Merchanting 101 - Nuclear_man2's guide to Merchanting V5.0GE

Fairwell tip.it/runescape, i have decided that I probably wont play again (unless sumoning is really awesome (as i still got like 20+ days for membership). I have learned much from RS. For instance that noobs are really really annoying and that making a buisness can be fun as well as annoying. On that note i have a bit of an anouccement. That I am going into the freelancing buisness (Yes the "steel giant" is gonna have a real buisness. Look out world here i come . I might keep you guys posted on how that goes in a blog topic so keep your eye out for me.

Anyway to all my friends and anyone that knew me Ii bid you farewell. Ill still come by every once in a while. expectally while i still have membership remaining lol. You'll all might like to know that i submitted a last request to jagex to allow merchanting to survive. Who knows if they will listen to the merchant gone freelancer.

-Nuclear_man2

Merchanting 101 - Nuclear_man2's guide to Merchanting V5.0GE

Update: July 4th, 2008.

Yup, doesn't look like I will be playing again. Summoning didn't look to interesting and my membership wore out um, 5 months ago.

As my last gift, I give you this guide. Although most of it is outdated, the GE section might still be of use and the concepts are still very useful and can be applied in may ways. THe most common, is the simple concept that to make a profit, you must sell for a greater price then you bought. There are many ways of achiving this.

Good Luck to all you who arrived after the begining of GE (or as I see it, final thorn in my side that made me leave RS), and Good luck to all those who stayed through the GE, you have my pity... lol.

Long life my legacy. Nuclear Co. an industry that allowed made nearly 100M in profits, with 60M+ in cash, before it started to collapse from GE... My many millions will stay on my account of course, not like I can give them away.

You free to try to hack it, but I doubt it will be of any use, after all, it was only really good at smithing and making a profit using merchanting.

The orginal guide is below, you guys should be happy I still had the orginal.

Ok, its finally done after several hours of typing and debugging.

Merchanting 101 - Nuclear_man2's guide to Merchanting V5.0GE

-Now includes a Grand Exchange section and more (read the Version History section for details).

I also have several Mircosoft Excel Based calculators available by request (PM me your email and ill send them via email.

They are:

-Cash and Profit calculator: Used to calculate how much cash you have, based on sell prices of merchantable items, also calculates profit, (individual item only at the moment, will add a multi item later).

-Cash Log: For tracking how much cash you have made over time (for use with the cash and profit calculator).

And the newest one.

-Exchange Price Log: For tracking exchange prices over time, calculates amount of change daily, monthly, and yearly, as well as the percent change. Which is completed and Availible for use with the New Price Manipulation section.

Guide states here.

Ive noticed a few people have merchanting/moneymaking guides. So I have decided to make a guide of my own. This guide will be mostly for merchanting ores and bars (concepts can be applied to merchanting other stuff), however it now has some other things included that I learned sense I first made the guide.

As of Version 5 and up (V5) this topic has been updated with GE pricing, and merchanting tactics.

This is an highly updated version of an old guide that got buried a while back.

Well This is a very long post (20 pages on Microsoft Word (GE updated added 5 pages, so its 25 pages now)) so I decided to modernize it (with the new BBC code update) to make it easier to use (coding probably added another half page :D and I made the code compact too).

This post is long enough if you read the whole thing you could say that you took Merchanting 101, a class in merchanting. :D

As this post is only updated every once in a while its good to check the Version History and see if its been updated then go threw the guide again (if it has or if you want to :))

Ill try to make it as good and accurate as possible.

I may expand this to a more general money making guide, if I get around to doing more research on the subject (still havent, and probably wont).

You are free to add me in game. My private chat is normally on. I do not ignore people without reason, however I am a busy guy (in game) so it may take me time to reply to you. I will most likely answer any questions you may have to the best of my ability.

In this guide I may repeat myself several times, if I do its probably something important to remember.

In regards to sell prices of ores and bars it would be a good idea to check out my mining company to check current prices (buy prices are about normal, sell prices are on the high/very high end (or extremely high if I really dont want to sell that item)), or better yet check out the Grand Exchange. However I am keeping the General Merchanting section as a reference, however I highly recommend doing research before merchanting (which is a section that I now included: See merchanting research).

Also most if not all examples will use my prices, along with stuff I buy/sell.

With the Grand Exchange now out I should note that it is now much riskier to merchant using the buy iron ore low, sell iron ore high method as prices can drop and if they drop too much you will lose money, therefore I suggest going with the hiring smelters method as its less risky, when it comes to using the exchange to buy and sell, I definitely suggest people read the Grand Exchange sub-section

Note: Now days the grand exchange can replace permanent buyers.

You should at least take a glance at the following information (Opening Information). If you come across a word or abbreviation you dont know what it means you can probably find what it means here.

[hide=Opening Information]A basic explanation of terms

Ea = Each (as in per item), this term is used constantly as most people list there prices as each and not total.

1k = 1,000 gp

1m = 1,000k = 1,000,000 gp (can also be referred to as 1m, 1mil, 1million) There are actually quite a few people with this much cash.

1b = 1000m = 1,000,000k = 1,000,000,000 gp (can also be referred to as 1b, 1bil, 1billion, Note: Im talking about short not long billion (not gonna go into details (not important, and doesnt really affect Runescape) (PM me about this if you really want know))). There are very few people with this much cash as generally only people that have been playing sense Classic have this much cash..

Max of any item: 2.1b (to be exact it is = 2^31-1 (or to be precise 2,147,483,647))

Generally people that have been playing sense classic or that happen to kept a few 100 p hats around or something (and havent been hacked) will be the only ones that have 1b or more.

GE = Grand Exchange

Perm Buyer = Someone who buys constantly (can be replaced by The Grand Exchange)

By request I have added my Smelting and Merchanting method which gains a nice amount of cash while gaining a nice amount of smithing exp. You can find this method under the Smelting and Merchanting Section, this however is not generally more profitable then straight merchanting, but it does make better use of your time (getting exp while making cash). I also now have a cash log (for keeping a record of cash and profits) and an experience log (for keeping track of experience (based on my cash log)) available too.

As a member, I included a Fletching and Merchanting section.

Also I now have an About the Author section, for those who dont know me and/or dont trust me, or just want to know more about me (or the person who wrote the guide).

If you see any errors of any type, quote the sentence or paragraph, post it here and Ill fix it as soon as I can and reply here or send me a PM (even better).

Also if you have any suggestions or improvements contact me the same way as an error.

Heres an idea of how long its going to take you to make a mil based on how much you make a day (can be used for people with 1m+ to make another mil). Figure out how much you have at the start of the day, and then at the end of the day see how much more/less you got. If its less then youre losing money and thats bad :D.

