Ethics and Concideration.. a Dwarf smith seeks advice

[Radasar]

Just a question
I'm an aspiring dwarven smith, and I have spent the better part of the last four months or so, slowly skilling up till now my smithing is 190, and I am trying to break the dreaded 200. I am making enchanted dwarven armor, mostly the breastplates because they have the highest trivial, and I figured they would at least bring my skill to over 200 the fastest. On the Bristlebain server, everything but the BP seems to sell slowly or not at all, so I have concentrated on the BP, and its costing me about 230pp per attempt, and Imbued armor seems to limit the sales because its Brell Serilis only. After many days of hording platt I made my first 20 attempts at the breastplate, and I find myself sitting on 19 out of 20 successes, and no skill increase. I am catching flack from other smiths in the bazaar for having so many BP's on sale, I am hardly wanting to ruin everyones chances to make a sale is there another way to break 200 from 190 as a dwarf, w/o trying the acrilia route, windstones are too rare for the tempers, and Imbuing Rubies just adds to the cost per attempt, Ive been killing elementals anywhere I can find them, and Iron oxide if far more common and has done wonders for paying for my smithing to this point. I just want everyone to have fun... any ideas?

[KennyCelican]

I would say you're not doing anything 'unethical' by selling what you've created.

You've made a lot of breastplates. Apparently you put out the cash, you beat the RNG, you have the goods. It is now up to you what you wish to do with them.

If you want to destroy them all, you can do that.

If you want to sell them all for double market value, you can do that.

If you want to sell them all AT market value, you can do that.

Heck, if you want to sell them below current market value, you can do THAT.

There was a big discussion on this in one of the old forums, the General Discussions or the Primal Scream, if I recall correctly (Lilosh? Do you remember? The one that had the really nice commentary on EQ Economics?)

What it boils down to is that having acquired the breastplates, you may now do with them what you wish, and others are free to not like it, but that doen't make what you do unethical.

In my personal opinion, selling them for below what the components cost you is unkind, because it actually kills the market by making people expect really unrealistic prices, rather than watering it down by making them expect lower than current market prices, but even if you DO sell below cost, the other sellers have the option of buying up all your stock and reselling it themselves if they want to keep the price up. If you ARE selling it for the cost of components, you're doing THEM a favor.

That about covers it, I think...

Did I miss anything, short, furry, and Lolishy?

[HoshiAdam]

AFAIK, there is no hard evidence suggesting that higher trivial items give a better skillup rate.

You might try only having 2 or 3 in your visible inventory on your merchant, instead of all of them. That gives buyers the impression that it isn't overly common.

Undercutting...Personally, I wouldn't undercut a product like cultural armor, it ruins the market for others.

[Glatius2]

My recommendations are as follows. Have no more than about 3 of the breastplates in your trader inventory, have the rest hidden. Its possible you'll sell two breastplates in a day, very unlikely you'd sell all three. And that way you don't make the availability of the item seem too common (perceptions are more important than reality in some cases). You'll also help to limit the number of people who try and bargain you down on your price.

I would also MATCH the lowest priced BP of the same type available in the market when you're selling. If after a few days of this you sell NO breastplates, you can consider whether or not the person you're matching is selling too high and perhaps lower the price a bit. Just keep in mind that once you lower the price people will expect the new price to be the price of BP of that type and you'll be forcing all smiths to lower their prices to match or go with out sales (as long as you have inventory anyway). Be thoughtful about price reductions. And price wars are evil.

There are always going to be a limited number of people buying that type of BP at any one time. Making the price too low won't necessarily sell more BPs, it may just lower the price. Be reasonable with what you charge but don't undercut the market dramatically or you devalue it.

These are of course my recommendations. They are meant to be a reasonable compromise between making a little plat and keeping the items moving from your inventory at a steady rate while doing minimal harm to the market and other smiths.

[KennyCelican]

A question: When you say 'Undercut', do you mean sell at a lower price than the rest of the smiths, or sell at lower than cost?

