Just Ride : City of Steam, GW2
7 minutes ago
This post is your gold guide to the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post. You can read it, love it, use it, and never worry about gold again in the game. This gold guide is just that good.
It is exactly how I easily make 2-4 gold every night while I sleep. Anyone can do this, and it's so mind numbingly easy that your head will spin for not thinking of it. Obviously it isn't the only way I personally play the Trading Post, but it is the perfect place to begin for anyone who isn't making 2-4 gold on autopilot.
Instead of pointing out individual markets like I have in the past, I'm going to instead give you the exact rundown of how I play this strategy. I call it, the Trading Post Game. During this gold guide to Guild Wars 2, I will be assuming that you only can play the Trading Post Game once per day, so there is a 24 hour gap between sessions. You don't have time to watch markets or baby sit postings, and you still want to make lots of gold every day. Well then, this gold guide is for you.
Step 1: Collect Winnings and Cancel Buy Orders
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| Collecting Gold from Trading Post |
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| Lots of Buy Orders Completed |
Step 2: Damn that "Match Lowest Seller" Button
Now it's time to start pricing items. The key here is to take a moment and actually look up what items are going for across the board. When I say this, I do not mean mindlessly clicking on the "Match Lowest Seller" radio button. In 99.99% of cases I do not use the price that Match Lowest Seller gives me.
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| Curse You Match Lowest Seller Button! |
There are two ways to go about doing this. You can either right click on the item in your bags to then click "buy on trading post", OR you can type the name of the item into the search bar on the trading post's main tab. I prefer to just right click on the item and ask to buy more from the trading post.
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| Posted Listings of an Item |
Step 3: Finding Markets to Place Buy Orders On
Time to place bid orders for tomorrow's selling fodder. I'm going to show you one series of items you can do this to. I will assume that you will use all the other strategies covered on this blog as well as find a few more of your own. The primary goal here is to show you how to quickly and efficiently find a large number of profitable markets, instead of trying to do the math and picking out near break even items that will make you just a few copper. Don't do that, unless you're going to baby sit the market and flip copper ore as I already showed you how to do.
I mentioned a series of items, and I'd like to explain what that means now. Most people are looking for individual items that flip really well. I personally do not do this when utilizing the strategy you're reading now. There is a time and place for charting prices, but here today we want to make you the most money while taking into account your limited play time.
A series of items would be something like all rare runes or sigils. I've covered that market already, so let's look at a different series of items today. Go to the trading post, and search for level 15 to 20 Masterwork Weapons. You'll see something like this image below.
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| Masterwork Weapons |
Click on the first item.
Look at the buy instantly price.
Click place a custom order.
Compare the highest price per unit to the buy instantly price.
If the price per buy order is close to half the cost of the buy instantly price, then place a buy order. Move on to the next object until you've placed a good number of buy orders. I do this because 24 hours later item prices can sometimes shift dramatically and unexpectedly. This will help prevent you from losing money and make it so you don't have to look up what you spend for an item. You make so much profit from this method that you don't even have to care about such things.
I want you to think hard and come up with other item categories to place buy orders on. There are dozens in the game, if not hundreds once you start looking at all the possible items you can sell.
STOP! THINK! STOP! THINK!
Did you try just now to think of anything? This is a crucial juncture for your trading post career. If you don't stop right now and think of a different market besides the one I just gave you, then you will most likely not repeat the same success that I've shared with you today. There's a few hundred people who will be copying my advice blindly, so please don't just use the one item set I just gave you. In fact, it's better if you don't try it and think of something else... like adding a few levels to the bracket, rare quality instead of masterwork, change weapons to armor... shoot I said too much already! Do some thinking please and not just reading.
Step 4: Go Play the Game!
Go play the game, or take care of your children, or exercise, or do whatever the heck you feel like. You're going to wake up, or come home from work, to a shower of gold and items ready to sell the next day.
