Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Anyone wanna give me a few USEFUL suggestions?
- I've sold a grand whopping total of 3 mounts...if that!
- I've sold no tissues
- I've sold 1 creature(s)
- I've sold 12 pet stims...aprox.
I don't think my prices are outrageous. I'm usually willing to negotiate with the buyer if they just TRY to negotiate! I'm getting tired of listening to ppl say 'oh i've seen it for cheaper than that!' or whatever variant they tend to spout.
We've all seen mounts selling for outrageous prices. Anyone here never seen a kaadu being sold for 70K+? So seeing this i think it's perfectly reasonable to sell my mounts for 20k. Yes this is untrained but I haven't seen alot of CH charging 30k for training. Yet time and again i hear ppl say '20k!?!? i use to sell/buy kaadu for 1.5k!!'
Please, I'm asking for a little help here.
- what are decent prices to ask for mounts?
- what are decent prices at ask for for creatures?
- what are decent prices to ask for tissues?
- what are decent prices to ask for pet meds?
If i can't turn BE into a profitable profession i'm just gonna make a bunch of master level stuff for myself and sack the profession!
I've spent literally days increasing/improving my breeding stock. I've got some of THE best flora and meat thats above average if not high in quality. So even with the wonky experimentation of stuff I still get really high quality creatures. So i don't know what i'm doing wrong. Please help.
I personally hate selling things. Drives me crazy. I don't even have a vendor. I know this is supposed to be a social game, but I just don't have the patience to deal with customers personally.
On the other hand, the bazaar is great. When I want to sell pet stims, I put them in the bazaar. I carrya crate of 50 around in my pack, and when I arrive in an overpopulated town (Theed, Bestine, Anchorhead, Moenia, Coronet), I pop 5 stims out and stick them in the bazaar. I tend to sell them for more in imperial towns than in rebel towns because I'm petty, but whatever - pick a pricing scheme.
The funny thing is, they all go. I've had them leave the bazaar while I'm waiting for the shuttle to the next town.
If I decide I want the cash now instead of in a slow trickle, I just pick the most recent person who bought more than one and offer to sell them the whole crate at whatever they paid times the number of stims left in the crate. People who just bought multiple stims out of the bazaar are thinking, "cool - haven't seen these in a while - better snag em while they're here." They'll usually jump at the chance to buy the crate and save themselves the headache.
As for creatures, I don't fuss it. I sometimes make them as favors for friends. I did make a bunch of kaadus before the mount craze - I gave them to a CH to sell, he gave me 1/3 of what he made (or whatever - I didn't really care, I was grinding the DNA tree and had to do something with the samples). He got most of the credits, and I didn't have to stand around barking. When we were done, I cooked up a bol with 9500 HAM and gave it to him as a present. I've got another friend who's grinding to master merchant and had an extra vendor - so he let me put a bunch of creatures on it. They might have sold, they might not...whatever.
The pet stims pay the bills, the bazaar does the selling for me, and I wander the galaxy killing things with a big stick. Life could be a lot worse (of course, it could be a lot better too. The new clone system sounds very interesting.).
--Insomnia
Sounds like you may be lacking in advertising, IMO. Try making a /shout macro to vocally advertise your vendor and what is on it around cities. Business usually snowballs from there with repeat customers and referrals. Oh, just noticed in your signature that you probably do not have a vendor based on your skills... Hmm, the above still works great to advertise what you just listed on the bazaar or have on you.
BE's are usually in high demand for the Tissue line of goods on almost any server. Tailors I know have a hard time finding a BE, let alone one that will make crates of tissues. Try asking around even... searching Tailors and /telling them to see if they may be interested in your goods. As for pet stims and vitality packs, these things sell like bottled water in Mexico almost anywhere! Listing a bunch on the bazaar then announcing the listingsin spatial is a great start. Hope these tips help you...
I'll just tell you what I did, and maybe you can see if it works for you.
I deal primarily in tissues used by tailors. All I did (and this will be even easier with player cities) is run around to the various tailors on the planet where i kept my basic residence. After looking at the shops and what they had for sale, I sent them a tell asking if they were interested in selling BE'd clothing. Most of them said yes and asked how much. I charge 300 cr per point per the highest point (ie, a 16 bleed defense is 4800cr and a 4/16 melee/stun is 4800cr). I had one guy balk, the other guy jumped at it. All I can say is the person that jumped at the chance is doing a fair bit better than the person that balked 
I also had a tailor that I was working with before while I was griding, those 2 customers keep me pretty busy.