Amount a day Days till 1m gp Profit: 30 days Profit: 12 months

1k 1000 days 30k 360k

5k 200 days 150k 1.8m

10k 100 days 300k 3.6m

25k 40 days 750k 9m

50k 20 days 1.5m 18m

100k 10 days 3m 36m

200k 5 days 6m 72m

250k 4 days 7.5m 90m

300k 4 days 9m 108m

400k 3 days 12m 144m

500k 2 days 15m 180m

750k 2 days 22.5m 270m

1m 1 day 30m 360m

1.5m 1 day 45m 540m

2m 1 day 60m 720m

[/hide][hide=Quotes]I borrowed this quote from the Why are merchants bad people topic I made (its been in-active for a while but hasnt been deleted (as far as I know))

I think merchanting is just as hard as any skill in the game (except farming which i despise) I think it also makes more money than all the other skills... just think while u are makin the money, the noobs callin u a bum r sitting there fishing lobbies and not making alot

(hope you dont mind vppunkrocker (I gave you credit), and I agree with it)

And heres a second quote that was from a PM I got replying to this post.

I agree with your quote from vppunkrocker, I think merchanting requires skill, and I would argue that since you are using real life skills (communication, courtesy, appointment management, etc) that it is even more important than getting lvl 99. Anybody can click a mouse a couple million times, (heck you can program a computer to click a mouse a couple million times) what takes skill (and something you can't program a computer to do) is making decisions based upon what the market is doing, making people happy, happy enough that they will come back to you later, and generally just being able to interact with a human being.

(Hope you dont mind I used that, but I agree with it)

Now adding a part that Death_Dude74 brought up is the fact that getting to lvl 99 requires a certain skill determination. I feel that it mostly requires raw determination, the will to get to 99 even if it takes months or years.[/hide][hide=My philosophy On Merchants And Merchanting]Required Things To Merchant/Is Merchanting A Bad Thing?

I feel that for a merchant to become successful they must be able to do two things. Those things are to buy and to sell what they are going to merchant. You cant make any profit if you cant buy what you want to merchant and you cant get the cash back (plus profit (profitless merchants arent really merchants (at least not very good ones lol)) that you invested (from buying) if you cant sell it, this also causes more problems by preventing you from being able to use that money to buy more stuff to sell for more profit. The more profit you make from this buying and selling and the faster you do it, determines how much cash you make and how fast.

Example: On any given day I make anywhere from about 0gp (if I didnt play) to 2m+ (depending on how long I play and what Im able to buy/sell), this averages to roughly 120k-150k a day (sense I started playing, now days its about 200k-1m a day at a times). Where as someone who might be what you call a worker might make a few k to 200k or more a day (Ive seen a few people mine 2k iron ore a day, however this would most likely have taken hours upon hours of mining). I make more then them cause Im getting so much more then they are, (they may mine 2k iron ore a day and make 200k a day but if I really wanted to and had the cash I could easily buy 20k or more coal which I could sell for 10gp ea profit some other time, this would be 200k, or buy around 10k or more steel bars and sell for 20gp ea fairly easily also making 200k. However the person that mined the 2k iron ore didnt have to spend a few million first to make that 200k, just maybe used 32k or less to buy a rune pick. Which if you figure 32k to make 200k thats 525% profit (200k / 32k * 100% - 100). Where as if I paid 190ea for 20k coal which I sold for 200ea thats 20k * 190ea = 3.8m I paid 3.8m to make only 200k thats only 5.3% profit (sell price/buy price*100%-100). However to buy 20k iron ore from miners (not merchants) I may have to buy from anywhere from 10-40 different people. That didnt for the most part have to pay anything to get that cash. Which is why I think merchanting is a good thing.[/hide][hide=Index]

Section 1: General Merchanting

-Merchanting: Why Merchant (why should I do this?)

-Merchanting: Getting the cash (merchanting requires a nice amount of cash to start)

-Merchanting: 250k-1m gp (making your first million)

-Merchanting: 1m to 5m gp (getting up to 5m)

-Merchanting: 5m to 10m gp (getting up to 10m)

-Merchanting: 10m+ (going farther)

Section 2 (Smelting)

- Smelting and Merchanting (Getting some smithing exp while youre at it)

- Smelting and Merchanting: 250k-1m (getting your first million)

- Smelting and Merchanting: 1m+ (going farther)

Section 3: Fletching

- Fletching and Merchanting (getting some Fletching exp while youre at it)

- Fletching and Merchanting: 250k+ (Geting cash)

Section 4: Company Management

- Company Introduction

- Starting a Company

- Making a Company Post

-- Basic Company Post

-- Adding Stock

-- Adding Misc Workers

--- Smelter Pay Example

-- Max Order and Minimum Trade

- Increasing Organization

- Managing a Company

- Non-Merchanting Companies

- Expanding a Company

Section 5: Appendix

- Merchanting Research

-- When you should do some research

-- Price Researching

- Grand Exchange

-- How The Grand Exchange Works

-- Profit Increasing Methods

-- Grand Exchange Merchanting Methods

--- Armor Sets

--- Individual Items

--- Materials and Finished Goods

-- Exchange Merchanting Math

- Tips (how to get better at merchanting)

-- Buying and Selling

-- Where to Merchant

- Calculations (Merchanting math stuff)

- Scam Prevention (dont get scammed)

-- Common Scams

- Communications

-- Trade Communications

-- General Comunications

-- Being Nice

Section 6: Informatio

Links, Misc Information, and Contact Info

About the Author

- Runescape related

-

- Merchanting Misperceptions

Credits

Version History

Im gonna include a little hint for you guys. I use this index for organization and debugging. With so many uses of the hide code I can get pretty complicated and annoying to organize so I use it to see after each section/sub-section how many /hides I need.[/hide][hide=Section 1]This is the general merchanting section which is as its name suggests very general and can be used with most things, however if you plan to buy and sell using The Grand Exchange then you should probably look at The Grand Exchange section (See Index to locate it), would be much more helpful, not that reading this section wont be helpful.

[hide=Why Merchant?]

Merchants do what they do for a reason. They have a goal. Most merchants do it for some one of the following reasons: They want better armor (or cool looking armor), rare items, or to help level up skills. There is normally a reason other then just to have a million gp or something lying around.

In my case it was rare items and to help level and flashing my cash around is fun too.[/hide][hide=Getting the Cash]First, you need to do is get some cash, after all without cash or stuff to sell, a merchant is nothing really. Around 250-750k is what I recommend 500k is a nice amount. Youre going to have to get a job if you dont have the money. I recommend mining, woodcutting or fletching if youre a member. Check Exchange for prices and look at my Grand Exchange section for ways to go about getting the most out of your grand exchange use. Doing this you can either make 1m or more or you can stop at around 250-750k, exact prices may vary with amount. The more cash the better no matter how you look at it.

Getting around this point its a good idea to count you money as the cash you have plus the sell price of your merchanting items (for me that would be ores and bars). My calculator (check Opening Information) can be used to do this. You can also find my current financial status (sense the last time I updated it) on my Nuclear Co MSC (mining/smithing/crafting) topic, link in the links section.[/hide][hide=When to merchant]You can merchant at any time with any amount of cash; however, the amount of cash you can get a day is greatly affected by the amount of cash you have. The best time to start merchanting is when youll probably make more cash merchanting then skilling. This is normally around 50-200k a day, however, it really depends on your skill levels (rune miners may be able to make more then merchants unless the merchants have about 20-100m or more to merchant with). I tend to find this happens at around 250-750k; however, most new merchants will generally be able to get around 50k or so at this point. Learning to merchant is fairly easy; however, perfecting it is very difficult, The Grand Exchange is a double-edged sword in the since that it can both help and hurt.

