Trading for Newbies

Here are few rules of thumb...

1. Do not low ball, its both annoying and a waste of time. Offering an Alchemy for an item priced at 1 chaos item is okay. Offering 1ex for item priced at 3-4ex is just wasting most peoples time. Sure you can find that one guy who will sell maybe 1% of the time but that's hardly the standard.

2. Do not talk about any other private transactions you've made before. Keep it simple. Stuff like "well on poe.trade they are going for anywhere between x and x I think your item fits here". Do not go "oh I paid someone 3 chaos for that last week". Its completely irrelevant to me or most other people the personal details of a private transaction you conducted with another person. I have not made a single deal with someone who said something like this and its not because its not relevant but because we never agree on price because the other party is citing irrelevant facts and only wants to negotiate on those facts.

3. If you have a price you are going to pay do not ask for an offer after you've stated your price. In other words, if you are unwilling to negotiate, do not ask the other person to negotiate. If they do not accept your offer, move on. Personally, I'll take less if the person will pay more but if I counter lower than my listed price and you do not budge or make basically the same offer using different currency its waste of both of our time. I do not know how many times this has happened to me and it get no less annoying. If you want to negotiate, negotiate dont press the person to negotiate and you not negotiate.

4. If you see an item that is obviously way under priced, its likely a typo or some person is not very knowledgeable about the marketplace. Its unethical to try and get it for that price. I'm not saying not to try and get a discount but when you see an item you know is conservatively worth an exalted and its priced on poe.trade for 1 chaos its tantamount to stealing. Be honest because you will still get a good deal in most these kind of situations.

5. Do not complain about the price. Keep it simple, state what you will pay and if its not accepted or sufficiently countered, move on.

This is more your own personal niggles with people to be honest.

Trading (flipping) regularly breaks all of your rules.

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Chundadragon wrote:

This is more your own personal niggles with people to be honest.

Trading (flipping) regularly breaks all of your rules.

Well, I think there is a distinct difference between personal trading and trading on the wholesale level. I do encourage you to state why my rules are not valid for people..instead of saying "they break all your rules" even for flippers? I welcome the discussion. In my opinion if you break these rules its morely likely you get less deals done on a whole and are more likely to get ignored. I think flippers need to abide by these especially.

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Billydanomad wrote:

Do not complain about the price. Keep it simple, state what you will pay and if its not accepted or sufficiently countered, move on.

This is the only rule you need, I use this one in business all the time.

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Billydanomad wrote:

I think flippers need to abide by these especially.

If flippers didn't try to get things as cheap as possible, they wouldn't make any profit.

Especially rule 4 is broken, 50% of flipping in this game is when people don't know what their item is worth. Probably over 50% to be honest.

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Chundadragon wrote:

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Billydanomad wrote:

I think flippers need to abide by these especially.

If flippers didn't try to get things as cheap as possible, they wouldn't make any profit.

Especially rule 4 is broken, 50% of flipping in this game is when people don't know what their item is worth. Probably over 50% to be honest.

Well, if you think being unethical is something we should not discourage as a community then that's your prerogative and I do not agree.

Well, most players I see are trying to learn how to trade for profit and the first premise of flipping is to underpay and then get people to overpay.

There's little difference imo of buying 1 ex and selling 5 ex as opposed to buying 3 ex and selling 5 ex, what's more ethical? Neither to be honest - both are underpaying - I think you think both are wrong? Well, you have flippers doing it 24/7.

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Chundadragon wrote:

Well, most players I see are trying to learn how to trade for profit and the first premise of flipping is to make money off of people.

There's little difference imo of buying 1 ex and selling 5 ex as opposed to buying 3 ex and selling 5 ex, what's more ethical? Neither to be honest - I think you think both are wrong? Well, you have flippers doing it 24/7.

Its one thing to get a 20-30% discount, its another to get 80%. Further, I guarantee you most people who flip and approach someone for such a discount will either get ignored or laughed at. The sucess rate of flippers making a deal is very low. Its why they spam trade chat. It's volume to them. With that said, I'm not talking about flippers, I'm talking about the person who is trading for gear they need who make up a substantially larger percentage of the population. You can talk about the flippers all you want, they are 5% of the market place to which my post was not directed at. If the normal trader who is looking for gear acts like a flipper its will take them awhile to buy the gear and it will be a frustrating experience because most people are going to ignore them.

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Billydanomad wrote:

Further, I guarantee you most people who flip and approach someone for such a discount will either get ignored or laughed at.

Try it out some time, you will be seriously surprised at how low people will go. You would be right if everyone knew the value of their item but that is not the case.

Normal traders don't need to care about people ignoring them because normal items are available x10000 so you are allowed to low-ball. And because they are normal item and they don't sell well, people will allow you to pay dogshit for them.

Skill in trading is all about knowing the right price for the right time.

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Chundadragon wrote:

Try it out some time, you will be seriously surprised at how low people will go.

Its not worth annoying the 10-15 sellers and the frustration it would bring upon to try and get that great deal when I can offer three people a much more fair and lower price than their b/o and be on my way.

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Normal traders don't need to care about people ignoring them because normal items are available x10000 so you are allowed to low-ball.

I tell you, I make more deals on items that have a buy out on than I do with no buy out. 90% of the deals I close are no negotiations because I typically price my items 10-15% market rate. I've never made a deal with someone who low-balled and I think you are still missing the point. Its not about if can or allowed too...its about if you should. If you rather spamming several people trying to get that great deal and act like a flipper, good for you but your success rate at closing a deal will be lower. 100% guaranteed.

You keep talking about skill in trading, profit, ect, etc. This is not directed at people who are trying to make a profit. I do not care if flippers get their time wasted. I care about the general population who wants to make trades for gear they need.