Nebbs has got it spot on.
I've been making money crafting for a while now, and I've gotten a feel for the market. In my experience, worrying about the undercutters or camping your retainers is wasted effort. As Warren says, the markets rise and fall, both during the day and during the week. Prices typically hit their lowest on the weekend (which is when you want to buy your mats, as lots of people are playing and dumping stuff on the market), and highest around Thursday. It varies by item, of course, and when you get into the realm of extremely high-end stuff that sells infrequently (airship parts, etc) you lose this cycle just because of how few items are sold.
What I personally tend to do is craft a wide variety of stuff - 2 each of about 40-50 items - and then put one of each of them up on the market, with the other sitting in the retainer. I check the markets once a day. I'll drop the price on any unsold merchandise to juuuuuust below the lowest price, but I'll otherwise not worry about it. I do keep a list of what I've made, with notes about how much it cost to make the item, so I can tell what profit I'll make at any price. This is important because of one strange undercutter behavior I've seen:
Occasionally you'll see an undercutter frenzy on one particular item that drops the price for a HQ item to below the cost of mats.
I've got some theories about this. I know a few crafters who labor under the delusion that they don't need to worry about mat costs, because they gather all their mats. "I gathered them, so they're free". It lets them drop the price to ludicrous levels and still feel like they're making money. When this happens, I'll simply pull that item off the market. In a couple of weeks the undercutters will have gotten tired of competing for less than zero profit, and they'll have left, letting that item's price rise back up. And it always rises back up to a reasonable profit based on the mat cost.
An aside: If you're one of those crafters who feels that it's viable to sell at below the mat cost because "you gathered the mats, so they're free", please. Stop deluding yourself. You expended effort to gather those mats, and those mats have a value based on their market worth. If you turn them into something and sell it below cost, you've thrown away some of your money. Please. Do yourself a favor and simply sell the mats. You'll make more money and you'll expend less effort.
I've been making money crafting for a while now, and I've gotten a feel for the market. In my experience, worrying about the undercutters or camping your retainers is wasted effort. As Warren says, the markets rise and fall, both during the day and during the week. Prices typically hit their lowest on the weekend (which is when you want to buy your mats, as lots of people are playing and dumping stuff on the market), and highest around Thursday. It varies by item, of course, and when you get into the realm of extremely high-end stuff that sells infrequently (airship parts, etc) you lose this cycle just because of how few items are sold.
What I personally tend to do is craft a wide variety of stuff - 2 each of about 40-50 items - and then put one of each of them up on the market, with the other sitting in the retainer. I check the markets once a day. I'll drop the price on any unsold merchandise to juuuuuust below the lowest price, but I'll otherwise not worry about it. I do keep a list of what I've made, with notes about how much it cost to make the item, so I can tell what profit I'll make at any price. This is important because of one strange undercutter behavior I've seen:
Occasionally you'll see an undercutter frenzy on one particular item that drops the price for a HQ item to below the cost of mats.
I've got some theories about this. I know a few crafters who labor under the delusion that they don't need to worry about mat costs, because they gather all their mats. "I gathered them, so they're free". It lets them drop the price to ludicrous levels and still feel like they're making money. When this happens, I'll simply pull that item off the market. In a couple of weeks the undercutters will have gotten tired of competing for less than zero profit, and they'll have left, letting that item's price rise back up. And it always rises back up to a reasonable profit based on the mat cost.
An aside: If you're one of those crafters who feels that it's viable to sell at below the mat cost because "you gathered the mats, so they're free", please. Stop deluding yourself. You expended effort to gather those mats, and those mats have a value based on their market worth. If you turn them into something and sell it below cost, you've thrown away some of your money. Please. Do yourself a favor and simply sell the mats. You'll make more money and you'll expend less effort.
