What's the secret to getting things sold on Balmung's MB?

[Drej]

I'm not totally new to this, but when it comes to selling stuff on Balmung...I'm totally lost.

 

I've noticed that the issue with Balmung is that you can post one thing for one price, but that someone 30 minutes later will have undercut you so badly that it just snowballs until your item's worth practically nothing. 

 

I've had several items sitting in my retainers for weeks now, and I really don't want to have to vendor them like I've been doing lately out of frustration because things seem to take at least six weeks to sell. There's a lot of stuff sitting in my inventory and in my retainers' inventories because of this.

 

Do I just have to undercut along with the undercutters until somebody gets tired and finally buys my item? I'm a little weary of posting an item up at market value, then having to knock the price way down when I get home from work because an item worth $44,000 gil is now worth $30,000, and still declining.

[Virella]

Camping your retainers, undercutting (please with 1 gil), seeing if first and foremost the item(s) you're trying to sell are fast selling or not, that's a big point as well. Switch markets if need be. If things drop hard, you can always buy out the absurd undercutting hos and relist it.

 

Weekends things tend to drop hard as well. In the middle of the week item prices stabilize. Don't be stupid and try to sell quickly. You will sell your shit somewhere later that week for a better price.

 

Making gil can be a pain though. But really, keep your eye on the market and all that.

[Kilieit]

Sell things that go into stacks.

 

Sell them in stacks of 1. Using this as our example competition:

 

 

So instead of listing 1 stack of 3 at 799 gil apiece, list 3 stacks of 1 at around 2,500 each.

 

Don't list more than 5 stacks of 1 at once, or you risk flooding the market and forcing people to undercut you in order to get their listing viewed.

 

Sometimes certain items just don't sell that well on the MB, and you have to decide if them taking up the space in your retainer's sale limit is worth eventually selling them at the price you want to go at. If not, cut your losses and vendor. (Looking up online what they're used for and where else they're available is a good way to determine this.)

 

Safe go-to's are dyes, glamour prisms, and crafting leve/quest items (either the finished items, especially if HQ, or the materials for them).

[Warren Castille]

Markets rise and fall depending on the day of the week (and the time of day). There's no real method to guaranteeing you're going to sell for top price all the time and with a server as crowded as Balmung it's also true that you're always going to have competition.

 

Patience is probably your best asset there: If things drop, they'll likely rebound later. That's not always true, though! Maps, for example, have been steadily dropping since Aquapolis hit the game. If something holds steady (or drops steadily) over a week or more, it's probably best to accept the new "normal" for the going rate and sell it at that.

[Skae]

The prices people are asking do not always reflect the actual market value.

Check the history on the MB to see what kind of prices people are actually paying for an item.

 

If you want to sell quickly, then you will likely have to join the undercutters - few people are willing to pay more than they have to.

If you have patience you can often get stuff sold for a higher price though.

[Ellmida]

My usual is to only sell a stack of 1 and it's worked okay for me. I've noticed things like my low level crafting items take a while to sell but it's not unexpected. Usually I'll try not to undercut at all because it leads to a death spiral for the cost of that item and because the server pop is so high I can almost guarantee it will sell eventually....The only exception being certain furniture and minion drops from PoTD and those I just resigned to leaving up in the event someone may want them.

 

If you're leveling you can get a pretty good price for any materia quest rewards. I've pretty much ignored using them myself until I not level cap and have gotten a decent cash flow from them. It really depends on what you're selling and if you are in the mood another option is to take time to study the market boards and see what sells.

[Shoshopu]

Alternatively to selling things in stacks of one, check out what recipes your item is used in and sell things in the smallest amount needed for a recipe that material is commonly used for. Say, for example, you've got some kind of ore that you need 3 of to make an ingot. Sell them in multiples of three.

 

Just don't sell them in huge stacks, especially in stacks that aren't even divisible by the amount buyers will actually need them in. Buying individual items in stacks of one can be time-consuming (as well as taking up a ton of space on your retainers), especially if there aren't enough stacks of one to match what you need and you end up needing to buy more than you need anyway. So for another example, imagine for this ore I need three of, at the lowest price there's 1, 1, and 5. But there's a stack of 3 at the second-lowest price that would still be cheaper than me buying the stack of 5. I'll usually go for the stack that I need instead of buying that larger but cheaper-priced stack and reselling what I don't use because that's more time- and space- consuming. So take a little time to research what you're selling and see how many are already for sale, and in what stack size.

[Valde]

Not to mention in general consider the environment you're in and what you're trying to accomplish, and what other players are trying to accomplish.

 

At the moment we are pre-expansion. Everything we have right now most likely will be relegated to 'useless' status in just a few short months, so the only things likely selling are things that are going to be relevant after the expansion, or things relevant to helping people prepare for the expansion.

 

Look at glamours that people want and aren't flooded. This may take extra effort but you can carve out a niche that way. Look at leve items, as there are going to be lazy people at all game times. Like others have mentioned prices tank on the weekends and slowly drive up during the week. You can even use that to your advantage to get some cheap stuff and flip it for dosh mid-week.

 

Be patient as well, and observe a market for a hot minute before investing. Materials in general are going to be flooded and not worth much, so you need to cater to the ease of use rather than difficulty of acquisition: AKA sell stuff in smaller stacks so it's appealing, and the other tips others have mentioned.

[Nebbs]

First understand the product you are selling:

• How much does it cost to make
  
• How much could it sell for (high & low)
  
• How active is the market for it
  

Knowing this you should understand when you are:

1. Making an excessive profit - often on rare hard to craft & high cost goods 
   
2. Making a reasonable profit - where most of the things you sell will be, but this can still be cost x10
   
3. Selling to recover what costs you can - probably because the market collapsed
   

 

Then understand how you will sell and price:

 

For fast selling goods the boards tend to be quite active. You can try and drop your price but likely you will be undercut, or pitch your price such that after some time those below you will be bought out and it will be your turn. I also find that the price on these goods varies wildly over the week, and takes a huge drop at the weekend.

 

For slow selling goods you have to just stick it out, and consider if you want to match someone undercutting you for the sale. Provided I am still making a healthy profit I will generally drop the price to just below the other's.

 

Price for competition is a bit more than undercutting. provided the goods are selling at a reasonable rate you don't have to undercut everyone. Look at the spread of prices, quite often there are some very high ones, some mid range ones and then some low ones where the price cutting churn is going on. Consider pricing to undercut the mid range ones but be above the low low ones fighting it out. I often find that the low price items sell out and the price resets to the mid range over night (or at least in a couple of days) and you sell at the price you are happy with.

 

Stacks, or mass production offers you more choices. Selling as a single that is more expensive than the stacks works when buying just one of those items makes sense, and this is especially good for high cost items. Selling a stack of a useful number to match a hand-in, or usage, it makes it affordable and convenient. Selling a large stack and undercutting the smaller stacks makes it easy to those who don't care so much about gil.

 

Consider who is buying and why. Just be aware of things in the game and what drives demand. Events that hand out new gear can lead to a rush on glamor as well as clothing that matches well with those given out or that match the season. The Expansion will see prices of certain good rise quite a bit, have a think what they might be. Even RP events such as balls lead to increased activity on certain clothing items.

 

After all that it's really watching the board for what sells and adjusting to suit, along with a lot of patience. Remember it is a buyers market and being undercut is just the nature of things.

[C'kayah Polaali]

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.