lets talk about undercutters.

[AlexiIvaniskavich]

Am I the only one who lists and sells items NOT at the lowest price viewable on the MB? Undercutting will always be a thing, but I don't sweat it. I typically put my items up for the average price they sold for in the sale history, and I will check on them periodically to make sure the market hasn't drastically changed for that product. If the pricing drops, I don't feed the mob and floor my price. I will either pull the product off the shelf, or adjust the price to be reasonable - but not the cheapest.

What makes me giggle is when people think that undercutting on an item that doesn't really move will make people want to buy the item. If an item's purchase history dates back 6 months and there are 2 sellers that list around the previous average sale, why do people think that if they cut the price in half, it will move any faster? It's apparent the demand for the item barely exists in the first place. (this excludes super rare items or items that become more readily available for any reason)

As with anyone, I do occaisonally have a "sell everything that isn't nailed down" period - usually due to lack of retainer inventory. I list things right at the average to the top 3-5 lowest prices, but this is purely to clear inventory issues. It's like popping a potion in raid - gives me a very short burst of money making and fades quickly.

[PirateCat]

I typically put my items up for the average price they sold for in the sale history, and I will check on them periodically to make sure the market hasn't drastically changed for that product. If the pricing drops, I don't feed the mob and floor my price.

This works fairly well as a strategy if you're simply trying to offload some stuff. If you're actively crafting for profit, though, you usually want your stuff to sell as soon as possible so you can make and list more of them. On Balmung, pretty much everything in the high-volume high-end market (glamours etc) follows the rule of: Set your price and check back in 24 hours. Either yours has sold or it'll be 3/4 of the way down the page due to undercuts. I've had items sit on my retainer unsold for weeks, knocked 5K off the price to become the cheapest one, and had them sell within the hour. (Note, I certainly don't want to discourage you from using the "hold at this price" strategy, just pointing out it's not always effective depending on what you're trying to do.)

For the lower demand items, I'm guilty of occasionally doing a drastic undercut as a way of sending a signal to competitors. If a primal weapon (or similar low-volume item) takes 200K worth of mats to make and I and another person are listing them for 1.2 mil, if we've been jockeying for first listing with small undercuts for a while I'll sometimes slash 200-300K off the price. The message I'm sending is "I'm not in the mood to play Babysit the MB. You can either let mine sell first or take a big hit if you want to keep doing this."

[AlexiIvaniskavich]

....

I guess at this point I would need to evaluate my definition of profit to yours, and then adjust for server size (though I employed this same philosophy with success on a medium pop server, nothing like balmung mind you). I do enough to profit about a mil a week, but I am not married to one method, which is probably the reason that I do have success. I craft, mine, fish, botany. I split stacks, I buy the absurdly cheap and relist, I put vendor items up for the uber lazy. This flexibility allows me to adjust to undercutting, and with practice I have gotten better at reading how much of X to obtain and not be left with a ton of leftover inventory clog.

Take all of this with a grain of salt. I play first to kill things, I don't play the majority of the time as a crafter.

[Lujan]

For the lower demand items, I'm guilty of occasionally doing a drastic undercut as a way of sending a signal to competitors. If a primal weapon (or similar low-volume item) takes 200K worth of mats to make and I and another person are listing them for 1.2 mil, if we've been jockeying for first listing with small undercuts for a while I'll sometimes slash 200-300K off the price. The message I'm sending is "I'm not in the mood to play Babysit the MB. You can either let mine sell first or take a big hit if you want to keep doing this."

This is me i often list for same or just a but lower like 1gil but if someone comes along and undercuts me i just slap 500k of the price and force their item down it happened to me last night i forced a guys item fown to 1.8mil when he could have got at least 2.7 yeah his sold first but it's a point you need to make the return was worthless