I started merchanting with only 8k (not something I would recommend as it took forever to get up to 1m (probably made like 10k a day :( )[/hide][hide=Merchanting]The way I see it there are several types of merchanting. There the normal buy low, sell high (a common misperception is that merchants make like 50%+ profit when really most I know that make a fair amount of cash in a week make about 5-20% profit (and with the Grand Exchange it makes it even harder), not saying we wouldnt rather make 50%+ but there isnt really a reliable way to make that much cash that quickly) (i.e. buying coal 180ea selling it 200ea (about 11% profit) (its and example so Im not gonna update the price). Theres also another type of merchanting (Buying iron and coal and making steel bars then selling the bars for profit (which works fairly well with The Grand Exchange). All forms of merchanting follow a very simple concept, which is if you sell higher then you originally bought you then make a profit. You can also buy ores and make bars (I recommend steel, mith, addy, or rune) and sell the bars for more then the cost of the ores (making profit) (for more see the smelting and merchanting section). Remember too keep your eye out for good/high paying buyers, especially permanent buyers as they will be useful when you have more cash. As temping as it maybe I dont recommend buying expensive armor till you got about 2x as much cash as it cost, cause when a merchant runs out of gp its over, they cant make more cash until they sell (and get more cash). So having the cash can be more profitable.[/hide][hide=Merchanting]This is a point where you should hire people to help you out or be finding permanent sellers. This is a more reliable way of getting cash. Be careful though not too hire too much miners and get overwhelmed. This also might be a good time to start a small mining company (merchanting off of the miners and selling to the buyers of course, possibly even mining your self). This is a fairly good time to consider hiring smelters if you are thinking of buying ores and selling the smelted bars. If you dont have a permanent buyer by now you should really find one. Try looking in the forums. As temping as it maybe I dont recommend buying expensive armor till you got about 2x as much cash as it cost, cause when a merchant runs out of gp its over, they cant make more cash until they sell (and get more cash), which is something to avoid. Just remember not to spread your cash out too thin; having your cash invested in many places can be good as well as bad for different reasons.[/hide][hide=Merchanting]This is a great time to hire people, Miners, smelters. I found I could never have enough at this stage. As I had enough cash that unless the sellers were merchants as well, they could never supply enough fast enough to make me too poor. Just dont neglect permanent buyers. Sell often. As temping as it maybe I dont recommend buying expensive armor till you got about 2x as much cash as it cost, cause when a merchant runs out of gp its over, they cant make more cash until they sell (and get more cash).[/hide][hide=Merchanting]Buy, buy, and buy! Sell, sell, and sell! At this point you got a lot of cash. Even f2p can get this far (trust me I got 26m in ores and bars and cash, while I was f2p). Keep hiring people and keep your eye out for new buyers. At this point I highly doubt one permanent buyer will be enough. Depending on how many things you merchant and how fast you get certain items you may need 20 permanent buyers for something and 1 for another.

Id like to mention that the Members Forum (aka Official Forum) is a great place to sell, people on the members forum generally pay higher then in game buyers, however this makes it not the ideal place to buy from.[/hide][/hide][hide=Section 2 (Smelting)][hide=Smelting and Merchanting]

This is the method I also used at one point in time. It requires that you have the same amount of cash as regular merchanting (250-750k), however, It doesnt make nearly as much (5-50% as much). You may ask then why do it.

The reason is that you get smithing exp as well as cash. This part of the guide will tell how to use this method. Heres how the method basically works. You buy the ores; smelt the bars, then sell the bars, and then use that money to buy more ore to repeat the process. Another way this could be done is to work for some1 who is hiring smelters (I currently am looking for smelters who will be paid ores (and coal) +50gp a bar for steel/mith/addy).

I also highly disapprove of trust trades especially ones that involve a lot of cash. Mind you a trust trade in this case is trading the ores in 1 trade, and then someone smelts them, and then they trade back. I dont like this because it is very easy for someone to steal you ores when you do this, also it can be annoying to keep track of.

Note you can also do this with smithing steel bars into cannonballs which sell for around 180-200ea, you can smelt the iron and coal then smelt the steel bars or you can just buy the steel bars and smith them in to cannonballs.

You could also hire people to smelt cannonballs, giving them ores plus cash, or steel bars plus cash. The cannonball option however is members only due to the fact that only members can make cannonballs, and you have to be on a members world to sell them. Some cases you can also smith, right now I make rune bolts and mith bolts (when I dont have rune to smith). The options for smithing for nonmembers is fairly limited though as anything you make will probably cost you money (however if you make like iron, it wont cost you too much).[/hide][hide=Smelting and Merchanting]First decide what bars youre going to do this with (or start with) weather its steel, mith, addy or rune. I did this mostly with steel. Once youve decided what youre going to make, buy the ores. However, I do still hire smelters today and they make up most of my profit.

Doing research on prices is a good idea as prices change, See the Merchanting Research section for ways of how to go about researching prices (to find it look in the index).

Ok, now remember steel is 2 coal, mith is 4 coal, addy is 6 coal, and rune is 8 coal. It may be a good idea to find a buyer or two before you start buying the ore to make sure that you can sell the price you want and not end up losing money.

Now that you have the ores, its time to smelt some bars once that is done, sell the bars and buy more ores and repeat the process if you want to make more money you should hire smelters to help you out. (1 or 2 smelters should be plenty, but hire the number you feel comfortable with)

Smelters can be paid in any way. Here are some examples on how to pay steel smelters.

1 iron, 2 coal, and some cash (I pay 120gp per bar for steel, 50 for mith and 50 for addy bars (I mostly hire just steel smelters)).

2 coal, and some cash (at least enough cash for the remaining ore).

1 iron ore and some cash (at least enough cash for the coal).

Or you can merchant the steel bars by paying completely in cash; however with The Grand Exchange you should definitely do research before you go about doing it unless you have money to throw around and Id still be careful.[/hide][hide=Smelting and Merchanting]At this point its best just to keep going and hire smelters as you feel you need them. Hiring too many smelters may make some quit (as your incapable of buying). You also may want to consider expanding and hiring smelters to make other bars. Also smithing some bars will get you more exp but cost you cash and/or profit. I sometimes buy iron bars to smith because they are cheap and provide 25 smithing exp (they are only a few gp per smithing exp). Smithing bars can give you smithing exp a nice boost but with a price (mind you getting to 99 smithing on iron bars alone may cost you 10-100m), where as smelting is slower but makes profit (if you research it). Also at this point with all your smelters helping you could be making 1000s or 10,000s of bars a week. So having more then one permanent buyer can help tons and keeping your eye out for more permanent buyers is a good idea.[/hide][/hide][hide=Section 3][hide=Fletching and Merchanting]

This is a good way of getting fletching exp and cash. Also fletching is a very good money making skill on its own. There are also a lot of chances to make a lot of cash. For fletching there are a few main things you can merchant. They are logs, shafts, arrows, arrow tips, headless arrows, bows, unstrung bows, crossbows and bolts there could be more.

