Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Any droid engineer wanna tell me about your profitability?
Page 2 of 2
Straker_Atrella
Sun Sep 12, 2004 2:53 pm
#14
I make about 1 million a week, sometimes more. Which isn't much when compared to a Weapon or Armorsmith, but that is enough for me.
However, I have also had to spend about 15 million buying resources that are not around anymore.
Also know that if you want to make a lot of money doing Droids, you need to do a lot of work. I spend over 40 hours a week donig droids.
ranger_one
Sun Sep 12, 2004 5:42 pm
#15
Straker_Atrella wrote:I spend over 40 hours a week donig droids.
/eyeswide and mouth agape
Thats nearly a full time job!!!
To me it is amazing, not to probe - but I do hope you have a secure job outside of SWG
BillyBobthe50th
Mon Sep 13, 2004 12:53 am
#16
I have made 1.5 million total for the 4 months I have been DE. I sell in STC, keep my vendor stocked, and advertise. But the only buisness I get atm is selling 1-3 crates of 10 seekers or probe droids, 6k for a crate of 10 seekers each with 10 uses, or 15k for a crate of 10 Akrayds each with 10 uses. Its probably because no one wants a droid anymore around theed, where 99% of my market is.
Rippen208
Mon Sep 13, 2004 2:40 am
#17
spacemouse wrote:
Rippen208 wrote:
Rather than break down a bunch of numbers for questions about DE profitability, its' easier for me (and simpler for the person asking) just to say how much I've made. I became a Master DE about a week before patch 8, in April (5 months ago). I had 425k then. Now I'm at 57 million. I think that answers the question quite well.
Rippen
Woot!
Ok, so, I'll pick up master merchant and I'll use all of my own heavies. Then I should be able to sell quite a bit if I spread my vendors to all the popular locations in the galaxy
I love taking special orders, and building stuff by hand when I'm in the big cities. You get a lot of these requests when wearing the master badge?
Before you spread vendors all over, make sure you're gonna be able to keep a bunch of widely spread vendors stocked, because as many people have pointed out, a stocked vendor is one of the most (if not the most) important keys to being a successful DE. I have 3 vendors in one building, and that has been enough volume for me to keep up with, in the limited time I have to play. And there is more to it than just having vendors all over. You have to cater to customers, help them out with purchases, explain things over and over, and do it all very kindly. In other words, you have to be a hands-on DE to be successful at it.
Some people just put up vendors in a dark, unfurnished house or tent with 5-6 droids on them at prices that are set too low, then disappear, and they think the money is gonna roll in. Then when it doesn't, they think the DE profession is unprofitable and spew it on this forum. That's why my mantra has always been "If you do it right, you CAN make a lot of money at DE." Geesh I sound like one of those people selling financial advice, don't I...
Rippen
Rippen208
Mon Sep 13, 2004 2:47 am
#18
spacemouse wrote:
Rippen208 wrote:
Rather than break down a bunch of numbers for questions about DE profitability, its' easier for me (and simpler for the person asking) just to say how much I've made. I became a Master DE about a week before patch 8, in April (5 months ago). I had 425k then. Now I'm at 57 million. I think that answers the question quite well.
Rippen
Woot!
Ok, so, I'll pick up master merchant and I'll use all of my own heavies. Then I should be able to sell quite a bit if I spread my vendors to all the popular locations in the galaxy
I love taking special orders, and building stuff by hand when I'm in the big cities. You get a lot of these requests when wearing the master badge?
Oh yeah, regarding the special requests, I don't often go to Coronet anymore, but my shop is close enough to Theed (900m) that I get tells from the searches people do for DEs. Those come every once in a while. Most of the time I can just politely refer those people to my vendor (email the waypoint, which gets passed around), because I have a wide variety of droids on it, which usually has what they want. That leaves a few special orders here and there, which is no problem at all to do. The business practically runs itself.
I also don't have an army of heavies, I have a couple of mediums for each resource, and keep a loose eye on resources. At first I paid a lot of attention to resource shifts, but now I don't have to because I still have lots of what I mined before. Invest time now and it pays off later. I don't spam, and I have only 3 boxes in the Advertising tree of Merchant.
So you see, I'm not even a "hardcore" DE (as that is often defined), and I make a lot of money.
Rippen
Rippen208
Mon Sep 13, 2004 2:49 am
#19
Lycids wrote:
Rippen208 wrote:
Rather than break down a bunch of numbers for questions about DE profitability, its' easier for me (and simpler for the person asking) just to say how much I've made. I became a Master DE about a week before patch 8, in April (5 months ago). I had 425k then. Now I'm at 57 million. I think that answers the question quite well.
Rippen
Wow! What your secret? Just wondering, are one of a few Master DE's on your server? On my server there seems quite a few Master DE's.
I've written a lot of posts explaining what I think is important to be a good DE, don't have time to post much now. I don't really know how many DEs there are on Starsider, I never visit any of them.
I don't even play enough anymore to know.Rippen
Straker_Atrella
Mon Sep 13, 2004 4:18 am
#20
ranger_one wrote:
Straker_Atrella wrote:
I spend over 40 hours a week donig droids.
/eyeswide and mouth agape
Thats nearly a full time job!!!
To me it is amazing, not to probe - but I do hope you have a secure job outside of SWG
I have a full time job as well. I just don't watch much TV and stuff. That 40 hours includes surveying and stuff of course too.
Zorkk
Mon Sep 13, 2004 2:15 pm
#21
Location is definatly important... Since i'm not a master merchant (i wanna fight and make droids, so room for MM) i've trying to get my vendors situated in vendor malls, or with vendors of a person who does have the planetary advertising.... not the best, but hey, it works.
Keep your vendors stocked! At least on my server, it's amazing the lack of stock the DE's put on their vendors... more often than not, the vendor only has batteries, or 1 type of factory run droid.... i keep all sorts of different models of droids on my vendor, so when people stop in, and i'm not around, they can see by looking at the different model, what types of things droids can do... let's face it, we all know a lot of ppl in this game know next to nothing about droids!!
Charging a good price for your droids. I'm a firm believer in the high priced droids. Since droids last forever, and your custoemrs aren't goin to come back next week, charging 30K for a r2, with 110 med, food crafting, and 10 item storage is pretty piddly. I seem to easily sell those types of r2 units for 70K + without a problem.... for an advr3 with those 3 things, plus 3 stimpack delivery i list em on my vendor at 90K, and they sell fine!
Recently i've been considering running some lower level modules... make lower med, item storage modules, to put in the cheaper chassis, to sell under 30K for a the new players... they'll still have the benefit of a good droid, but know there's an option to upgrade to something even better when they have the money!
And lastly... it's easy to lower your prices.... it's damn hard to raise them once ppl know owhat they are.... when someone gives me a tell, or see's me running around the starport and ask for a droid, if they say they can't afford it, i usually ask them what they could afford OR if they wanna make a downpayment, and pay me the rest later.....
I love the hagglers... they're few and far in between, but I love the RP aspect of haggling over the price for a droid. 
Z
RasalTheWise
Tue Sep 14, 2004 12:14 am
#22
I've said it before...it's all about location. I have prime real estate just at the starting point of the player buildings south of Coronet, and I get a ton of traffic, which gets me a good credit flow. I keep a healthy stock of batteries, repair kits, BH droids, and medical droids. On the average, I gross about 1-3m a week, and I consider that good for any artisan who holds down a weekly job IRL. 
Page 2 of 2