Selling lower than current is my stock in trade.

There isn't much of a tradeskill community on Vazaelle. Not no tradeskillers, but most do for themselves and guildies and friends of guildies. Most of the non-tradeskillers (of whom there are many) mock me for trying to work on tradeskills at all, whether in friendly jest at my hobby or in outright lack of understanding at why I'm not 'paying attention to the fun bits'.

In any case, that means that MOST of the items being sold are not being sold by the original creators, and as such have been marked up substantially, as the BIGGEST markup in any given retail transaction is the final vendor - to - consumer markup.

That and a limited sale time window leaves me in the position of having to work the economy of scale - I provide the final vendors with much of their stock, by selling at roughly double the cost of materials. I was actually suggesting that our Dwarvish friend try suggesting THAT to his detractors - that they buy his BP's at or near cost, then they make a profit with no risk, and he gets to skillup the way he wants to, rather than the way they'd like him to.

Now, I'm not at this point evaluating the efficiency of BP's as a skillup vector, someone else would probably be a better judge of that. I'm just commenting on the ethics of the situation.

[Lilosh]

My name is Lilosh, NOT LOLISH


L I L O S H


And yes, while kenny is correct in saying that you can do with your successes, The rest of the server is free to call you a rat fink if you undercut them all. So long as you arent undercutting and killing the market, I see not problem with you having 19 Breastplates for sale.


If the other tradeskillers on your server dont like it, tell them to buy some from you.

<grin>


-Lilosh

[Radasar]

How does one define undercutting
It seems reasonable to me that if the mark up is based on the actual cost of the attempts, how high do you have to go?
The "rate" most people seem to want is 10 times materials cost, as a part time player, this seems hugely excessive
but lower skilled people seem to need that in order to make back their cost
if the my mark up is 400% (as a sales rep this is horrifically high to me) but still 1/3 the desired prevaling rate? is that undercutting and ruining the market?

[Glatius2]

Here is how I would judge undercutting, at least for an item such as a Breastplate. I look at the stats for the BP in question. I check on the prices for droppable BPs of similar caliber. For example, just for discussion, on my sever a Barbed Ringmail tunic typically sells for between 3 and 4k. I then look at what the current market price is for the BP I want to sell, factoring in my costs.

I pay over 2k in materials costs? I'm probably going to want to make about as much someone would for a Barbed Ringmail tunic, if the market will support that. I'd use that price as a starting point. Other smiths selling the BP for more? I'd consider if that seemed reasonable. I might even match their price for a while, just to test the market. However, if I ended up lowering the price to be more in line with the Barbed Ringmail, this wouldn't break my heart.

I pay around 1k or less in materials? I don't have to sell at the Barbed Ringmail price to do well. If other smiths are selling over that price, I probably would match the Barbed Ringmail price. If they were selling under, I'd match their price.

I consider it undercutting when once you've done this kind of research and comparisons between droppable and tradeskill items, and determined that the current price for the smithed item isn't hugely out of line, you go ahead and drop the price substantially anyway, say by 300-500pp or more, just to get them out of your inventory.

You can do this. Don't expect to make many friends in the process.

[Angelsyn]

Pricing on Cultural BPs is easy, IMHO.

How much does a Barbed Ringmail BP go for on your Server?

An Enchanted Brellium BP should go for nearly that much, because it's just as good... with a more limited market.

How much does an Acrylia BP go for on your Server?

An Enchanted Brellium BP should go for nearly that much, because it's better, but again a more limited market.

On Xegony, Acrylia BPs are 2k, Barbed Ringmail BPs are 2-3k. I price Mithril (Enchanted or Imbued, emeralds are relatively cheap) at 1800pp. I would price Brellium BPs at 1800pp also.

