cheating you out of your profits, for charging less for the same product your selling’.
I may have been on your bandwagon before, but that’s before I really took a look at what it cost to make the things I do and then what I can sell them for. The fact I can make a profit off selling my products for .5cpu is really point less. I bet, I undercut you in most of my prices and sell a lot more then you do for just as much work as you put in to make your big money selling at 3+cpu, maybe I even put in less work then you. After all how hard can it be to sit on your ass for 4+ days gather up enough resources run your items throw your factory? Cuts downs your Critical fails form 1/10 to 1/1000or 1/500. Oh, but your not to the point that you can set back for more then day or so with out seeing your bank account move in the upward direction.
I’m starting to agree with Dayln more and more these days. I’m getting sick of seeing new posts on this topics pop up every other day or so.
Eirn
Master Architect, Master Artisan, Master Merchant.
starsider
so 1/3 of what i charge is profit. so untill i can find something else to spend my money on, you can just deal with my low prices, maybe you should find new suppliers if it costs you more.
chelmsford123 wrote:
No, my problem is not with people undercutting i dont understand why people actualy sell for less than the material used sell for as resouces ???
why on earth would anyone spend time,effort and the risk of crit fails when selling the resouces would yeild you more cash?
I can explain this one to you. In simple terms, it costs me a WHOLE LOT LESS than 1:1 to create the deed.
Let's say I'm harvesting resources with my harvs, and the end total is only costing me about .1 or .2 credits per unit I pull up. In truth, when I turn that into a deed, anything over 0.2:1 is profit. Even 1:1 is profit. 3:1 is a slaughter. What you're charging - around 7:1 (250k jeeez!) is pure robbery.
So it's only officially undercutting if the architect is selling it for less than what it took him or her to make. It's called competition if he's selling it for less than what you're trying to rob people of.
There's never going to be a standard. I will always sell cheaper than you,as long as I'm still turning aprofit. It gets me repeat customers, and I have more money than I know what to do with. It's actually a good business model.
Exactly right.
The reason they cant compete is mental, they cant get past the idea that a resource is not really worth 3 cr a unit. The actaul value is what it cost you to extract it. The market value fluctuates. All we are doing is bypassing the middle man to provide our customers with excelent products and a very low cost while still reaping massive profits.
An excelent business model.
This thread scores a 82 on the Useless Architect Pricing Debate scale. If someone would take off their shoe and pound it on the table yelling "I will crush you" then it would push it up over the 90 mark.
Pretty simple where Dalyn is coming from.. if you don't mine all your own resources to make all your own deeds to sell to customers then you are going to have a VERY hard time competing with him.
At the same time he can't supply everyone so there is a market out there for those of you able to make/deliver what a customer wants when they want it... or simply create a vendor stocked full at your own prices and well advertised... some people when they want stuff, want it NOW and they don't care much about the price.
Of course one of the best business models incorporates all of these factors along with a few others.
At the end of the day, you are all complaining about the wrong 'person'. Dalyn (and other low cost architects) arerunning an excellent business model and should be praised for it. The people who are screwing over the Architect profession are the resource sellers selling at 3 cpr or more. Cut them out of the equation and you can compete with Dalyn, simple really.
Harric wrote:
if u sell lower then u COULD sell the pure resource then u dont make any profit. cause u simply could make more without work. if u cant see the point then u are really really stupid and got no clue about business.
its really not worth to discuss with brainless ppl but its so much annoying me to hear such crap over and over again.
Harric, are you just clueless? It's profit, ALWAYS profit - if I sell it for more than it took me to make it. If it totally cost me 10k to bring up a heavy harvester deed (counting energy for factory, harvs, credits all around) - and I sell it for 10,001 - I made a profit. Doesn't matter if I could've sold those resources for 100k. I STILL MADE A PROFIT. Brainless here -- seems to apply to you, for your inability to understand the word "profit".
I couldn't really care what the resources could sell for. If I wanted to go into the mining business, and bother with watching the fluctuating demand of resources and their prices, I would.
Frankly, matching selling-per-unit prices on resources against deeds for architects is a very weak way at trying to set down price-fixing for deeds. That's the whole reason it came about, because nobody could agree on pricing. This ridiculous 3:1 rule came into being.
Me? I base my sales on my profits. I couldn't care what other architects are selling for, outside of the fact of two rules:
1) I sell at a profit. I will not sell a deed for less than it took me to make.
2) I will sell cheaper than architects near me, to get more business to me.