well...
Well here goes what experience I've had, read, seen, etc. (*part of this is from a blog entry I created in 2008!... but this has more updated info too*)
----blog excerpt----
Maria has been looking in to making some serious investments in Entropia Universe, but is still looking for the big investment that will be worthwhile. So far, she's found 3 "investment funds," but each have pros and cons.
Entropia Investment Fund
http://www.eifund.net/
Advantages
- Been around longer than the other two options
- Currently owns 2 Land Areas and a Mall Shop
- Already has multiple investors
Disadvantages
- Originally, EIF Fond Manager (avatar in charge of the fund) was created by another player from the Via Delarosa society, so Fond Manager may be in violation of EULA with Mindarc, which means ALL inventory and storage that this avatar holds is liable to eventually be purged in to cashout for avatar owner or even worse, account may be deleted entirely and all peds and goods avatar owns may be gone forever!
- Originally Fond Manager would allow share buy ins, hold ped for 90 days and then buy back the shares with income in addition to original buy in price. However, since that time this buy back policy has been stopped since after Land Area (LA) purchases and Mall Shop Purposes, some of the inventory Avatar is now in charge of have a Zero Trade Terminal (TT) value. As a result shareholders are required to find new avatars to sell their shares too if they ever want out of the fund, which can be difficult if not impossible at times due to the large cost of buy in. In other words there's ZERO guarantee you'll get a return on investment!!!! All you'll get is what Fund Manager thinks is appropriate percentage of taxes to share with you. You have zero ways of finding out if the amount he gives you is appropriate amount based on your "share" of the fund... You could pay in 65.00 USD or whatever current buy in price is and only get 3.00 back or less on your investment since there's no guarantee or anything that LA and/or shop will ever be resold...
Buy in is relatively high since current rules require you to buy at least 5 shares on inital investment.
No set limit on max number of shares so anyone at any time could buy in and buy out 60% or more of shares and essentially do a buyout takeover of the fund's voting rights.
Entropia Holdings
http://entropiaholdings.com/
Advantages
Relatively New - so getting in now would be good since it's just starting.
Disadvantages
Relatively New - so is not well known, and on some forums is actively discredited by members of the EU community.
MMBig Show is the Avatar in charge - and he's known to be aggressive in some forum postings and is a real life martial artist, so may be aggressive in dealing with. However, he seems to have a good head on his shoulders and may do very well.
Business is based on real estate sales, which is not a proven business concept in EU since most real estate deals are usually done in person to person trading or via EU auction.
Initial buy in was originally $100.00 USD, which is more expensive than any other funds listed here! This may have changed by the time you read this.
Developing Worlds Investment Funds
http://bizconnects.com/emergingworlds/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=20&Itemid=29
Advantages
Interested in multiple worlds besides Entropia Universe.
Disadvantages
Originated in Second Life so Second Life account is needed to buy in. This one is new too so not much is known about it.
Conclusions
Buying in to an investment fund such as these is risky but could be profitable. Many forums warn that deals such as these are usually "too good to be true" and are usually run by scammers using the variations of the "friend scam."
My avatar, Maria Mastermesh Mesh, will likely not buy in to any of these any time soon since risks are too great. She will continue to buy items at TT values (or below tt) and sell them at reasonable prices above TT but below market values. Visit
http://www.mariasgoods.blogspot.com for a fairly updated list of items Maria is selling. This way of selling at TT or lower is the original method the Entropia Investment Fund started out once it's investors put money in to the fund. It seems to be the safest way to make money in EU, the least risky way to make money on EU, and the best way to make money in EU besides sweating. Maria is interested in possibly creating a new investment fund based solely on this method of trading as it seems to be the way EIF was successful and safe before the Land Area, Hanger, and Shop purchases. Having this form of trade as the basis of a society may well turn in to a good idea in the long run. However, for now, Maria will stay in her current society, Entropia Asia. If you are interested in this idea, please contact Maria and if we get enough people interested, maybe we can buy a shop and work on future investments. An apartment shop with shopkeeper would be cheapest, but that's still currently over $500 - $600.00 USD, so is too costly at the moment.
------end of excert----
RR Fund was a scam... read about it over at
https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/services/68465-r-r-fund.html#post820872 - unfortunately a lot of funds end up like that...
