Need help making a decent profit.

I am now a 3 Star Crafter but I still don't know how to use the market board very well. I'm finding it impossible to sell any of the tools I make. I put one up for sale and ten minutes later I find out that 5 different people undercut me. I'm trying to stock pile enough money to be able to buy a house.

Do you guys know what a crafter of my level should be doing to make money on a server like mine?

My fc mates and I have great luck in pf advertising our wares. Also making mats in high demand yields a ton of money. Look at the sales history of whatever your putting on the MB, if it sells quick and has readily available mats, put some on.

Being from Gilgamesh, I have experience with a large population server MB. Typically, I make about 350K per day (I am casual player with 2 retainers) selling the following items:
Dragon Skin map 75-100K
20-25 Glamour Prisms 9-12K (there are several prisms which sell for only 2-5K and I complete avoid those markets).

Now, there are several other items I dabble in, such at the 2/3* stuff you are trying. But, I generally follow these rules.
If the sale frequency does meet the following conditions it is just not worth my time to make it.
2/3* Tool/equipment pieces, 2-3 per day.
DoW/DoM, Levelling Gear, 2 per day.
Glamour Prisms, 30+ per day.
Minions, 2-3 per day.
Furniture, I do not bother but I should.
Relic components, raid food and potions; I enter and leave these areas of the market repeatedly.
Another small but interesting source of income from the MB is low end Materia; typically grade 3 battle materias sell in bunches for near 1/2 than Vendor sale value. I buy it up and sell it to a vendor.

Yeah, if you have the free time you can avoid the board entirely. When you're playing but not busy in an instance you can put up a PF group advertising your crafting skills, and you can shout when youre in town/idyll. Some direct commissions from people who want to avoid the board(or people who want to "know" a crafter who can make things if they need more later) can be a good income. Otherwise, id agree with Chameleon and Aurius. Make the stuff that sells the fastest(no luck selling High Mythrite Cross-pein Hammers? try High Mythrite Ingots instead) and price it at the going rate. If 10+ of something are bought a day then undercutting has to be very consistent to keep you from making some sales.

There's also stuff other than crafting tools, an example would be 220 ilvl gear. The crafted gear is still the fastest way for someone to gear up their alternative classes, especially if they have more important things to spend their eso tomes on.

As a mid-level crafter, I find that gathered and crafted materials sell for way more than actual assembled items. I had a bunch of random leftover CUL mats since recipes always make three and need one, so I hawked the stuff I didn't need and they flew off the board (and I'm on a "dying" server).

I usually do some MB research on things that sell quickly and for a lot (like around the 500g a piece range) and have my retainer gather it. Accumulate and sell.

If you can bear to part with materia, they are huge sellers.

Also, if you can bear to part with your esos, sell eso-bought craft mats.

Try and check the history on items. Some stuff (big items) will sell really slow and undercut wars will happen on them. So it can go from 1 mill to 800k or less in no time.

If you're looking to craft and sell stuff asap, materials are a better thing to sell.

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Originally Posted by ChameleonMS

Furniture, I do not bother but I should.

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This. Probably the best time to sell housing items would be right after an update that adds new housing, or an event in-game that gives access to housing (like if the reclamation system were reinstated, the day that unused plots come available again). You can make a decent income on even relatively simple or low level stuff due to the rise in demand, definitely more so on higher end items.

If you're selling crafting gear such as high mythrite tools, I find a good way to combat undercutters is to buy and place a grade V materia into it. Just one, and make sure it's a relevant materia that will help the buyer reach the stat cap. Then it won't matter if you're the most expensive as people will probably buy yours anyway, and you can price it a few hundred k higher than the lowest price as well.

You get a little less profit by doing this, but I think it's by far worth it since you don't have to sit at your retainer bell all day in an undercut war.

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Originally Posted by Sakuraluna

This. Probably the best time to sell housing items would be right after an update that adds new housing, or an event in-game that gives access to housing (like if the reclamation system were reinstated, the day that unused plots come available again). You can make a decent income on even relatively simple or low level stuff due to the rise in demand, definitely more so on higher end items.

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Last I saw it's being reinstated with 3.35. So this may be a good time to stockpile.

Everyone's advice has been spot on so far.

My Favorites of the advice:
1) Add Materia to Armor/Weapons you sell (V Control would be the most logical IMO)
2) Sell intermediate items like HQ High Mythrite Ingots, Leathers, cloths, etc
3) PF Advertise your crafting (I usually charge ~200-500k for HQ end synths) for items which normally go for 3-5 million.
During patch updates commissions can be around 1m, while during patch drop offs 100k can be reasonable as well.
4) Sell other items outside the most popular items, furniture, glues, foods, potions, things which are both picked up infrequently (and selling competition is low with large profit margins) and items consumed frequently with small profit margins.

