mastermesh
Mutated
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2007
- Posts
- 16,582
- Location
- Auction room somewhere...
- Society
- Freelancer
- Avatar Name
- Maria Mesh
Edit - RENT IS NOW FREE EVERYWHERE ON CALYPSO!!! 
https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...2-Should-shop-and-apartment-fees-be-abolished
============
This info is probably posted elsewhere, but under a variety of different areas in the forums, in a variety of various threads, etc. I figure I'd put this out here in one spot for those that are interested. The info below is mainly my opinions. If you have different opinion, feel free to reply. This sort of stuff would have been very useful to myself when I first started out, but I had to find out a lot of this on my own the hard way... I'm putting it out here so others might have a little easier time then I did.
a little background... I have played around with estates for a while... I had an apartment 10A in Treasure Island Silver about 2 years ago with 2 little shopkeepers in it, traded that place for apartment 4A in Omegaton Delta after I bought a booth in Omegaton Delta. I bought Apartment 1A in Delta too around that time since it was on the auction at a descent buyout price. A few months after that I bought Shop 1 in Block A of Omegaton Delta. The apartments have been sold off (although I might buy at least one of them back someday since I still know the owner of one of them)... I currently own Booth #3 and Shop 1 in Block A of Delta Tower at Omegaton West Habitat (Omegaton City). I sold off my apartments since they seemed to be a ped drain for my style of play as I'm mainly a trader these days. I learned most of what I know here from personal experience or from talking to those that have personal experience (I've never owned a mall shop, but have several folks on friends list that do)
Here's how I see it mainly:
------------------------------------
Advantages of Apartments
- cost is low
- monthly mainenance fees are fairly low (10 ped a month)
- rent doesn't have to be paid monthly since it's really a maintenance fee, not "rent" even if Marco's postings on the forums here sometimes say otherwise.
- items can be put in to hallways leading to apartments now. Pre Vu10 this was not possible. This also now allows you to put items outside of the apartment on the doorway if you desire to do so. For instance, when I still owned an apartment upstairs from where my shop is, I put a sign on the doorway to the apartment that explained that the shop was downstairs. The items that are visible outside of the doorway should be visible even if monthly maintanence fee is not paid so long as item is visible when door is shut (you can get door to shut by stepping backwards from the doorway until you are on the other side of the televator for that floor). If you get the message that other participants can pick up the item, it's not "on the estate" so don't drop it there... moving it just a pixel can make all the difference as far as if an item is inside of an apartment or outside, lootable by all. In apartment hallways - if you put a light just inside of the doorway, you can easily tell when moving items around if it's inside or outside because the shadows quickly change from really dark to really bright when the item crosses the line that indicates where the estate ends and does not end. This is really useful since apartments don't have any red lines that show up like booths do when you hit visualize in estate terminal.
- number of item slots is farily good for the price
- views from some apartments are awesome. This is much better then pre-vu 10 when there were bars on nearly all the windows that made it hard to see outside.
Disadvantages of Apartments
- you cannot sell items in apartments without a shopkeeper
- Most apartments need interior lighting, which is sad because the lights blow item slots that you could use on other things
- televator has to usually be used to access apartments. This adds an obstacle to any would be visitors. This also makes it very difficult to run a shop in an apartment with a shopkeeper since many avatars won't even bother coming inside of a building, much less going up a televator.
- All floors of every apartment building more or less look identical, so it's easy for your would be visitors to get lost if they accidentally use the televator to go to the wrong floor
- anything put on a balony can be looted
- hallways are narrow and close to neighbor's hallways. In other words, if your neighbor puts certain big pieces of furniture in their hallway, such as l-quent sideboards, certain shelves, etc. they might actually accidentally, or purposefully end up blocking your hallway since there's only one small wall between the two estates, and items can and do go through walls currently (the only walls that don't seem to be affected by this are exterior walls of malls and apartment buildings - if you own a basement shop and put l-quent sideboard so that it looks like it'll stick outside, it won't show up outside. I think the game engine sees the outside and inside as two different "world maps" so stuff does not carry over from one to the other like that, but stuff like l-quent sideboards can block walls and locations inside of the building in estates next door)
- Item slots fill up fast. It might seem like 120 item slots is a lot of slots to play with in an apartment, but believe it or not, it's very easy to fill that number of slots in no time, especially if you use displays or shopkeepers, which use more than one item slot each.
