Making Money
I'm often asked about how to make money.
Making money is hard when you are brand new. Once you reach level 15 and can travel, it gets much easier, which is why I try to push people to reach level 15 asap.
Level 15 allows you to travel. Running flowers (or plushies) will easily make $2M to $3M a day, maybe even more if you are super active. You fly to another country, buy flowers or plushies, bring them back to Torn City, and sell them for a big profit. A large part of the Torn economy is based around flowers/plushies. People who have completed the History degree can trade in a full set of either in return for 10 points. Those points can be sold. So many people will buy them to make sets, which they trade in on points. When you are flying for flowers and plushies, it is important to live in a Private Island with a landing strip and a pilot. That will speed travel by 30%, and allow you to carry an extra 5 items on each trip. Those extra items mean extra profit, and the PI will pay for itself, and more, plus you get higher happy which helps with gym gains.
If you are just starting to fly, Iribuya has a Guide To Flying that helps explain the process. Slightly out of date, but still useful.
Torn has added items known as Contraband. These items should all be profitable to run, very similar to plushies and flowers. This was the announcement about contraband. These were added after I created my guide, and after I stopped flying often myself, so while I've heard they can be profitable, I do not have good first hand advice to offer about them.
Trading can make a lot of money, but requires very high activity. It helps to have a bazaar, too. You can sell items without a bazaar, but a bazaar is usually ideal. The best trading items are usually consumable items, like drugs, alcohol, energy cans, and donator packs. By "consumable" I mean that people use them and they are gone, so flowers/plushies would also qualify. It's hard to make big money on things like guns because people don't need to buy a new gun every day, but they'll need more drugs, or energy cans, or donator packs. Guns or armor will never wear out. Trading will also lead to a lot of muggings. If you are selling big money items, or large quantities of lower value items, muggers will find you and take advantage. Trading also takes some up front money. If you don't have the money to buy donator packs or goodie bags, you can't buy them to resell. If you watch the item market and trade chat, you can often buy items, mark them up a little, and resell at a profit. If you don't have a lot of cash to work with, then beer, plushies, and flowers are items you might want to trade.
One thing that can be done right away, before you reach L15, is buying 100 items in Torn. You are limited to buying 100 items total in the Torn shops each day, and some of those can be resold for a little profit.
In Bits-N-Bobs, you can buy beer, and 3 kinds of basic plushies. (kittens, sheep, and teddy bears.) In Sally's Sweet Shop, lollipops are a good choice. These shops will sell out of items, and restock them later (more or less randomly.) Buying 100 of any of those (beer, plushies, lollipops) and reselling them will make you around 50,000 to 70,000 profit a day. It's not a lot, but prior to level 15, it's one of the easiest ways to make money.
Jobs don't pay a lot, with a few exceptions for people with very, very high work stats. But the benefits of different jobs can be very nice. For new people, the sweet shop job is good. It has low stat requirements, and a 7* or higher sweet shop will allow you to trade in job points for energy cans. Those energy cans can be sold for 1.5M to 2.5M depending on the can. You should always be working, either at a company or at one of the basic Torn jobs like casino, grocery, army. Having some kind of a job keeps your work stats growing, and work stats grow very, very slowly no matter what you do. You should always have a job, even if it is a basic torn job with very low pay, because any job at all will help your work stats grow.
Slutting is a term for being paid to attack someone, knowing that they will kill you. It can make a lot of money. When you're brand new, it's the easiest way to make good money. I'm not a big fan of it long term, because it uses your energy, and if you do it a lot, you'll make a lot of money but you'll miss out on a lot of gym training that you really need to do. That can slow you down from reaching L15. But as a brand new player, it can be a very good way to earn some quick cash to rent your first PI and such.
People will pay you to attack them and lose because it raises their number of times they successfully defended, and there are merit points for that. You can make $250,000 to $300,000 for each attack, sometimes more. I wouldn't do it for less than 250k. If you're going to waste your energy, you should at least make a decent profit.
You can often find people who will pay you for slutting in this forum : http://www.torn.com/forums.php#!p=forums&f=59&b=0&a=0
Before you start attacking, read their post, and be sure to follow their instructions. Some people will be very specific about "msg me ahead of time" or "use fists only" or whatever, and if you don't follow the instructions, they'll often use that as an excuse to not pay. You can also look at their age, their networth, and their number of enemies. (You'll find most of this in their stats, by viewing their profile and clicking the button that looks like a bar graph.) Almost everyone will have some enemies, but if it's a high number, they may be scammers. If they have less than $1B networth, or if they are less than 100 days old, you might want to pass, because the people who pay for defends tend to be older and have a lot of money.
