Welcome to Gaia! ::

I will take you step-by-step through a process that will earn you gold without having to beg, join a charity, PM your friends, or win a lottery. Just so you know up front, this method takes work -- yes, you have to spend your time and focus your attention at earning gold in the marketplace. But think about how much better it will feel when you have earned your wealth rather than relying on the charity of others.

In a nutshell, you will buy items in the marketplace at low prices and sell them right away for higher prices. You make a small profit on your investment and repeat this process until you have as much gold as you need.

The following paragraph gives you an alternative to reading the rest of my guide. If you don't like to read or don't want to use the marketplace to leverage your gold into a fortune, then read the following paragraph. If you don't want to take the time to learn about trading in the marketplace, I can tell you in one easy step how to make 100k on Gaia without any work at all. Purchase $25 worth of Monthly Collectibles -- 10 envelopes -- and put them all up for sale in the marketplace. If you buy the envelopes early in the month, you will probably get no less than 10k per envelope -- later in the month you might even make more. Ten envelopes times 10k each = 100k. I support Gaia, and encourage you to purchase a few Monthly Collectibles each month if you can, but you don't have to spend real money to build up a nice nest egg of gold.

Contents

1. Prerequisites and Recommendations
   
2. A Brief Overview of the Method
   
3. Choosing an Item
   
4. Buying Your Item Below Market Value
   
5. Selling Your Item at Near Market Value
   
6. Tips and Hints
   
7. I've Made 100k, Where do I Go From Here?
   
8. FAQ

Appendices

• Working with Common Items

Note: I took this snapshot of the guide on 18 June 2007. Generally, I will make updates to just the original guide, although I probably will mirror major updates over here. Also, I will only maintain the list of graduates and the 1,000,000g Club in the original guide.

2. A Brief Overview of the Method

This system operates on two basic economic principles that work in the real world as well as on Gaia:

• Buy low, sell high
  
  
• You have to keep your gold in motion to make it grow

Buy Low, Sell High
If you buy an item for 100g, and you turn around and sell the same item for 200g, then you have made a profit of 100g. The item made you an excellent return of 100% on your investment -- that is, you doubled the money you invested. While great bargains will come up frequently, you will typically look for opportunities where you can buy an item for five to ten percent below the current market value, and you will then sell them on the market for nearly the market value.

For example, if you see that Spirit Falcons currently sell for around 8,000g in the marketplace, you would watch for someone to list a Spirit Falcon for sale at 7,600g or less. You buy the Spirit Falcon, put it on the market for 8,000g, and when it sells, you make a 400g profit. Four hundred gold might seem like a long way from 100k, but if you average a profit of 400g per trade, you only have to make 250 trades to reach 100k. If you can make twenty-five trades each day, you can reach your goal in 10 days.

You might ask, "Why would someone list a Spirit Falcon for such an inexpensive price? I'll never find such bargains." I promise you that such bargains happen every minute on Gaia for any number of reasons. Perhaps the seller mistyped the sale price, wants to quickly dump some unwanted inventory to raise cash to buy the latest and greatest items, or doesn't understand the marketplace and took a guess at the item's value. If you want to see this principle in action, just watch the marketplace on a day when an event item gets released. Since everyone gets the item free, not everyone recognizes that the item might have value, and you will often see the items listed for much less than the market price.

Just as an example, I found this bargain on 5 April 2007 when looking at the Worthless Black Giftbox (one of the April Fools 2007 event items). You can see that some people do list items without even looking at the marketplace. You snatch these bargains up, sell them, and make a 300% return on your investment.



Keeping Your Gold in Motion
In this course, you will make short-term investments -- the real world would call this day trading. When you put something up for sale, you want it to sell almost instantly, making room for the next item you have ready to sell. If your items just sit in your store, then your money has stopped moving. Since Gaia limits us to selling only four items at a time, you really do need to have your items moving quickly to make money. So to keep your items selling, you need to list your item for nearly irresistible prices. I'll discuss pricing in detail later on, but for now remember that you need to have your items sell and not sit stagnant in your store. The faster you can sell your items, the more transactions you can make and earn 100k in just a short period of time.

