Welcome to Gaia! ::

==The Vendors Blog==

This is a weekly blog that teaches our exchangers about a new thing in the vending or exchanging world, please read on and learn about interesting aspects of vending and exchanging and how to make the system work for you. This is not a guide for beginner exchangers but more like a weekly column for all exchangers to read and perhaps learn something new about exchanging or vending.

If you have an idea for a new blog send me a private message with your idea and I will consider writing it, please make sure the blog has not already been written before you send the message.

==The Price Is Right==

Now that you know the technicalities of Haggling, the next thing you need to know is when the price is right. So, when is the price right? Well assuming you have already begun your exchanging adventure, I am sure you have learned the basics of knowing when the price your buying at is a price that will become profit when you sell out.

The most important thing to keep is an organized list of the current market values of your most commonly vended items. For instance, right now some commonly vended items include "May 2007, Lunar Scythe, Sealed Envelope, Spirit Falcon, etc". You should keep this list in a notepad opened on your computer for you to refer to when you are buying items in the marketplace and on The Gaia Exchange, for initial bids or purchases.

Because the marketplace is so fast paced it will be important to keep that little price list close to your heart when you are buying on the marketplace, on the other hand if your in a slower paced world. For instance, The Gaian Exchange you will have some time on your hands to get the exact price of the item your bidding on. Its important to be one of the first bidders on the doorstep when the seller puts up his thread, so before you do anything else you want to put your initial bid in, and because it starts low you should have no problem since you have a close cut number on your notepad (if the item your bidding on is not on the notepad and you don't know the price go check it really quickly, and add it to your notepad).

Once you put in your initial bid its important to find out that price, so go to the marketplace and get the lowest buy now price there is. That's your market-value and you now know not to bid any more than within 400 gold next to that item; unless you are really desperate.

Remember, that the market-value of the items you bid on is more important than every single penny you have to your name. If you get a market-value wrong it could take months to recover, take extreme care in finding the market-value of the items your buying and bidding on, and never make an uninformed decision because it could be a fatal one... financially speaking.

Next Tutorial :: The Chicken Neck

==Exchanging or Vending==

So this is a big question for a lot of people. Should I use The Gaia Exchange or the Marketplace? I could be a gutted pig here and say, do what feels good for you. Instead I will tell you my feelings and then you can take the question from there, with an educated decision.

What does The Gaia Exchange offer? It offers the chance to purchase an item at a lower price than the market-value almost guaranteed, its expected now-a-days. It also gives you a very realist feeling and small-business feeling because there is more communication between the Buyer and Seller. The issue with The Gaia Exchange is finding the items you wish to purchase, a lot of thread titles are very vague and don't give you the information you need. They will say "Selling" or "Got some good items here", and when you go in there they are either a bunch of bugs and candy-wrappers or a Coco Kitty priced at 200,000 gold. Good item, sure! But at three times the price. The other problem with the Exchange is that it is a slow process, but if your good at multi-tasking then you can generally look in two, three or even four threads at once giving you better odds at finding an item and saving your time.

What does The Marketplace offer? The Market offers something that the youth of today demand, speed. It is the fastest thing on gaia to this day, with the Chatterbox as second contender. If your looking for a fast-paced buying and selling world, this is it for you. Unfortunately sometimes its so fast-paced that you don't got enough time to even type in your password and buy the good item you spent that time looking for, and then the speed is no longer on your side of the table.

There is of course a way to counter this, get faster. In order to do this you can first, type in your password in a notepad and copy it, so then you can just ctrl+v it into the password table and get your item quickly.

The other thing you can do is go after more obscure items. Obscure items have a smaller hit list and therefore you have more time to respond. A good example of a more obscure item is a Whip of Fire/Whip of Ice. The Whip of Fire goes for about 31,000 gold right now while the Whip of Ice is 32,500 gold. Some people mistake them as one in the same, which gives you a higher level of lowly priced Whip of Ices to purchase. Its a niche market, but your almost guaranteed to get the item when it does appear.

Another thing you can do to counter this is to bid on items that are ending soon, in order to do this type in your item "May 2007", and go to "Lowest Buy Price", find out your market value. Then change it to "Time Remaining" and look for an item with a time remaining in the time you will be on. Put it in a seperate tab to be bidded on about 15 seconds before it ends, giving other bidders no time to bid on the item. But make sure you don't bid over the market value or the profit is no longer there.

The final problem with both the Marketplace and The Gaian Exchange is that theres to many people on the docks, its crowded. The final solution is very simple. Get online at about 8am and be on until 12pm. Also get on at 9pm until 12pm. You won't get very many purchases in the marketplace but when they do come you'll be sure to get it, and the purchases in the exchange are amazing. I got on at 1 in the morning the other night and purchased 50,000 gold worth of merchandise for only 38,000. Thats a 12,000 gold profit, and it only took me about eight minutes to sell the items.

The best way to go is a combination of both the Exchange and The Market. Most of your purchases should be made from the Exchange because theres a lower market-value there, but if you have quick fingers you can get the good deals in The Marketplace, and of course you always, always sell in The Marketplace.

Next Tutorial :: Boogie-Man Under The Bed

Haven't read the exchange part of the guide (which I am least experienced at). But I did read the 'Chicken Neck' section, which did give me some food for thought. I've always wondered the strategies of other vendors when it came to dealing with sealeds.

I'll have to read the exchange parts later, but right now all that tiny text is making my eyes go crazy... Yours would too if you've been staring at the first page of the market for 3 hours straight xD

Thanks for the guides!

Thanks for the invite, but aside that, Normally i've been seeing in the mp cocnut bra's for around 105k and it's around 10k less then normal prices. But it's not being bought at all. I've even seen something like the slot machine according to tektek it's 13 million gold, but it doesn't even sell for 10k. So exactly why is that and what makes it so much yet when it's 10k compared to 3 million gold no one buys it for that. Like for instance the coconut bra as well.

The problem with Tek-Tek is that it's not a reliable guide of actual sale prices for 'rarer' higher priced items.

It records the lowest vend price for an item, but not actual sale prices. It's fine for things like sealed letters and other fast paced donation items. They have a high turnover of sales in the vend so Tek-Tek can track the trend of prices and is a good indicator of marketprice.

But when you look at items that are rarely sold in the vend, Tek-Tek runs into difficulties. For example I watched a friend of mine inflate the value (as recorded on Tek-Tek) of a Grizzly Hat by about 20 million, just by putting it in his vend shop. There were none there, when he put up that item he could put any price he liked and Tek-Tek would have recorded it. It's a similar story with rare fish. Tek-tek shows a Rubyback Lion Mask at 60 million, because there's one in the vend for that. It's ridiculously overpriced (about 3 times what it's worth) and no one in their right minds would pay that much, but that's what Tek-Tek says.

The Coconut Bra (along with a lot of other event items) are much slower selling items and prone to sudden fits of deflation. Most vendors tend to avoid such items, even if they appear cheap at 10k below the next item.

The Slot-Machine is a store item and was previously ridiculously inflated due to the fact that it no longer appeared in the store's list of items. Naturally there are Gaians who will exploit such errors for profit. wink But I believe the slot-machine is back in stores again, for a measly 5k, explaining why no one is buying them for 13 million or whatever it was. xp

well for more adv excahgers 400g deals arnt that much. I deal with more 5-30k deals.

Interesting.