Also make sure to spread your sales out among multiple options. So when one thing goes ill, you can simply drop price till you're out of the market.

When dealing with a swarm of undercutters, my best advice is to be patient and don't engage with them. In my experience, rapid undercutters on high end items like these are trying to force you out of the market, but if you stay, they will typically stop, as after a certain point, they're not getting enough of a return on their investments. Be confident in your pricing, so long as your pricing is fair. Once the undercut war subsides, yours will be in a better position to sell at higher profit for you.

As others have mentioned, it also helps to spread yourself out—as you can, make one of each tool you can craft, and that way, if an undercut war happens on one of them, you can rely on the others for profit until that one stabilizes.

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Originally Posted by Frizze

Make the stuff that sells the fastest(no luck selling High Mythrite Cross-pein Hammers? try High Mythrite Ingots instead) and price it at the going rate.

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This. Many crafters like to make their own equipment, but still need the materials that are supplied by other specialists. Essentially, if you make a High Mythrite Saw, only Carpenters will buy it. But if you make a High Mythrite Ingot, Carpenters, Goldsmiths, Alchemists, Leatherworkers, and Weavers ALL have recipes that need those ingots - and even though Blacksmiths and Armorers can make their own, they may prefer to buy materials to save time.

Additionally, (and you probably already knew this, but just to cover all bases) keep in mind that when it comes to equipment, NQ results are all-but worthless. Easily-crafted, lower-tier HQ gear is BETTER than NQ higher-tier gear, and much less expensive to make. If you craft a NQ piece of equipment, it will not sell fast, and it will likely sell for far less than the cost of the ingredients used to make it. Materials, on the other hand, both NQ and HQ results sell well, because most crafters don't NEED all of their ingredients to be HQ in order to craft successfully. For them, some, or even all ingredients can be NQ, and so they will happily buy your NQ ingot.

Since we're on the same server, I'll give you my method. Look through low end gear and stuff you wouldn't necessarily think sells. I made 10 million off selling mostly leveling armor and furniture. You do need to be proactive to combat undercutting, but only engage with it to a reasonable extent. If I put something up for 70k and someone undercuts me by 20-30k, I'll generally wait on them because someone else will take their item first and now I'm back on top with my higher price. Basically, don't always look to the expensive items to sell. You can find a nice fortune through selling mats and low end stuff, especially if you have multiple retainers or alts, and thus, can put up a ton of stuff at once.

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Originally Posted by Sakuraluna

Probably the best time to sell housing items would be right after an update that adds new housing ...

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This is hit or miss. I've tried to get into it on my server but they don't sell like hotcakes, as you'd assume. You'll look at the prices of stuff with cheap materials and it seems good like easy money but the people (on my server, at least) are very good at driving away competition. I don't honestly think it sells that high. I think almost all the money I've made that way was because I was sick of getting instantly undercut and so undercut them all by a TON (and the people who were undercutting me would buy the stuff.) I don't think I ever sold any furniture to anyone other than the furniture tzars on my server. XD

My way for lazy money making is to do the maps, doing glamour triangles, finding the GC mats that'll turn a profit, or selling NQ components to things other than the current crafting tier (like the eikon ingots, etc. I don't bother with those. Generally crafters don't need them so the demand is less -- it's simply less expensive to make them yourself). I don't bother with HQ parts either (the nuggets and ingots) because the people who are buying them are the crafters who are just being lazy (like myself XD!) and can easily achieve HQ items with NQ mats so they won't pay the extra to get it in HQ. I know. It sounds strange but, in my experience, NQ sells better.

You won't hit the cash cow overnight but you'll be okay. You could also drastically undercut those people if you gathered/made almost everything yourself.

Gather camphorwood branches - craft camphor = profit.
Grade 4 carbonized matter is also selling fast, you can get 90 of them each eorzean hour

If you cannot gather your own mats it means you'll spend gil and put the item for a high price on MB trying to make your gil back, while you'll see others offering the same item for cheaper price because they gathered their own mats.

I recommend levelling gatherer and unlock books. Each item is sold for about 3k-8k on my server and can help you make 300k gil daily.

I find that 'big' items don't sell terribly well. The market is smaller and a lot of crafters will try to grab it up. It makes sense, after all you've worked to gear up and collect books/ gear to be able to craft these items. What actually tends to happen is people get to the point where they can make anything HQ and don't want to bother with the ingredients anymore, which every crafter needs.

