How To Trade And Make A Profit

[MarTooth]

I've noticed from the items we at FIPS have recieved that a number of site members have not realised the full potential of the trading system and are loosing out on the vast amount of points which can be gained through upgrading and recharging of selected items prior to sale so I am posting our traders (Electra) guide.

Inventory

These are items you can find on Ausgate. When you find an item click where it says item found to collect it, if you do not click it then you don’t get it, once you have clicked on it you will see a notification saying item collected, if you click on this then you will see what you have found.

Recharging

The majority of items on site are rechargeable, only a few are not and these tend to be of a low value. You will notice that all items range in % of charge from 1% to 100% when you find them.

For trading purposes, it is never financially beneficial to recharge and item of lower maximum value than 5,000 naq as each percentage point recharged costs 50 naq but for those lower valued items the increase, per percentage point, is less than 50. All items who’s maximum value is 5,000 naq or more it is dependant of the offer price of the alliance you are selling as to whether it is worth recharging first.

By recharging these items, you will gain a Naquadah profit for every % you recharge it before sale, as will the alliance, it’s win win situation.

Upgrading

All except 7 items can be upgraded on a variety of aspects e.g. Range, using your own minerals (Naquadah, Trinium and Naquadriah). Now it is possible for you make a profit by upgrading items before sale but this is a little more complex.

How to Upgrade

When you view an item (see Inventory above) if the item is upgradeable you will see one or more long bars, below the item details, with numbers and at the end a link saying Upgrade. Click on this link and it will take you to a page where you can decide how much you wish to upgrade that aspect of the item by. Each upgrade has a fixed cost, e.g. to upgrade by 1 unit may cost 100 Trinium, if you only have 99 Trinium then you will not be able to upgrade that aspect, do not be deterred though, you may be able to upgrade a different aspect or a different item, the cost of upgrades do vary in amount of units, price of upgrade and mineral required to upgrade. Now as we are talking about upgrading before selling the item, it is best to upgrade the aspect as far as your own funds will allow, if you do not have the funds to upgrade an item fully do not worry, upgrade with as many units as funds will allow, you can still make a profit and maybe next time you’ll be able to upgrade by another unit and get a larger profit. Now many of the items have multiple different aspects you can upgrade, the TER for example which has 4 different aspects, it is important that when you do one upgrade that you go back and do the others before selling the item, in fact until you get used to how many aspects to upgrade an item has, I would suggest you always use the “return to item” link to make sure that you have upgraded every aspect. Once you have upgraded your item, as much as you can then it is time to sell it.

[MarTooth]

Upgrading prior to sale can gain huge amounts of points, for example, a Ribbon Device has a maximum naquadria upgrade of 5000, if you are able to upgrade it to that amount you will get 5050 naquadria in return from FIPS, 50 naquadria profit or 500 points (and that's not considering the additional profit from naquadah and trinium). Other alliances who offer upgrade profit to all site members include RAA, SKAA and MOA though the latter two do not always do so, alternating between high upgrade offers and high base offers so always check that you will profit prior to selling any upgraded items. Other alliances also offer upgrade profit but do so only to their own members and selected trade allies through the bonus system.

Using FIPS as an example I'll now give you Electra's step by step guide to the trade centre, with a few minor alterations to make it more relevant to all site members not just our own.

On the left side of all pages on site, on the Navigation bar, is a link to the Trade Centre. When you go to this page you will see Individual Trade and Compare prices. Under Individual Trade you will see a list of all the alliances (and Aris the Ausgate database trader) that you can trade with, amongst that list you will see Furling Interplanetary Society (FIPS),or your own alliance if your are a member of another alliance on site, select that link and you will come to the sell page (we do not offer any site members trade bonus' but your own may do as may some other alliances in accordance with trade pacts, you only get a trade bonus through direct trade and will not do so through compare prices). If the selected alliance offers a trade bonus at the top of the page, in white, you will see a message saying “This trader currently offers extended prices for members of your faction.” this tells you that you are getting a bonus which has already been added and is included in the prices shown and just sell the item you want to.

Now there is also Compare Prices. Below the Individual Trading section you will see Compare Prices and below that, a list of all the items you are currently holding, by clicking on one of those items will bring you to a page where you can see what every trader will offer you for that item, BUT this does not include the any bonus' on offer to members of your alliance. We recommend that you only use Compare Prices to as a rough guide to compare prices, remembering that the bonuses offered to you vary from trader to trader, and use Individual Trading for actually selling your items. If in doubt you can sell to Furling Interplanetary Society as we always offer the same price at all times to all site members.

For selling upgrades there is an important thing to remember:-

PRICES DO CHANGE!

With this in mind, it is important that you check that you are going to make a profit on your upgraded item before you sell it. In FIPS, we use the Faction HQ Front Page to keep our members updated with any changes in regards to trade, whether we are offering a profit on upgrades or not (almost all of the time we do, as long as we have funds to purchase them with) and, therefore, it is a good idea to check the Faction HQ Front Page, or any threads on your message board relating to trade when you come on site for any changes, all the same it is also a good idea you know how to check whether your going to profit or not yourself as well. There is a very good way to check; upgrade an item with an amount of Trinium or Naquadria making note of the cost of the upgrade (do not use Naquadah upgrades for this as the price you will see in the trade centre is for the combination of both the basic item price and the upgrade thus making the maths more complex), go to the trade centre and in Individual Trading select Furling Interplanetary Society, look at the item you have upgraded and if the amount being offered to you is higher than the amount it cost you to do that specific upgrade, then you are going to make a profit. Do NOT sell the item immediately! Once you know you are going to make a profit, if you haven’t completed upgrading it as much as you can, and on all aspects that are available for upgrading, then go back and do that before you sell it. Continue doing that with all items until you have not got any or we run out of funds.

*Note: as profit margin is normally around the 1% margin it is recommended that you upgrade with at least 100 Trinium or Naquadriah for checking purposes. If the amount you can upgrade with is insufficient to show a profit but doesn’t show a loss, it is greatly appreciated by Furling Interplanetary Society to still upgrade as we can still make a small profit ourselves, which in turn means there will be greater funds for purchasing your items and may mean we can offer you a better price in the future.