For some time I've played with the idea of posting this. Often I've thought..well maybe I shouldn't because it will give away some secrets that I would prefer people did not know, but I guess I can share as not all that many people will see this, and less might take the advice to heart.
This guide is one that does not deal with game mechanics much, so if you need help with that please refer to other guides on that subject.
This guide is going to discuss how to run a successful business in SWG, and make enough credits to advance in your chosen profession and buy nice stuff for yourself.
At every level of the artisan tree there ARE items that people need and/or want, even if they don�t know it yet. You can start selling your goods on day 1 as a crafter if you choose to do so.
Step 1 : Decide what your item or items will be that you wish to sell to the general public. As a novice artisan you have several items to choose from.
Step 2: Take some time and look and understand your schematic diagrams. Figure out which materials you need, and what sorts of qualities those materials should be to make a good or even great item that consumers will want to buy. I have a list I regularly update with what raw materials are around and what quality they are so I can quickly reference it and update it as materials go away, and new ones show up. If you don�t know how to do this, it is very simple. Just open your schematic in your datapad and look for the item attributes, and what raw material attributes effect them. Say a basic CDEF weapon. You need a metal and an inert petrochemical. The qualities of the materials that effect the qualities of the finished product are Conductivity and Overall Quality. So you need to find a metal that has high conductivity and high quality and a petrochemical that just has high quality. (petrochems don�t have conductivity at all). Some items are much more complicated and have ratios that you need to be attentive to. The CDEF weapon is effected 50% by the quality and 50% by the conductivity, so it is pretty even. If an item�s schematic says the attributes needed are 66% Overall quality and 33% Shock Resistance than if you find a metal that is 950 quality but only 450 shock resistance than it is still pretty good if you can�t find anything better. Pay attention to this stuff as it has a major impact on the quality of the finished product. Some can get rather complex, like armor.
Step 3: Gather those resources. At lower levels this means stepping outside the front door of your home town and gathering them. Get enough so you don�t have to do this again for a little while. At higher levels where you have the funds and the ability to buy or make a personal harvester, you can scour the galaxy for just the right resources. I encourage this as it will ensure that you will have a really outstanding finished product if you spend the time to grab an interplanetary shuttle or two.
Step 4: Craft your items using the custom crafting tool for that item and be sure to do it in the presence of a Public Crafting station. Unless it is an item with no useful changeable attributes (like clothing) you MUST make your item at a crafting station.
Step 5: Experiment, Experiment, Experiment. Take the time to work on each individual item you craft. It takes maybe 30 seconds to use up your experimentation points. Let�s use the example of the CDEF weapon above. You have gathered your resources and gotten a good result for your item�now crank it up to its max. It�s a gun so people like high damage..so experiment on that first, max it out if you can and then move on to things like range or efficiency. If you want to craft bofa treats, make them really good bofa treats that people will want to buy and eat. Whatever it is you need to experiment on the item.
Now you have your finished products. Maybe you made a dozen CDEF weapons or maybe you made one hundred of them. Now you have to sell them. There are two basic ways of selling your items:
FACE TO FACE
BAZAAR
We will deal with the Bazaar first. Check the local bazaar terminal and first look up the item you are selling to see what the local market price is. You can also check the entire galaxy and organize by location to see who is selling what where and for how much. What you are looking for is a POPULATED place where at least one of the following statements are true:
THE ITEM YOU ARE SELLING DOES NOT EXIST IN ANY GREAT NUMBERS
THE ITEM YOU ARE SELLING IS MUCH HIGHER IN QUALITY THAN THE ITEMS CURRENTLY FOR SALE IN THAT MARKET
THE PRICE FOR THE ITEM IS MUCH HIGHER THAN THE MARKET DEMAND
The last one is tricky. How do you know what the market demand is? Well, you have to make some educated guesses. A CDEF weapon is a weapon useable by anyone but desired by a new character who does not quality or cannot afford a more powerful item. The buyer for this item does not have a lot of cash, but really wants a better weapon. Let�s use this simple example: Say your weapon does 27-52 dmg.
CDEF Pistol Dmg 17-35 price 1000cr
CDEF Pistol Dmg 20-42 price 1000cr
CDEF Pistol Dmg 17-35 price 3000 cr
CDEF Pistol Dmg 30-50 price 3500 cr
Now right away you notice that all these weapons are selling for a lot of money for what a new character could pay. The 17-35 damage is a starter weapon (probably used) that someone is selling. Every character starts out with this gun so who would buy that? Right! No one in their right mind. On the other hand it looks like there is one that someone put some time into, but did not experiment on which they are selling for the same price. There is yet another that someone did experiment on but they are selling for a ton of cash. YOU JUST FOUND YOUR MARKET!!!
It takes some time to browse this stuff and keep a careful eye on it. What you need to do when you find your market is put your item up for sale at a reduced price. Sell for less than everyone who has locked in their items for 7 day sale-a-thon. What did your pistol cost you? Well, if you were not using a harvester this item cost you nothing but time. How much you charge for your time is your business but it should not be 3500 cr for a few minutes of work. On the other hand you don�t need to undercut the lowest price by that much to make the sale. You can take a risk and sell your pistol for say, 1500 credits to beat out the loser pistols and the one really nice one or you could undercut the 1000 credits and sell for 800. This insures that your pistol will be the first to sell and sell fast. It is up to you.