Of course, on Xegony the market for Brellium Plate is heavily contested and the prices fluctuate like crazy. I'm glad that's not true with the Mithril! :D

[Radasar]

Ah, I see, I have been basing my costs only based on the materials cost, I am not all that familiar with the droppable equavilents, Most of the armor I wear, I made, and only recently starting using a weapon I paid for. The comparable gear has always been so expensive I never could afford them, and cant even now
No item I have has cost over 500pp to make, my main weapon is a polearm I paid 400pp for and that stats on that far exceed anything the armor has. I just think that if you want an item that drops, go kill the mob that drops it. If an item is made, the price is based on the materials cost.

[Angelsyn]

Ah, I see, I have been basing my costs only based on the materials cost, I am not all that familiar with the droppable equavilents, Most of the armor I wear, I made, and only recently starting using a weapon I paid for. The comparable gear has always been so expensive I never could afford them, and cant even now
No item I have has cost over 500pp to make, my main weapon is a polearm I paid 400pp for and that stats on that far exceed anything the armor has. I just think that if you want an item that drops, go kill the mob that drops it. If an item is made, the price is based on the materials cost.

Ah... the joys of innocence. ;)

I'm an Accountant, trust me on this.

For many people, it's just not possible to go out and kill the mob(s) that drops the item(s) they want. So, that's where Pharmers make their money.
Tradeskillers make their money by making stuff that's nearly as good, as good, or better than what the Pharmers can bring in... and selling it for "the price that the market will bear".

Honestly, some things are sold at a marginal profit (Opal Steins, for example) while other things are sold at an incredible profit (Heraldic Plate, for example).

It's all about perceived value and market awareness. This is why so many say things like "Only put 3 or 4 BPs up for sale at a time". Once "the market" perceives that the goods you're selling are plentiful, they'll expect the price to be low.
When goods are rare, people expect the price to be higher.

Just look at what happened with Windblades! For a short time they were down to 20-30kpp... now they're back up to 65-90kpp! All because of the perception of rarity.

[Glatius2]

If an item is made, the price is based on the materials cost.

If everyone could make the items for materials cost, then you'd have a valid point. However, gaining a trade skill takes time. Gaining a trade skill takes tons of dedication. Gaining a trade skill takes thousands of combines. Now, you'd like to get to 250 skill in smithing I assume? Consider that if you purchased your materials at a cost of 1000pp per combine. And you charged only 1200pp per BP. You'd make 200pp per BP you sold, correct? That might seem like a reasonable enough profit to you and if you're happy with that, thats fine.

But consider, how many BPs will you have to sell to get enough plat together for an additional combine? You'd have to sell 5 BP as a profit of 200pp each to be able to afford a 6th combine beyond the 5 you started with, correct?

Now, if you increase the price to 2k per BP, and this was not unreasonable for your server, how many BPs would you need to sell for that extra combine? Answer, 1.

Each BP would gain you enough profit to make an additional combine beyond what you started with. If you sell each of those 19 BPs for 2k each you have 38k for additional combines, rather than 22.8k for combines. And if you were going to sell the same 19 BPs anyway for either price, which would benefit your goal more?

What I'm saying is, if you're giving reasonable value for the price you're charging and the price you're charging moves you closer to your goal faster, why wouldn't you?

[wombat]

Hmm its a problem skilling up when you are not a cashed up uber twink, you have to pay your own way and that means selling your armour to players. Unlike Fine Plate you cant sell back to merchants at near cost.

I have a great deal of sympathy for your position as I am in it myself. I dont want to destroy the market but cant progress without sales. I dont have the cash reserves to powersmith on Sickles or sit back and wait on orders for Underfoot and Brellium Plate (am too unpredictable for success anyway on these).

I sell to my guild at adout 50% above cost for old cultural plate and Acrylia Plate, the guilds small races tanks are all brown now LOL! That helps everybody including me (skill ups). I hire out to other guilds to make them Sickles. In your case you arent high enough for Sickles yet.

Cringe, I suggest Shadowscream as an alternative, its horrible but doable, I dont do it due to bank space problems making 4 types of smithing item already (and a dodgy ISP for the no rent stuff). Basically I am 7 skill ups for 360 combines since the trivial patch (226/237) and look like taking to December to get to 230/241 at this rate.