Making arrows is a good way to go as it can get you wood cutting exp, tons of fletching exp, and a nice amount of smithing exp, and make a fairly large amount of cash.

However now a days bolts sell closer to the price of the bars then arrows. However you still might run out of cash

Also something I have started doing recently for lots of fletching exp is buying flax nature runes, yew logs (or magic), making strung long bows cheap enough so you can high alch them. This however requires that you have 70 fletching, and 55 magic, and a fair amount of cash (~600k). (There is something similar to this in the next sub-section).

However as always its a good idea to research before you go about merchanting.[/hide][hide=Fletching and Merchanting]First you might want to start off with making your own arrows with getting the regular logs, feathers, and arrow tips yourself (not buying them).

Remember to make an arrow you use a knife on the log, to make arrow shafts then use them on a feathers to make headless arrows, and then use them on arrow tips which you make using a metal bar on the anvil, this will produce arrows of whatever metal type tips you made.

The actual sell price of arrows varies with the metal and how many you have. So it would be a good idea to research prices into start merchanting them.

It might be a good idea to hire people to get you the material you plan on buying, rather then going from seller to seller.

Merchanting feathers seem to be useful if you can buy them @ 4gp or less and sell for 5gp or more, as large amounts of feathers (10,000s or 100,000s) can bring in equally large amounts of cash if you can manage to sell them, however this might be risky if you buy them for too much each.

Also I have a quote here from someone that tells another way to merchant. (I have yet to try this out myself, must research it first (credit is given)).

an ok profit maker that you could add to your fletching guide is :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buy 10k yew logs 250-300ea

 

 

 

Buy 10k Bow strings 150-200ea

 

 

 

(total 4m-5m)

 

 

 

go to the fletching forums and trade for yew longs (s)

 

 

 

then go world 2 seers and sell the yew longs (s) for 550-600ea which is

 

 

 

500k-2m profit sometimes

However since The Grand Exchange this method may no longer be possible.[/hide][/hide][hide=Section 4][hide=Company Introduction]

Making a company is something a merchant can do if they want to. Running a company can be fun, it can also be difficult. Not all companies stand the test of time. My company has been on tip.it for a good year now (sense I joined tip.it (for my mining/smithing company) and has expanded from doing iron ore, coal, steel bars to iron ore, coal, mith ore, addy ore, rune ore, iron bars, steel bars, mith bars, addy bars, rune bars, arrow tips (iron addy), arrows (iron-addy), feathers, bolts (iron-rune) and probably more. I have managed the company (Nuclear Co.) from sense it started up until now, it is the longest standing ore and bar company on tip.it forums (from what I can tell). A company is similar to regular merchanting in just about every way. However a company is more official. They are generally posted on forums (this can attract buyers and sellers). You dont have to be a merchant to have a company. You could be a miner hiring people to help you mine ores to be sold for profit. This can turn into a merchanting company as soon as youre not doing it by yourself (the point where you start to buy from other miners).

There is however a downside, while running a company you may have to take orders for stuff, instead of buying and selling of your own free will, this can be avoided by keeping your prices high enough that a great majority of people will not buy (leaving you to sell to the highest paying buyers), while having a post that will most likely draw sellers, so you dont have to look for them as much.

You may also want to join United Smelters Association (U.S.A), which is an organization founded by me to help company owners get a head start (we also try to regulate smelter pay on tip.it forums, to make sure that smelters and company owners are happy and making money).[/hide][hide=Making a Company Post]With the grand exchange, you may no longer need to have a buying or selling section (selling might be good have it above your normal GE selling price).

[hide=Basic Company post]

There are a lot of things to think about when making a company post. First of all you want your post to represent you. You want it to look good. If you have to scroll down to read your company post then I recommend use of the hide function in the BBC code (this post uses it to make it so you can click to expand).

Then you should figure out exactly what is gonna be contained in the post. Are you going to just have This is _____ Company where we sell ________ and buy ______ with a price list of something like this (I used iron ore and coal as examples).

Sell Prices

Item - price

Iron ore 120

Coal - 200

Buy Prices

Item price

Iron ore 100

Coal 180

That is pretty much as simple as it gets.[/hide][hide=Adding Stock]However maybe you want to show how much of what you got so you might use one of the following methods.

Sell Prices

Item price - stock

Iron ore 120 1,000

Coal 200 0

-OR-

Stock

Iron ore 1,000

Coal 0

Youre free to use the examples above as templates, but its better if you figure out your own design.[/hide][hide=Adding Misc Workers (Smelters)]You might also want to add workers to your company post.

Like smelter pay (used steel, mith bars and cannonballs as examples)

[hide=Smelter Pay Example]

Smelters

bar trade

Steel bar 1 iron ore, 2 coal, 110gp

Mith bar 1 mith ore, 4 coal, 50gp

Cannonballs [ores] 1 iron ore, 2 coal, and 180gp (per 4 cannonballs)

Cannonballs [steel bars] 1 steel bar, 70gp (per 4 cannonballs)[/hide][/hide][hide=Max Order And Min trade]Then of course theres the problem of Max Order and Minimum Trade (least amount of something youll buy). Max order should be set quite low when you first start a company then raised as you get the hang of filling orders/trading with miners, smelters, sellers, and/or buyers. This will help with keeping yourself from being overwhelmed. My min buy is 250, which means I probably wont buy what you have (ores/bars wise) unless you got at least 250 of each item (thats 250 iron ore, 250 coal, not 250 iron, 50 coal)

Now you have buy/sell prices, smelter pay, max order, min buy.[/hide][/hide][hide=Increasing Organization]Now that just leaves the finishing organization, which includes any policies you might have (ie: No trust trades). You may want to consider adding some BBC code to the post (if you havent already). You may want to put an index in the front of it. You may want to put in a company motto or some type of vision statement (if you dont know what this is then you probably wont need one). A good example is my http://Nuclear Co. MSC.[/hide][hide=Managing a Company]Managing a business can be difficult and only gets more difficult as it grows (there are however times where there isnt people PMing you to death.) The longer you do it the better you get. When it comes to talking with a lot of people if you cant handle it I recommend telling all but 1 or 2 people talking (probably the ones that you want to talk to the most) to give you a minute, if nothing else (especially if you forget about them) they will get annoyed and PM you later probably (probably with a lot of ?s or !s (if they really want to sell/buy from you).

This part (Along with the new Company Management section) is still under construction (as theres a lot to making companies and I probably missed something) (this part probably needs most work else everything else is ok).

PM me (visa tip.it), or reply to this topic to make suggestions about what you think exactly should be put in here (what questions you got about company management).[/hide][hide=Non-merchanting Companies]When I say non-merchanting companies I mean companies that dont merchant, (like mining companies, that just mine).

