Money makers thread: What are you willing to do?

[Srikandi]

If you're sitting down, intending to play the game 40 hours a week to make a living, you'd be better off getting a job at McDonalds.

There are actually a lot of people in the US these days who can't GET a job at McDonalds, or anywhere else The whole "time is money" thing only works if you can convince somebody to buy it.

Course that applies to D3 as well, and I have no idea if the demand is going to be there to use up the supply... but in today's economy, I have no doubt that the supply will be there

[lilbuddha]

There are actually about 10% of american's who refuse to "get a job" despite there being hundreds of thousands of job openings around the country... The key issue being that those people refuse to:
A. retrain for a position, even if minimal training is required
B. Go into a different field, even if qualified for it
C. Take a pay cut

The unemployment rate needs a strong-strong asterisk put next to it.

[stonerdoom]

Hi,

I haven't read everything on this forum but I am wondering if anyone has touched on the premise of the AH's actually being auctions? I mean will there be an ebay factor? Some stuff you can buy right away? Some stuff will be listed for X amount of time with people bidding on it? If so, there are other factors to consider then. I've had some experience on ebay and that aspect (auctioning) will impact the economy and should impact some of the strategies I've heard or read about thus far. I feel that the only folks who could really stand to make serious dollars are folks running several machines or bots if that will be possible. auctioning takes time and thus playing the AH will take time and time is the cost of your overhead. you need to be playing to get the stuff whether you are selling 10 windforces or 10K scrap pieces. After you get your stuff you have to give time to the listing of stuff and some monitoring (although the interface seems to be fairly simple). Hey how bout a bot to list stuff as it enters your stash?! That could be an overhead cutter. I am gonna dabble and test a few of my theories but my focus will be fun.

[Glass]

There are actually a lot of people in the US these days who can't GET a job at McDonalds, or anywhere else The whole "time is money" thing only works if you can convince somebody to buy it.

Course that applies to D3 as well, and I have no idea if the demand is going to be there to use up the supply... but in today's economy, I have no doubt that the supply will be there

So no job, but they have to be able to afford to buy Diablo 3, pay for an internet connection, electricity, a computer capable of running it and hope to make enough money to continue paying for the internet connection, electricity, food and rent/mortgage. Which would be very unlikely to be possible.

D3 is not going to be the answer to America's unemployment problem...

[Srikandi]

So no job, but they have to be able to afford to buy Diablo 3, pay for an internet connection, electricity, a computer capable of running it and hope to make enough money to continue paying for the internet connection, electricity, food and rent/mortgage. Which would be very unlikely to be possible.

D3 is not going to be the answer to America's unemployment problem...

I was not suggesting it was going to be the answer to America's unemployment problem. I have no idea whether the RMAH is going to be a viable money-making option. For that to happen, there have to be enough people BUYING the goods, and at high enough prices. The economic situation affects the demand as well as the supply. Plus the transaction costs are unknown.

I AM however saying that there is currently a good supply of people -- historical highs -- who do not have a good range of options for getting all of their time converted into cash (or as much of it as they want to convert). Besides the unemployment issue, underemployment is at a record high these days too.

Sure, people who lost their house and are on the streets aren't going to be trying to pick up a few bucks on the RMAH. People who lost their job and are looking (but not yet destitute), people who ARE working at McDonalds but can't support their family on what it pays, people who would like to be putting money away for retirement or helping their kids or putting gas in their car, and can't do it on their current income... anybody who likes computer games and who feels they could use more money than they are currently able to get... are going to be attracted to it. If buying a $60 dollar game is a stretch, it might seem like a lot less of a stretch if you thought you could at least recoup the cost by spending a few evenings farming.

I'm not putting myself into that group btw I have no intention of going near the RMAH. I am curious to see how it works out though

I'm not even going to get into the argument that everybody in America who isn't making six figures deserves to suffer because they're lazy That's pure ideology.

[Player]

I hope you people don't think you'll get to sell any items and make 100$ like you dream to. That's the only reason why you support this RMAH am i right ? Well, these are the real earners that's gonna dominate the market with 0.11$ prices.