- Locations of apartments are not near the first TPs you get (except Bilton)
----------------------------------------------------
Advantatages of Mall Shops:
- Display Area outside of the shop has a doorway next to it that leads inside, which is different then the way apartment basement shops are
- Location is pretty good for Port Atlantis since it's the first TP everyone has, and it's on the way to Sweat Camp.., Location for Twin Peaks Mall is pretty good too (as long as the street traders like staying at Twin as quite a few do now). Emerald Lakes Mall is is little harder to get to, but it's still one of the main TPs that most people get since it's not too far from Treasure Island. Emerald Lakes Mall shops make up for this with the number of item slots they have vs the other malls. CND Mall is not really considered a mall by MA...
Disadvantages of Mall Shops:
- Prices are very high to get shops as things are right now when comparing the number of item slots available vs shops in other locations with similar number of item slots
- Monthly Maintanence Fees are very high (some go as high as 70 peds a month - not a lot, but that can seem like a lot if you are not making a full 70 peds a month in sales, especially when places like the apartment shops only have 12 ped a month maintanence fee)
- Shop is NOT visible from outside of the mall.
- Display Area outside of the shop in the mall hallways are not super tall, so if you use a gigantium sign in them, part of the sign will likely be cut off at the ceiling or floor.
----------------------------------------------------
Advantages of Apartment Basement Shops:
- Shops are visible from the outside of the apartment building, but only the "display window" is.
- Maintenance Fee is very low (12 peds a month)
- The Number of Item is fairly high for the price you pay for the shop vs other locations
Disadvantages of Apartment Basement Shops:
- The "display window" is not really a window or a door, so some of your items are outside of the building, and the rest is on the other side of the wall, requiring would be visitors to have to do a big U-turn to get inside.
----------------------------------------------------
Advantages of Booths:
- No maintenance fee! This makes booths a good "long term" investment since you can run them basically forever even if the monthly deposits on your pedcard is low or nonexistent. Great place to house a shopkeeper since monthly fee is low, so you can make up for the extra costs on shopkeeper decay easily
- Price is low
Disadvantages of Booths:
- Low Number of Item Slots vs other estates (only 10 item slots to start with)
----------------------------------------------------
Advantages of Shopkeepers:
- Low TT Value Items can be sold in Shopkeepers which cannot be sold in shops or booths, i.e. sweat and other stackables below 1 pec in tt value, deeds (you can't sell deeds in shops or booths since that requires that deeds be "dropped" - you can't drop a deed), etc.
- shopkeepers are mobile, so you can move them if you sell your estate and buy another one. You might even be able to put them on other planets.
- Shopkeepers use 6 items slots but give you back 20 in return. In a shop or booth this only gives you a total increase of 14 item slots. However, in an apartment or other non-shop estate, such as an LA or hanger, this gives you 20 selling slots that you didn't use to have before owning a shopkeeper.
- there is a slight bug, or feature if you want to call it that - depends on your point of view (may have been fixed by the time you read this) that lets shopkeepers hold 20 "items" not just 20 slots worth of stuff... so at the time of this writing, it's possible to put displays in to a shopkeeper, even though each display should use more then one item slot.
Disadvantages of Shopkeepers:
- shopkeepers decay .10 per sale in addition to having taxes added to all sell items. This makes selling in shopkeepers slightly higher cost for shop owners then selling in shops/booths themselves. Most shop owners pass this on to their customers, making stuff sold in shopkeepers possibly a little higher priced then in shops outside of the shopkeepers.
- Shopkeepers currently cost over 2k usually, sometimes as much as 3k or more on buyout. That cost per item slot is much higher then the estate upgrade offer gives you.
---------------------------------------------------
CND Shops & Oxford Deer Mall
Advantages:
- fairly high visibility as far as location goes since it's a TP everyone gets
- price per item slot is very low compared to elsewhere
- nice view from the balcony/top floor
Disadvantages to CND and Oxford Shops:
- Deer Mall is designed in a weird way where you have to take a televator to get to the shops inside
- CND is designed in a way that's sort of hard to navigate the first time you get there, which puts some people off. There are shops on both sides of the hallway, but the hallways are in an arena sort of shape, and CND shops have an upstairs and downstairs which seems very crowded and narrow, and designed with godawful wallpaper to me.