Ingots, threads, cloth, lumber, and dilutions of several varieties are used to make more or less everything. Many people don't seem to want to make grade I 'X' dilutions and buy them from the MB, possibly because they haven't levelled ALC or because the ingredients are annoying. Similar things happen with all intermediate crafting materials, and as someone else already pointed out, NQ products are still worth money. Being a 3* crafter though, you can probably write a macro to regularly HQ most of the annoying 35 DUR recipes anyway.

These markets are also much harder to oversaturate because people need a lot of this stuff.

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Originally Posted by Alisi

This is hit or miss. I've tried to get into it on my server but they don't sell like hotcakes, as you'd assume. You'll look at the prices of stuff with cheap materials and it seems good like easy money but the people (on my server, at least) are very good at driving away competition. I don't honestly think it sells that high. I think almost all the money I've made that way was because I was sick of getting instantly undercut and so undercut them all by a TON (and the people who were undercutting me would buy the stuff.) I don't think I ever sold any furniture to anyone other than the furniture tzars on my server. XD

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I never found it hit or miss and made around 20 mill last update on furniture. As I knew people needed Summoning Bell, Company Chest, Armoire, Moogle Letterbox and The Unending Journey.

Also the prices of most of these items had doubled on the first day of the update. I think the housing demolition timer restarts this update so in 45 days(need to add maintenance hours to this as the timer doesn't include these days) some of those items will be wanted again.

I'll echo selling mats. People need em, they're not terribly hard to make and are steady.

I've dabbled in selling gear and hate it. I've already seen 2 people that love to undercut by 10k or even 100k for no reason. I've found people selling mats don't go to that extreme.

Just imagine what is annoying for other high-roller crafters to craft. Craft those items that crafters need in order to synth the final product. You can make gil on high end stuff, but you can also make gil selling intermediate/supplemental materials. Look through your recipe book, check the markets, and determine what investment and profit-margins that you are comfortable with. Some markets have lots of competition and undercutting but you can find other areas with less competition.

Neglected markets like old Relic items such as Kingcake, Titanium Alloy Mirror, Adamantite Francesca, and Dispelling Arrows can still be quite profitable as well.

Raid food like Steamed Staff are pretty popular and sell for a decent profit, especially since you can make 3 items per synth now.

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

I never found it hit or miss and made around 20 mill last update on furniture. As I knew people needed Summoning Bell, Company Chest, Armoire, Moogle Letterbox and The Unending Journey.

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I think it's the server I'm on. It's a large server and crafters are very hardcore. They're not really shy about trying to drive off competition. I'd have better luck if I babysat it but I've never really liked that aspect of things.

Sell your stuff at 50% off or even 25% off. Works for me, they tend to get bought up right away. Though Gil is kind of useless in this game when you can get everything for free. Buy/resell stuff from the market board. I bought 2 items around 3.3 at 10k sold one at 375k. The price went down to 90k now. Gonna wait to see how low it goes and do the same again. I think in 3.4 the item is going to jump to 500k+

Crafters made me rich during that Moogle fiber thing. Now that fiber sits at dirt cheap on the market board last time I checked. Wonder if it went up.

here is me giving advice to someone and talking about said item on 12/Jun/2016 I was right mmhmm.

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Originally Posted by LalafellDown

There is an item that I predict will go up in 3.35 or 3.4 patch. I bought 2 of them for 10k and already the prices went up to 50k. when the patch releases I'm sure they will be in the 300k area, maybe higher. On my old server i went from 30 million to 66 million in less than 2 months just selling stuff. People are at max Gil limit its very easy to make money. its all worthless because its all free. All you have to do is make the items yourself.

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Originally Posted by Alisi

I think it's the server I'm on. It's a large server and crafters are very hardcore. They're not really shy about trying to drive off competition. I'd have better luck if I babysat it but I've never really liked that aspect of things.

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The thing about "driving off competition" though, is that it really doesn't work in this game, like it would in real life. The startup costs for entering a market are, well, zero, as long as you have the craft geared and leveled. If the "tycoon" decides to engage in a few weeks of wild undercutting to try to scare competitors, just take your products off the market, wait for prices to stabilize again, and put them back up. If more wild undercuts ensue, repeat. And repeat again. The wild undercutter is spending millions of gil to keep prices low and you're spending... nothing. You may not be making any money on that particular product, but the tycoon is LOSING money by selling for less than the cost of ingredients. (Even if they farm the ingredients themselves, I still count that as a loss, as they could have sold the ingredients instead.)

In real life, you could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up a business. When a chain plops down next to you and sells products at half your prices to drive you out of business, you'll have to spend hundreds of thousands AGAIN if you want to try again. For this game to be at all similar, it'd have to be something like, if you fail to sell a product within a certain amount of time, your crafting classes all return to level 1.