500g + 48 days = 1 Million Gold? (Guide)

How did you get here?

From Gaia Guides & Resources	30.2%	[ 891 ]
A friend linked me.	11.8%	[ 349 ]
I searched some key words and found it.	10.6%	[ 312 ]
Redirection from Teh Hoarding Guild.	1.9%	[ 56 ]
Redirection from Solution to a Problem.	2.6%	[ 78 ]
Redirection from The Profiteers Guild.	2.2%	[ 65 ]
Redirection from The Newbie Support & Training Guild.	0.7%	[ 22 ]
Marketplace link/banner/other advertisement.	9.1%	[ 267 ]
By stalking Jace.	9.1%	[ 267 ]
I have no idea how I got here.	21.7%	[ 640 ]
Total Votes:			[ 2947 ]

[Jace Quin]

Exchanging vs Vending
(Both are Trumped by Hoarding)


Exchanging vs Vending. Although you might hear people say differently one isn’t really better than
the other. They both have pros and cons. Which one you think is better depends on you and your
situation. I personally do a combination of both. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

But when it comes to seriously making gold, nothing is trumped by hoarding. I'm talking here,
sheerly of percentage of return on capital. By which, I mean, you spend the least amount of
gold to make the most amount of money. It is not for everyone. It requires patience and capital to
start out. If you don't have either of those things (or one but not the other) stick to whichever of the
above methods you prefer.

[Jace Quin]

Exchanging




The purpose of the Exchange is twofold: You go there to buy cheap items to sell in the
marketplace at a profit or you go there to sell or trade away expensive/hard to sell items.
There is an unspoken agreement among the frequenters of the Exchange that the sellers
expect lower-than-market prices for their items in return for the convenience of bulk-selling and
the quick gold of not having to wait. In short you buy from the Exchange to sell in the Marketplace.

First, you need to know where the Exchange forum is. It can be located by going to Gaia
Forums and clicking on The Gaia Exchange in the Gaia Gaming section. (Or by following this
handy link: Exchange Link.) Now that you’ve found it you need to know where to go from there.
There are several sub-forums contained within the main Exchange forum. Basically as long
as you are selling some kind of equip-able or house item, you can do anything else in the main
forum. Buy, sell, sell game items, have contests, etc. If you are not selling (or if you are
selling only Game Items) you need to head to the appropriate forum. Because not being in the
right place is rude and gets on a lot of people’s nerves. So don’t do it.

Explanations of what to do in each sub-forum. You can skip this if you want to.

Lotto/Money Games:
This forum is where lotteries and other money games can be held. If
you are an extremely lucky person you might go there to check it out. But I wouldn’t recommend
it. I have never entered that forum but, I suspect, as with many money games they probably
have some way of ripping you off. Especially the lotteries. Most lotteries are “for profit” and can
take years before they’re drawn.

Wanted:
This is the place to go to buy things. If you are looking for something for yourself I
suggest listing an offer rather than asking people to name their price because, more than likely,
they’re going to try to get you to pay as much as possible because they know you want the item.
There’s also a way to make money by buying things in the Wanted but I’ll explain that later.

Charity/Quests:
The Charity/Quests forum is the forum dedicated to exactly what it sounds
like. If you are on a quest I suggest creating a semi-pretty nicely laid-out quest thread and
bumping it a lot as you will get far more donations than just random begging. On a somewhat
related note, if you have ever been donated to by a charity and you get to have a lot of money,
give back to the Gaia community by donating yourself.

Gaia Marketplace Discussion:
This is the place to advertise your shop in the Gaia
Marketplace. I honestly don’t know why you would, or how this would help in anyway. But hey, if
you feel the urge, there’s a forum for it.

Game Item Exchange:
This is the place you buy and sell game items. Game items include:
Bugs, other “trash” that can be found in towns, all items obtained from fishing, pinball powerups,
“Electric Love Factory” powerups, credits, tickets, tokens, all zOMG rings, all zOMG recipe
ingredients (but not the recipes themselves or the items created from them.)

The Main Gaia Exchange:
Most likely, this will be the place where you are headed to make
money.