4. Buying Your Item Below Market Value

Now that you have selected an item that has good marketplace movement, you need to buy your item below market price. I know of two ways to buy items below market price:

• Watch the marketplace like a hawk
  
  
• Negotiate a purchase in the exchange

Watching the Marketplace Like a Hawk
I would say that I buy most of my short-term investments by watching the marketplace like a hawk and pouncing on items listed below the current market price. Let's continue with the example from section 3 with the Spirit Falcon. By searching for the lowest buy price on the Spirit Falcon, you determined the current market price as 8,000g. You want to watch for someone to list an item for sale around 7,600g or less. If the market seems a little slow, I might buy a Spirit Falcon in this case for 7,800g, but then you would only make 200g profit instead of 400g, but generally I shoot for about 4-5% profit on each transaction. So, if you start trading 20k items, you would want to look for about a 1,000g profit.

Really, the price at which you choose to purchase your item depends entirely on your patience. If you have the patience to wait long enough, refreshing the search every 5 seconds, you will eventually find a great bargain. You have to think in terms of profit margin -- how much will you make on the transaction. I like to have four items up for sale all the time to maximize my opportunities. If I only have three items for sale and need a fourth, I might settle for making a smaller profit, just to keep my money in motion.

When you do spot a great deal, you will have to move quickly because other bargain hunters have the same opportunity and desire to buy the item. Keep your password stored on your clipboard so you can quickly paste your password into the confirmation box. Or, if your browser can remember your password, you don't have to do anything but click the confirmation button. Don't worry if you don't get every deal. When the market really moves quickly, I can usually win one out of three races to see who can buy the item first. As you get more practice with the marketplace, you'll build up skill and reflexes that enable you to click Buy Now, paste in your password, and click confirm in less than a second.

As you become more experienced, you will find that having a browser that supports tabs very convenient. You set up a search for a different item in each tab, and you move from tab to tab by typing Ctrl+Tab. Using this method, you can leave the mouse pointer at the same spot on the screen and then press Ctrl+Tab and click Go repeatedly through multiple search pages.

Some traders, instead of setting up multiple searches, watch the main marketplace page. When you first click on the marketplace, you see the items listed most recently for sale. You can click Go, and see the 10 to 20 new items listed in the past few seconds. If you really know your items and their prices, you can find bargains on more items. Personally, I don't trust my memory well enough and the market shifts often enough that I don't prefer this shopping method.

A Note About Bidding on Items
Up to this point, I have only talked about buying items by clicking the Buy Now button. Some sellers will list their items as an auction, where the sale goes to the highest bidder when the listing expires. Sometimes you can find some really great bargains through bidding, but as you progress to buying more expensive items around 10k or more, you'll find that the seller will cancel the listing if the bidding doesn't go high enough to suit the seller. Personally, I find that too often the sellers cancel the items that I bid on, so I hardly ever bid on items for sale.

Buying Items in the Exchange
The Gaia Exchange forum provides the equivalent of classified advertising. Sellers advertise the items they have for sale, and you post offers to purchase the items. If you agree to a sale, you exchange the item for gold (or other items) through the Bank of Gambino trading system.

I don't buy much from the exchange for the same reason I don't usually bid on items -- the process just takes too much time. First you have to find someone selling an item that you want. Usually I check the current market price on the item just to make sure I know where I want to make my offer. Then you have to post your offer in the thread and wait for the seller to post a response. I usually start my bidding several hundred lower than my maximum purchase price so I have some room to haggle. Often sellers want close to market price, so often you'll make your highest bid and then have to look elsewhere for another opportunity. For me this takes too much time, but to each his own.

I do like to search the exchange for opportunities to purchase items in bulk. Often you can get a better deal when you purchase five or ten of the same item at once than you would buying the item one at a time. Be careful that you don't buy too many items. You might sell the first few at great prices, but then have the market price fall to where you can't make a profit on the remaining items.

6. Tips and Hints

So now you have all the tools you need to make gold in the marketplace. No, you won't earn a million overnight, but you will see steady increases in your net worth. Every transaction makes you a little bit more wealthy, and after enough transactions, you will have 100k.

As you buy and sell in the marketplace, you will start to get a feel for how the marketplace shifts and changes. Every trader has a different style, and you will develop one all your own. No one can master every item, so you will probably develop a set of items that you know well and like to sell.