Good Luck! :D

Radodverge of Quellious

[Nizanko]

Selling items for a price related to materials cost was what made early jewelcrafting (i.e., back in '99) completely unprofitable. Now that we have the bazaar, selling items for a price related to materials cost has made things like sow potions pretty much unprofitable as well, since sow potions are really pretty easy to make.

In my opinion, the key is to sell the items you create at a price suitable for the stats the item has. Of course, this only works if there is some rarity to the item - if there are thirty of an armor piece for sale in your bazaar, you're probably going to have to pick a price near the low end of the scale, or you'll end up holding the bag for quite a while. But if the bp's that Radasar is talking about aren't that commonly made - i.e., you are sometimes the only person selling the bp's - I'd try edging the price up as high as you can toward the price people pay for similar dropped items.

I've actually found that if you keep a relatively uncommon item for sale for a price higher than normal, sometimes when the cheap ones sell off, the new market entries will get priced similar to your price. (Again, this doesn't work for very common or very old items, as people come to expect a particular price for them, like 300pp-ish for a CBB, for example.)

Just my thoughts, of course - but I do like the idea of only putting 3 or 4 of your items up for sale at one time :) Just swap out traders' satchels for normal 10-slot backpacks and put your reserve stores in those.

[Girsham]

The most important thing to consider when selling things which you and other tradeskillers have made is that if it stacks up Statwise then it must stack up price wise with all other things available to your target buyer. With the price drop on the Barbed Ringmail Culteral Armour has become harder to market. Remember that if you are considering selling the BPs at below market value (even if only 250p less) you are undercutting yourself in the future aswell. The problem with some people is as they are coming up through the game and are just beginning to see their first real~ sums of cash together 2-3k they may have seen someone trying to quickly get rid of something. They save up to what the 'get rid of it' price is and then expect it to be theirs as soon as they get together the lowest possible price for the item. This may lead to flaming from some annonymous middy-newb (a little level 43 jerk maybe) and who needs that? /rank off /personal expire filter off. Sorry. I just realized how far off point I am now.

[Zeralenn]

If they had 19 BPs, they would sell them too.

Not only is there no evidence that going for a higher trivial will make you skill faster, there IS actually evidence that working on something CLOSER to your trivial level will make you skill faster.

If you think about it, it makes sense, if you understand learning theory (and that it IS applied in this game). If you tell one computer-illiterate person to learn how to use an email program, that person will learn their task quickly. If you tell a second computer-illiterate person to WRITE an email program, however, this will take a lot longer. I believe this is applied to tradeskills as well. If you are at 155 in smithing, you will get to 160 a lot faster making fine plate bracers than you will making shadowscream bracers.

For the trade issue, I will tell the tale of the Great Halas Pie Meltdown on Innoruuk.

My friend is a GM baker and used to male Halas Pies to sell. These generally sold for between 10-15pp each. They are incredibly complicated to make, requiring many sets of steps to create, not to mention farming mammoth meat. In the salad days of the Bazaar, it was an incredibly fast way to make money.

Then a lot of people saw that Money Was Good and they all jumped in. People had hundreds of Halas pies for sale, and gradually they started undercutting one another, first by a plat, then by golds, then actually by silvers. In the space of a couple weeks, the price of Halas pies was driven down from 10pp to 3-4pp each. People had hundreds of Halas pies for sale and literally started trying to be the cheapest by COPPERS.

Many people got out of the Halas pie market because price competition had made the product not worth making anymore. Nobody ended up winning in the end. They were made for JUST above cost -- and at what price is your time?

You may wish to do what I did when I had 20 non-stick frying pans for sale (I made these when the recipe just came out, and yes, I sold all 20). I never put more than 4 up for sale at any given time. Just because you have 19 BPs for sale doesn't mean you have to list all 19.