The whole point here is to make it so you don't even have to worry about fees, nor do you have to worry about what the items are that you're flipping. All you care about is making sure that you can earn a profit at the current moment, and that you will actually sell something in a 24 hour period. Your buy orders just gets cancelled, and anything that doesn't sell you leave up hoping that it will eventually. This is a no brain required kind of strategy, but it teaches you a great deal about the Trading Post Game. Hope you enjoyed the gold guide, and please do share this with lots of people if you liked it!
I made an additional 2 gold while placing my buy orders during Step 3 and writing this post. Obviously it took longer than normal because I was writing while playing, but that still shows you just how easy the strategy is. 15 minutes of game time giving me just under 5 gold? Not many people can compete with that when we're using novice strategies such as this one. What's really cool is that the money just kind of builds upon itself, because you're able to spend more time bidding the more gold you have.
Oh look, I'm about to hit publish and there's another 36 silver waiting for me... ah this is the life!
For those of you looking to improve your skills on flipping or go beyond it, definitely check out the awesome forum that we have here at Guild Wars 2 Trading Post. Hundreds have joined and are sharing their best kept secrets for our secret group! Will you be next?
39 comments:
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Haven't bought any gems with dollars, there really is no need to. I have bought plenty with gold though.
I would say that if you invest 50 silver, you can make a gold, assuming that half your buy orders are fulfilled and then sold.
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Markco I love these guides as i've told you I sometimes use your guides as a trigger if i found out late to still make money flipping on a mass market such as the rags 2 riches temporary market i told you about! and anyone wanting to know how to make the initial 10g SELL YOUR COLLECTABLES (usually higher than market) get to 80 and just as Markco says here, PLAY THE GAME ;P go farm karma in cursed shore or do all the paths in dungeons, if you're 80 and say you have less than a gold then you have done something wrong (or you just spent it all on bags....exotics....everything else this game has gold dumps for ;P) in which case you should do one of the above options to make some quick money for investments, I will personally say i've made 2-5g a day following Markco's methods, I also now have my entire 500 man guild following these methods, so if they become unprofitable faster, that's why, and I give due credit to Markco for showing me just like WoW markets and D3 markets can make money out of thin air, as can GW2! ;P
Individually for Markco I made 2g flipping Superior Scavenging and banking 20s per trade easy all day, I bought 2 copper higher than the highest buy order of 3g 3s 1c and I sold 2 copper undercut at 3g 79s 97c which with tp calc came out to 19s 95c per transaction NOW THAT'S FUCKING PROFIT (pardon my language). It works guys just gotta find your niche in the 100's of markets like this there are! Good Luck and Thank you Markco!
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Thank you for your heartfelt, detailed, terrific comment.
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Hey just letting you know that SUPERIOR SCAVENGING RUNE market is making 55s per trade right now.... don't know how many you can make in a day but if you make two! THAT'S A GOLD for two freaking trades! 1g and 10s I might add judging from TP calc ;P check that shit out! Another thing the sell price only dropped 10s overnight where the buy price dropped 50s so good to know ;P
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Markco - this is, by far, the best post I've seen on the site so far. Bravo, it's much appreciated.
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Thanks, I rewrote it three times and took out a lot of filler. I rarely like writing this much because people miss the details if there's too many.
Hopefully I hit the sweet spot and everyone will remember the information, plus put it to good use.
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When you say "place a buy order" on these items (for instance the weapons in the picture) how many do you typically order?
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Do you just Flip the weapons or do you search for sigil ?
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Marko, the way you keep saying how money flows in as your writing, just makes the whole guide better, it was a great read, thanks.
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You said that you don't cancel your listed auctions. How long do you let those go, indefinitely?
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I am trying this out today, have a bunch of purchase orders and will see how they sell. Thanks for this.
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So if I get the gist of the whole thing...