After that blog entry... stts came out...
https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...trade-terminal-solution-stts.html#post1485471
STTS was "safe" because the paid TT value, sold stuff, and paid people back... so you at least always got TT value back, and there was no "investment" until later when the investment side opened up, but profits on that was not super high.
STTS failed because Josh ran out of real world time to maintain it. He also very rarely logged in because of the enormous amount of chats he got when he logged in I think... "Payday" on STTS usually cost him several hours because there was a line of investor avatars and folks wanting payouts that literally stood in line waiting to talk to him in the mall just like at a real world grocery store...
STTS also failed, in my opinion because Josh relied almost 100% on selling things in auctions. Auction selling costs sellers A LOT more than selling in shops or booths.... what STTS was really doing was - buy at TT price, sell on auction (thereby loosing auction fee regardless of if thing was sold or not), then figuring out profits AFTER auction costs, and then taking 30% of whatever profits were left after auction costs, and paying the rest back to original item owner...
THAT costs avatars using STTS a lot more than it should have, but that was hidden in the hype. Real in game consignment shops like mine and Nihilist's sell things at prices below auction fees, and cost sellers less than the auction does. With my own consignment deal on blueprints, I try to keep my actual profits out of the deal at a range that is 20% BELOW what the auction normally costs sellers. What STTS did was a lot more than what the auction costs because the auction fees with STTs were taken out of profits before any profit shares were calculated, I think.
In my opinion, in todays market, STTS would work better if it was run in a number of booths that have no rent, and that has maxed out number of item slots by buying upgrades from Estate Broker and by filling all those upgraded slots with 11 shopkeepers in each booth.... for a total of
10 item slots in booth per booth, with each booth costing around 5k
upgrade of 20 slots x 3 = 60 slots, with each of those upgrades costing 2k or 6k per 60 extra slots, so total of 70 slots in booth itself...
and upgrade of shopkeeper being .. around 3k per sk = 33k or so initial cost +10 pec per sale decay that would be added to sales costs of things in shopkeepers..
so total cost of 5k+6k+33k= around 44k for EACH maxed out booth, maybe a little less if shopkeepers are bought for a little below 3k each (market price varies a lot day to day)... giving total net of 20x11=220 item slots in shopkeepers + 4 leftover slots in the booth.. so 224 item slots in total there, but some of the 4 slots leftover would surely be used to hold signs or something?...
initial cost to get that started would be fairly high... but to have 220 item slots that had no rent, and a system in place to get goods cheaply and pay people back like STTS did would be amazing.... and would likely make back the initial costs in a short amount of time if advertised correctly, and if only certain items that would definitely sell were taken in to the program.
STTS was really a consignment shop. As Nihilist and my own shop prove daily - those can be profitable. If you do want to invest in something, getting involved in something like a consignment shop deal is the safest route, but even then, there is some risk since shop owner has to be trusted, and you have to hope nothing happens to shop owner that keeps him/her from logging in.
If someone did start the booth idea like mentioned above, I suspect it would be a gigantic success - BUT... so far no one's set up anything like that... Part of the reason I'm posting about that idea here is to see if maybe this post won't put a hint of how to do this in to the head of someone that has more peds than I do currently that could make this little investment idea in to a reality a few decades before I could do it myself !...
If someone did run it, I'd suggest they cost original owners 20% less than auctioneer costs sellers, like I do (30% less = actual net losses I think), and that they use google documents to keep track of stuff like I do with my consignment deal so that one click publishes the stuff, and updates are instantly available as a web page in html format... Josh probably wasted a lot of time in updating spreadsheets in the forums here - time he could have been using to do more stuff to make STTS successful if he would have put the time/effort in to make it work and continue to work...
There are rumors that STTS will be restarted, but so far, no one's taken up the torch so to speak... if someone does, hopefully they read this post... a setup like listed above, especially if other resources in selling were used too - like bulk sales in auctions here on forums, selling in the atlas haven radio auction, etc. there would be a heck of a lot of profit potential....
I think a lot of booths are not utilized right now. Imagine if the above was started by a bunch of investors that already owned booths and shopkeepers... so startup would be low cost... just make each asset owner in to an investor... imagine what would happen if all of this was done somehwere popular like Cape Corinth or Omegaton West Habitat where there's a lot of booths in one place... lots of possibilities there if someone took the time to make it a reality.
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2012 edit - since rent was removed from shops, something like STTs could potentially be set up in shops...