I have added this inside sub-section because a company doesnt have to be a merchanting one. However merchanting ones do tend to make more money.

If your going to make a non-merchanting company you should have a max order in place for sure, especially if your prices are low (see the tips section for the reason behind this (remember merchants may buy off of you, unless you implement a non-merchanting policy (not selling to other company owners), which may or may not be good)).[/hide][hide=Expanding a Company]Sometimes companies require expansion, maybe cause of not enough sellers, or not enough buyers of what they currently deal in. Expending a company can be problematic because it splits your cash between items even more. So my only real suggestion on expansion is to think carefully, and do your research on prices to make sure you make buy at the prices you want to buy and sell at the prices you want to sell for, before you do some.[/hide][/hide][hide=Section 5][hide=Merchanting Research]

Researching is a very important part of merchanting and is one part where a lot of new merchants seem to be lacking it, and enough some well off merchants could improve in.

As Runescapes economy is always changing there will be times researching is necessary.

However one of the best things you can do is to keep your eye out for possible changes in economy (such as the Grand Exchange). Therefore it is a good idea to always read the updates.

[hide=When you should do some research]

There are quite a few times when doing some research can be useful, those times are most likely:

1. When you start merchanting

2. After changes in the economy (such as the Grand Exchange and the update that created pure ess from rune ess.

3. When looking for possible changes in your merchanting strategy.[/hide][hide=Price Researching]When it comes to researching prices there are several key factors you should think about. They are:

1. Possible price changes. You should think about weather the item is likely to increase in price, decrease in price, or stay the same. If you are not sure then perhaps it would be a good idea to keep an eye on the price (the Grand Exchange is rather useful for that).

2. Grand exchange price. You should look into the Grand Exchange pricing, mainly the lowest, highest and market prices, as these will help determine how much profit you will most likely be making.

3. Probable Amount of profit. When it comes to the grand exchange and steel smelters and various other service related merchanting (like trading ores and cash for steel bars), its a good idea to figure the market price of the materials (ores in the example used) for the buy price and the lowest price for the sell price for the finished goods (steel bars in the example used). However these wont exactly be how much you will be making as you can use Profit Increasing Method #1[/hide][/hide][hide=Grand Exchange]With the addition of The Grand Exchange merchanting has become harder so this section is here to hopefully help you merchant using the Grand Exchange better.

I want to start of by defining a few terms Ill be using, that are specific to this section they are:

The buy zone

First, Im gonna discuss exactly How The Grand Exchange Works

[hide=How The Grand Exchange Works]

The Grand Exchange is an automatically updating system that is centered on the market price of items. It is a system that is used for buying and selling pretty much everything and anything that can be bought or sold on Runescape player to player.

The Grand Exchange is something like a stock market, however sense Runescapes supply and demand based economy works a little differently then most and it doesnt work like the stock market

Here are how buying and selling on the exchange effects the market price.

-If the majority of people buy and sell above the market price the price will go up.

-If the number of buyers and sellers are the same and the buyers buy below the market price and the sellers sell under the market price in theory the price should stay the same (however this actually happening for an extended period of time is unlikely).

-If the majority of people buy and sell below the market price the price will go down.[/hide][hide=Profit Increasing methods]#1: Highest profit with rapid buying/selling

-Buying: Start at lowest buy price and then work your way in gradual (for iron/coal you might do 1-5gp at a time, for steel you might want to do 5-10gp at a time), by offering at GE, aborting, then re-offering a little more the next time until you buy what your after, this is a good way to buy something fairly quickly while cheaply. The goal is to buy below the market price.

-Selling: The selling method is basically the same only working from the highest price to lowest price, hopefully selling above market price.[/hide][hide=Grand Exchange Merchanting Methods]Im sure this is the part most people want me to talk about so without farther wait I will now start on the methods Ive thought of or used.

[hide=Armor Sets]

This method I pretty much stumbled on. I was trying to merchant armor sets by buying at cheapest price and when I got to Infinity there was one there already (not a good sign). However I looked into it and the pieces of the armor combined sold for a little more then the actual full armor.

So then this section requires a lot of research as you have to research the prices for the armor as a set and the armor as individual pieces, you mainly looking at the total price for all of the pieces (cheapest selling price to be on the safe side), compared to the lowest buy price[/hide][hide=Individual items]This merchanting tactic will probably most risky as it generally will have the least likely chance of making a profit. However Im gonna tell you how to do it anyway; its at least worth looking into.

What you do is just regular merchanting (selling an item higher then what you bought it for). Very straight forward method however I cant say that it will be that easy. For all those who decide to use this method, good luck.[/hide][hide=Materials and Finished Goods]This is currently my main method of merchanting (not to say the others arent worth looking into).

This method is simple enough as well however you need to do a little more research before you do it.

The goal for this method is to make a profit by selling a finished good (such as a steel bar) for a higher price then you bought the materials for (ores in this case). Mind you can do this method by yourself but you can also hire someone to make the finished good for you (steel smelters in this case). You also have to be at least somewhat wary about the price changes, as you dont want to have to sell your finished goods for a loss because the price for them went down too much or have the materials so long that youd have to sell the finished goods for a loss.[/hide][/hide][hide=Exchange Merchanting Math]This section is dedicated to math related to Grand Exchange merchanting.

Using the Grand Exchange to merchant requires much more researching then before when you could just ask some random person how much something was and you could have a fairly accurate description. So Im making this section (expanding on the Calculations section down below) to be more Grand Exchange orientated.

First I want to show a list of Varibles, which will be referenced in this section.

LP = Lowest price, the lowest price for an item in the Grand Exchange

MP = Market price, the market price for an item in the Grand Exchange

HP = Highest price, the highest price for an item in the Grand Exchange

BR = Buy Range, explained later on

SR = Sell Range, explained later on

First I want to introduce some concepts, which I have devised after some experimenting and just keeping my eye on GE prices.

Buy Range This is the range which you will probably be able to buy something at. It is from halfway between the lowest price and the market price to the highest price. This can be calculated by: [(MP LP) / 2] to HP

Sell Range This is the range which you will probably be able to Sell something at. It is from halfway between the highest price and the market price to the lowest price.

The halfway point between highest and market price can be calculated by: LP to [(MP HP) / 2].

These concepts can give you an idea of the most likely prices you will be able to buy and sell at.

Ok, now as I mentioned before The Grand Exchange prices can change daily, so its not a bad idea to keep track of these changes, as the grand exchange prices where made so they could change. Ill probably start working on an excel sheet similar to my cash log and exp log to keep track of these changes, which I will be distributing after its completed, that will track patterns and help decide whether you should invest in merchanting items.

Keeping that in mind[/hide][/hide][hide=Tips]Merchants have to find the perfect balance the following factors to make the most money in the least amount of time, they are:

Buy Price The price you buy the item at, affects how fast youre able to buy what you can.

Profit How much youre actually making.

Demand How many people are actually buying this item.

Sell Price The price you sell the item at, affects how fast youre able to sell what you bought.