Now, what if you are a high level crafter competing with other high level crafters for business? You have to compute your costs for manufacturing the item AND analyze the market condition. With all the cash you already have as seasoned crafter you should be spending a lot of time waiting for shuttles to find the market where ALL THREE of those statements are true. That way you can insure that your items will sell, cover your costs (including travel expenses) and give you a hefty profit.
Now, onto FACE TO FACE SELLING
So you have decided to supplement your bazaar sales with some good old fashioned street corner vending. How do you go about doing this?
Assuming your items are pretty much identical with only some variance in quality you need to set for yourself, an asking price. Again, you can refer to the local bazaar to see what is for sale and then try to undercut that price by a little bit if you like. Say you have a dozen CDEF weapons to sell. Figure out what your best weapon should be priced at, and then figure out what your cheapest weapon will be priced at.
Find a high-traffic area of a major town where many people will be waiting around or otherwise congregating.
Make a Macro for your goods. Don�t use abbreviations, just say what you mean. �Selling High Quality CDEF Weapons for cheap!� or �Selling Experimented CDEF Weapons!� or whatever you like. Don�t spam, but give that shout out every minute at least as new people arrive in your area. Make sure you remain attentive to people around you, sometimes someone will send you a tell if interested, sometimes they won�t. The last thing you want to do is turn down a sale because you are too busy crafting or reading your skill tree.
It may take awhile until you get a bite, but often the first bite will generate more interest in a crowded area. It is human nature to not want to be the first. Very quickly others will come to look at your wares.
Take your time with each customer, tell them the pricing. If you have a variety of weapons have your prices ready to go so they know what they cost. Why didn�t you just shout out the price with your selling cry? Well you don�t need to talk price right up front, as it will guarantee you some customers won�t approach and you don�t need to alert any other sellers in the area what you are offering.
Negotiation: Always leave room for negotiation. It is the oil that lubricates the market. Your asking price should always be negotiable on the street. Welcome it. It�s fun. If you tell someone the price �That Pistol is 1000 credits� and they say �WTF! That�s nuts. Thanks anyway.� You should immediately follow it up with a /tell. �what would you pay?� and get the counter-offer out of them. A sale for less is more than no sale at all. These items are cheap to make, remember. They don�t do anything for you in terms of XP or in terms of cash if you just sit on them.
If you have an item that does cost you money to make, make sure you know what it costs you so you don�t sell under it!
Watching the crowd: Look at those characters who are just idle in a given area. Often you can tell a lot about them by their gear. If you see a guy in a noobie scout outfit holding a CDEF weapon it�s a pretty good bet he doesn�t have a nice weapon. Ask him nicely if he would like to buy one cheap. Chances are he will be very interested in talking to you. Maybe he didn�t respond earlier because he thought he didn�t have the money, or because he didn�t see the spam. On the other hand, a guy with �Master Marksman� above his head probably doesn�t need to buy your 60 damage CDEF or your Bone armor breastplate.
Some items you are going to have to be a bit more specific. Food for example, is something that a lot of people never bother with, but they say it is a good buff now, so let people know just how good.
If you are making clothing, go to a cantina and sell to entertainers. Give them a discount, they work hard!
Hang out in the hospital with the medics and sell your wares to those waiting for healing.
Sell your weapon powerups to a group getting ready to go out on a hunt. There really are endless possibilities, and if you play it smart you can make a killing and have a lot of fun doing it!
Putting it all together. To do this right, you really cannot think about this as steps, but as different processes. You can sample while you craft clothing. You can craft a few items while you /shout for sales. You can take a galactic trip and spend a few days on a new planet where you sample some new minerals with your harvester, sell your items on the local bazaar and hock your wares in front of the star port.
As you advance up the tree you should always fully explore new opportunities. That item that you think is pointless might be a key component for something completely unrelated to your field, and you can mass produce it. The prime example of this is the tailor who makes synthetic cloth. You need some as a tailor, sure, but so do armor smiths. Ask other crafters what sort of items they need.
There is a whole separate dimension to the game, that no one has really explored and that is the true merchant character. If you spent the time and effort simply on buying and selling, you can make quite a bit of cash for yourself without ever picking up a crafting kit or a blaster. If you watch the market regularly, you will see insane low prices pop up all over the galaxy. I bought 3700 nice hide for 1000 credits this morning! If I didn�t want it, I could break that up into 10 smaller packages and sell them for 37,000 credits at the going rate for hide resources.
To do this requires that you spend most of your time interacting with other players, and striking up conversations as well as browsing the bazaar for hours on end, but you might find that rewarding. Crank out a few weapons and get your merchant novice skill and go from there. Go out on buying binges, meet crafters who don�t want to sell their own goods but need to dump them on the market. Make deals, have fun.
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