Please Undercut Wisely

The other day I was sat around twiddling my thumbs, looking at my gil count i thought i should probably look into making something to bring that back up.. so i look through my recipes and when i can sell.. as a weaver Dew Thread HQ occurred to me, its still expensive right?

So I buy a stack of Diremite Webs (cos looking at the market and the history i could stand to make 60k on it) and craft away..

For the last 2 days none of my items have sold, each time i look to adjust my price i am undercut.. but not by a small ammount like 1-10gil which would be entirely appropriate.. no.. by 100's .. i have a stack of 50 to sell sold in smaller stacks obviously

Each time you drop the price 100gil my profit drops 5k.. and its dropped by 300gil in the last few days..

And i am not whining, I am trying to get whoever is reading this to realise, if you undercut by a ridiculous ammount, people will look at your price and undercut you..


People will then look at that price and undercut that..

So while you think you are being smart by dropping the price by 100 for a quick sale, you are actually dragging the average price of the item down and its really bloody irritating..

Yea, everyone was selling this item fro 2500, and I went and undercut it to 2480, then 2 hours later, bam, everyone was selling at 2k


I was like WTF


I don't know why people want to sabotage their profit margin that badly

I completely agree. I understand market competition. And since my crafting gear ain't up to par yet ( busy with making my general gear such as belt/accessories optimally melded) I tend to make money by selling materials as a fisher/miner.
Whenever I look on the market I tend to play it. If I see lots of people's sellign small stacks, I sell a hugh stack for a smaller price. On the other hand. If people are selling huge stacks, I sell my items in pieces of 5 or lower for a bit higher price.
The demand changes over the week. So prices fluctuate. Yet when I log of in the weekend, hoping my ores/fish have sold, I wake up, drink my coffee, log in and see what I made.... And its nothing. Because some douchebag decided to lower the price of HQ darksteel from 500 a piece to lets say 270. I hate it when that happens. I understand you want to sell your wares faster. But this is crazy.
So I tried to play it smart, by buying the undercut. And selling it at a decent price again... And a bit later I am massivly undercut again by the same, or another idiot...
We all try to make money here, but please.. be decent!

That's so true >.>;
Some people go pretty mad when comes to undercutting.
I used to sell those lv. 50 grimoires for an average of 23k to 25k and as I looked into the market to adjust my price it suddenly dropped to 10k(!?!?!).

If a supplier is happy to cut his/ prices and therefore his/her profits that is his/her prerogative. If you want to make, say for instance, 5k gil in an hour but someone else is happy to make 2.5k in an hour but sell it much quicker then that's up to them they may need the money quickly. As well some people might not regularly check the history and are cutting themselves short.

This is what put my log business under (it was doing very well)... I've given up now. The market is like a mini game in itself, it was driving me insane trying to play that.

I can "afford" do undercut for a very simple reason: Everyone else is trying to sell items for a ridiculous amount of money. Stack of Diremite Webs, barely takes any time to get. Other much farmed or harvested items, really simple and fast and easy. Crafted items NQ'd sold for twice the material cost, HQ's for quadruple or more. I don't feel the need to be that greedy, and I sell much faster.

Undercutting by a difference of 2 gil or 200 gil makes no difference, you're not selling your items if someone has undercut you by either 2 gil or 200 gil. The person who undercuts by 200 gil have looked at their profit margin and checked how much they need to make before they earn an acceptable (to them) profit. If they have farmed all items (shards and materials) then they could sell them for 10 gil and make a (small) profit.

Let's use the Amazon effect. Amazon makes very, very small profits on each item sold, let's say you buy a book from Amazon which costs you £5, the profit for Amazon on that book may be £0.02, but they sell millions because the price is so cheap, lots of sales with small profits beat few sales with large profit.You want to make 60k profit, someone else is happy with 40k profit, so be happy with 20k profit and make 3 times the amount, getting you back to your 60k profit.

Sure, it's a little more "work" for you but as long as your items are unsold their actual value and your actual profit is 0 (and you're running at a loss if you purchased anything to craft the items in the first place).

UNDERCUT ME AND ILL UNDERCUT YOU TO 1 GIL !!!!!

I bet those people don't know about the market history. A lot of times I've been undercutted and didn't even bothered adjusting prices because I knew mine would sell soon or later.

I'd buy and re-list everything grossly undercutted but I'm too lazy for that :P