[Azzure]

You guys should post your ideas on Madoff Mondays on the new Market site.

http://diablo3markets.incgamers.com/...-madoff-monday

[BlackenedRoseThorn]

There is a few major issues here that I do not think have been considered:

1) There are relatively few people who are going to have the long term interest to play the market. Sure there will be a few, say 1%, that do, but I do not think that even they will stick around for the long haul. I think that in the beginning, there will be more, but it will dwindle rapidly, especially as people notice that there is little money to be made.

2) I think that what will really be the deciding factor is the demand of what is being sold. If for example, it is found that people are not willing to spend more than $1 for 50,000 gold, then you will likely find gold being allotted in that amount. Also, items for the more popular classes will be worth more.

[Grayson Carlyle]

Making the most profit will mean not actually playing the game. I really enjoy slaughtering things, so I'm going to try to resist the urge to play the AH like I did in WoW. I already have a job; I don't need a second. Thankfully, my playstyle, except for my build, is naturally optimized for finding the best items. Maybe I'll get lucky.

On actually making profit:
I'm going to bet against Azzure here and say arbitrage will not be worth the time for the profit:
There are going to be several hundred thousand people, at the very minimum, playing in each region. If 1% (which is a good estimate) of those are actively use and try to profit form the AH, the market is just going to be too big for arbitrage.

The typical best way to make a profit in a virtual economy is through middleman activities. Usually by combining various commodities into a high volume, required consumable, where the amount of time spent on said middleman process is directly proportional to the amount of goods created. This causes a large fluctuation in market prices because the market is essentially paying for your time; a volatile, unquantifiable variable. Diablo III won't have any of this. Consumables are not crafted (gems cannot be considered consumable; they can be re-used, so an open market handles them differently; their value approaches their cost, minimizing margins) and end-game item enhancements (if they exist) are done by the artisans. Almost everything profession-related is handled by your own artisans. This won't be a good way to make a profit.

Commodity control though, can work very well in a high supply, high demand scenario. Such as at release! If you can get your early capital for a good investment, or work with other people to control supply of the early, highest demand commodities, you'll make a tidy profit (relatively speaking) right at the start! Enjoy, I'll be busy playing the game After things start to settle though, watch for the commodities with which demand outstrips supply. The more volatile the commodity, the more profitable. Always keep a good stock of these items. If supply dries up, either from over-demand or someone else trying to affect the price; get your product out there. Buy the cheapest ones, even if it's not relatively cheap, and re-list. As long as there's no sudden supply glut from a patch or the sun rising in China, and the commodity is necessary for continued advancement in the game, yours will sell. People undercutting you are just making smaller margins than you are (unless you aren't being proactive enough about purchasing and they simply have a much larger supply than you do), since they will sell. We won't know which items qualify for these conditions until at least a month has passed though.

Undervalued items. This often plays a small, though lucrative (with patience) part of profiteering. This plays a special role because it's Diablo. In a game like WoW with fixed items, this only works on the most valuable items where supply is low and demand is low. If we had fixed items in a market as large as Diablo III's, then this wouldn't be profitable, as there would be an obvious, visual and persistent market value for this type of item. It would be comparable to the automobile industry. Thankfully though, randomness will mean assigning a value to any given item will be half art, half math. A lot of people will be bad at this, consequently, a lot of items will be over or undervalued. Finding the undervalued ones and re-listing can yield some considerable margins for minimal effort. The difficulty will be finding these items, as what makes them valuable is the same thing that makes them hard to find pick out of the AH; they're completely random. There's also going to be many other eyes looking for these items on the AH, though most will have equipping them in mind, not resale.

I'm sure there's other things I'm forgetting right now.

The best margins will be obtained with research, observation, understanding and intelligent decisions. The better you know the market, the more advantages you can simultaneously leverage. The more time you put in, the more you can monitor and control. Be wise about it though; time and profit is not linear while staring at the auction listings, graphs and posting and cancelling auctions. Doubling your time spent will yield less than double the profit. Though how quickly it levels off will depend on the activity volume at the AH.

[Bigfish]

I'm going to play D3 to have fun. Anything I make is just gravy.

That said, making money is also fun, so we'll see how that works out, but I'm not going to worry about busting my hump in D3 for cash. If I wanted a second job outside of my day job, I'd trade financial markets.

Oh, and I'm going to be looking at multiboxing, so that always ups my cash flow.