Part of what you are running up against is the created perception that cultural BPs are common. This is what your smithing compatriots are getting cheesed off about. This WILL drive down the price.

And when was the last time you sold 19 BPs in one night? If you are lucky, you may sell a BP or two. Just don't offer more than a few for sale at any given time and the others won't be so upset.

...Zera

[Radasar]

Thats the point of contention that Im most curious about, If I price my goods based on the per attempt cost, say 200-250 pp per attempt, and sell for 1k-1250, thats a relatively high mark up in my opinion because I make cost, plus 3-4 additional attempts back in sheer profit, which seems reasonable. But they seem to want a sale price of 2500-3k, which is their profit line. Some smiths are trying cultural at 150 skill, which makes the failure rate really high for them, but also means they have not even finished the ornate chain-fine plate stages. I dont have a lot of sympathy for them, I went through those stages, as agonizing and costly as they were.
as for middle newbie, I resemble that, only being level in the low 40's, but then eq isnt about the biggest pile of plat for me, Im tradeskilling because its fun, not becuase I want to get rich off the uber armor, but I want to wear a set I made. At this point, Ive spent enough on trade skills I could have probably have just bought it... But wheres the fun in that?

[Boleslav]

The point in this case is that the market will not be able to absorb all the Dwarven Plate you would make if you used it as your primary skillup tool. There are only so many members of the target audience for that armor. Lowering your price to try to sell more will not accomplish much other than destroying that market for yourself and others.

I hate to say it, but Shadowscream Steel is the best armor to skill up on. Make a full set or so of Dwarven Plate and sell it for CASH profit! Make Shadowscream for skill. Heck, if you are from 40 – 52 you can still get decent experience hunting for some of the components.

Good luck to you!

Boleslav Forgehammer
Paladin of Brell in his 56th Campaign
E'ci – The Twilight Fellowship

[Radasar]

That is what I primarily wanted, Shadow Scream Steel sounds like an option, just how difficult is it to come by the materials? as a mid 40's pally, is hunting for the parts faster than the many hours of enchanting time it takes for the vendor available cultural armor supplies? (not counting tempers and padding)
Ive also concidered simply doing Imbued armor, no enchanting, but rubies are horribly costly, and then just vendor the successes if its not to low, and plain imbued armor is dwarf pally/cleric only, an even more limited market than enchanted dwarven which is small races, plate wearable
if I can go this route, and leave my prices in the range for the other smiths not to lock them out of the market, everyone can be happy
at this point in my skill, I am much more concerned with time vs number of combines than success rate or profit.
Is there a thread on shadow scream somewhere? I havent been able to find it.
I do appreciate all the posts.

[KennyCelican]

My name is Lilosh, NOT LOLISH

L I L O S H

-Lilosh

/blush

Sorry about that. Fixed the post. Thanks for backing me up on this. Based on your past posts in other threads, we don't quite see eye to eye on this, but seems like you and I are far closer to each other than the rest of the board here.

I am tempted to note that the player in question has noted that he considers PP below 1KPP to be a fairly large sum. Ergo he is NOT one of those folks with a huge warchest, or gobs of playtime, but rather someone like myself who has to move the items fast if he's going to move them at all, since he doesn't appear to have a mule account / machine.

I'd say see if the others want to buy them off you at, say, double cost, then let them sell them for full retail price. They get money, you get money, everybody's happy.

[Glatius2]

Ergo he is NOT one of those folks with a huge warchest, or gobs of playtime, but rather someone like myself who has to move the items fast if he's going to move them at all, since he doesn't appear to have a mule account / machine.

I would purpose that often times you won't be able to move the items as fast as you want to move them at any price. Basically because there are only so many people at any one time looking for a Breastplate. Yes, you might get a larger percentage of the sales during those times you're selling if you price them at just above cost. But then you add to deflation making other smiths follow your pricing line or lose sales, and they're no more willing to go completely without sales than you are. Which leads to a downward spiral on the price which crashes the market to where people might actually have to take a loss to sell the item. That just sucks.