Exchanging in the Exchange

Unless it’s eight am (EST, five am PST) on a tuesday morning, any thread on the first
page should be just fine for your purposes. (If it does happen to be such a slow time as early
morning on a school day you may want to wait until later to avoid becoming frustrated. If you
can’t wait for whatever reason then pay attention to the time stamp on the most recent post. If it
was more than ten minutes ago, don’t bother.) And by “any thread” I mean, you’re probably not
going to head into the one where the title says: “Glaurels, HOTD, Devil Tail, NM Minis” but most
of them should be fine. Generally, the post-count doesn’t matter as much as you’d think. A lot
of people have perma-threads that get to be extremely large and other people have to bump a
lot to keep their thread on the first page.

Once you’ve selected a thread the first thing to do is read the thread owner’s rules (if they
have any.) Many rules people will post are common sense. Such as, do not quote anything on
the first page (or just the first post itself if it’s not a permanent thread). This causes
page-stretching which is just annoying. Even if they don’t have that rule, don’t do it. Many
people will ask you not to pm them, although conversely some people only want to be pmed.


If there are no rules posted, or if there are, I have compiled a list of things you should follow.
You may skip this, I suppose, although I would prefer if you did not. And believe me,
I’ve seen at least one person break every rule.

Follow the TOS. Most obvious rule ever. Go read it again just to refresh your memory.
Follow the Exchange rules posted in a stickied thread in the main Exchange.
Use a readable font.
Don’t quote first post/first page posts. Especially if they contain large pictures.
Because of the quote notices many sellers prefer to be quoted but if they don't provide a
specific post to quote and you quote any post of theirs you should delete the content of the
quoted post before you type your offer and post.
Do not pm the seller unless they give permission in their rules or ask you to.
Look up and know the price of what you’re offering on before you offer.
Never bid more than you have.
Don’t bid on something you don’t intend to buy.
Don’t beg.
Don’t send a trade unless you are told to.
Label all trades as much as possible (there is a large character limit, I promise.)
Be polite.
Offer on items individually. No lump offers for this that and the other thing for 3k.
Try not to use chatspeak. If you’re thoroughly incapable of avoiding it please never come
to my thread I mean... please use only more common chatspeak such as “u”, “2”, or
“brb” instead of expecting the seller to know what “tn34umvsn” means. (To my knowledge that is
not an actual word in 1337, I was just giving a ridiculous example.)
Be patient. Don’t requote your offer every minute or leave after three minutes of no response. I
follow the guide-line of re-posting my offer after a few minutes if and only if the seller has
already responded to someone who posted after me and leave the thread if the seller has not
posted at all in ten minutes. Before I leave I requote my offer with the further message asking if
they can pm me or send a trade later if they like any of my offers and that I don’t want to wait
longer than ten minutes.



The next thing to do after reading a seller’s rules is to look over their items and see if
there is something or multiple items you want to buy. Sometimes people post pictures of what
they’re selling, sometimes they have lists, sometimes they put items in the “show inventory”
box or equip everything they want to sell. But anyway, try to figure out everything you want to
buy (within your price range) before posting. Also before posting: Check and see that the
items you want to buy aren’t already sold. Then post the item name and your offer.
Offer individually for each item. Make sure you have enough for what you want to buy and
hopefully a little more for wiggle room in case the seller wants to haggle.

How do you offer, you wonder? Because, I know, it seems bizarre to buy things to earn
gold. But, that’s how it works. You’re going to want to offer less than what you think you can
sell it for in the marketplace. There are a few different things to consider when offering on
something. You need to keep in mind the two percent tax. You need to pay attention to
both the Average Buy Price and the Lowest Buy Now Price as well at the little red or green
percentage next to the average buy price. A small green number (five or less) is good. A huge
green or red number (+/-10% or more) is bad, I’d avoid buying it. A small red number is okay
you just may want to offer a little lower on that item. When offering always make offers off
whichever price is lower, LMP (Lowest Market Price/Lowest Buy Now Price) or average buy price.

Rule of thumb for offering. If the item is worth less than 1.5k offer 100-400g off the MP (Market
Price). Most people will accept that. For items 2-4k offer 500-700g off. 4-11k offer 1k off. 11-30k
offer 2k off. 30-70k 3-4k off. 70-90k offer 3-5k off. 90-120k offer 10k off. For items over these
amounts (or just in general if you’re the calculations type, it’s usually safe to offer 80-90% of the
price. Not off, but of the price, which is 10-20% off. As you become more
experienced it becomes easier to offer on items and to know which items to offer a little more or
a little less on.

