Merchant Archive

Using Merchant Effectively

Greetings! I have been a merchant so long, that I think its stenciled on my tidy whitey briefs. Making money in SWG using merchant skills isn’t that difficult if you have a plan. If I end up repeating sticky info, I do so without any disrespect to the current or former correspondents.

How to make money 101!

Use the Bazaar

Find a popular item and put it on the bazaar for a decent price. When crafting the item, insure the description includes your business name, planet location and waypoint. Customers appreciate a good deal, but they hate searching all over SWG for a good vendor with reasonable prices. The bazaar is a great way to introduce you to the customer base.

Scout out a good Vendor location

If you are using a vendor tent/residence, make sure it’s in a high traffic area. Although customers can now search vendors on the bazaar, not all merchants have the skill to place their vendors on the global lists.

Player cities or guild affiliations are usually good resources. They include shopping malls or tent locations close to the shuttleports. A word of caution. Make sure you have a good relationship with the owner/mayors of these locations. There’s nothing like having a falling out and finding access to your vendors have been locked out.

Avoid crowded, poorly organized vendor malls and locations close to the city where construction obscures your business. In a vendor mall, the best locations are close to the building entrance. Those vendors almost always get checked first by customers. Locations close to a city should be in the first or second row of buildings/tents. Make sure to put your structure on the zoning edge so some enterprising nit-wit doesn’t place his small house/tent right in front of your prospering business.

Keep Your Vendors Stocked

This is a no-brainer. Empty vendors still cost credits to operate. Customers absolutely hate merchants with empty vendors.

Advertise

To get started, bark at busy starport locations. Don’t overuse this tactic or you’ll end up on people's ignore lists instead of getting customers.

When someone buys an item from you, send them a thank you mail and ask if its okay to add them as a friend and send them mail about new items. Don’t just add them and spam them to death with mail. See the previous item for the end results of such a tactic.

Put Your Tag Up

How is anyone going to know what your do for a living if you keep it to yourself? Be prepared for tells though and expect a customer to “want it right now”, regardless of the sanity of the request. If you have vendors, point them in that direction, unless you just love carrying all your crafting tools and resources with you. Keep a good crafting droid with you, just in case.

Good Luck to All

Nod
Bloodfin