The Inevitable 'How Do You Make Money' Thread...

[Fellwarre]

Okay, so I am a level 21 tailor, and my funds are rapidly getting low, low, low. I tradeskill more than I adventure, so my adventuring revinue is negligable. Here's my question:

How do you other tailors make your cash? Are there any items out there that you're making that are making you decent profit?

Tanned Leather Backpacks used to be my cash cow (selling for 30 sp each,) but since Sony made the change that they can fit in a bag, the market is flooded with them and I'm lucky to get 10 sp each for 'em. It's almost not worth it.

Any other ideas? Any help would be appreciated, thanks =)

[Jonn]

You might be able to make some money selling pristine tier2 armor to players' alts? My suggestion is to make one or two of all of your recipes (a stack of each sub) and put them on your trader. Pay attention to what sells and make more of those. Problem is you don't know really what people will want so just make a few of everything so that when someone is looking for it, you'll have it available. Just set your "trader bags" (or boxes) in your bank or room vault and switch out to them when you're ready to go into trader mode.

I've wanted to do just that for some time, and know that I really should. My reserves are dropping also (my total net worth is down about 20% post nerf, and I've been pretty careful about spending too much on raws) but haven't gotten around to it, because I've been out adventuring and seeing Norrath outside of the tradeskill instances...

Beyond that very general advice, I'm sorry I don't have a one-recipe to grind on fix to your predicament. :(

[Haidara]

Try making hats. I need a light armor head piece and can't find one. The only option available is a prisitine boiled leather cap which some dude wants nearly 3 gold for.

There are no dropped and no quested (that I know of, Freeport side) for light armor caps in the 20-25 range. I know there is one in Qeynos but you have to speak gnome and I'm not sure alot of people are aware of it.

Make a bunch and sell for 1 gp I'd bet they would fly of the shelves.

[GnomeTailor]

The boiled armor stuff you should be able to sell pretty fast for 20-40sp. At 25, the 10 slot backpacks used to be good money makers, but now go for 70-90sp on my server, with at least 20 available at all times....so market is kinda getting flooded. But since it costs about 5sp to make a pristine backpack (not including time spent), I guess even if you priced them at 30sp you'd make 6x your investment....it'd just take forever to make some good money.

[Lemamas]

I can not seem to sell much of anything since the big patch with the fuel costs and skill additions. It seems for some reason that every harvester on my server now thinks that the harvestables are worthless and so are selling them all for dirt cheap. At first I thought this to be good but now it is proving to be bad. Reason being is that most of my customers were harvesters who had the cash to buy my gear. Now with raw resources selling so cheap no one has any money to buy my goods.

Ok that was a little rant I guess heh.

I would try to sell at 1 of everything you can make. Both Very light armor types, ranged weapons, sub combines such as padding, harnesses, straps, thread, and cloth. Put it all on trader. Do not make more than 5 of each subs and 1 of each finished item. Make them for all teirs except teir 1. Price them all for what you would want to get for them if they were the hottest item on the server based on dificutly and cost to make.

now that you have all this stuff make up 5 backpacks from each teir except T1 again and put all of this on trader mode and leave it for 1 full day. From server reset to server reset. Do not stop the trader if you can help it.

I know that you willl miss a day but while you are doing this check back and take a sceen shot of your sales log every 3 hours if you can or as often as you can hitting your main start/stop times for when you play.

After the first 24 hours you should have a decent comparison for what demand there is for items on your server at the current moment. You will know the potential need for light vs. very light armor, the need for subs if it is padding or harnesses or thread. You will also know if there is still potential for bag sales still if you have tailors on yoru server that are making high end bags. I find that 12 slot bags sell at a decent rate for 3 gold on my server where the 10 slot ones at 1 third the cost do not sell well at all.
The 14 slot bags are my top bag and I do not sell them cheap. I consider them for the impulse/ubar player who wants the best so theyare willing to pay for the best so I charge 8 to 10 gold for those. The 12 slot bags seem to be the most appealing but then again I have not dropped my T5 bag prices to 5 or 6 gold ever and I really don't want to.

So in a nut sell do this test of the market. 1 day is not a lot of data to look at but it could giv eyou a starting point. Iddeally it would be best to make a list of your wares and how many you have. Mark how many you sell and keep the list running. If you see that T3 Helms are selling 2 to 1 over any other armor of the same type then maybe you will want to look to start makeing up T4 helms as the players will be coming up to T4 within a few weeks or there could be some buyers there already.

Another thing I have noticed is that INT casters tend to spend the bulk of their money on Adept3 spells and much less on Vl armor. Mark up the Light armor a little extra and discount the VL armor to compensate. I have found that though my profit on VL is less I sell more peices where if the price is matched at the higher amount I do not selll as much. Light armor folks seem to not worry about the cost as much and have bought my goods at a wide range of prices.

[halinar]

I'm finding the same problem with T3 stuff on butcherblock now. There were 17 PAGES of backpacks for sale last night. So, that market is officially dead right now.

I'm haivng to make money off my alchemist and jewler at the moment which is the opposite of what I was doing before the big patch.

[ilumin]

As far as I'm concerned the "big patch" created a disincentive to doing writs. Just turned in an Ironforge writ of 10 boiled skull caps and got a lousy 22silvers. Why so low? The more work you put in to make an item by doing all the combines and the return is less. The harder you work at something and the reward is less and less coin.

Players are wearing armor longer now I would suspect since they cant sell their old armor for much of anything. I sure am glad I have a provisioner the harvests constanty. The only thing I make money on is the occasional rare harvest.

Writs were a way of dumping skill ups and keeping them out of the market. I could price those 10 skullcaps at a 5 silvers and make twice at much. That one reason the seller market is tanking and becoming nothing but a time sink.

[Gedwin]

You also have to keep in mind that with the double xp weekend lots of people were making lots and lots of things and then selling them cheap just to make inventory spack so they could make even more stuff and I like run on sentences. Anyway, I noticed the same type thing about the bags for a week or two after the xp bonus weekend, but now things have calmed down some. Post patch on Guk someone was selling something like 40 T4 bags for 1 gp each. Now, however, the market has settled to about 10 bags for 2gp and another 5 or so for 1.5 gp. Just give the market a little time to bounce back from XP weekend and you'll find things will return to reasonably profitable prices.

[Thicket Tundrabog]

Psssst... a little tip.

Some recent quests require tradeskill components. These can be self-made or bought. Funny thing I noticed when doing these quests. Very few quest items were listed on the broker, they were very expensive, and they are easy and cheap to make. Do you see a potential niche market? I know I do. Last night I sold 6 of my first batch of quest tradeskill items at quadruple the normal price for that kind of item.

No, I won't spell out the specific quests. You'll have to do some work yourself. I will say that the quests span numerous tradeskills, including tailoring.

[Wolfysins]

I have a guildmate who paid 2 gold for a T3 sub needed for a tradeskill writ. I needed one, so I made my own plus a few more.