Saines
Demonic Prophet
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AN HONEST ATTEMPT AT A GUIDE TO ART PRICING AND UNDERSTANDING CURRENCY ON GAIA
"Help me Obi-Saines Kenobi, you're my only hope."
STEP ONE biggrin ETERMINE YOUR MARKET VALUE.This is a big ask I know, You were already agonizing over fictional money and now I'm asking you to figure out how much to pay yourself in real world currency? What a jerk! Believe me, once you figure this out the rest will fall into place.So how do to this? Sorry to say this isn't an in depth guide for that.There are innumerable resources online on how to go about how to price your art. Things that I can advise on this front is:- Host an art auction.- Figure out what you would charge in real life in US dollars. USD is sort of universally understood online upon to avoid pricing confusion.- Do your research. Comb though art sites, find out artists with a comparable skill to your own and find out what the going price is for what your selling is. Many of these will be under-priced. Keep that in mind!- Set yourself a minimum hourly rate Figure out how much you want to pay yourself for your time, even if it's based on minimum wage. I recommend:Your art has Value and how to Price itArt Price CalculatorUltimately, if you're happy with 5$ a chibi that's you doing you, but do set something! You can always adjust your prices.STEP TWO:UNDERSTANDING GAIAN CURRENCY.Long gone are the days of one gaian currency, gold. You now have 4 active forms of currency to understand and value. Let's break them down.GOLD.The original coinage of yore. Gold used to be very hard to come by. Forum posts and surfing used to grant you a mere 1-3 gold. Thanks to HYPERINFLATION things have changed. Site rewards exist that now grant hundreds of thousands of gold daily. Bumping in threads around 15 times and a user can earn 28 billion gold. It's not unheard of for average users to have trillions of gold. TRILLIONS. For visual reference, one trillion is written as 1,000,000,000,000, or 1t.It got so bad, the site had to create a new currency, which brings us to...PLATINUM.Platinum or Plat or p/P was the inevitable solution to the numerous zeros gold suffers from.Plat has a direct, stable exchange of 10 million gold equaling 1 platinum. In numbers, 10,000,000g = 1p So, like our above earning example, if you were to bump at least 15 times and you'd get 2.8k plat. This is the daily cap for just posting which is important to know to understand a user's earning power, and in turn your own pricing.Commonly shared Plat exchange reference guide:MYTHRILL COINS.Mythrill coins were introduced as a way to consolidate large volumes of currency into single items for trade purposes. They can be bought at Barton BoutiqueThey are stored in your inventory [Special Tab] and Regardless of the amount they all look like a silver coin with an M embossed on it I hate these things for that very reason. You have to hover over them to check the amount they are worth, and if it's in gold or plat. If you're going to accept these as payment do CHECK carefully.GAIA CASH.Finally, the site's only outright purchasable currency, Gaia Cash. Gaia Cash can be used onsite to purchase specialty items, and can be used in the exchange. Gaia Cash has a base value of 1USD = 100 GC. (Remember when I recommended pricing your art in USD?)The marketplace lists the exchange of gold to gaia cash as 100,000,000g to 1 GC. We now know that 1 USD = one hundred million gold or 10 platinum. So your 5$ USD chibi would be worth about 500 million gold, or 50p.That's pretty straight forward, right? smile WRONG.STEP THREE:CRUNCH SOME NUMBERS.The site heavily incentives buying large amounts of it with timed deals, coupons, and subscriber discounts that grant you more Gaia Cash for your dollar. The current sale is 115% more GC. For example, 100$ USD would normally get you 10,000GC , now it's granting 21,500GC. In the past I've seen deals of 140% more GC.GAIA CASH GIFT CARDS.Users are also able to buy tradeable, Gaia Cash Gift Cards from the cash shop:GaiaCash GiftCards - Shop LinkWhat these cards look like:Full List:GaiaCash GiftCards - Exchange ListSavvy Exchangers often sell these Gaia Cash Gift Cards at the rate of 1,000 GC for 1.5 trillion gold. Based on that, the rate of exchange for Gaia Gold into Gaia Cash would be 1 GC = 1.5b or 1,500,000,000gThat's one billion, five hundred million gold, or 150 platinum.Phew.STEP FOUR razz ROFITSo! Let's go back to your 5$ USD chibi. $5 USD would buy you 500 GC (base rate, no bonus cash)Basing our rates on what the lovely exchangers have set, We can now use the power of MATH. That would be at about 750,00,000,000g, or seven hundred fifty billion gold, or 750b g / 75k platinum - at least!By using the Gaia Cash Calculator I can figure out if I'm setting my gaian pricing to something that equates to my RLC pricing so I'm not underselling my work.Again, because the amount of Gaia Cash is so fluid, I tend to err on the side of higher cash bonuses.It was driving me nuts as a returned user to try and figure all this out.Hope this helps someone out. I'd welcome any advice on how to make this guide better~.