- there is a transportation fee involved in getting to CND
- New Oxford Deer Mall and CND Mall both are close to a TP, but far enough away from the TP that it's a bit of a hassle to get there to window shop
- no terminals near the shops themselves like there are in the malls
----------------------------------------------------
Pre-VU 10: Hangers
(Hangers stopped existing after vu 10, but should be coming back at some point in the future, just like taming, and some other stuff that existed prior to vu 10 that doesn't exist now)
Advantages of Hangers
- no monthly maintanence fee, just like booths
- obvious advantage in transport to astroid/planet(s)
Disadvantages of Hangers
- no shop item slots available unless you add a shopkeeper, just like apartments
- decay costs on ships that are used for travel (usually passed on to customers like shopkeeper decay costs are in shops)
- oil costs if ship is used (usually passed on to customers too)
----------------------------------------------------
UPGRADES...
FPC has made several upgrade offerings availabe since late last year. The main one that is worth investigating, in my oninion, is the addition of 20 item slots to a shop for 2k ped. That makes upgrading a shop in this manner cheaper then upgrading via a shopkeeper. However, it also can be an added cost that is not worth it in some people's opinions because there is nothing to identify the upgraded estate that would make it stand out if you tried to sell it on the auction later. Also, the upgrade is stuck with the estate, not mobile like a shopkeeper is.
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[br]Click to enlarge[/br]
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Tips, Tricks and Gotchas - a few Hard (and not so hard) lessons I've learned...
Make use of estate terminals. They tell you who should be the owner of the place, or who used to own the place. Unfortunately, the estate terminal does not update who is listed as "owner" until the deed holder claims the place, so it's highly possible, as with the large number of estates that lists Marcus the estate broker as owner, that the owner listed on estate terminal is not the real deed holder... However, the places that have been claimed should show an owner, even if it's the old owner, who might be able to tell you who the new owner is they sold to.
Use entropiaforum's search function. Many times you can search for the avatar name listed at the estate terminal to find the entropia forum avatar and person behind that EU avatar. Once you get that info, you can shoot a PM to them if you want to buy their place, give them advice on what to stock, or even to become a supplier or bulk discount buyer in a deal you set up with the shop owner(s). Doing stuff like this is how half of NBK Entrepreners was created about a year and a half ago. It has been "converted" to NBK Otium for now, but might come back eventually in a number of various ways in the future.
I've found many good friends doing stuff like this. I will warn you though, some estate owners don't want to be found, or are not willing to talk to people that PM them about business matters. Don't take offense if they don't want to tell you all their little shop owning secrets, tips, or give away their suppliers to you for free... Be respectful of others, and they usually will be respectful of you. These folks put real money in to this game to run a part time business. Treat them with the respect you'd give to any other part time business owner in real life. That having been said, most smart shop owners are always on the lookout for new contacts that can supply them with things cheaply or buy things from them that they have an overstock on that is not selling very well in the shop... so do contact them, but don't be offended if they don't reply immediately, etc.
Use the estate list...
I set up https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub...Y0FBdHhjdm1MYUxWT2hjWHBMbWc&hl=en&output=html to allow estate owners to freely edit the database and let others know where they are. Since its there and is a lot easier to edit then numerous entries for places and shops on entropedia, and entropiabay listings that have to be updated every couple of weeks, why not use it?...
Consignment Deals... Trust...
Many shop owners attempt to set up consignment deals to lower their overhead costs in stocking their shops. With these sort of deals, the shop owner usually pays a supplier TT price for something, then trys to sell the item for an agreed upon amount of time. If it sells, the shop owner and the supplier split the profits. If it does not sell, the shop owner usually either just outright buys the item from the supplier or gives it back to the supplier at TT price. TRUST is a big issue with these sort of deals, and many times both shop owners and their suppliers can and do get scammed. Be careful. Remember, according to MA, "All sales are final" so there's nothing MA can do if you do get scammed.
furniture tricks...ninjas.
Furniture can be used for a variety of purposes in climbing hills, hanging signs on invisble walls, etc. Sometimes these "features" are considered bugs by MA (such as the L-quent sideboard trick that used to work where you could hang signs in midair by removing the L-quent after hanging something on it), so they'll be fixed eventually. Other times, new features like this are added to benefit the community (such as the addition of allowing you to put items in the hallways of apartments). As with all thing, remember, Entropia Universe is dynamic. What works today might not work tomorrow. What does not work today, may work tomorrow.