Quantity How many you have (large quantities can both make it easier or harder to merchant (depending on the item)).

Total Cost How much all of 1 kind of item is worth (example: 1000 iron ore) (Amounts of items worth millions of gp (such as like 30,000 steel bars (worth 17.2-18.7m)) would be harder to sell as not many people are able to afford this, however people that would be able to afford that much may pay more for bulk (in some cases))).

New merchants tend to make bad choices in these areas

And the best merchants will find that they have a good balance between them.

The real biggest factor generally is cash, how much cash you have in the first place.

Which is the main difference between people those who skill and people who merchant.

Skillers are able to make a steady amount of cash. Where as merchants vary more, and tend to make exponentially increasing amounts of cash.

Only Fletchers and Rune miners are really able to surpass the average merchant in cash making abilities. However a good merchant with about 20mil+ can probably top it.

Generally merchanting is the only way to go for nonmembers, when it comes to making large sums of money.

You have to adjust the buy and sell prices to suit the situation.

The higher the buy price the faster you can buy the items lowering does the opposite.

The higher the demand the more like your able to profit (i.e. Coal has a high demand due to its used heavy in smelting/smithing in a wide range of levels (Level 30-99).

The lower the sell price the faster you can sell the items increasing does the opposite.

Finding the best item to merchant and the best prices isnt an easy task. It takes a lot of practice. Ive been f2p merchanting sense like March of 05, and a member merchant sense Oct of 06. So Ive gotten quite good at it and have made a very nice amount of money (in my opinion).

Ive mentioned this 3 times already so Im saying it again just incase you missed it. When a merchant runs out of cash they cant make any more cash, its a very bad idea to let this happen, its a good idea to keep about 1/10th of what you got total (merchantable stuff + cash) in cash.

Be fairly firm with your prices. Like your buying price for iron ore could be 100-100ea.

When they ask how much each? Offer 90ea, then haggle down to the max youll pay for that amount and be firm. You should try to buy as much as possible for as little as possible. However sometimes it is better to buy more for more when the profit is high enough. In the end as long as youre still making money its all good. For more on how buying more for more can be better see calculations.

Note I know how hard it maybe but I recommend not giving out more then what you make in a day. (20% of what you make isnt bad) just remember. If you give away all youre money you wont have any cash to merchant with (remember thats a bad thing :D). Also try not to spend more then what you make in a week or so at a time.

[hide= Buying and Selling]

This small sub-section is for helping with buying and selling.

First I would like to state that when merchanting you should have a maximum buy and minimum sell price. This will insure that you dont accidentally buy for more then you sell and lose money. Another thing to remember is that the markets are ever changing so prices can change from about 500 (when I wrote this guide)-625ea (possibly more with inflation) to as much as 1k ea in a day (steel bars when construction came out). Using forums to buy and sell is quite helpful. Also finding the right place to sell is helpful to (for ores and bars Fally east bank world 1, or 3 (or other high people worlds (f2p seems to work best for ores and bars)) is good). As for techniques to buy and sell my advice is to buy and sell as much as possible.

Another thing to remember is opportunity. Just recent I just finished making 150k iron arrow tips which I was going to make into arrows and sell for 25ea when I had a guy buy them for 40ea. Which ended up making me about 3x as much as I paid for the bars to make the tips. So when you see an opportunity to make a lot of extra cash take it. Just remember deals that seem too good to be true generally are [scams], also just recently the update increasing power of crossbows came out, which inflated mith, addy and rune bar prices, I took advantage of this (sense I had bought a few k mith bars previously, and made several million in a few days, also cause bolt prices were up I went to level 89 smithing), however now days its just a nuisance that makes buying bars harder.[/hide][hide=Where to Merchant]I find that it depends on what youre after. If its ores/bars probably Fally east bank. Armor is probably Varrock west. Generally its gonna be close to where its made such as Fally East is right next to a fairly big mine.

Worlds to merchant:

Probably the so called trade worlds (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 22 and so on) are probably the best to buy in bulk. If you want to just buy cheap probably the worlds with low amounts of people.[/hide][/hide][hide=Calculations]First I would like to recommend that you at least be able to add, subtract multiply, and divide before trying to merchant, (as I know not all players are actually 13 or older), this will minimize scamming, help maximize profit, and let you get the most out of this section of the guide, which may include high school level math.

Also incase you didnt know (I use the following symbols):

+ Means addition or plus or and

- Means subtraction

/ Means division or divided by

* Means multiply or multiplied by

^ to the power of (exponent)

There are many ways to maximize your profit

To calculate the % profit take the sell price divide by the buy price [200/180ea-1=0.11 or 11% profit] this can be used to figure out how profitable and item is (compared to its cost)

Such as:

Coal -buy 180ea, sell 200ea

Rune ore Buy 11k ea, sell 12k ea

At first glance it seems like rune ore is the best choice.

However if you do the calculation, the % profit goes as following: coal - 11%, rune ore 9% and so Coal has a higher profitability also the demand for rune ore is fairly low over all (sense very few people can mine it, and even less people can smelt it), also rune ore is fairly difficult to sell @ 12k ea. So coal is clearly better.

Another example is that rune ess can be bought for around 20ea and sold for around 30ea Which is 50% (a high profitability) the draw back is that it has a very low profit (only 10ea) and so unless you can get your hand on oh 10,000s or 100,000s. Youre not going to make much.

When calculating how much cash you have, remember that you should have a minimum sell price and max buy price. To avoid losing cash, dont go over the max buy or under the min sell. Unless youre redoing your prices (setting a higher max buy or a lower minimum sell price. This way you will always be making what I like to refer to as the minimum profit. This is the least amount of profit you can make for that 1 item (this amount tends to differ between items depending on the prices. Such as if the max buy is 180ea and the min sell is 200ea then youll be making at least 20gp per item. There are 2 ways to make this amount greater, they are: buy for less, or sell for more. For vast quantities of something a mere 10gp more or less each can make a big difference.

I have a calculator I made using excel (similar to the tip.it exp calculators) for calculating cash and profit, if anyone wants to see/use it (for personal use), PM me on tip.it forums with an email address and Ill send it there. Ill also include a cash log for keeping track of how much money you make. (They will be set to my preferences when I send them (you can send me information you need added to it if necessary).

Also Remember that sometimes buying more for more can be good, Such as if you buy iron ore 100ea and sell iron ore 110ea. If you like 10,000 iron ore a day you make 100k profit, if get over 20k a day buying 105ea youll be making more then 100k a day profit.[/hide][hide=Scam Prevention.]Scammers absolutely love merchants for one reason: THEY HAVE CASH!

Merchants generally have more cash then most people. (If youve seen me in game youd probably think I was poor (I dont normally wear armor (I got red gloves though and full camo, and probably a fire staff (for superheating rune bars or high alching)), when I actually have several million (sometimes on me), so looks can indeed be deceiving)).

