SE: How are we supposed to make money?

[NoloeTazier]

I make roughly 500k a week crafting, you're doing it wrong ;p

He's not wrong, he's on Balmung. The market is really bad. I'm one who always plays the market. I'd love to buy cheap undercut items and resell but once I buy the items, they begin to sell for that price. There's no money in reselling. Most crafted items, when you work out the cost of shards and repairs, you're barely breaking even. SE is adding Kobold and Sahagin dailies, can't wait to see what the NPCs sell because it's just going to hurt the market more. The Philo item market is dipping down into 1-2k, people are avoiding these items as the return on the items with the cost of Materia (RNG blowing up factor) and the ilvl they bring (penta-meld philo item not upping ilvl for content which can make joining Party Finder hard even if you send a /tell and explain). Labyrinth of the Ancients and Turn 2 Enrage have made it so people can avoid these crafted items even if they are indeed good with Materia melds. But people don't want to dumps hundreds of thousand of gil into the quad/penta melds to make them better than DL or Labyrinth gear (I say Labyrinth cause it's not Crystal Tower yet).

[blowfin]

The key is searching the market board for the best margins, then capitalising on them. It's not rocket surgery, and there are profits out there.

OP: I see that you don't have any other crafts levelled very high. Some of the cross class skills are extremely important in being able to reliably HQ lvl 50 synths. Things like Waste Not (LTW), Byregot's Blessing (CRP), Comfort Zone(ALC), and Tricks of the Trade (ALC), are going to dramatically help you in turning a better profit. I'm sure I left some off that list too. Until you're comfortably able to HQ one star synths it's probably worthwhile to focus on recipes that you can HQ more easily.

[Gramul]

Individual items sell faster than stacks, and often for more per item.

Just throwing that out there.

[mindful]

Just use the market board history, and see if a lot people are buying the stuff. If there not many buying the stuff and there are 50 items on the market board. Then do not make that item.

Also research the right HQ gears that works well for people that are going to do leves to level there crafting job up or, if you make it at the right price you can just , leve quest it your self for roughly 125k with 100 leves build up.

The days of the week also will see the market changed a lot from mon-thurs, To fri-sun. You will see a changed so need hold off selling or deal with the undercutting or wait till it go to were you like it.

Best advice I can give. Is if the items you were trying to sell did not sell within the week. Then just undercut it bad and never make it again or NPC the item or gear.

[Zaels]

Used to make good money in Diabolos/Exodus, then moved servers to Adamantoise where everything sells for less in the market board :\

[AiChyan]

He's not wrong, he's on Balmung. The market is really bad.

On Balmung & they are both right. I feel proud for managing to resell a few items but its not always possible.
Items I bought for a couple of thousands are dipping to hundreds, and I'm leveling weaver right now (@lvl 45) and its incredibly difficult to gain from my crafts.

[Snitchie]

To undercut big is only hurting yourself. If someone sells item X fgor 2000gil. U sell it for 1999gil if u put it up for 1800gil , some other douch will put up for 1600 etc etc.. you see where this is going? So i nother words cut with 1 gil or maximum 10gil this way the buyers are forsced to pay the "high" price. And seller get as much as they can. simple... DONT UNDERCUT, it only bites you in the arse later.

[NoloeTazier]

To undercut big is only hurting yourself. If someone sells item X fgor 2000gil. U sell it for 1999gil if u put it up for 1800gil , some other douch will put up for 1600 etc etc.. you see where this is going? So i nother words cut with 1 gil or maximum 10gil this way the buyers are forsced to pay the "high" price. And seller get as much as they can. simple... DONT UNDERCUT, it only bites you in the arse later.

Undercutting exists because selling items at the same price as everyone else isn't efficient if you aren't at the top of the list. People aren't going to scroll through the Marker Board list and find a certain retainer to buy from when all the prices are the same. They're going to find the lowest price (be that a stack of 1, 5, 10, or 99) which just so happens to be at the top of the Board, they buy it and move on. Either using that item for a quest, using it to craft whatever, or really it doesn't matter. They're moving on. All markets are flooded because items are too easy to obtain, so sure in theory it's best to keep the values the same as to not devalue the product, but in reality to make every little bit of gil you can the theory doesn't work unless your retainer just happens to be at the top of the board. Undercutting is far from the real problem.

People who can move their items quickly can fill up their 20 retainer sell slots faster thus making more gil. Yes it sucks having to adjust prices almost hourly trying to move products but that's just what we're stuck with. This broken Market Place that has been called "working as intended."

[Dark-Seraphim]

Farming the materials to make items also increase your margins, if you buy all the materials/crystals you're not going to make as much profit as you would farming all the items.

[Fayto]

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.

Congrats, you crashed your own market.