As for pet stims, well, I didnt get into these much until recently. If you go the route of tailoring tissues you'll probably understand why if you are mildly successful. What I have done is team up with an artisan (surveyor) and sold half my business to him. I bought like 12 harvestors and he places them and maintains stock levels of all my neccessary components (tissue and pet stim). For that, he gets half of my pet stim revenue. I typically charge: (Heal x Charge)/10. I just toss them up on the bazaar and watch them fly. Usually sell 20-25 a day plus the occasional crate from people that email me.
Basically, you have to be proactive. Pet stims are probably the easiest thing to get into. You just need to make sure you make quality pet stims. If you are making trash, they arent going to sell (I'm typically in the 700/30 range for my B's). People will pay for quality, remember that. For tissues, you just need to go out there and talk to people (tailors)...its as simple as that.
These are pretty much the only 2 lines I consistantly make and sell. I dont really get into pets too often (except for friends and stuff) because the time involved to make a good one or 2 usually isnt worth the payout in the end. I hope some of this helped and good luck.
Tilen
where ya based out of ... sometimes that is a problem too.
For the longest time my shop on Naboo was in the RP city Temenos (now a real city thank goodness). I was having slow business because it was such a long hike. What I did was worked on getting name recognition, and customer referrals. I know I am not as rich as some BE's out here but I am not wanting for business.
What I mean to say is RP cities and the good RP people are good people to sell to, I have made tons of creatures for their houses, or pets, mainly for RP reason.
Thats just me though, shoot me a tell if ya have questions. Just don't open yer shop near mine =P
Its all about suppliy, demand, and competition. Many times people try to charge too much for their product. While you may sell a few at the high price, you may actually make more money selling lots of items at a lower price.
If you maintain an honest lower price you never have to negotiate with your customers. They trust you more and you get return business.
Creature Handlers don't care about return business (or they wouldn't be selling level 18 mounts to non-ch). We see them charging a lot of money, because they are only interested in that one time sale. Let them charge alot. I seen one sell a Carrion Spat Mount for 50k, then 5 minutes later went to my store and bought a crate of Stims for 60k. Either way I still get the money in the end hehe.
Basically its not always good to charge the most you possible can. If you keep your vendor stocked with lots and lots of items at a fair price, it will sell out everyday. On a bad day I can bring in 200k. If people know you keep your vendor stocked, they will come back over and over again to buy stuff and tell friends about your store. People don't save waypoints to a store with no vendor or a store that never has a selection of items on it.
I've made maybe around 60 or 70K selling products. I realize its not really getting rich as most of that has gone straight back into training or material to grind with. What few sugestions I have:
Don't try to compete with finished mount prices and deffinatly not first week mount prices. I've sold 2 finished mounts last week both for around 20K. If you can move any mountable creatures you are trying to sell to your data pad and let them grow. You will get more for them if they are ready to be made into moiunts than if you sell them as deeds. As babies or deeds prices isn't much better than it was pre mount, 3-5K for that much you might as wel just dump them on the bazar.
Watch for people looking for non-Ch pets, rock beetle, cowardly gurreck, although you can't make eithor of these when you explain to them that in a week or so non-ch pets will be reduced to Lv10 and below and they won't be able to have a CG or RB a lot of them will buy a pet from you. We do have a number of decent lv10 pets, Guurcats are pretty good.
As for pet stims, just walk around with your BE title up. I get about a tell every other day from someone looking for stims. Also join hunting parties. Everyone has a pet and most don't carry a lot of pet stims with them.
As far as negotiation, I will usually give people a price around 1200 for stim B's, if they say that it looks high or seem wishy washy about it I will lower the price to maybe 1K. anyone who gives me the "my friend is a BE and he sells me beter stims than yours for less money" story. I tell them thats an excenelt deal and they should go buy from their friend. They I usually pout them on my ignore list. I have no time for whiners. Money is probably the easiest thing to get in this game.When I wasabout 1/2 way up the pikeman ladder I could easily solo missions for 1K without a pet, with a decent pet maybe 3-4K. The pet took only moderate dammage in those missions and it would take less then half of the charges from one of my Stim B's to cure that dammage. So anyone bitching about how they can't afford your prices just isn't worth your time.
So far I haven't sold any tissues yet, but I tend to give away free samples to any tailors I meet. Good contacts are worth a lot.
So thats me in a nutshell. I don't have any sort of set prices for most items, usually comes down to what people can afford. For pets I often just tell people to make me an offer and I'll take anything reasonable. For the people that can afford it, money means nothing. for the people that can't afford it I'm usually glad to just help them out, not counting the whiners.