Window shopping.
It's always a good idea to shop around before spending a lot of peds on something with a high markup. For instance, some mall shops in PA offer great prices on Ghost Armor. Some shops in Omegaton offer awesome prices on blueprints. Shop around. The auction is the fastest place to buy something, but that speed sometimes comes at a price... Why pay more for something when you can get it cheaper if you just hop on a tp and walk 20 feet to the nearest shop.
Monopoly Board
Finding places next to one another can take a long time and be nearly impossible. If you are looking to do as I did and buy a booth next to a shop, expect to pay a pretty penny for the estates since you'll probably have to pay buyout price on auction, if the place you are looking for ever does show up on auction. The SFE bought a whole row of shops in Treasure Island and I managed to buy a booth next to a shop, so it's possible to get this sort of stuff. It just takes time, brains, and connections to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Use your brain, and be patient.
Signs
Signs use one item point usually. Most screens & displays (other then the ad terminals like the one hanging in my shop) use more then one item point. This is true for all types of signs, even the big gigantium and megaview ones. If you are a shop owner trying to maximize the number of items you are selling in your shop, this is a really important fact to take in to account. If you are looking for a sign to upload your own jpg file to, be sure to get a PC (Parcipant Content) sign since non PC signs displays and screens only show MA's own backgrounds, not backgrounds you upload. Theres a list of MA's backgrounds over at https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...-backgrounds&p=1426687&viewfull=1#post1426687
Max out markup
Patience is a virtue. If you are looking for some particular item, armor set, etc. it can help you save a few peds by being patient as prices on auctions fluctuate day to day, and prices in various shops do too. Shop around before you buy something... but also be aware that some items like Relaxed Woman Statue, Gigantium Sign (PC), Megaview Sign (PC) and Ad Terminal are very rare, so if you see them on auction, you want them, and buyout price is right, you might seriously consider buying at the buyout price before someone else does. This is also true of certain estates. If you know you want an estate in a certain location, you might have to pay a premium price to get it in the location you want it as the seller may know you are wanting something particular, so they have a bit of leverage on you sometimes... be careful with who you tell what since knowledge is power sometimes. Also, be aware that others are being careful in that regard too, which is why some folks come off as anti-social when in fact they are not really anti-social, just trying to protect their assets.
FEES (Thanks Nihilist)
Here's the Exact formulas:
Auction Fee/Commission = (0.5 + Markup * 99.5 / (1990 + Markup))
Shop Tax = (Markup * 49.75 / (1990 + Markup))
That works out to be something like this:
So as you start out at +1 Shops save you roughly 16% as a shop owner vs being an auction seller... since both auction fees and taxes are usually passed on to customers. As that number grows you start to approach 50% savings, but never quite make a full 50% savings. If these calculations are right, it just goes to show that MA gets about 2x more out of it's cut of auction sales than Land Owners get ouf of shop taxes, and shows that it's cheaper, in the long run, for shop owners to sell in shops than in auction, assuming they can get regular repeat customers.... which isn't as easy to do as it might sound. However, it's usually easier to do then having to constantly relist items in the auction, especially since the auction has a low limit on the number of items you can list at one time (Not sure on exact limit, but I think it's 30?).
I might add more to this posting later if I get a chance. Happy shopping! Good luck!
P.S. feel free to post your opinions of various estates, what you think is a better value, etc.
https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...2-Should-shop-and-apartment-fees-be-abolished============
This info is probably posted elsewhere, but under a variety of different areas in the forums, in a variety of various threads, etc. I figure I'd put this out here in one spot for those that are interested. The info below is mainly my opinions. If you have different opinion, feel free to reply. This sort of stuff would have been very useful to myself when I first started out, but I had to find out a lot of this on my own the hard way... I'm putting it out here so others might have a little easier time then I did.
