I’m a fairly new trader (1 month) and it’s my first guide so feedback is appreciated.
How to start trading
Things to consider before you even start Trading is time consuming and requires you to be active a lot. Your customers expect you to handle their trades in a reasonable timeframe.
You can’t trade when flying so you can’t go of flying all over the place all the time. If you like flying trading probably isn’t for you.
You will get buy mugged if you are not in the hospital when trading. You will be spending a lot of time in the hospital. This means other Torn activities you like might suffer ie racing, casino,…
You need a price-list. People don’t go around messaging traders with a thread ‘buying plushies and flowers. Message me for a price’. They want to see what you are paying so they can compare.
In addition to the point above: preferably an auto-updating pricelist. You will spend a lot of time searching and checking your prices otherwise and might lose money.
You need a bazaar. Trading on item market is nearly impossible.
How to get started.Get yourself a pricelist. Decide what you want and more important can buy. When starting you probably do not have the cash to buy SE like boxing gloves. Keep them out of your price list. If someone offers you something that will drain your cash tell them politely you can’t buy that at the moment.
I started with a homebrew excel and after three days of comparing prices and updating it manually switched to an auto-updating one.
EDIT: Work with maximum prices in your sheet to avoid hughe losses. Speaking from experience :)
Options: You have several players who can make an auto-updating price list for you for Torn money.
In between. JTower makes an
auto-updating one you can rent. I started with this one. First of all to see if trading was something I liked doing. Price: Rent8Mil/Two Months.
Another player who makes trading sheets is Nuran. Price between DKK and JTower.
Nurans trading sheets
Cornhub is also a player who creates pricelists. You can find his thread
here. He uses a flat price of 20m and 300k per category.
More expensive/professional:
Arson Warehouse (AWH), a site with price list, browser extension and custom receipts.
Free version: manual price list on the site
Payed version: linked to a sheet connected to the API for auto-updating prices. If you can't make the sheet yourself you can have one made by
DeKleineKobini (DKK) or
Unique. Price: for AWH: 1 Xan/week
This is the one I'm using at the moment.
How to create a pricelist
I'm not going to go over the technicalities because every sheet/list has it's own way of doing it. I am going to try and explain how to best set it up in general, at least in my opinion and with my way of working.
Setting your profit: most traders have a margin of about 2% in general. Compare your prices to other traders if you want to know how you are doing compared to them.
Higher margins: On a bunch of items I set a higher margin because they are harder to sell or more volatile to market fluctuations. ie clothing, some weapons,... This to avoid you paying way to much and get stuck with an items or items you can't sell with a profit. It takes some time to see what margin you can set on what items. I'm not going to go over the whole list.
Smaller/no margin: some very wanted and easy to sell items are set with a very small margin ie xanax, EDVD, flushie sets,... You take less profit but usually you get sold more of them either by a lot of traders or in bulk so you still make a decent profit.
Fixed price: Some items are set at a fixed price because they can fluctuate to much or with millions. ie SE, most traders have a set price for SE, Cesium,... the more expensive stuff.
Max prices: a lot of items in my list are also setup with a max buy price. It means I have it set with a regular % margin but I also set a max price should the item rise above the set price. Why? Some items are prone to manipulation or tend to jump up around certain events. It's up to you to decide if you want to pay more when an item jumps up around an event but keep in mind if you can't get them sold by the end of the event the price will normally drop back to it's normal market value.
Advertise your businessIn the trading post forum start a thread telling who you are and why people should trade with you. You have a lot of big traders around (ORAN, Iribuya, Unique,…) but that doesn’t mean you can’t make money. I started trading about a month ago and I make good money.
Consider a banner in the paper. It’s rotated on the different pages for as long as you pay. If you can make one yourself, good. If not, look in the graphic forum. You can also get a the YAZ BB to get free banner advertisement.
Post in the various discord servers on the trade channels. Look in the discord forum to see which servers are available.
Advertise on your profile page that you are a trader with a link to your thread and pricelist.
Ask your sellers to give your thread a comment and a R+ rating if they liked your trading.
Get a regular customer baseOnce you get started try to get a regular sellers base by keeping your profit low. Better have a lot of sellers with a lot of items to buy at a lower profit then some sellers with larger profits.
Sell at the price you are advertising even if you made a mistake (within reason: don’t buy peony at 780.000$) Try to keep your customers happy.
If I have someone coming back daily/weekly I try to round up sometimes or sell them Xanax at a discount. Keeps your customers coming back.
MuggingYou will get buy mugged if you are not careful. Either you are in hospital when your bazaar is open or you are online watching your balance dumping your money the second it comes in. Muggers hit you between 4-15 seconds after a trade. I have been mugged a few times and in my opinion it’s my own fault. Don’t go putting bounties on them or complaining in forums. Buy mugging is part of the game and a way a lot of people make money. It’s your responsibility to keep your money safe. You can put them on your black list so they can’t buy from your bazaar anymore but personally I don’t do that. Money is money. Make sure they can’t mug you the next time.
You can also fly to avoid mugging but when flying you can't do trades unlike from the hospital. Keep this in mind.
Trade cancel mugs: you also have people who set a trade and when you add the money and send it back to them, they will cancel the trade and mug you. If you have a new customer approaching you for a trade you can check their friends/enemies ratio. This can be an indicator to see if he is a mugger. You can prevent this from happening by trading from the hospital and staying in the hospital untill the trade has been accepted.
Another way to save money on mugging is to get a job in a 7* Clothing Store. It offers a 75% opponent mugging reduction as a passive perk. This is not a full protection but it will make you lose less money should you forget to close your bazaar when offline.
HospitalIn relation to the point above. It can cost money to self-hospitalize. Cheapest way is to let someone hospitalize you. Easiest imo is IV the wrong blood bag. Longest is Small Explosive Device (SED). This gives you around 5 hours in hospital but it’salso the most expensive method. You need to be making millions before this makes sense.
Very important: Turn revives off for all if you are into trading. Otherwise they will revive you right after a buy and still mug you.
Cost of starting to tradeBelow I will give a sum up of the cost it will be to trade.
Bazaar: 250points@+-45-46k/point
Pricelist: free up to 50-60Mil
Banner advertising in newspaper: 500k/day
Discord advertising: free
Self hospi: blood bags around 26k, SED 2.5Mil
Start-up cash: you can start with a few millions. You can adjust your pricelist to show what you are buying at the moment. Over time you can handle bigger and bigger trades. If you can't afford a trade just be honest and tell your seller. Don't ignore them or find excuses. They will understand.
Any comments, suggestions always welcome.
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