When I first started crafting, it was a HUGE money sink. In fact, until very recently, it was still a huge money sink. I had to run dailies just to fund my crafting. When the new recipes came out in 1.3, it was a struggle to snap them up on the GTN and still have money left over for other things (like raiding repairs and augmenting my raid gear). With the average new recipe going for upwards of 25k, and I have to get oh… 200 of them, well that’s ugly.
The rarity of the recipes, however, is the reason why I’m actually able to make money right now. I did manage to snap up some good recipes (some of them cheaply!) by checking the GTN obsessively and running a scattershot of underworld trading missions.
Now I’m able to support myself by making the new gloves, boots, bracers, and belts and putting them up for sale on the GTN. They’re actually selling like hotcakes. Sometimes they come back to me unsold. If they come back more than a few times, I mark them down and they still sell for well over the cost of materials.
So I have some tips for those of you who are tired of doing dailies and want to be self-supporting with crafting.
Variety. I can’t stress this enough. Someone looking for the perfect belt to complete their outfit wants to have a selection of belts. It may be tempting to just crank out 10 of the same thing, if it’s popular, but I’ve found that in any given 24 hour GTN-cycle, there are not 10 people who want the exact same fashion item, regardless of price.
Also, if you have a scattershot variety, you can’t be undersold on every item. If you make 10 of the most popular item, there will be some other jackass who decides to severely undercut you on that one item, and that’s that.
Price To Move. Don’t undersell yourself but don’t get greedy! If it takes more than a few days to sell something, you’re pricing it too high. Better to sell a higher volume at a lower profit margin than to wait for that one big sale. It will never happen.
Happy Crafting!
Nice. I’ve actually been working myself into the poor house the last few days while crafting. Gotta level armormech so I can make the Rakata belt/bracers for that op who’s 40 right? And then I might as well make boots, bracers, belts, and barrels for my lowbie funslinger and a guildie of the same class. And you and your augment talk, plus a recent return to tanking, has me working on mk 6 augment slots for my columi tank set. I have had some luck selling things I didn’t expect to on the GTN. Who knew that crafted non-orange gear sold? You apparently. Keep up the good blogging.
These are pretty nice tips. For me, crafting is still a money sink. As a biochem, I suppose I should make stims and such, as those will be what raiders will be looking for. It’s pretty easy to barter for better implants than I can craft (although some might want to buy the crafted ones for their companions).
I suspect that biochem will be profitable until the end of time, unless there’s some jackass who is cornering the market with low prices. People will always need stims to raid.