a little background... I have played around with estates for a while... I had an apartment 10A in Treasure Island Silver about 2 years ago with 2 little shopkeepers in it, traded that place for apartment 4A in Omegaton Delta after I bought a booth in Omegaton Delta. I bought Apartment 1A in Delta too around that time since it was on the auction at a descent buyout price. A few months after that I bought Shop 1 in Block A of Omegaton Delta. The apartments have been sold off (although I might buy at least one of them back someday since I still know the owner of one of them)... I currently own Booth #3 and Shop 1 in Block A of Delta Tower at Omegaton West Habitat (Omegaton City). I sold off my apartments since they seemed to be a ped drain for my style of play as I'm mainly a trader these days. I learned most of what I know here from personal experience or from talking to those that have personal experience (I've never owned a mall shop, but have several folks on friends list that do)
Here's how I see it mainly:
------------------------------------
Advantages of Apartments
- cost is low
- monthly mainenance fees are fairly low (10 ped a month)
- rent doesn't have to be paid monthly since it's really a maintenance fee, not "rent" even if Marco's postings on the forums here sometimes say otherwise.
- items can be put in to hallways leading to apartments now. Pre Vu10 this was not possible. This also now allows you to put items outside of the apartment on the doorway if you desire to do so. For instance, when I still owned an apartment upstairs from where my shop is, I put a sign on the doorway to the apartment that explained that the shop was downstairs. The items that are visible outside of the doorway should be visible even if monthly maintanence fee is not paid so long as item is visible when door is shut (you can get door to shut by stepping backwards from the doorway until you are on the other side of the televator for that floor). If you get the message that other participants can pick up the item, it's not "on the estate" so don't drop it there... moving it just a pixel can make all the difference as far as if an item is inside of an apartment or outside, lootable by all. In apartment hallways - if you put a light just inside of the doorway, you can easily tell when moving items around if it's inside or outside because the shadows quickly change from really dark to really bright when the item crosses the line that indicates where the estate ends and does not end. This is really useful since apartments don't have any red lines that show up like booths do when you hit visualize in estate terminal.
- number of item slots is farily good for the price
- views from some apartments are awesome. This is much better then pre-vu 10 when there were bars on nearly all the windows that made it hard to see outside.
Disadvantages of Apartments
- you cannot sell items in apartments without a shopkeeper
- Most apartments need interior lighting, which is sad because the lights blow item slots that you could use on other things
- televator has to usually be used to access apartments. This adds an obstacle to any would be visitors. This also makes it very difficult to run a shop in an apartment with a shopkeeper since many avatars won't even bother coming inside of a building, much less going up a televator.
- All floors of every apartment building more or less look identical, so it's easy for your would be visitors to get lost if they accidentally use the televator to go to the wrong floor
- anything put on a balony can be looted
- hallways are narrow and close to neighbor's hallways. In other words, if your neighbor puts certain big pieces of furniture in their hallway, such as l-quent sideboards, certain shelves, etc. they might actually accidentally, or purposefully end up blocking your hallway since there's only one small wall between the two estates, and items can and do go through walls currently (the only walls that don't seem to be affected by this are exterior walls of malls and apartment buildings - if you own a basement shop and put l-quent sideboard so that it looks like it'll stick outside, it won't show up outside. I think the game engine sees the outside and inside as two different "world maps" so stuff does not carry over from one to the other like that, but stuff like l-quent sideboards can block walls and locations inside of the building in estates next door)
- Item slots fill up fast. It might seem like 120 item slots is a lot of slots to play with in an apartment, but believe it or not, it's very easy to fill that number of slots in no time, especially if you use displays or shopkeepers, which use more than one item slot each.
- Locations of apartments are not near the first TPs you get (except Bilton)
----------------------------------------------------
Advantatages of Mall Shops:
- Display Area outside of the shop has a doorway next to it that leads inside, which is different then the way apartment basement shops are
- Location is pretty good for Port Atlantis since it's the first TP everyone has, and it's on the way to Sweat Camp.., Location for Twin Peaks Mall is pretty good too (as long as the street traders like staying at Twin as quite a few do now). Emerald Lakes Mall is is little harder to get to, but it's still one of the main TPs that most people get since it's not too far from Treasure Island. Emerald Lakes Mall shops make up for this with the number of item slots they have vs the other malls. CND Mall is not really considered a mall by MA...
Disadvantages of Mall Shops:
- Prices are very high to get shops as things are right now when comparing the number of item slots available vs shops in other locations with similar number of item slots
- Monthly Maintanence Fees are very high (some go as high as 70 peds a month - not a lot, but that can seem like a lot if you are not making a full 70 peds a month in sales, especially when places like the apartment shops only have 12 ped a month maintanence fee)
- Shop is NOT visible from outside of the mall.