You might be better off trying to cut a deal with another smith whereby you sell him your success as a slight increase over cost and allow him to use his mule/trader to sell them out over a period of time. If you don't try and flood him with too many at one time, this might work well.

The point is, selling our successes is what finances most of our further skill ups. Destroying the market to the point people actually end up being able to do fewer skill ups each time they complete a manufacturing batch, just delays everyone's progress. I don't advocate charging people through the nose. Nor do I advocate putting people in a position where they either have to give away their successes or vendor them for gold on the plat.

[Xorshaik]

Maybe you can find some profit weasle to take your stuff just above cost who would be willing to hand on to the stuff to sell at market value and make his own profit.

Pretty sure this is exactly what happenned to me when I sold my KT bracer after getting my Dozekar quest bracer~

[Unnone]

The more of an item you have, the less likely you'll sell it all off. I'd try to vary my skillup attempts among the decent pieces. And you need to familiarize yourself with the dropped items that are competing with your cultural armor. If your bp is almost as good as the Barbed ringmail, but it's restricted to brell dwarves, expect to get about half the price. Restrictions mean it's harder to resell. And if you have 19 bps, that means you have to find 19 brell worshipping dwarves that can't afford barbed ringmail or better. You're going to end up competing with your own product. People who bought your bps are going to upgrade and then undercut you. This is what happened to the Black Acryllia market. The object is to maximize your profit, not maximize your throughput. Keep the cost high, because once it drops, it's very rare for it to go back up.

[Glatius2]

I'd try to vary my skillup attempts among the decent pieces.

I do this as well, although I hadn't consciously thought it through. I keep one of each size acrylia BP, Greaves, Cloak, and Pauldrons on my mule. I don't sell as many of the cloaks or the pauldrons as I do the BP or Greaves, but a sale is a sale and it increases the number of items I can make and hopefully get skill ups on. Focusing on just one or two items, which might sell fairly well, also means you end up flooding the market more or building up more of an inventory back log.

[Guntar Thickneck]

What I would suggest is that you sell the bp's at a price that is similar to the other dwarven smith's prices, or priced near mob dropped stuff with similar stats.

Now this is the big part. With the profits from a bp or two smith smaller pieces that you can still gain skill at and vendor sell them. You will loose some money, but you don't have to wait around for people to buy the items. I checked the sell back price of an enchanted boot last night with a 45 charisma and it was 55pp. With a maxed cha it is probably about 60pp. That covers your folded sheet price (51pp and change at maxed price) with a little to spare for the jointing. When you have to switch to gauntlets you will probably take a bigger hit, but it shouldn't be terrible.

If you do smith and vendor sell make one piece of all the decent stat items and have them for sale. You might as well. You may get lucky and sell them.

If you vendor sell be sure to sell them to a vendor that has his inventory completely full, or one that doesn't show stuff sold to him. This is very important. You don't want to kill the enchanted dwarven market by letting folks buy your sell backs from the vendors.

With smithing it is often very important to make your money on the pieces that are useful and then spend that cash on making skill up pieces that don't sell.

Guntar Thickneck
250 dwarven smith
(hehe haven't done my sig yet)

[Xorshaik]

If you vendor sell be sure to sell them to a vendor that has his inventory completely full, or one that doesn't show stuff sold to him. This is very important. You don't want to kill the enchanted dwarven market by letting folks buy your sell backs from the vendors.


Or sell to vendors you can kill, or sell to HQ ore vendors you can restock (ie poof everything they had from making him respawn)

[Mardark]

You made the stuff. You sell it for what you want. If the other people making the stuff dont like it, tough.

If it costs 300pp to make, selling for 1200pp is not unreasonable. But thats if it sells. I would recommend selling at a price where the product moves, so the next time you do a batch of 20, your arent left holding 39 of them because you matched everyone elses prices.

You are taking the route of selling in volume. So your profit margin may be somewhat less than others. But your overall profit should be more.

