Recap: I lost my trading pass and needed to scramble in order to salvage something out of Christmas and keep my Gaian economic plans going until Gaia stops sitting around on their thumbs and solves this problem. In Part 2, I wrote about scaling back and prioritization.

So now that I knew what I was aiming for, it was time to go about getting it. Again, I'm talking about making gold NOW, so I'm not talking about investing. I'm talking about making my working capital actually work, and I'm talking about growing it. I'm talking about vending and Booty Grabbing.

It's not one or the other: they're both the best ways on Gaia as of this writing to make gold in the short term. When vending is good, it's far more lucrative than Booty Grabbing, and isn't so boring it makes your brains leak out your ears. But vending is not always good. Sometimes there's nothing to buy; sometimes sales are slow. Booty Grab is always there, there's always a tank glowing, so when vending isn't paying off, you don't have to sit there waiting for it to pick up again, you can keep the income coming in.

If you can't play Booty Grab, I don't know what to say to you other than I'm sorry. It was and continues to be a key component in gold accumulation on Gaia.

Vending is where I diverged from the newbie experience; I've been vending on Gaia for over 4 years. I know what to look for and what to expect out of it, I know when to price aggressively and when to be patient, I know my prices. Even though I was being somewhat more conservative than my usual style (there's nothing like severe negative consequences to make you think too long and miss out on good deals), I got over it after awhile. When you need to make gold fast, you need to take some risks.

And yeah, some of the risks I took didn't pay off well at all. We all make mistakes. That's why it's so important to have enough working capital around that if one vend goes sour or prices dip, you have enough to keep going while you wait it out. You don't have to make the choice of taking a loss or making nothing while you wait.

I'd chosen an item to give everyone on my gift giving list that I thought was pretty nice but was less expensive than I'd originally planned. See, when the pass was yanked, I really didn't believe that this was all going to be necessary - I figured a week, maybe two, and I'd have it back, along with access to all the gifts I'd already bought. This whole "get gold, get gifts, keep going" was just a backup plan. So I didn't want to sink too much gold, even if it was my mule's gold, into items that would probably not be necessary.

Silly Me.

(No, I don't know what I'm going to do with the items I'd already bought for gifts for friends that are on my main. That's part of the "don't think about what you HAD, think about what you HAVE" strategy. I'll deal with it if it becomes an issue.)

If you're not used to vending, it's best to start small - and again, not with gold that you can't afford to tie up for awhile. The Christmas event was a perfect opportunity - lots of people were dumping their items for far less than the going price. Yes, the prices are low and the profits aren't huge and the competition is fierce, but if you're just starting to vend, it's not about huge profits, it's about learning to recognize what's a good deal, it's about learning your own risk tolerance, it's about learning how to go after deals with confidence.

And if you do lose out, it's not much gold gold, which you can make back plus a bunch in one good game of Booty Grab.

It's all practice for when you see the 2M item that you know is going for at least 2.4M. Yes, that was a real vend from a couple weeks ago. If I didn't have 2M in working capital at the ready, I couldn't have taken advantage of that and made 400K in under 10 minutes.

So did all this work? Hell yes. I started with 1.5M. I did a quick and dirty total of the gifts I bought and the items I bought for my mule (and for my main) and the increase in gold and it's well over 10M on top of that. Ok, it's not as impressive as 7M in one week, but this was over the holiday season, I was not on Gaia full time, there were holiday get togethers and Christmas shopping in real life not to mention all the everyday stuff that makes up a real life going on. Real life comes first.

Was this all work? Hell double yes. People who have a decent amount of assets have either spent a cubic blortload of real world money on Gaia or worked for it. Whenever I was on Gaia I was working at gold accumulation: either vending or Booty Grabbing(*) or both.

It was annoying because I'd just reached a financial goal on my main that required a bunch of work, and I'd planned to take it a lot easier during the holidays. But when life hands you lemons, throw them back and get back to work.

(*)When I say Booty Grabbing, I also mean bumping the glow threads of those whose tanks you're grabbing. It takes nearly no time, and one bump can make the difference between almost no players and a full glow. So bump if you grab. It's good karma.

I got my 1000 post achievement on my mule just from bumping Booty Grab glow threads. I told you I Booty Grabbed a lot.