How I plan on making $1000 in the first month

[ShadoutMapes]

Well, $17 US is like £11 so the difference isnt that big, but the cost of living in England is probably quite a bit lower as well (outside of London anyway) - I buy a lot of my games from UK for example, since they typically cost 30% less than if I went to a local shop.

In any case it still comes down to whether you can really earn all those money you believe, by farming 16 hours a day. Which I'm certainly not convinced about. If you can earn that much, the gold seller companies in China would go insane if they could earn such money and would multiply their farming efforts greatly, and thereby force the prices down.

[Enlil]

I realize living expenses in western Europe are likely higher than the average in US - as I surely couldn't pay all my bills with $1000 despite having a relatively cheap apartment, no car etc - but yeah, $3/hour as jamesL's math shows, would surely be a lot under the minimum wage where I live ($17 or something - ignoring aforementioned differences in purchase power).

Edit: and then I realize you are from UK, making my US-EU comparison meaningless. Oh well.



Edit2: Of course tax enters the picture as well. It might be easier to avoid paying tax of Diablo 3 earnings than from a job, but hiding a $1000 income from the tax authorities could probably be rather be difficult - depending on country of residence (apparently you can hide just about anything if you happen to live in Greece :P).

hmm, thats an interesting point. I don't know how the pax people will handle earnings from playing a video game.
If you earn money by chance playing a video game "for fun, not work" do you own the goverment ? good question.

[ShadoutMapes]

hmm, thats an interesting point. I don't know how the pax people will handle earnings from playing a video game.
If you earn money by chance playing a video game "for fun, not work" do you own the goverment ? good question.

Where I live you technically have to pay tax from money earned in Online poker. I would assume Diablo 3 income would fall into the same category.
It would be really hard for anyone to know that you earned money from Diablo 3 of course (or poker for that matter). Guess it comes down to whether people want to take the risk of being caught, no matter how small the risk might be.

[Enlil]

Well, $17 US is like £11 so the difference isnt that big, but the cost of living in England is probably quite a bit lower as well (outside of London anyway) - I buy a lot of my games from UK for example, since they typically cost 30% less than if I went to a local shop.

In any case it still comes down to whether you can really earn all those money you believe, by farming 16 hours a day. Which I'm certainly not convinced about. If you can earn that much, the gold seller companies in China would go insane if they could earn such money and would multiply their farming efforts greatly, and thereby force the prices down.

Apart from China is region locked, who cares what they do.
If they start playing on another region by proxy it will the US, I don't think they would target the EU

No min wage is about £6, £11 "my friend just fell of his seat laughing hes on min wage"
Well, lets just says I'll be playing with the euro's that are about equal in exchange rate to a £
Perhaps the euro market will be eaiser for making a decent amount if $17 is min wage in us.

[GamingBinary]

Soo much misleading math it makes my eyes hurt. But here is a hint: JamesL is using a 5 workday week and 4 weeks vacation. Enlil is using 7 workday week and even then the numbers are "slightly" wrong

[Enlil]

Soo much misleading math it makes my eyes hurt. But here is a hint: JamesL is using a 5 workday week with 4 weeks vacation included. Enlil is using 7 workday week and even then the numbers are "slightly" wrong

Yes, I'm talking hardcore. No days off, no vacation. Full no life mode style farming
Whats misleading about my math !

£6 per hour 16 hrs a day = £96 per day
average 30 day month = £2880 per month.

[GamingBinary]

True Hardcore:

• £6 per hour 16 hours a day (6*16) = £96 per day
• £96 per day 365 days a year (96*365) = £35040 per year
• 12 months a year (35040/12) = £2920 per month

But I was more pointing out that the £X per month doesnt really matter when you don't use the same comparison.

[FizzyBubbly]

... I wish people elevated there arguments to a level that is expected when speaking about $. Any qualitative theories or beliefs about the market or profit potential should be accompanied by some form of quantitative analysis. Without doing this the discussion devolves into repeating banter.

Again the argument of $???? / month = worth the time invested has a completely subjective answer based on a persons financial situation dictated by the region of the world they live in. Other subjective factors are also involved such as a persons mentality towards traditional means of work and income.

With this in mind the discussion should end regarding the topic of "is it worth it?"

But rather

What is the highest consistent profit a person can produce / time played?

This focuses the discussion toward a more quantitative discourse.

If these forums are to produce helpful and meaningful information we must do our best to stay away from conjecture and simplistic argumentative statements.

[Enlil]

...

What is the highest consistent profit a person can produce / time played?

This is exactly what I'm going to do, look at what I'm making a day/per hour on average and try in increase that by setting myself goals to attain per hour.

Act run time, will be a a big factor. Need to clear out all the content in an act asap and repeat. More runs per day more money. Not going to be easy running act 4 inferno in mf gear for the best chance of the top loot, so a players skill is of great importance. "Dying costs you gold with repairs that could of been sold for money"

[ShadoutMapes]

But rather

What is the highest consistent profit a person can produce / time played?

This focuses the discussion toward a more quantitative discourse.

If these forums are to produce helpful and meaningful information we must do our best to stay away from conjecture and simplistic argumentative statements.

We cant possibly know the answer to that yet.

However, in a perfectly free market one would assume that the income move toward the cost of production (never reaching it of course). The cost of production in this case is the wages, rent, computers used etc.
Now no market is ever perfectly free, but a digital market of virtual goods is a lot more free than any market in "the real world".
It seems fair to assume that if you can earn more money than the cost of production then more sellers will enter the market (and they can freely do so, since there is pretty much no barrier to entry to the Diablo 3 market. A PC, the game and a paypal account = ready to go. The only real barrier might be the ability to kill stuff in Inferno, and that is unlikely to be much of a barrier).

Of course, for a "goldseller" (I'm using this term for someone selling any form of virtual goods here, not just gold) it isnt just a question of earning more than the cost of production, but also to some degree a question of earning more money than you can earn doing something else (as in selling goods in another game).
I don't know how much goldseller companies are making on their business (other than the fact that they make a lot) however. According to google (as untrustworthy as that is) a reasonable wage for a chinese goldfarmer is something like $120 a month. Which obviously means that one goldfarmer can generate more than $120 in sales (and probably a great deal more - to cover all other expenses + profit).

$1000 a month is a lot more than $120 though, so it would seem unrealistic that you on average could earn anything close to that. And if you could, more people would want to enter the market and compete with you on the prices of your goods.

Again the argument of $???? / month = worth the time invested has a completely subjective answer based on a persons financial situation dictated by the region of the world they live in. Other subjective factors are also involved such as a persons mentality towards traditional means of work and income.

It does, but in a market which is truly global (Such as RMAH), with no geographical transaction costs, and no barriers of entry to speak of (other than having somewhat reliable internet/computers which is minuscule*) and where the major part of the production cost is the wage, it is a fair assumption that the the country with the lowest wages will be the one who sets the limit on how far down the prices can be pushed.

*Lag might make it more difficult to be efficient in Inferno for sure. It is unknown how much it matters. Diablo 3 isnt that lag sensitive overall though. Do we have any south-east Asians with D3 beta access who can tell us what their latency is?
If HC RMAH ever became a reality, then internet stability and latency would have a rather huge influence, and I could imagine that for example chinese farmer companies could have more problems on US/EU HC than US/EU players.