The following suggestions provide a few of the details about my style, but if you find that any of the suggestions don't fit your style, consider this section optional.

• Keep a list of your items and the purchase prices. I happen to use an Excel spreadsheet to track the purchase price, sale price, and profit on the items I buy and sell. You don't have to use a spreadsheet, but I do highly recommend that you write down the prices you paid for an item. As the market shifts, you can use your ledger of purchases to know if you want to lower your price or stop selling until the market swings back. (You can see an example of my spreadsheet.)
  
  Yes, I know that you can view a list of your recent purchases in your store's log file, but if you do a lot of trading, you will often have items you purchased roll off the bottom of the list before you have a chance to sell the item. And if you bid on items, every time you bid, you create an entry in the log, pushing your purchases and sales off the list even faster. So, if you don't trade very much in a day and can rely on the log, that's fine, but if you make more than 20 trades in a day, you will probably want to keep an alternate log.
  
  
• Carefully review the sale price you typed on every item you list. In the frenzy of fast selling, you can easily transpose numbers or leave off a zero. You don't want to sell your 10,000g item for 1,000g. I still cringe at selling a Celebrity date for 3,945g instead of 9,345. Slow down and take one second to double check the price.
  
  
• Don't panic when you take a loss on an item. Ok, I guarantee that in spite of my previous recommendation, you will get in a rush and accidentally list an item for a price lower than you intended. If you notice quick enough, you might save your item by canceling your listing, but most likely some savvy bargain hunter like yourself will have snatched up your item within seconds. Since you have the skills to earn money in the marketplace, you haven't lost anything but time. Shrug your shoulders, remind yourself that it's only pixels, and get on with the next sale that makes you a profit.
  
  
• Don't dump four of the same item on the market at the same time. Ideally, I like to keep four different items for sale at the same time. While I wait for those items to sell, I search for the next bargain that I will list when the next item sells. If you dump four of the same item, your slow down the movement of your money and you encourage others to list items below your selling price.
  
  
• Don't overstock on a single item. Ok, if someone keeps listing Mimzy's at 10g, then you buy every single one that person wants to sell. In cases where you know your item very well, you can stock up on bargains, but in general, I would suggest that you keep no more than two of the same item waiting in your inventory. The more items you have sitting in your inventory, the greater the chance the market can shift, leaving you with items you sell at a loss or hold on to until the market swings back.
  
  
• Expect market dips mid-month. When the new Monthly Collectible items come out on the 15th, prices in EVERYTHING drop and remain low for two to three days. Everyone wants to sell their current items so they can buy the new items. This is the time of the month where I spend most of my profit and buy items at these low prices. I then take a small break from the marketplace (two or so days) and then start to re-list the items at the lowest marketplace value. You can make thousands off of certain items by doing this. So, try to sell all of your vending items right before the 15th of the current month, or you will have to wait a while for the market to recover.
  
  Thank you Kaborganoodle.
  
  I addition, you should expect the prices of the new monthly collectibles to decline over about a week before they settle in at a stable market price. This happens because on the 15th the supply for the new items remains limited. This low supply coupled with a high demand pushes the price up to a high level. As more of the monthly collectible items emerge on the marketplace, the supply becomes more plentiful and the demand drops off as Gaians purchase the coveted items. Although the new items might look really cool, I recommend you wait about a week before buying them, since in the first week, you will pay a premium price.
  
  
• Don't be afraid to study your items first. In addition to watching the marketplace yourself, two services exist that track the prices of items on Gaia.
  
  
  • tektek.org -- At tektek.org, you can look up the historical price of items, look up which letters carried which items, and even calculate your net worth.
    
    
  • The Gaian Economy Monitor -- GEM provides very details pricing information. They snapshot the current market price every 15 minutes, and you can display historical pricing graphs back in time, often back to when the item came on the market. GEM doesn't have the extensive database of items like tektek.org, but their market data gives some additional details that I find very useful.
  
