SE: How are we supposed to make money?

[Ed_N_Ants]

You need to play the market... First thing you are doing is creating too many items and trying to make bank... You need to go under crafting see what is making decent money and make 1 or 2 items... If something is saturated don't make it... And don't limit yourself to level 50 stuff either... There are a lot of people leveling up alt characters and such that are looking for different armor or jewlery... Hope that helps but remember the more you know the better off you are... I'm not going to tell you what item's to strive for because then the silents that read this are going to ruin my money making but that at least gives you a idea of how to make some cash...

You do realize there's an option to see what has sold and for how much right?

[Figgleleaf]

Every time I try to sell items in the market, I get undercut. I see an item is selling for 3200 gil. Great, so I make some of them, put them up for sale for 2800...

When you undercut someone, other people will undercut you, and someone will undercut them... so don't undercut someone, just be patient with your sales. Sure, others will still undercut you, but hopefully not as much - because you didn't start or continue the undercut chain.

Some undercutting doesn't make sense. Earlier today I saw tons of HQ armor being sold for less than a vendor would pay for it. Not for less than a vendor sells it for - but for less than a vendor would pay for it.

Why?

[Sapphic]

Every time I try to sell items in the market, I get undercut. I see an item is selling for 3200 gil. Great, so I make some of them, put them up for sale for 2800 (thinking i'll get them sold) and then come back the next day to see nothing sold. Same item is now selling for 2000, and then 1800, and then 1000 and then 500 gil. I can never seem to sell more than one or two items before I am undercut again. It seems the money I make at level 50 is no different than what I was making at level 20.

So you are complaining that people are undercutting you whilst you are undercutting first?

[Ed_N_Ants]

When you undercut someone, other people will undercut you, and someone will undercut them... so don't undercut someone, just be patient with your sales. Sure, others will still undercut you, but hopefully not as much - because you didn't start or continue the undercut chain.

Some undercutting doesn't make sense. Earlier today I saw tons of HQ armor being sold for less than a vendor would pay for it. Not for less than a vendor sells it for - but for less than a vendor would pay for it.


Why?

I buy that shit and put it back up on the market... Nothing makes more money than an idiot on the market...

[Uriahnool]

So you are complaining that people are undercutting you whilst you are undercutting first?

Either I undercut so my retainers sell their inventory for something, or I leave the price up where they were at and check in day after day after day with nothing selling. I'm not saying people shouldn't undercut and I know i'm very guilty of it, I'm just upset on how people NEED to undercut to make profits. There has to be a better way to make money than scraping pennies out of the bottom of the market board. If someone is a level 50 craft, they should be able to make some real money by doing what makes sense - crafting and selling items.

[Carzilla]

People are able to level so fast they dont bother buying low level gear. all you have to do is log out in a safe zone for a day and you have an instant chariot ring free of charge next time you log in. Why buy level 19 gear when you can level to 25 in less than a couple of hours. Some times i feel this game plateaus too fast, plus everyone already has everything.

the problem is that there has not been any expansions yet. once we get an expansion low level items will be sought after more cuz eveyone will BZ farming the new content.

[juniglee]

I take that 2k item you're selling, spiritbond it, and convert it to materia. Materia prices aren't that great either, but they do move in faster volumes than crafted accessories.

Plus you'll definitely make more than 2k for the materia you will sell.

[IndigoHawk]

FFXIV is designed around loot and tomes, not crafting. Instead dailies and leves give modest but reliable gil.

To craft for some profit, organize and diversify, including under 50 items. Keep track of material costs and item prices and frequency. Buy materials at good prices, and make items to undercut high prices. Don't make too many, because there's not much volume. The more you list, the more often you will be undercut. Pricing items really low won't move items faster (items only sell when a buyer finally shows up), so diversification, reasonable prices, and 1 gil undercutting are the way to go. No one likes being undercut by 1 gil but unfortunately you have to fight for scraps with so much more supply than demand.

If you like dungeons, GSMs can make jewelry for spirtbonding. Materia doesn't sell for as much as it used to, but it does ok and takes little time to craft. Keep two sets of everything so you can swap in mid dungeon if something gets 100%.

[Ranzan]

What's gil and why do you need it?

[cearka]

don't sell the same stuff all the time either. I usually only sell one of each thing I list and then move on to another item. Unless your trying to control the market on soemthing, which is difficult since there so many people that can craft.
Make two star items, but only any one kind at a time.

Farm your mats. this is a big increase in profit. Don't buy any mats unless its shards (which are usually cheap), or if the mat you need is like under 100gil.
with stackables, sell them in batches of what its commonly used at, and smaller batches. there are more likely to sell.
if its a stackable thats a material for other crafts commonly used, then it might be worth selling a full stack of 99 (ingots, lumbers, threads, cloths, leathers). anything else usually sells better in smaller batches.
and farm pieste skin maps and do parties with your FC. Our FC gets together once a week for an hour and we do like 16 maps. We make about 200-350k that we put into out guild chest.
Usually we'll get a few drops of say, coke, or potash, or what have you, and I turn around and craft these into two star items that can go from like 20-80k.