Merching Dead?

[Teryaki]

well lately ive noticed the profit on items completely blows.. pretty hard.

 

heres a couple merchs ive done recently.

 

Dragon claws

Sara Sword

All godswords

all bandos pieces

all armadyl pieces

fury

DFS

 

(ALL BOUGHT IN SETS OF 10)

 

ive recieved at max a 500k profit from the 10

 

usually only get 200-350k no matter how much the cost is..

 

taking an avarage item like claws

 

275,000/17,000,000 = .16% profit

 

back in the day 1-2% used to be bad..

 

and anything above 5% was good...

 

now the profits dont even get halfway to the bad "back in the day"

 

 

please share your experience... idc about wat items... ofc if u want to share the items u use thats okay

 

but maybe someone will give me a bit of hope to keep merching til it gets bettr... :)

[Naraku893]

Those are not good items

[Teryaki]

maybe not for merching, but if ur impatient like me... then those are good "FLipping items"

 

 

my mistake, shudve called the topic "Flipping dead?"

[Amethyst_Gem]

My profit has been varying wildly. A few days ago all my 7 regular items (of which I typically do 4-5 at a time) were getting profits of 0.2% or less. At the moment though I'm getting around 2% profit on 3 of them.

 

Before I had usually got a consistant 0.6-1% profit from all 7.

[ilovecuttingyews]

It's been long enough since free trade that everyone knows about the new restrictions (or lack of restrictions) on the GE. That sends lots of people flocking to the GE to flip which means people are going to keep undercutting everyone elses profit margins in order to have their offers filled first. I've seen this with yews. I used to flip at 5-6 gp margins, but it's been slowly narrowing down to 1-2 gp splits.

 

It's not dead, just lower profit margins per item. Just do more items / hour.

[guitar_god_2007]

I've been merching the same group of items for 4 months now, each day per bulk i sell i make a minimum of 2.9m

It really depends on the items you try and merch. Remember the higher the value doesn't always mean the better the outcome

[Teryaki]

okay thx everyone ill look out for new items.. if anyone wants to pm me and help me trhough it, it will be appreciated :)

[BBK]

Because you can now sell instantly after buying a lot more people are flipping than there was pre-free trade, that's why the margin is really low on obvious items because everyone is undercutting each other to flip faster. I assure you flipping can still make decent money but you have to think outside the box for items not many merchers would think of and you have to keep up too, prices can change in minutes.

[codecRS]

the only ways to make serious cash in game now is staking and dicing.

[RS_Qet]

taking an avarage item like claws

 

275,000/17,000,000 = .16% profit

 

 

 

It's 1.6%, which is actually not too bad

I partially agree. At the moment I'm finding it hard to make a decent profit (usually like 2-3m on a 20m initial investment over a day with checking a few times over the day). That's because I usually use items that are newer, which there aren't many of - apart from the whip vine which is just crazily unstable.

Merching now is a lot easier than it was when trade was restricted in my opinion.

[SanNo1]

taking an avarage item like claws

 

275,000/17,000,000 = .16% profit

 

 

 

It's 1.6%, which is actually not too bad

OP may correct me on this, but I believe that he bought 10 items, so the profit would be .16%, as stated.

[RS_Qet]

taking an avarage item like claws

 

275,000/17,000,000 = .16% profit

 

 

 

It's 1.6%, which is actually not too bad

OP may correct me on this, but I believe that he bought 10 items, so the profit would be .16%, as stated.

If that's the case my bad!

0.16% on 10 items is awful though :o

[Assume Nothing]

I wouldn't consider merchanting/flipping 'dead', it's just less effective per flip. Bare in mind that 'back in the day' flipping required waiting for 4 hours between buying and selling, whereas you can do another flip instantly after selling these days.

 

I would point out that flipping becomes more risky with freetrade, and typos are very deadly (if the demand isn't sustainable). Hmm

[Teryaki]

yeah i ment for 10 items the profit is .16%

[RachelLeuthauser]

Merching Frost Bones is certainly dead. The demand for them are gone, and it's mainly merchants buying off each other for profit. That's aside from the bot situation, which further causes the price to crash.