If you were to choose to sell at cost, just to get rid of them, thats fine too. It might upset other tradeskillers though. You have to do what makes you comforable. And if the other tradeskillers give you grief, then you have the option of /ignore.

[Glatius2]

You made the stuff. You sell it for what you want. If the other people making the stuff dont like it, tough.

I agree and disagree with this attitude. On the one hand if other smiths think you should price your items at a rate that is unreasonable for the market, then I agree. Too bad for them.

If on the other hand if you are pricing your items so that it destroys the market, making the items essentially worthless garbage, then I disagree.

Keep in mind, you have impact beyond just yourself. You should consider what that impact is before you make rash decisions with long lasting impact. Just because sooner or later you won't need to stay in that market, doesn't mean other people will be as lucky.

And given that I've gotten a total of 8 skill ups since the big cultural patch, doing acrylia plate, I imagine there probably needs to be enough room in the market for a lot of people, since many of us will be in that 188-230 range for a long long time.

[Mardark]

Selling for 4 times your cost to make should usually not crash the market. The real problem is flooding the market on items that just plain ole don't move fast. I had 80 shadowscream boots for awhile. Yup, I crashed the market on em selling them for 35pp each. I didn't hear any complaints. And yes, I know they really werent worth much anyway, just making fun of shadowscream because I hate it so much. If they are going to sell at a rate of one a day, regardless of you selling at 1.5k or 2.5k, then sell at what is best. Thats the hard part to figure out. Some items just wont sell.

But still, if you get filled up on one item, make something else. The shadowscream bracer does not sell at all hardly. Be aware of that. Gorgets do not sell very well either. All the other peices pretty much will sell slowly. I don't make much cultural or Acrylia. Just occasionally when I get components to make.

After the big patch I was at 175, currently at 214 and slowly rising. Almost ready to stop farming, but not quite.

[Eumerin]

The trick isn't so much to move as much product as possible. The trick is to maximize your profit overall.
This doesn't necessarily mean to raise your price to the highest possible that you can sell at. It means to adjust your price so that your net gain is as high as possible, which is a combination of both price per product, and the number you're selling.
As an example, I'll use my recent foray into baking.
Erudite smithing is pretty much non-existant, so I've left mine at 170 (from when banded could take you that high) while I struggle with my tailoring. So I can't use that as an example, unfortunately. However, I recently got my baking skill nice and high and have started to sell patty melts, which I price at 1pp per melt. I got this price from listening in to other posters on the message board.
When I arrived in the bazaar the other night with a stack of melts, I noted that someone had already set up shop, and was selling them for 5g. Despite this, I stuck with 1pp per and left it up while I went to work. When I came back, I had sold 6 stacks of patty melts, which produced a 'whopping' 120pp for me (okay, I know its not that much, but its better than nothing).
There are a few things that are important from this.
1.) Whether the price per patty is 5gp or 1pp probably isn't important to the buyer except at the moment of sale. i.e. most buyers will buy for 5g if they're available at that price, but are just as willing to buy for 1p otherwise.
2.) If I had dropped my price to 5g per, I would have needed to sell twice as many patties (i.e. 240) in order to pull in the same amount of cash, and my cost per patty would have been double, as well.
3.) The fact that I didn't move all of my product isn't that important in this particular case. The guy who was selling them for half my price didn't have as many in his inventory as I sold, which means that chances are, 240 patties weren't sold during that time period, and even if I had managed to sell to every last customer by matching prices, I wouldn't have shown as much gross.
4.) My competitor (actually more than one as I've seen a couple of other people pop up with the same price - then again, there's also the guy that's asking 10pp per. I think he's nuts) is not making nearly as much money as he could be.

At any rate, the point of my ramble is this.
You have the volume to sustain a fairly high number of sales. Try and set your prices up to maximize your net profit, even if it means destroying some of your product because you run out of bank space.

[Skinni Stonefinger]

Just my observations....

I am a dwarven smith and my skill recently hit 239. I can easily make the Underfoot and Brellium BD armor and have sold quite a bit of it so far.

