Smuggler Archive
Thread: Smuggler Advertising?
If you aren't a Master Smuggler, don't bother advertising.. Wear your slicer tag if you have it, and hope you are the only slicer around. Use searches when you get on planet to figure that out, This is important to know because then you can figure out your pricing based on smuggler avail. If its 3 am on Dathomir and you are the only smuggler around and someone asks for a slice, you'd be surprised how much you can get them to pay. They will blow at least 2400 credits to get off planet and back, so remember that and adjust accordingly. Supply and demand, supply and demand...
Once you get weapon slicing, I suggest finding a wepsmith that will make you crates of cheap CDEFS and PLKs, Molec Clamps and Weapon Upgrade kits at or close to cost (Try a novice, they need the XP and be sure to remind them that the material quality plays NO ROLE so use the cheapest crap off the bazaar that they can find) You can also check the Baz for crates of cheap stuff, sometimes you can find it. Then, just sit home one day and grind grind grind...
Whatever you do NEVER EVER EVER PAY someone to slice for them. Do NOT pay for containers... Anytime I see some hapless new smuggler /shout "Paying 3000 for locked containers to slice." I am sure to tell them to switch it to say something like this: "Slicing Containers for Free. 100% Unlock rate due to molecular clamps" then just sit at a spaceport and spam, not a lot, and off to the side. Soon, with the no spam macro nerf (YAY!) the spaceports won't be full of idiots shouting for their awesome 1.3 cpu resources mall and you'll get some playtime... Another good place is when you are waiting for a shuttle and everyone is sitting around bored (less applicable with the 5 min wait times now, but you can still do it)... just spam once or twice and I promise you'll get some offers. I had one guy give me 30 locked containers out of his Inv once... that was awesome… tipped 60 k to do it too. Just make sure you always have M-clamps around. Don't waste people's time with random red/blue wire garbage. Also, when you slice containers for people, offer to take any of the crap they get in there that you can slice. Since 98% of it is crap and a good deal of that crap comes in the form of crap knives and cdefs, then you can build up a nice little cache of crap weapons to slice =) .... Think of it like this, you are paying to level up. Think about how much a combat person pays to level up with all of the buffs and the healing and powerups and what not... you are paying very little to do this , comparatively speaking...
Most people won't trade money because you can only trade CASH, if all your money is in the bank, you can't trade then. Make them pay upfront, or just trust them. After all, they are trusting you with their stuff to slice, so you can trust them a bit, no? If you don't trust them, keep half of their stuff until you get paid. If they refuse to pay you (this is rare), keep it all and jump ship immediately....
Find an artisan. Get them to make up factory run of Survival Knives (or, get them to make a schematic, with you providing the resources and use your own factory). the knives take far less material (1 type, and less of it) so they're cheaper to churn out than CDEFs, you're not going to sell them anyway.
Clamps you'll have to buy, or get a Slicer to make you a schematic for. Shop the Bazaar when you have to, but spend some time checking out various shops. I've found Clamps as low as 2.5k a crate on Eclipse.
The PLK's you can make yourself, buy, make a schematic from or whatever.
that is the fatal mistake, if you advertise, they KNOW you are looking for them, ayou are now their beotch, they control you.
whereas if they comer to you, and your not advertising, theyre your beotch, i can tell them whatever i want, where its fuk off, or i charge 100k per slice, or leave me alone. you are in control
I tend to hang out in the NE corner of Coronet when I do that. I figure if people want my services, they need to come to me, where there's very little lag.
On the whole, my main source of income is selling clamps... though the one time a guy paid me 70k to slice his comp... then asked if it was enough.