If the seller accepts your offer send them a labeled trade with the correct amount of
gold (or items if you’re trading). Once the trade is complete you’re all set to start earning money
from your investments.

Okay! So you have now bought a few items. You want to list your items so that they sell
quickly in the MP and you can re-invest your gold (especially if you have very little). This is
why it’s important to offer off the LMP if it’s lower than the Average buy price. So that you can
sell right away and still profit. List your items for less than the current lowest price (even if only
1g lower). If you have a little more gold or a little more patience you can make more profit by
listing your item a little higher, especially if you plan to leave it overnight when the supply is
lower and the demand tends to remain the same.

Ideally you will have ten different items selling in your shop at the same time while you
search for or wait on more deals. That is where you want to be to make the most profit. But
having items sit in your shop (or your inventory, waiting for a slot in your shop) for days at a
time is no good. You need to price to sell relatively quickly so that you can move on and
re-invest.



Wanted Exchanging

Exchanging through the Wanted subforum is a lot like owning a pawn shop. You typically want
to have at least 100k before trying this. People will come to you and offer you items to buy
from them. They do this because they’re too impatient to sell in the marketplace. They want
gold and they want it now, not in an hour. You profit through patience. You offer on their
items much like you would to a seller in the regular Exchange, if they agree to sell you do a
trade and then you list the item in the Marketplace just like you would with any item you bought
from someone. Often, you can offer even lower than you would usually in the regular Exchange
because the sellers are just so impatient and eager for your pure. It depends on your strategy in
the Wanted. If you give better offers you’ll likely get a higher volume of items. But if you offer
lower you might buy fewer items but have a higher profit margin. Whatever works for you.



Game Item Exchanging

Buying game items for cheap in the Exchange at inventory sales and such and then selling
them to collectors in the Game Exchange or turning bugs into ink, etc. is a decent way to
make profit. The highest profit game items to buy are black, green, red, & blue bugs, black,
blue, green, red & white ink, and tickets. Bugs can typically be bought for 1 gold each while the
inks (made from fifty bugs) can be considerably more than that. Particularly black and white
ink. White ink can be made from five of each red, blue and green inks (250 bugs of each color)
so you spend much less on the inks needed to make a white ink than the white ink costs and
that's where your profit comes from. Tickets should be bought for a few gold each less than the
average buy price per unit for tickets. The best way to sell them is to turn them into the best
selling prize and joy items. To know what these are you must do research. The same goes if
you’re going to turn your cheap ink into tattoos. The goal here is to always make the most profit
from your investment.

[Jace Quin]

Vending



The first thing you need to know about vending is that I have a much looser definition of the term
than a lot of people you might find. I tend to use it broadly, referring to using the Marketplace in
general to earn gold as opposed to just using it in the “traditional” way of snatching up low and
mis-priced items. I have come up with several different techniques of using the marketplace to
earn gold, not all of which require the fastest connection out there. But first we’ll start with the traditional.


Latest Listing

This is the traditional method and what most people mean when they talk about vending.
You refresh the page that shows the most recently added items and look for mis-priced or
low-priced items that you can buy to re-sell. You can get to this page by going to the main page
of the marketplace scroll down to “auctions ending now” and click “view all.” From there go to
the drop-down menu at the top right of the listings and pick just added. This will take you to the
page of the most recently added items. (You can also get to this page by using the handy link I
have provided here.) Just refresh to see new items.

This method requires a great deal of knowledge about all of Gaia’s items because you’re being
shown items indiscriminately. Some items are easy to tell if it’s a good deal. Game items are
very easy to pick up this way. Other items are a little harder. It helps if you’ve been around in the
Exchange for a while, buying and selling a variety of items.

This method also requires speed and being able to think on the fly. If I spot a deal I usually click
on the item name, not the listing, to check and see if it’s really a deal before I buy it. Taking my
time to decide this sometimes means other people end up buying the item before I can. But I
prefer to play it safe. I’d much rather buy something I know is a deal one hundred percent of the time
than snatch up something I think is a deal half the time only to discover that it's not a deal at all.
Because really, no matter how familiar you are with the items, you might be wrong.


