Artisan Archive
Thread: Here's what to charge for your stuff, and why (if this is to be a worthwhile profession)
In order for this to be a worth while profession (IMHO), our profits must match our costs, and hopefully exceed them - we are merchants after all, and should be able to get rich faster than people who just run missions. Here's what I figure:
COSTS
Labor 2400 per day (see below)
overhead, maintenance 1000 per day
overhead, power 350 per day
-----
TOTAL COST 3750 per day
If Avg. mineral extracted in a day is 1600 (remember this is avg for good sites and not so good sites), then to not LOSE money, you must charge more than 2.344 credis per unit of mineral extracted. And this is using extractors, which makes good use of time. You should charge much more if you are sampling.
If you want to make a tidy profit, it should be at least 3cr per input unit + a flat 20cr for the bazarre fee. So a random widget which requires 10 units of what ever should be priced at 50cr MINIMUM.
THE LABOR PART OF THE EQUATION is based on this... we want to be able to make as much as some shmo who just runs missions all the time, right? So the opportunity cost of us making stuff, trying to sell and serviceing extractors and power gens is that we are doing that instead of running missions. SO... my equation estimates that in a 4 hour session, an average player spends half the time "working" and half the time messing around. I say an mission seeker could put away 1 800 cr mission every 40 minutes, or 3 of those in 2 hrs for a total of 2400.
Shouldn't we get paid at least as much, or more (we are merchants after all) for two hours work? So I built it in as labor to arrive at "proper" pricing.
Maybe you think we shouldn't make as much, but I say then that the artisan may not be a worthwhile profession. Better to run missions....
So PLEASE, people! Do not price your goods for anything less than 3cr per input resource! That price even assumes we sell everything, so it is very conservative. IF YOU PRICE BELOW THAT, YOU RUIN THE ECONOMY FOR THE REST OF US! True the value is what the market will bear, but if the market only bears goods a 1cr per input unit because people are giving stuff away, well, I'd rather be a Brawler or something.
SORRY for the diatribe, but PLEASE POST your guesses on the assumptions I made in the first paragraph!
Sincerely,
Ick
Ick Brothers Trading Company
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Interesting, I'm not at a level where I can build harvesters yet but I thought mass production should push down the price not up. If I understand correctly you are saying that for you to maintain say 5 harvesters instead of 4 would actually increase yourprices.
As I said I'm not at that level yet and will probably have more insight once I'm able to put up my first harvester.
That sounds fairly reasonable to me. I just built my first harvesters yesterday and I began wondering shortly after I had built them how the heck I was going to pay for them. Artisan does seem to be the profession that has the hardest time making some decent money in this game (at least right now and at the lower levels).
I have no problem working within that 3cred/unit scheme. Of course, I'm on Correlia so it may not matter if nobody else there follows suit.
When you start building harvesters, in order for them to work, you must supply them with power. The power comes from a wind or solar generator or Ogolo extractor.
Both are structures, on which you have to pay maintenance.
My best guess is that its about 1000 credits per day, so the more extractors, the more overhead. 2 extractors means 2000 in maintenance plus you have to give them about 350 cr worth of power each.
Now, by my estimate, extractors do bring the price down. Imagine running an extractor for one day, playing for 4 hours ("working" for two, maintaining them and crafting a few items). The next day, you'll have somewhere around 1500 ore. So you sacrificed 2 hours of mission-running-cash-earning time. + overhead. So that cost you about 3750.
If you were to sample 1500 manually and craft a few items, since it doesn't work for you while you're off line, it would take you ??? number of hours? 6 hours? of solid work time? That just cost you 7200. Almost double. If you are passing your costs along in the price of your product, yup, its more expensive to do by hand. At least in more than small volume.
Ick
Ick Brothers Trading Company
[)|(]
Any attempt at price control are doomed to failure. It a waste of time to even discuss it. The BEST you can do is coordinate with people in your region, in an attempt to price fix. Even then it only take one person with 9 mines running to kill your price. Since you have no legal options(like in the RW) you can't control the other players. Some people have suggested social pressure, I for one wouldn'tcare if others don't like my pricing as long as it sells and I make a profit.
I really hope the 2 extremes can understand that
extreme 1
2000 units of Ore 500 credits
extreme 2
3 units of Ore 2500 credits
I think 3-5 cr per unit is fair. when I sell materials I see what the average price is so as not to undercut anyone. I have seen 4 cr/unit as an average. Also scarcity plays a very important role.
While the servers are still in a state where no new players are coming in, things are going to be rough.
Without new people to come in and buy new stuff, we have to wait for degration of existing equipment before people are going to start buying our wares.
Even then, the number of Artistians and related elite professions is too large to the demand for goods. The market is flooded right now. The demand isn't that great - although I have found items that seem to sell better than CDEF weapons.
Right now, I am contemplating a change in professional "role" Forego the elite artistian professions, become a full fledged scout as well.
Instead of building items out of the resources, I am just going to resell the resources. If I can cover my costs of harvesters and maintenance and provide a simple way for other artistians to get their resources, then I become the middle man. Plus, I will have bone, meat and hide to sell as well. Being a scout and artistian, I can foucs on my weapon skills as well and then I can survey/harvest in those dangerous locations that the average artisitian can't go because of the danger.
-p
Artisans also need to pay attention to demand on the bazaars. There's no sense in undercutting your competitors if there is enough demand that you'll both be certain to sell your items quickly. For example, bone armor is still movingpretty quickly through the bazaar (and will probably continue to move given the steady influx of newb combat types), so take a look at how long the instant auctions for bone armor are lasting ... if the OLDEST instant auction for an item is at "6d 22h", then you know the stuffis selling like hotcakes and you can probably bump up the price a bit. LIkewise, if stuff is sitting there with the timer down to "1d 4h" or something, then it's probably either (a) overpriced or (b) not in demand (usually it's the former ... right now there seems to be at least SOME demand for just about everything).
Anyway that's an overly complicated explanation of a pretty simple supply & demand principle, but it seems to me a lot of the artisans out there aren't paying attention to this.
Just let them burn.
I'm not paying the maintenance fees on any of my harvestors and it looks like they'll last about a week. Someone mentioned that they can eat about 1000 credits a day. So figure I'm saving 7k. Just buy a new harvester for 2k and you've cut the cost a bit.
- Sav
P.S. Also very cool watching several machines burning in a field. hehe.
True price fixing is illegal, but so is market dumping (this is an abstract point, since there's no actual organized market dumbing going on).
It's just an education thing. Artisans should know what they need to charge to break even. It's like someone in your hunting party not knowing what a weapon power up is, or medics only healing themselves and not realizing they get xp from healing others... not knowing this stuff makes life harder for them, but it ALSO makes life harder for us!
Knowledge is power.
Also, excellent point about checking how old the oldest item on the market is! Don't underprice if stuff is moving.
Also an excellent point about the extractors. I will, in fact, let mine blow up thanks to this thread. Anyone else have an opinion on how long it takes one to go from 100% to 0%?
Ick
Ick Brothers Trading Company
[)|(]
Ick
Ick Brothers Trading Company
[)|(]