I highly recommend checking the second trade window, often prevents scamming, thats what its there for. Lower levels tend to be less trust worthy. Doesnt mean a level 100+ isnt going to scam you. Also remember if a trade sounds too good to be true (like some1 selling a large amount of something for a lot less then normal) its probably a scam. However people do tend to sell small amounts for less ea then larger amounts, and can buy small amounts for more ea then larger amount, generally this happens with amounts of about 250 or less for stuff around 1k ea or less, and as much as 50 for stuff worth 10k or more (rune ore)).

Also have a working calculator around, to check peoples math, even if they arent trying to scam you their math can still be off, I calculate every trade myself before accepting. Be fairly firm with your prices, and make sure to have a min sell price and a maximum buy price for everything you merchant, and be firm with that price. Chances are your going to be scammed. How much you are scammed out of and how often all depends on you being alert and making sure your getting what you paid for and not being careless. Not really scamming but make sure they you dont over/underpay lol.

I also disapprove of trust trades due to the fact that it isnt very hard for them to scam you and not give you what you wanted in return; also keeping track of who has your stuff can be difficult when you have 50+ people on your list. For those who dont know a trust trade is when you give someone something (such as iron and coal), and have them do something with it (such as smelt it into steel bars), and then give it back. Do this at your own risk and dont blame me if you get scammed as I did warn you. I highly advise the checking of the second window every trade especially when the trade looks suspicious.

[hide=Common Scams]

Here are all of the scams that I know of. most of these wont be as common now probably because of addition of the notification that tells when the trade has been modified (Seems to only appear when the amount has been lowered (probably a good thing)). It also shows how to avoid them.

You should note that when it comes to trading with the Grand Exchange There is no real way for people to scam you, however prices on the exchange may differ from in game prices, however prices in game will generally be cheaper not much higher, however Im gonna list the scams anyway for those who dont use the exchange.

Cash/Item removal: This type of scam is the most common type where the person offers something (weather it be cash or items (generally 100k+) and removes a proportion of the cash (such as going from 1000k to 1000gp). This can be avoided by looking for those red exclamation marks ! telling that the trade has been modified and by checked the second screen.

Distraction: This type of scam is used by offering cash and items (or possible just items) then taking away and/or putting up items while removing a proportion of the cash (or something of high value). This is one to be wary of and is one of the few that might work even with the scam protected mentioned above. - As with most scams this can be avoided by looking closely at the second window.

Differing Value: This type of scam is the hardest one to avoid and requires knowledge. This is where someone says something is worth more then it really is. - The only real way to accurately check how much something is is to see how much people are paying on the Members forum. You can also check other forums as well. However, the members forum is probably the easiest to use (I think). Just go to http://www.runescape.com, go to forum, then search for buying _____ the blank is where you would put what you want to check the price of. Then check what people are paying for it. It is not wise to buy something of value without at least a general idea of what it is worth. As always if the deal is too good to be true make sure that it really is what it says it is. As for extremely high priced items (millions, 10s of millions, 100s of millions you should definitely ask around).

Multi-man Scam: This is similar to the differing value scam only it involves more then one scamer. An example is muddy keys where as someone would saying selling muddy keys like 100k each, and someone would say selling muddy keys 90k ea. You should be suspicious off the bat as if it was really true, the buyer would have bought them It could also be the other way around (selling 100k, buying 90k) anything that your not familiar with you should look up before you buy. Commonly used Multi-man scam items would be: Muddy keys (worth about 10k max)

-Looking for more examples Post here if you know more of more items.

Trust-Trade scam: This is where people say give them x amount of cash and they will give you something of greater value later. This is generally a scam and should be avoided. However if you can spare the cash like you have 100k and he wants 500gp and will give you 100k back later then it maybe something you want to consider, generally if its not something you would giving away then dont do it.

If you know more types of scam post them on this post and Ill add them here.[/hide]

Also you may want to check out Runescapes official section on Scam Prevention and security (to help avoid key-loggers which can be worst then being scammed, and other information I may have missed) which can be found here, this contains even more information.

[/hide][hide=Communications]Its always good to know the lingo. This may be kind of nooby but hey, what can you can you do.

First of all I would like to say to clarify Ea, refers to each, as in per item (such as if you selling coal 180ea would refer to 180gp per coal (if it doesnt say k, or m (or mil), then it usually means gp).

[hide=Trade Communications]

Not all people are scammers if they offer the wrong amount. They may have just miscalculated, or had a typo when they enter the amount. In which case you can tell them one of 2 ways:

You can just send them a public/private message.

Or if you dont want to close the trade window you can offer the actual amount they should have (if your short on cash you can use like 100gp as 100k), however for multiple items its just best to message them (close the trade window if need be).

If they refuse to change to what it should be just tell them what your willing to pay, and if they dont like it ignore them, DO NOT INSULT THEM in anyway, as this may lead to Jagex taking action against your account (IE: being banned/muted).[/hide][hide=General Communications]Learning to communicate well with your merchanting contacts (buyers/sellers) is a very important part of merchanting even though its often neglected. First, you must be able to find a seller, meet with them, buy from them, find a buyer, meet with them, and sell to them. This can get very complicated when youre trying to meet several people at a time. I find it best to direct as many people as possible to meet in one place.[/hide][hide=Being Nice]I dont know if this is pointless or not but having good people skills may help you merchant, as people generally won't trade with you if your mean to them, not mention you might get actions taken against your account by Jagex (IE: being banned/muted).

The best way to be an effective merchant is to be honest. After all any cash you make wont mater if your account is banned. So remember dont scam, dont lie, and dont cheat. Even though some players consider merchanting a bad thing, really it isnt, after all stores do it, (they buy whole sale (cheap) and sell retail (expensive)). To stay in business a merchant must be legit: without scamming and other things that would reflect badly against the person merchanting. Its generally not a good idea to insult your customers; this may end with your business having a bad reputation and/or your account getting banned/muted. One more thing, you must always be nice to the people around you. As getting a bad reputation for being mean isnt a very good thing. Dont flame or be rude to your potential customers, actually its a good rule of thumb not to be rude to anyone. As no one really wants to trade with someone who is/has insulted them.[/hide][/hide][hide=Merchanting Misperceptions]Ive seen people say bad things about merchants. So I decided to use this part to clear up some of those things.

#1: Merchants buy low, sell high Well the concept is true however it makes it sound like merchants make massive amounts of profit, like you would make 50%+ profit (if you pay 100k to buy stuff and then sold for 50% profit you would make 50k). The merchants I know that make a fair amount of money average about 5-20% profit. Not saying a merchant wouldnt jump at a reliable way to make that much profit and make millions in a week off of it. However, sadly in Runescape no such reliable way really exists that I know of, there are ways of doing it however they are either complicated, time consuming, or dont make enough profit (cash wise) to be worth while.

If you have other things I could put here send them to me (either by talking to me in game, replying to this post, or sending me a tip.it PM).[/hide][/hide][hide=Links, Misc Information, and Contact Info]I also have a cash and profit calculator, exp Log and cash log in excel available on request and am willing to give out pointers visa Tip.it PM, cant say they will be any more information then what is given in here.

Feel free to point out errors (spelling, grammar, and so on) by quoting the mistake and adding the correction, or suggestions.