Game Sub-version of Latest Listing Method

You do what you do in the above explanation of the latest listing method except you only look for
deals on game items. Snatching up bunches of flowers or trash for .01 gold each and selling
them for .33g each to the crazy people in the game exchange who collect them isn’t a fast way
to earn gold but it is a sure bet. You can also find low-priced tin cans and paper bags and
do the same thing. A huge majority of Gaia sees game items as nothing but a nuisance and will
throw hundred of items into the vend for 1g for everything just to get rid of it. Finding cheap bugs
(particularly the ones used to make black, blue, green and red ink) in the vend and making ink
out of them to sell can also be profitable, or moving up a step in production to tattoos (be sure to
research tattoo prices first to make sure you’re making the most profit for your ink) is good.


Multi-tab:

The multi-tab version of Vending involves taking a much more focused approach and
concentrating on half a dozen items that you are going to vend. What you are going to do is
open multiple tabs all opened to the marketplace showing different listings. I will admit I have
never tried this method, I have no attention span and it’s just not for me. I do know a bit about
how it works. You choose items to concentrate on by certain criteria. I deduce, using my vast
intellect, that the criteria are: the supply of the item (how many listings it has and how often new
listings are added), the demand for the item (how much and how often do people buy it?), that
the item has a relatively stable price, and you have enough gold to buy several of the various
items you are vending. Unfortunately, choosing the items involves research. Once you’ve picked
your items you refresh the listings in a cascade and check to see if there are any low priced
ones for you to buy. To me, this seems ridiculously boring. But this is a good method to use if
you’re not familiar with a ton of items.


Sniping

“Sniping” involves searching the auctions that are almost over and looking for ones where the
bids are still very low, jumping in and bidding at the last minute and winning the cheap item.

You can find the auctions expiring now by going to the main page and scrolling down to
“auctions expiring now” and clicking on the “view all” link. (Or you can just click
here because it’s easier.) I usually go to the second page of auctions, which will show
auctions with 1-2 minutes left. Choosing items for this is fairly easy. Since you have a couple
minutes to think about it. Check on the listing of a likely-looking item to see that you’d be getting
a deal before bidding.

Some auctions have a bid increment so you want to make sure you bid enough to go over the
bid increment or you’ll get an error. Another thing about bid increments is that they don't apply to
the starting bid. Often you can start the bidding for just 1g but the bid increment will make the
listing undesirable for anyone else to bid on. The two biggest problem with this method are the
one I mentioned briefly before about the fact that one minute is automatically added to the
auction duration if someone bids in the last minute, giving other people time to out-bid you. The
other problem is the bidding wars you have with other people trying to get the item for cheap. It’s
very frustrating in my humble opinion. I don’t use this method often anymore although it’s good
for slow Gaia-times such as early-morning if you have a slow connection but still want to try to
earn some gold.


Opening Packages

I suppose that this isn’t technically what most people would call a vending technique but it uses
the marketplace and doesn’t fit in any other category. This method involves finding instances
where the items that come out of a letter or bundle are worth significantly more than the letter or
bundle itself, buying the letter/bundle and opening it up to receive the item(s), then selling the
item(s). This method can be used for bundles of RIGs, Letters, and other Cash Shop bundles.
Find an instance where the contents are worth more than the package, buy, unpack,
resell the contents.

The two things about this method are: as the majority of MCs are typically worth in the 20-200k
range (although there are obvious exceptions) you have to have a decent amount of gold to do
this, just as you would to otherwise vend with or Exchange with MCs. The second is that it
requires a lot of research using the Marketplace.

First thing to do is look up “letter” in the market place. Have it sort by price, with the lowest
price at the top. This way you have an easy list of the Letters in your price range. Then open up
a new tab or window and start to look up the letters one by one. Usually the MCs that are
inside are recognizable tags when you look at the letter listing. For example if you look up "july
2011" the letter listing has "ithilldyn armor" and "queen dorado" (the two items the letter
contains) as tags. Make a list of the Letters that are cheaper than the MCs they contain as you
go along. Buy some of those cheap letters, open them for the MC, sell it and profit.Rinse and
repeat.