- Display Area outside of the shop in the mall hallways are not super tall, so if you use a gigantium sign in them, part of the sign will likely be cut off at the ceiling or floor.
----------------------------------------------------
Advantages of Apartment Basement Shops:
- Shops are visible from the outside of the apartment building, but only the "display window" is.
- Maintenance Fee is very low (12 peds a month)
- The Number of Item is fairly high for the price you pay for the shop vs other locations
Disadvantages of Apartment Basement Shops:
- The "display window" is not really a window or a door, so some of your items are outside of the building, and the rest is on the other side of the wall, requiring would be visitors to have to do a big U-turn to get inside.
----------------------------------------------------
Advantages of Booths:
- No maintenance fee! This makes booths a good "long term" investment since you can run them basically forever even if the monthly deposits on your pedcard is low or nonexistent. Great place to house a shopkeeper since monthly fee is low, so you can make up for the extra costs on shopkeeper decay easily
- Price is low
Disadvantages of Booths:
- Low Number of Item Slots vs other estates (only 10 item slots to start with)
----------------------------------------------------
Advantages of Shopkeepers:
- Low TT Value Items can be sold in Shopkeepers which cannot be sold in shops or booths, i.e. sweat and other stackables below 1 pec in tt value, deeds (you can't sell deeds in shops or booths since that requires that deeds be "dropped" - you can't drop a deed), etc.
- shopkeepers are mobile, so you can move them if you sell your estate and buy another one. You might even be able to put them on other planets.
- Shopkeepers use 6 items slots but give you back 20 in return. In a shop or booth this only gives you a total increase of 14 item slots. However, in an apartment or other non-shop estate, such as an LA or hanger, this gives you 20 selling slots that you didn't use to have before owning a shopkeeper.
- there is a slight bug, or feature if you want to call it that - depends on your point of view (may have been fixed by the time you read this) that lets shopkeepers hold 20 "items" not just 20 slots worth of stuff... so at the time of this writing, it's possible to put displays in to a shopkeeper, even though each display should use more then one item slot.
Disadvantages of Shopkeepers:
- shopkeepers decay .10 per sale in addition to having taxes added to all sell items. This makes selling in shopkeepers slightly higher cost for shop owners then selling in shops/booths themselves. Most shop owners pass this on to their customers, making stuff sold in shopkeepers possibly a little higher priced then in shops outside of the shopkeepers.
- Shopkeepers currently cost over 2k usually, sometimes as much as 3k or more on buyout. That cost per item slot is much higher then the estate upgrade offer gives you.
---------------------------------------------------
CND Shops & Oxford Deer Mall
Advantages:
- fairly high visibility as far as location goes since it's a TP everyone gets
- price per item slot is very low compared to elsewhere
- nice view from the balcony/top floor
Disadvantages to CND and Oxford Shops:
- Deer Mall is designed in a weird way where you have to take a televator to get to the shops inside
- CND is designed in a way that's sort of hard to navigate the first time you get there, which puts some people off. There are shops on both sides of the hallway, but the hallways are in an arena sort of shape, and CND shops have an upstairs and downstairs which seems very crowded and narrow, and designed with godawful wallpaper to me.
- there is a transportation fee involved in getting to CND
- New Oxford Deer Mall and CND Mall both are close to a TP, but far enough away from the TP that it's a bit of a hassle to get there to window shop
- no terminals near the shops themselves like there are in the malls
----------------------------------------------------
Pre-VU 10: Hangers
(Hangers stopped existing after vu 10, but should be coming back at some point in the future, just like taming, and some other stuff that existed prior to vu 10 that doesn't exist now)
Advantages of Hangers
- no monthly maintanence fee, just like booths
- obvious advantage in transport to astroid/planet(s)
Disadvantages of Hangers
- no shop item slots available unless you add a shopkeeper, just like apartments
- decay costs on ships that are used for travel (usually passed on to customers like shopkeeper decay costs are in shops)
- oil costs if ship is used (usually passed on to customers too)
----------------------------------------------------
UPGRADES...