You're putting a buy order and hoping someone will sell, and for example you got that item at 2.40s, so tomorrow you'll list that same item for the price of the low seller, let'S say 5s, and you'll hope that someone will buy it overnight?
Is this what this entire strategy is about?
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Hope is the wrong word. It's more like picking the right markets and prices to almost always guarantee a sale. Then multiply it by 100 markets.
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This is indeed sound advice, works in nearly any game with an open market system like we have in Guild Wars 2. The trick is finding the right items to make a profit off of. I am a noob to the game, just started playing, only level 15, I sold all my tier 1 crafting materials from gathering, made a bit of coin, then placed some buy orders last night. This morning, all of them were filled, so I listed my goods for sale and went to make breakfast. By the time I had sat back down to play a while, I had 1 gold waiting for me in the pick up tab. Not bad for a level 15, I'd say.
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1 gold in your pickup tab is not bad, too bad that 1 gold was not pure profit :) but also the money you put in there yourself.
i find the UI of the market rather uneasy to work with. hope we get more tweaks to the trading post. In the fear that certain items where i wanted to buy more than 1, would not sell if I placed buy orders in bulk, so i placed orders for each item separately. Though if you have to put in numbers, those fields are annoying, this morning i was in a hurry and instead of overwriting the 0 silver to 3 silver, i accidentally typed a 3 in front of the 0,
by the time i saw my error the buy order was long filled, 27 silver paid too much.
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Hi,
I have already been trying to post this question on here for a while, but failed the last 3 times for some reason. So here I am trying again. I loved this guide. It is non-mathematical and easy to understand. The statement are loud and clear and normally there should not be a problem with such a clearly written and comprehensive guide. Nevertheless, I have one remark. The phase/stadium AFTER my stuff has been sold is still unclear. For example: I have 40 orders all of 20 silver each. I leave and 24 hours I check back. I got 20 of these orders fullfilled but I 20 are still open. So I delete the 20 orders that are still open and go further with the 20 orders I got (lets say 20 weapons). I put these weapons up on the trading company and then it is unclear. Do I sell the weapons at the price of "the highes buyer", "the lowest seller" or any price right in between? It seems to me that this isn't covered in the guide. I would appreciate an answer as I am very eager to try this guide out on the trading company.
Thank you and kind regards.
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"I do not, repeat do not, cancel my listed auctions."
I'm curious on this part...when DO you cancel those listed auctions? or do you just eat the cost and leave them posted until the market bounces back to that price? (if it does?)
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@Saelfar: Indeed, it's a matter of how much was put into the TP and how much profit was gained. But again, as a lowly level 15, I have no way of making steady income. No high level farming spots, no max crafting disciplines, no high demand rare items. I started with about 35 silver and ended with 1 gold. This morning that 1 gold is now 1 gold 75 silver. I have no doubt that with higher funds to invest in items, the profit margin will just continue to grow. The problem I am facing is that the market fluctuates so harshly on a day to day basis. I made my profit the first round on a single type of item, eager to invest even more the next day for even higher profit, only to find that the margin of gain had gone from 35% to 6% overnight. This is likely due to others using this method and capitalizing on the sales while they could. I have a rule, if I can't make at least 15% profit on the reselling of the item, I don't buy it. This may change of course once I have a large bankroll to play a hundred different markets at once. But currently the process is very slow. You know what they say, your first million is the hardest to make.
As far as mispricing an item like that, be sure to always double check before pressing the ok, but a simple "Are you sure" prompt before listing or buying would do the trick on Anet's part.
I would like to see a Right Click > Preview option added to the Trade Post, as I am such a low level, not knowing what everything looks like by name makes it difficult to decide what I want to set my goals towards in acquiring on an aesthetic basis. With transmute stones so easily attainable, sometimes that low level staff looks better than the higher level upgrade. I would also love to see a chart like we have in the currency exchange. After selecting an item, instead of 80% of the interface being wasted as a dark gray background, having the chart listing the chosen items low and high sales, a 5 day average, and so on. This would be a wonderful tool for all market goers.