  
  
• Watch for underpriced letters. Occasionally, the price for a letter falls below the price for one of the items it contains. For example, if the March 2007 letter has a market price of 7,000g and Spirit Falcon has a market price of 8,000g, you can buy the letter, open it and get the Spirit Falcon, and sell the Spirit Falcon for a 1,000g profit.
  
  
• Don't send your password in a PM to anyone for any reason.. I never got a password fishing PM until I started working the marketplace. It makes sense, if you have a 10k item up for sale, most likely you have an account worth hacking. You will get PM after PM telling you about an investigation or a database problem that asks you to reply with your password. DON'T SEND YOUR PASSWORD TO ANYONE. The Gaia staff already has access your account and no one else needs to know your password but you.
  
  For more security tips, please visit Dawn Crest's guide on how to keep your account safe:
  
  
  
  
  

8. FAQ

Well, this section depends on you. Please post your questions in the thread. I usually check the thread every day, and I will answer your questions in the thread. I'll list any good or frequently asked questions here.

Q. Your guide is too long. Can't you just summarize it for me?
A.Buy things below the current market price either in the marketplace or the exchange. Sell the item for just under the current market price to make a quick profit. Repeat until you have 100k.

Q. What items in the 1-5K price range provide a good opportunity to put your methods into practice?
A. You need about 3-5k to get started, but you should really look at items in the 300-1000g range for your first items. You need 3-5k in order to purchase up to four bargain items and have them for sale at the same time. I will try to update this section with items that seem to move well in this range.

• Worthless Magical Giftbox
  
• Soot Face Explode
  
• Mimzy
  
• Easter and St. Patrick's Day Event Items
  
• Mokona Hat

Right now, the April Fools items still represent a good opportunity to make money. Just today (16 April 2007) I have bought a Worthless Magical Giftbox for 400g and a Soot Face Explode for 70g. Mimzy currently doesn't move as fast as it used to, but I bought a Mimzy for 25g today as well. These bargains happen all the time, and you can make several hundred in gold with these bargains.


Q. How long did it take you to write this guide?
A. I wrote the major sections of the guide over a period of three days, but in total, I probably spent about 5 hours writing the guide.

Q. Did you really make 100k trading the way you recommend?
A. Yes, several times over, and I continue to make money with it every day. I'm not alone. You can read the list of course graduates below who have verified that they have made 100k.

Q. Isn't this method just another way to inflate the marketplace?
A. For items with unlimited supply, the price will never change. Thus, common items that have unlimited supply at a fixed price, will never inflate.

For item with limited supply, the price will change with supply and demand. Over time, the supply of any collectible or event item will dwindle as new players buy the items and old players leave Gaia and leave the items locked in their inventory. A drop in supply will naturally lead to an increase in price, but only if the demand for the item remains constant. Some of the collectibles don't have a very high demand and have relatively low prices.

For example, look at the graph below showing the price of an Ice Tiara -- a collectible item from December 2005.



Even though this item has been on the market for over a year, the price still remains under 10k. Four months ago, you would have had to spend 12k to get an Ice Tiara, but today, you can buy one for just under 9k. Usually, an item's price spikes some around the anniversary of the item's release, and then drops back down as the temporary demand for the item subsides.

But even wildly popular items can have a drop in price. Look at the price of the Coco Kitty Plushie.



Over the past few months, the average price for a Coco Kitty Plushie has dropped from over 120k to under 90k -- a drop of over 30k. The price for any item will swing up and down with the tide of demand, and I would expect that in the long term (several years), that the price of a Coco Kitty will go over 200k, but only as a result of the natural process of price inflation due to a limited supply of the item.

The Gaia staff creates the monthly collectibles with the express purpose of creating an item with limited supply. Companies like Hallmark and the Franklin Mint do the same thing by offering "limited editons" of items. By offering items with a limited supply, companies provide the possibility of a return on initial investment through natural inflation of the price due to limited supply and increased demand. You buy a collectible item for the express purpose of having something that not everyone else can have because of the limited supply and with the hope that the value of the item will go up in the future.

Q. Shouldn't I buy as many collectible items as I can and horde them?
A. If you look at how slowly the prices of collectible items inflate, you can make a much greater return on your investment by buying and selling items than you can by hoarding items. Remember, you want to keep your money in motion. If you hoard an item, your money invested in that item stagnates.