FPC has made several upgrade offerings availabe since late last year. The main one that is worth investigating, in my oninion, is the addition of 20 item slots to a shop for 2k ped. That makes upgrading a shop in this manner cheaper then upgrading via a shopkeeper. However, it also can be an added cost that is not worth it in some people's opinions because there is nothing to identify the upgraded estate that would make it stand out if you tried to sell it on the auction later. Also, the upgrade is stuck with the estate, not mobile like a shopkeeper is.
----------------------------------------------------
[br]Click to enlarge[/br]----------------------------------------------------
Tips, Tricks and Gotchas - a few Hard (and not so hard) lessons I've learned...
Make use of estate terminals. They tell you who should be the owner of the place, or who used to own the place. Unfortunately, the estate terminal does not update who is listed as "owner" until the deed holder claims the place, so it's highly possible, as with the large number of estates that lists Marcus the estate broker as owner, that the owner listed on estate terminal is not the real deed holder... However, the places that have been claimed should show an owner, even if it's the old owner, who might be able to tell you who the new owner is they sold to.
Use entropiaforum's search function. Many times you can search for the avatar name listed at the estate terminal to find the entropia forum avatar and person behind that EU avatar. Once you get that info, you can shoot a PM to them if you want to buy their place, give them advice on what to stock, or even to become a supplier or bulk discount buyer in a deal you set up with the shop owner(s). Doing stuff like this is how half of NBK Entrepreners was created about a year and a half ago. It has been "converted" to NBK Otium for now, but might come back eventually in a number of various ways in the future.
I've found many good friends doing stuff like this. I will warn you though, some estate owners don't want to be found, or are not willing to talk to people that PM them about business matters. Don't take offense if they don't want to tell you all their little shop owning secrets, tips, or give away their suppliers to you for free... Be respectful of others, and they usually will be respectful of you. These folks put real money in to this game to run a part time business. Treat them with the respect you'd give to any other part time business owner in real life. That having been said, most smart shop owners are always on the lookout for new contacts that can supply them with things cheaply or buy things from them that they have an overstock on that is not selling very well in the shop... so do contact them, but don't be offended if they don't reply immediately, etc.
Use the estate list...
I set up https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub...Y0FBdHhjdm1MYUxWT2hjWHBMbWc&hl=en&output=html to allow estate owners to freely edit the database and let others know where they are. Since its there and is a lot easier to edit then numerous entries for places and shops on entropedia, and entropiabay listings that have to be updated every couple of weeks, why not use it?...
Consignment Deals... Trust...
Many shop owners attempt to set up consignment deals to lower their overhead costs in stocking their shops. With these sort of deals, the shop owner usually pays a supplier TT price for something, then trys to sell the item for an agreed upon amount of time. If it sells, the shop owner and the supplier split the profits. If it does not sell, the shop owner usually either just outright buys the item from the supplier or gives it back to the supplier at TT price. TRUST is a big issue with these sort of deals, and many times both shop owners and their suppliers can and do get scammed. Be careful. Remember, according to MA, "All sales are final" so there's nothing MA can do if you do get scammed.
furniture tricks...ninjas.
Furniture can be used for a variety of purposes in climbing hills, hanging signs on invisble walls, etc. Sometimes these "features" are considered bugs by MA (such as the L-quent sideboard trick that used to work where you could hang signs in midair by removing the L-quent after hanging something on it), so they'll be fixed eventually. Other times, new features like this are added to benefit the community (such as the addition of allowing you to put items in the hallways of apartments). As with all thing, remember, Entropia Universe is dynamic. What works today might not work tomorrow. What does not work today, may work tomorrow.
Window shopping.
It's always a good idea to shop around before spending a lot of peds on something with a high markup. For instance, some mall shops in PA offer great prices on Ghost Armor. Some shops in Omegaton offer awesome prices on blueprints. Shop around. The auction is the fastest place to buy something, but that speed sometimes comes at a price... Why pay more for something when you can get it cheaper if you just hop on a tp and walk 20 feet to the nearest shop.
Monopoly Board
Finding places next to one another can take a long time and be nearly impossible. If you are looking to do as I did and buy a booth next to a shop, expect to pay a pretty penny for the estates since you'll probably have to pay buyout price on auction, if the place you are looking for ever does show up on auction. The SFE bought a whole row of shops in Treasure Island and I managed to buy a booth next to a shop, so it's possible to get this sort of stuff. It just takes time, brains, and connections to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Use your brain, and be patient.