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My question is, when you say, "f the price per buy order is close to half the cost of the buy instantly price, then place a buy order. ". What do you put in for your desired price? Do you just keep it at the lowest possible value? This is what is confusing me because if that is true, why would someone sell me something for lets say 2 silver, when someone is willing to pay 5 silver for it?
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I don't know if my first question went through and I apologize for a potential double post. Ok, I look at an item, it costs 2 s 24c, i click on it and I can buy it for 2s 12c. I then click custom order to see other prices. The highest price someone is willing to buy it for is 1s 4c, this is close to half, as you said. I would then click place order for whatever my desired price of let's say 50c, and I did not type in 50c, this is what the desired price automatically put in. And hope he gives me the item rather than the guy who is willing to pay double of what I am offering?
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You are misunderstanding the idea.
The items listed on the first screen are items that have been posted to sell on the TP. The items listed on the second page are buy orders. I>E other people are requesting to buy an item. When you go to sell an item on the TP you are given 3 options. Highest BUYER (your custom offer) or lowest seller. Most of the custom orders are fulfilled by people too lazy/stupid/impatient to pay attention.
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how does the buying work for multiple items?
if you place a buy order for 100 heads of garlic,
does it wait till it finds a farmer selling 100 garlic heads or can it fill your buy order in chunks?
best regards
Sander
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@Saelfaer, it will buy them in chunks, as long as your order is the highest buy order. Often times I will see, 1 garlic heads, 10 garlic heads, 8 garlic heads, 1 garlic heads in my Trade Pickup if I placed a buy order for 20 garlic heads.
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@Anonymous: "Why would someone sell me something for lets say 2 silver, when someone is willing to pay 5 silver for it?"
You can ask the same question of any market (and it's a valid one!). Two reasons come to mind:
1) Ignorance. Most people don't understand how the market actually works, or what it does/is. They probably have a vague idea, but write it off as something that's too complicated to bother with. They're a hero, they get gold and loot from slaying dragons - leave the number crunching to the accountants! So long as they can get *some* money for their goods it's doing its job.
Also there's the ignorance that the vendor price for an item is a valid assessment of its value. (And why not, after all SURELY ANet know better than anyone else what the true value of the things in their game are, right?). So if the vendor price is 1s60, and some "sucker" is prepared to pay 2s for it on the Trading House, our clueless seller sees that as free bonus money.
2) Immediacy. Even people who understand how the market works may well buy/sell things at the asking price occasionally. Doing this means that you get the item/gold right now, rather than waiting for your order to be filled (and possibly uncut).
Sometimes the opportunity cost of waiting is high enough that it really is worth paying e.g. 3s to have something right now, than paying 2s to maybe have it in 24 hours. Often it's not *economically*, but people think it is (they want to level crafting before they log off, or they're about to run a dungeon and want to upgrade their gear first) - and since it's a game, it's about what's most fun for them. Effectively you're paying the spread (the difference between buy and sell prices) as a surplus in these cases.
I think of the spread as the cost to hire a "psychic butler", who knew what you were going to want, so bought it for you in advance. If you pay his fees, you can have it right now rather than having to wait for your order to be matched.
I think that sums up why people would make immediate transactions on the TH (either they don't realise how big the spread is, or they do realise but are prepared to pay it).
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Markco - just wanted to say thanks for posting articles like this on your blog :) The fact that you're sharing this is awesome! Reading how you're applying real world economic and and market analysis to Tyria is rather spiffy.
Hope this lands you an awesome job some day :)
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Hi,Great Guide
Just wanted to clear up, what is the difference between the price per unit and the price per buy?
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I have tons of stuff not selling on the market that seemed like a good price. I don't get how you figure out which things to flip. I'm guessing that what you were keeping secret by "I've said too much already," so for me, I'm not getting anything out of this guide other than "buy low, sell high, but buy the right stuff."