When i was at about 180 skill or so, i made the enchanted dwarven stuff, thats the brellium blocks without the imbued rubies.

I would sell the BP for 1500pp and the rest a little less. I sold a bunch of this armor at that price and made prolly 200k while I went to about 210 in skill.

During that time, pieces of the enchanted dwarven became trivial to me. I stopped making them at that point. At 215 the BP became trivial. At that point, I had dropped my price to 950pp, because of my increased success rates and was still selling a bucnh of them.

Now, because they were trivial, I stopped sellign them and started making the Imbued Enchanted dwarven plate in stead. I made tons of bracers, collars and boots, cause they only needed one sheet and weren't trivial. I would make a few of the other pieces to sell and was selling the BP at 1500pp.

I noticed that since I had stopped selling the enchanted dwarven BP and other armor, that other people had started increasing the price. Just the other day, I saw a BP for 3000pp. I get asked all the time if I will make it, and I say no, its trivial, I would rather spend my hard earned tempers on BD cultural, or the imbued enchanted dwarven that isn't trivial to me at this point.

My point is that you should make whats good for skillups, and sell them at a price that you need to get rid of them, it may ruin the market for a little while, but once they go trivial, you wont be making them anymore, and others can raise the price back up.

Now that I do make the BD cultural, and since there are only two smiths on the server making it, I have talked to the other smith and we set the price on it together. We agree when its time to lower the price, like when BDs started dropping in price.

I hope that helps you and above all, have fun!

[Aandaie]

Just a question
... I am catching flack from other smiths in the bazaar for having so many BP's on sale, I am hardly wanting to ruin everyones chances to make a sale is there another way to break 200 from 190 as a dwarf, w/o trying the acrilia route, windstones are too rare for the tempers, and Imbuing Rubies just adds to the cost per attempt, Ive been killing elementals anywhere I can find them, and Iron oxide if far more common and has done wonders for paying for my smithing to this point. I just want everyone to have fun... any ideas?

Yeah, this is what I'd say when you catch "flack."

"thank you for your concern. However, I tend to mind my own business when it comes to what people sell items for in the bazaar or the quantity of said items."

That is telling them they should do the same, without actually saying so.
It is none of their dang business, anymore than it would be if someone called you on the phone about the house or car you were selling and said "hey, I want to sell my SUV too but your's is priced too low!"

They should be of no concern to you, nor you to to them. That is the entire point of the bazaar, a free market. If they continue to pester you, keep selling in that volume but drop your price to 300 plat or so per BP ;)

[Glatius2]

However, I tend to mind my own business when it comes to what people sell items for in the bazaar or the quantity of said items.

Certainly harassing someone because they don't agree to your pricing beliefs is out of line. If someone wants to come into the bazaar and price their wares 100pp or 200pp below the price I have my identical items selling for, there really isn't much I can say or do except drop the price of my wares 500pp to make sure they don't get those sales. Then they can drop their's a few hundred more pp, rinse and repeat until we are both selling our items for less than it cost us to do the combine, so we're effectively losing money on the deal.

If you have unlimited funds or don't care whether you do your skill ups slower rather than faster, well then there isn't much anyone can say or do. But don't be surprised if it turns out that the one or more of the other smiths has close to unlimited funds too or has such a significantly better skill up success they can afford to sell the items for less and still finance their combines.

It doesn't have to be an you against them situation. Nor does it have to be a trader skiller against customer situation. There is no reason why tradeskillers can't find a reasonable price at which to price their wares and only adjust those prices in response to the droppable market. The only time it becomes a problem is when either you have trade skillers trying to keep the prices unrealistically and unreasonably high to generate excessive profits or you have trade skillers trying to keep their prices just low enough compared to the other trade skillers to make sure they get the sale over the other guy in all circumstances.

How many people really price their wares because they feel a morale obligation to offer their customers the lowest possible price? There may be a few, but they're certainly not the majority.