If you’re like me, you’re always… well not doing so awesome on cash because crafting eats it all.  Never fear!  I have some tips.

Crafting supplies – don’t buy them at the vendor on the fleet!  Sure, you CAN, but it’s much cheaper to send your idiots out for them.  Problem is that those missions are not always available, so you have to make sure to grab them when you can.  A little planning ahead will save you money on fluxes and filaments down the line.

In fact, never buy materials.  Materials are rarely for sale on the GTN, I’ve found, and when they are, they are grossly overpriced.  Be patient and just farm them up yourself using your minions.  If you keep your minions constantly busy in the background while you do other things, this should never be a problem, and you’ll always have a healthy stockpile in the bank.

Physical farming runs may not save money.  So, you think, why pay to send out the minions when you can trot out to Belsavis and farm up the stuff yourself on your speeder?  Because time is money, friends.  That time would be more profitably spent doing dailies, which will more than pay for the minion trips.

Keep your minions busy.  Always.  An idle minion is not earning his keep.  If you farm up extra materials, you can always sell them.  Or you can send your minions for companion gifts for easy cash, which leads me to…

Companion gifts always sell.  If you are in a rut, you can always farm up some companion gifts and sell them for a quick buck.  This can be in conjunction with bribing your minions (as detailed below).  Farm the gifts, use the ones the minions like as bribes, sell the rest.

Bribing your companions is an investment in your future.  Sure, it’s expensive now, but when they’re critting left and right, you’ll be happy you did.  And I’m not talking about critting augment slots.  I’m talking about critting gathering missions or crafting extra stims, augments, or mods.  If I send out my minions slicing, the ONLY useful thing they bring me is a purple augment part when they crit.  If I queue up 5 augments and I get 8 (this happened), I have just saved a shitload in extremely expensive mats.  So my lifeblood is crit, pump it up as much as possible!

Get a crafting sensor unit for your ship droid, which is also an investment in your future.  Crits are crits.  You don’t have to buy the droid that sells the sensor for a million credits – just hitch a ride with someone who does and pay 100k for each unit that you want.  You can mail them to you alts because they are bind on legacy, so it just takes one stowaway voyage.

How do you keep your expenses manageable as a crafter?