You can also do this with RIG (officially known as Chance Item) or cash shop bundles. The
more recent RIG bundles and cash shop bundles are more likely to have the price differences
you want to exploit so try looking up more recent ones before the older ones. You do this in a
similar way to the letters by looking up a bundle and then adding up the prices of the items it
contains to see if they're worth more than the letter. Though of course you also need to keep in
mind the 2% tax that's subtracted when you sell.

It’s research and labor-intensive but happens more often than you might imagine and the
method doesn’t rely as heavily on there being a large number of people on Gaia at the time. It’s
a good way to profit in my opinion.

[Jace Quin]

Hoarding


A brief explanation of hoarding and a few generalized suggestions.


The first thing you have to know about hoarding is that there are two things that are a
requirement to do it. One is patience. The other is gold. If you don't have either
or one but not the other then this section is not for you. This is an instance where you really
have to have a good chunk of gold to make even more gold. Teh Hoarding Guild, of which I am a
member and by no means am I intending here to poach information I just wanted to share a
viewpoint of someone qualified, says you need at least 400k to hoard. I think it depends more
on what and for how long you are hoarding. If you're only hoarding some cheap items for a
month you can probably do it with less gold but that kind of instance really only occurs before
Halloween and Christmas. If you aren't in for a really long-term goal like a D-tail, Minis or
*winces* a Halo, you probably don't want to hoard for years. I can't say as I want to either. So
my methods focus more on hoarding for certain times of year than hoarding for years. Okay? Okay.

The best things to hoard for anyone as they are both cheap and easy to profit from are are
Halloween, Christmas and Wintery items because they're at their cheapest prices and
they go up the most because the market swings up at Halloween and Christmas. I suggest
buying at inventory sales or keeping an eye out in the vend for mis-priced or low priced event
items (I notice that people list event items very low often times just to get rid of them swiftly.)

You can also hoard RIGs and EIs. What do I recommend for hoarding for RIGs? Whatever is in
the cash shop as of right this moment. However, if it's been out for less than a week you'll want
to wait a week before buying. Just buy a bunch, wait a month or two and then sell. You can
make 35k+ on each one pretty much guaranteed without doing anything. Seriously. You can
also hoard EIs but they require more research. You need to know who the artist is, whether the
item seem popular or has a popular theme and what the price in Cash is. If the Price in cash is
ten dollars and you have enough to buy some first or second generation ones when they've just
come out you'll want to do so. For a seven-fifty EI you'll want to wait until the second generation
comes out (to see if it looks good) and find out who the artist is (the work of some artists is
much more popular than others) and see if the GCD if going crazy over the item. If all those
things are looking good I say buy some. You'll only want to wait four to six evolutions before
selling. Sell when you like the profit. If the third evolution is amazing and the price shoots up
300k SELL, SELL, SELL. You don't want to wait. More than likely if you do you'll end up
settling for less profit when you could have earned more, moved on and re-invested by then.

I suggest not buying more than fifty of any one MC to hoard or more than
twenty-five or any one event item. You have to be aware of what you are capable of getting
rid of in a time period or without affecting the market price. Try to avoid "dumping" your hoard.
Take you time selling, go slowly and get the best prices. It might take a couple weeks to
sell it off but after you've already waited however long it will be worth it.

More specific suggestions for shorter term. Hoard Halloween items from June to October. If you
only have a few items start selling as soon as the event opens. If you have more than a few
items you'll probably want to start selling in anticipation of the event (before it begins) so you
have time to offload all of your items. Christmas items may be bought from early summer
through November. Selling works the same way for any event as it does for Christmas. If you
have only a few items maximize your profit by selling when the items are most inflated but if
you have more than a few start selling early enough that you can sell everything. Christmas and
Halloween are the best event-related hoards but obviously I'm not saying you shouldn't pick up a
few Valentines or Easter things for those holidays as well. Evolving items. I suggest hoarding
five to ten (not more) of a particular kind of EI. The ten-dollar or greater than ten-dollar EIs are
usually a good bet but other EIs need to be researched carefully before deciding to invest in one.

For more information on hoarding check out my other guide: The Solution to a Problem; A Guide to Hoarding

[Jace Quin]