[Rudyaard]

flipping has never been more alive for me....

Easily pulling 3-5m/day this past week (50m~ish bank)

[Pete Party]

Those percentages say nothing to me, how much % profit do you have at the end of the month?

[Viv]

Those percentages say nothing to me, how much % profit do you have at the end of the month?

yea or per day - makin 275k off 10 items in 2 mins is different then making 275k off 10 items in 6 mins or 15 mins or -------b4 free trade u had to wait 4hrs lol

 

some days are better than others - i dont merch much tho =p

[NoHopeLeft]

Market saturation is a huge problem now, once you have bought all items at one price and sold at another, all offers will need to be higher and lower, respectively. Eventually you make 1gp per item if you but too quickly.

[jijilentosmi]

I've got a list of about thirty items which I've found to be "decent" for flipping, I normally do 2 flips on my favorite six, assuming they aren't terrible profits at the time. After the two initial flips, I normally switch to new items and just cycle through until I'm tired of flipping. I don't flip constantly, and I find my best profits to be between 2am-8am EST, but accumulating a list and going that way makes it harder for other merchants to curb your profits. The list method is pretty effective, because you don't have to think on the spot and you've always got a bounty of items to use, but, like others have noted, think outside the box. Guthan's Helmets and Dragon Hatchets aren't going to cut it anymore.

[meili]

Ok thanks to the OP and everyone else who left comments. I have had very disappointing results with some flipping lately and I thought it was just me because I'm not an expert at merching at all. :) So it's nice to see that this is happening to other people, too.

 

Not say that's its dead exactly, just not as easy as before when would just get easy gp quite fast.

[tuggernongy]

As others have said, look for different opportunities in the GE, and try thinking outside the box a bit. :)

[gspbeetle]

I am truly surprised that you all do very short term investments.

It is very risky and this isnt a good practice at all in any markets, unless you know the next big thing is going to happen shortly and you arbitrage.

Like any investment adviser would tell you, have a look at the price trend before you put your money in.

[LitterBug]

TBH, those items are very "wanted/known" flipping items.

Generally, you want to have some market power (buying for min/a little over and sell for a little under max). These items (in my experience) seem to be not the ones that people need every day but rarer items.

Also, go for items that people wouldn't normally flip. Easy to flip items (like armors/weapons) are good for people inexperienced with flipping but they also have a bad turn over/gp ratio. Simply since it's so easy and everybody can do it.

 

However, I'm only speaking for what I've been doing.

I started off with bandos and I was making about ~3-4 mil a day while training for most of the day. However, that profit was cut pretty soon because it seemed like everybody was getting into barrows.

After reading a few guides, I started flipping items that aren't super common (i.e not the most daily traded items) and went for random items. This produced way better profit (although for some of these items, it required that I be at the GE pretty often).

[LitterBug]

I am truly surprised that you all do very short term investments.

It is very risky and this isnt a good practice at all in any markets, unless you know the next big thing is going to happen shortly and you arbitrage.

Like any investment adviser would tell you, have a look at the price trend before you put your money in.

 

Have you ever had any experience with flipping? Or merching on RS at all?

Because truly, short term investments is EXACTLY how you make money.

If you try to go for long term investment - chances are extremely high that you will lose money (unless you're super duper rich and you're just buying phats/halloween masks/santas/etc)

If you don't believe this, randomly think of 5 items and check up their 180 day price change on the GE. I'm pretty sure all of those 5 items will have a negative price change (and if its positive the price probably started at 5 gp and rose to 7 gp or something along those lines.

 

Price trend may not always be an accurate depictor of what is a good/bad trade. Unlike the stock market where you're forced to sell at exactly the market price, the GE gives farm more leeway. You can change your price inbetween and I've experimented with items that have pretty stable price trends but they can offer amazing profit as well.

Also, the GE trends are based on the average of prices that an item goes through. If you're flipping, you're buying low and selling high. The average of these two are way closer to the median and as a result, you wouldn't change the GE median much which then distort the trend you would like to see.