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This guide sound quite accurate, yet I'd want to see more. I saw there was a registration needed, any possibilities to pay by mobile phone ? :)
By the way, with my technique, at level 10 i had 10g. But it was the start of the game and I had found a very lucrative market... But after trying out a bit, your technique doesnt seem right to me. And for anybody interested with sharing ideas and regrouping, I created a guild for trader (also includes investors, for the one who start) so if you wanna join, just contact Arthasnack IG.
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Great guide. I've used these methods on other MMOs and always make bank doing so. It is astounding that very few people know how much potential there is to be made in auction houses! I suppose that the majority are looking for that "quick fix" whereas these methods do take some time to develop. However, if you can play it right you can see that it is less time consuming than other ventures because it's something you can do while still playing the game the way YOU want to. When I got older my parents told me, "Find a way to make your money work for you," which simply means to invest your money in something that you can profit off of. With the realistic economies found in MMOs that same rule can be applied in those game. All you have to do is do the research, but Markco here has already done half the work for you!
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Here's commenter honesty time- I'm a horrible member of the TL;DR family. That being said, I have fully read your guide for or five times now, and I've only been playing the game for a few days. I had started this as level 4, am now level 11, and I have filtered through having close to 2g cumulatively in profits from this since I had started. I have since spent it on gear or new trades (damn being a dye collector).
You can start doing this as a beginning player, too, just understand that your lots that you order and play will be in terns of tens, not hundreds, and your purchasing pool of money will be in a single digit amount of silver, not triple.
I think perhaps it should be blatantly stated in the beginning of your guide that this is NOT a guide for someone who has just reached 80, but for anyone who just wants extra money to work with. Initially, I thought "there's no way I'm going to be able to amass enough money to begin this, so I should just level." This just isn't true. I currently have 25s on my character from strictly trades.
You weren't joking about the STOP THINK section. When I first started, (feel free to laugh) I got excited and bought 15 Persephone Dyes. Hint: just cause it says consumable doesn't make it a great idea. Hah!
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Can you please explain submitting a buy order when it's approximately half the lowest sell price? Is this just a buffer in that we are assuming the price won't drop by 50% overnight? Why not just create buy orders that are at 50% of the sell price? Also, how does this stop you from having to look up what you bought the item at? The lowest sell price could vary dramatically overnight. I've already employed your tactics and have been earning gold! But I'd love to understand the why a bit more.
Thank you!
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Listed auctions aren't cancelled because when a listed auction is cancelled, you lose the 5% deposit. Also, just because something isn't purchased in the first 24 hours doesn't mean that it won't be purchased. Often, the market has fluctuated and the instant buy price has dropped below the priced you listed. It could go up tommorrow or several days hence so that your listings are snapped up then.
There is a time to cancel an auction, but it isn't within 24 hours of listing it. It's when it is clear that the price is not going to rebound soon (or when you realize that you listed during an artificial high) and it's better to lose the 5% and relist at the going rate to recoup your investment capital.
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I've put out my orders, then next day I've got 30 new items. Then this:
"Do I sell the weapons at the price of "the highes buyer", "the lowest seller" or any price right in between? It seems to me that this isn't covered in the guide. I would appreciate an answer as I am very eager to try this guide out on the trading company."
I mean, wouldn't I just be selling the items back for the same price I bought them for?
Hello there.
first, I´ve been reading you since 2copper, great advices.
My question is, in order to get your 3g a day, how much did you have to invest? Did you started playing the TP with the gold you earned ingame or you bought some ingame gems to boost up your inicial investments?
We both know we cant get 3g if you have, lets say, 30silver. Me, for example, didnt buy any gold with gems so my bank is gratually increasing (from 30s to 40s to 50s to 70s, to 1g .... now i have 5g) my exponencial factor is lower than someone who bought, lets say, 10g.