We've all seen mounts selling for outrageous prices. Anyone here never seen a kaadu being sold for 70K+? So seeing this i think it's perfectly reasonable to sell my mounts for 20k.
20k is still too high, people when they think about mounts want it fully grown and trained. They don't want to wait for 5 days for it to grow. I have yet to actually both selling off clones as mounts, i just sell the Kaddu and such for the usual 5k and there's never been any problem with it. The point is that if your not selling much then your either not promoting yourself very well or your prices are indeed too high
What are decent prices? It varies from server to server by a great deal. Generally it's best to do some market research and find out what people are selling it for and what the common prices are, then you price yours competatively. It also helps to be a socializer, if you get involved in the community then words of mouth spreads very easily. I'd say a good 80% of my customers are people who others have referred to me, the other 20% are simply sales from people who used the search function to find me or bought stuff from the bazaar.
If you want my suggestion for petstims then try to keep all but the advanced components Cs under 3000c. Unless your paying through the nose for the resources at over 10c per unit then you'll still profit. I typically sell a normal petstim B for 800c, the advanced (single adv. BEC)ones for 1800c and occasionally some very advanced ones (adv. BEC and LS) for 2800c. I've not got someone supplying my insect meat or any dantooine fiberplast so I've never dealt with the Cs or Ds but the fact is that most people are perfectly happy with some nice 750/35 petstims for under 2000c anyway. I mean sure there are people like Fairchild who has the weight of a guild backing her so she's very popular but there's still a market out there for us independant bio-engineers because people like Fairchild cannot keep up with the demand.
I believe that I sell fairly cheap,
I sell a crate of tissues for 50k (2k ea) (unless its rare)
Mounts range from 12k - 35k
Stims are about 1200 each for a fairly good B
Vit Backs (B) around +49/50 I sell for 1000cr
I offer discount to guildies of course. I dont get many new customers, it is mostly a few tailors and 1 chef who come back to me. I sugest that you should just find a few tailors/chefs looking for these tissues and get to know them, and they should keep coming back.
I've made millions (literally) selling pet stims and tissues. I've only made a couple hundred k sellin creatures. I just made 350k last night selling two tissues alone. They were 14/14 CH tissues. I have a friend who runs my vendor for me. I just make the stuff and drop it in my house. He sells it from there at whatever price I set. He get's people into his city and sales tax from it. I get 100% of the money, free advertisement and it's easier. I'm just starting my Doctor business too.
Anyways... I sell Pet Stim C's at about 4k (25 charges 1050 heal average).
I sell tissues from 7-10k when they buy less than 10. I get the price from the final experimented value. Like if it's at 70% of the max (on the little experiment bar), I sell it for 7k. If they buy a lot, I go as low as 2-4k per tissue.
I sell creatures for whatever the hell I feel like because I hate makin animals. I just charge as much as I can for them.
There's my 37.5 cents.
On Dathomir, I could never keep the Bazaar stocked for more than a couple minutes, even charging 3k per vitality pack...
Until BE is changed you could probably make more money with your TKA skills.
If the new changes go in you will be in big demand. Since BE has been borked for so long there is probably 1 BE for every 50 CH. There will be plenty of orders to fill so I wouldn't drop it just yet if I were you.
Think of how many CH's there are (dabblers and masters). It's a huge market if we ever get the product. And most CH's I know have plenty of cash to throw around.
I'm 1/3/1/0 BE grinding right now on Kauri, and I sold my first pets last night.
I sold a couple of crappy Kaduu's to a fellow for 15k each.
I told him the following:
- It's a baby, so you won't see it do anything useful till its fully grown in a week or so
- He needs a CH to tame it and to teach it
- He needs a MCH (basically) to get it mounted
I told him he could go out, and buy a creature right now for 100k+, but why bother when you can get one for 15k and probably get a CH to do all that for cheap.
He bought one, and then got a second one on top of that. I gave him some free stuff on the side as well because he was patient and understanding.
It seems from a revenue generation standpoint, that Pet Stim C's are in high demand. Depending on what galaxy you're on (as time goes on, I'm really thankful I chose Kauri..!), the markets will differ. If anything, I just sit outside the Coronet starport and grind. Eventually, someone usually comes along and sends me a /tell.
IMO, this game is about quantity and quality. Not markup. You're better off selling 3 things and make a profit of 60k instead of trying to make a profit of 80k on one item. Why? Because you've got 3 people who know about you as opposed to one, and the benefits of return business is huge in this game...