Signs
Signs use one item point usually. Most screens & displays (other then the ad terminals like the one hanging in my shop) use more then one item point. This is true for all types of signs, even the big gigantium and megaview ones. If you are a shop owner trying to maximize the number of items you are selling in your shop, this is a really important fact to take in to account. If you are looking for a sign to upload your own jpg file to, be sure to get a PC (Parcipant Content) sign since non PC signs displays and screens only show MA's own backgrounds, not backgrounds you upload. Theres a list of MA's backgrounds over at https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...-backgrounds&p=1426687&viewfull=1#post1426687
Max out markup
Patience is a virtue. If you are looking for some particular item, armor set, etc. it can help you save a few peds by being patient as prices on auctions fluctuate day to day, and prices in various shops do too. Shop around before you buy something... but also be aware that some items like Relaxed Woman Statue, Gigantium Sign (PC), Megaview Sign (PC) and Ad Terminal are very rare, so if you see them on auction, you want them, and buyout price is right, you might seriously consider buying at the buyout price before someone else does. This is also true of certain estates. If you know you want an estate in a certain location, you might have to pay a premium price to get it in the location you want it as the seller may know you are wanting something particular, so they have a bit of leverage on you sometimes... be careful with who you tell what since knowledge is power sometimes. Also, be aware that others are being careful in that regard too, which is why some folks come off as anti-social when in fact they are not really anti-social, just trying to protect their assets.
FEES (Thanks Nihilist)
Here's the Exact formulas:
Auction Fee/Commission = (0.5 + Markup * 99.5 / (1990 + Markup))
Shop Tax = (Markup * 49.75 / (1990 + Markup))
That works out to be something like this:
Code:
Markup - Auction Fee
0 PED - 0.5 PED Markup Taxes on shops tax markup / auction markup
5 PED - 0.74 PED +5 0.12 0.162162162
10 PED - 0.99 PED +10 0.25 0.252525253
20 PED - 1.49 PED +20 0.50 0.33557047
30 PED - 1.97 PED +30 0.74 0.375634518
50 PED - 2.93 PED +50 1.22 0.416382253
70 PED - 3.88 PED +70 1.69 0.43556701
100 PED - 5.26 PED +100 2.38 0.452471483
150 PED - 7.47 PED +150 3.49 0.467202142
200 PED - 9.58 PED +200 4.54 0.473903967
300 PED - 13.53 PED +300 6.52 0.481892092
400 PED - 17.15 PED +400 8.33 0.485714286
500 PED - 20.47 PED +500 9.99 0.488031265
700 PED - 26.39 PED +700 12.95 0.49071618
1,000 PED - 33.77 PED +1000 16.64 0.49274504
1,500 PED - 43.26 PED +1500 21.38 0.494220989
2,000 PED - 50.37 PED +2000 24.94 0.495135994
3,000 PED - 60.31 PED +3000 29.91 0.495937655
5,000 PED - 71.67 PED +5000 35.59 0.496581554
7,000 PED - 77.97 PED +7000 38.74 0.496857766
10,000 PED - 83.48 PED +10000 41.49 0.497005271
20,000 PED - 90.99 PED +20000 45.25 0.497307396
100,000 PED - 98.05 PED +100000 48.78 0.497501275
9,999,999 PED - 99.98 PED +9999999 49.74 0.4974995So as you start out at +1 Shops save you roughly 16% as a shop owner vs being an auction seller... since both auction fees and taxes are usually passed on to customers. As that number grows you start to approach 50% savings, but never quite make a full 50% savings. If these calculations are right, it just goes to show that MA gets about 2x more out of it's cut of auction sales than Land Owners get ouf of shop taxes, and shows that it's cheaper, in the long run, for shop owners to sell in shops than in auction, assuming they can get regular repeat customers.... which isn't as easy to do as it might sound. However, it's usually easier to do then having to constantly relist items in the auction, especially since the auction has a low limit on the number of items you can list at one time (Not sure on exact limit, but I think it's 30?).
I might add more to this posting later if I get a chance. Happy shopping! Good luck!
P.S. feel free to post your opinions of various estates, what you think is a better value, etc.
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) are even cheaper to get.