Many will tell you that they pay X amount for defends, and Y amount for runaways. Runaways are always a lot more money. But you'll find it near impossible to get a successful runaway (because their stats are much higher than yours), so base your plans on losing the attack, not on being able to run away.
If you're going to sell losses, it needs to be short term, and you need to have a goal. Perhaps you want to purchase a donator pack and rent a PI for a month. Both of those would be very useful, and by the time that month passes, you should be level 15 and making money running flowers/plushies so you wouldn't need to go back to slutting. But set your goal, do it enough to reach that goal, then stop. Don't do slutting as an ongoing method of making money. Either don't do it at all, or do it short term, reach your goal, and move on. E (energy) is very important, and you need to use most of it to train.
If you are planning on slutting for cash, you might consider using xanax. Selling 4 losses should make at least $1M profit, which is a little more than the cost of a xanax. Then buy a xanax, use it, and you have enough energy to do 10 more losses. That turns 100e into a profit of $2.5M or more. You can do this 2 or 3 times a day, plus some other losses using natural energy in between, which means you can make enough money for a PI rental in just a few days. I have a section below on Financing your first Private Island that explains in more detail.
In theory, mugging can make a lot of money. In practice, most muggers don't make a lot and they waste a lot of energy. Especially when you are very new, and have low stats, it's hard to consistently find mugging targets with a lot of money. I recommend you completely avoid mugging until you know a lot more about the game and have trained your stats a good bit. Most muggers that make good money have to buy-mug. (Find someone selling expensive stuff, buy from them, and then immediately mug them to get some of that cash back.)
There are various giveaways happening in Torn all the time, and you can make some decent money in those. They can be particularly useful when you are a newer player with few ways to make much money.
In the Torn forums, the Fun and Games subforum has various ways you can win money or other prizes.
There are also numerous lotteries which are run on Discord servers. Those are also good places just to find other Torn players to chat with.
It's not necessary to spend real world money on Torn, but it's an option that can help. You can pay for a monthly subscription or buy a donator pack which will give a month of donator status when used, for roughly $5 a month. Buying the donator packs more than one at a time gives small price breaks. Some players will buy 2 or more donator packs when they start. They will use one, and sell the others to get some working cash. They normally sell for around $23M-$24M (though prices do vary.) If you want to jump start yourself in Torn, this is the way to do it. If this appeals to you, visit City, Donator House. (Link : https://www.torn.com/donator.php )
For more information, in the Tutorials section of the Torn forums, you'll find several good guides on making money.
I hope this helps.
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Financing your first Private Island
At level 15, you can travel, which is a very important step. But financing your first Private Island (PI) can be hard, and it's another important step.
Often, when people reach level 15, they haven't rented a Private Island, and don't have the money for it. In order to make good profit flying for plushies and flowers, the PI is very important.
Using a PI to travel makes each trip 30% faster. It allows you to carry 5 extra items. (So compared to the base 10 items, it brings you to 15 per trip, a big difference.) That makes a big difference in profit per trip, or per day. And it gives you higher happy, too, which helps every gym train. Without the PI, there is also a charge for each trip, which you don't have when using the PI. And the PI adds a lot of happy, which helps every gym train.
Coming up with rent money the first time is often difficult. Until after you are living in a PI, making money is still hard. You can travel, but with only 10 items per trip, slower trips, etc, the profits are still pretty low.
One option is to sell losses. Many people will pay you to attack them and lose. (The common name for this in Torn is "slutting".) You can usually make $250,000 to $300,000 for each attack/loss. You'll have to spend some of that on first aid kits (so you can attack, med out, attack, med out again, etc.) But it can make money fairly fast, to help you rent that first PI.
A good place to find people who will pay for losses is this sub-forum.
https://www.torn.com/forums.php#/p=forums&f=59&b=0&a=0
If you use 100e (100 energy) to do four attacks, you can make roughly $1M. Then you can spend that money on a xanax, use the xanax, and you have 250e, enough to do 10 more attacks, and make about $2.5M profit. So in just a few minutes, you've turned 100e into about $2.5M. When you're done, you're out of energy, and you can't take another xanax for 6 to 8 hours. If you're already level 15, that's a good time to fly for plushies and flowers while your energy rebuilds and the drug cooldown ends.
You can do the "sell losses, use xanax, sell more losses" thing two or three times in a day, plus make a little more money while flying for plushies or flowers. A few days of that should let you rent a Private Island. Often the best deals are at 3600 happy, but the one critical, must have upgrade is a landing strip. Any with a landing strip will work starting out, and some PI's have those in the 2550 happy range. Be sure you hire a pilot as part of the staff. Once you've rented your first private island, then you can make a lot more money flying, and selling losses is no longer necessary.
Long term, you don't want to sell losses, because training your stats in the gym is very important, and selling losses uses your energy. But it's a very useful way to come up with money for that first PI rental.