United Smelters Association-Founder

Nuclear Co. MSC-Owner[/hide][hide=About the Author][hide=Runescape related]

In RS Im known as Nuclear_Man2. I started playing Runescape in September of 2004. About 6 months after I started I discovered merchanting, and started to merchant coal; with only 8k (not something I recommend doing). Later I moved on to iron ore, then started smelting and selling steel bars, then moved to mith ore, addy ore, and shortly before I could smelt it rune. I dont really like mining so its really low compared to smithing. Ive made over 80m merchanting. My Grand Exchange experience can be found at the bottom of Nuclear Co. MSC.

Well thats about all there is to say. Hope you enjoyed the guide.[/hide][hide=Background Information]Im 18, currently a student (final year of High School). Ive done some programming for a game (Operation Flashpoint) for 2 or 3 years (Started when I was like 13). Im planning to go to college for either Engineering or something computer related. Well thats about all I can think of that tip.it will let me add really lol.[/hide][/hide][hide=Credits]Me (Nuclear_Man2) For making the guide, and basically everywhere where credit isnt given (expect to Jagex for making the game of course)

Microsoft for making the program I used to make the original copy of this guide (on word) and for making the program I used to make my Cash And Profit Calculator (Excel)

Shadowcra for suggesting that I restart my business (which ended up making me millions) (Hes gotten his share (the greedy person)).

Baddle_axe For suggesting that I add buying and selling tips

Wurmskin1 For suggesting that I add the smelting and merchanting section

mchainmail For suggesting Trade Communication (which I turned into the sub-section Communication)

Gugge - For Informing me of short and long scales (definitions of a billion)

radmix - For his yew long merchanting method (quoted).

eyehawk78, yeoldecorvette, and Hollandowner - for pointing out max of any item is 2^31-1 (was slow to update it)

falconerd Various improvement suggestions, and a quote (sure he wont mind)

Death_Dude74 Bringing something to my attention about 1 of the quotes, also for his suggestion to add more information on business organization.

Tintin17- For bringing to my attention a couple errors I made (1 BBC code and 1 Spelling)

Im very sorry to anyone who I may have missed.(If you really feel you should be added here send me a PM with your reason and if its a good enough reason Ill add you to this list.[/hide][hide=Version History]V1 - First release

V2 - Added Smelting and merchanting section and added some anti-scamming tips.

V2.1 - added a link to my Mining and smelting Co.

V2.2 added when to merchant sub-section, and made some spelling/grammar corrections

V2.25 expanded the cash per day to up to 2m in a day, did some misc. corrections and changes, added on to the smelting and merchanting: 1m+ part.

V2.3 Added on to the calculations section, and added the Buy and sell tips sub-section

V2.31 Added a request counter for the calculator

V2.4 Added Cost and quantity as factors (under tips), added a few tidbits here and there

V2.5 (12/04/2006) Added a new fletching section, made various slight changes

V2.6 (12/19/2006) Added Communication Sub-section, along with Being Nice tips, did some misc. changes throughout the guide.

V2.65 (1/01/2007) - Minor fix of font sized I must have overlooked.

V2.7 (1/02/2007) Added a fletching quote, Added another definition of 1 billion.

V2.75 (1/11/2007) Fixed max cash

V3 Implemented various improvements suggested by falconerd and a quote by him (regarding merchanting)

V3.1 Added My philosophy On Merchants And Merchanting section to guide

V3.11 Slight fix on calculations for the My philosophy On Merchants And Merchanting section

V3.12 Fixed link to mining co.

V3.2 Cleaned up post a little bit, added a quote by HellsBells (regarding merchanting of water filled vials)

V3.3 Modernized with the new BBC code update

V3.35 Quick fixed a few issues with profit

V3.4 Added something bought up by Death_Dude74 a quote.

V3.5 Updated guide prices and other various stuff to be more current (from inflation/deflation sense the guide was originally made); also made it easier to read

V4 (4/19/07) Added the Company Management Section

V4.05 (4/27/07) Made it so that credits are separate from the section.

V4.1 (5/19/07) Fixed a couple errors pointed out by Tintin17

V4.2 (6/29/07) Added my fletching co. link, and I added an about the author section, also went re-read post and updated the information and added more information.

V4.5 (8/26/07) Added worlds to merchant on, added common misperceptions about merchants and added some common scams. Looked guide over and modified it as I saw fit.

V4.6 (8/27/07) Fixed a problem with the sections that introduced with the last update.

V4.7 (11/14/07) Added a key detail I forgot to include in the being nice, sub-subsection.

V5.0GE (12/03/07) Added the following sections: Grand Exchange Merchanting, Merchanting Research, and Merchanting Strategies

Future updates:

Next update (major) will be to do some color coding (Ill do it someday.)

-May include pictures.

-Got a quote Ive been meaning to work into the guide (wanted to do GE update done before adding the quote)[/hide]

Gotta add this:

By wise elflord

hats off.........its quite a nice guide...

reminds me of those old days when i used to totally dominate world 1/world 3 iron ore markets for like a month..........and i could make around 3 mil a day.......

i would also like to add some tips for iron ore merchants with 10 mil+ gp.

-a nice way to make profit is by getting complete control over the market of the commodity you are selling.

For example,wen i had 25 mil..........

i used to buy all iron ores 105 ea(110 ea when there were other buyers also buying at 105 ea).........and sell em 120 ea

and i also kept stockpiling upto 200k iron ores.....woot!!!

The whole point is that wen u are buying iron ores at say 105 ea...when the expected market value is 100 ea,almost 90% of sellers would sell their ores to you and you only......

and scince you have lots of cash in your hand,you can keep stockpiling your commodity......

Just remember to keep on shouting "buying all iron ores 105 ea'...and the suppliers will automatically come to you.

In the mean time...if u find a prospective buyer whoose buying loads of iron ore(by loads i mean atleast 5k-10k iron, some ppl may even buy say 100k iron ores) at a slightly higher price.............negotiate with him into telling that you can provide him the entire stock that he wants....and make him agree on your price...how ever high your price may be.............and the more bulk you have the higher price you can get

like i might be able to sell 10k iron only at 110 or 115 ea....but if i have 100k iron ores.........some buyers would even buy the entire bulk for 125 ea-130 ea

now one important factor needed is patience..............coz ppl who want to buy in small amounts never buy at high prices............you may even have to stay in the market for 2 or 3 hours keeping on stockpiling iron before you find good buyers.But by a good buyer,i mean a buyer whoose gonna make your day.....like someone willing to buy say 50k+ iron ores....(the best sale ive ever had was selling 180k iron ores 125 ea...that was an awsome """(125-105)x180k=3.6 mil""" profit all at one go...but i had to wait around 4 hours just keeping on buying iron before that guy turned up)

If you can become a really good merchant,i think you can move a stock of like 30k-75k iron ores on average per hour...........thats 600k -1.5 mil per hour profit.

Another important point is...never forget the official runescape forum....even if u r not a member,u can read the archives looking for iron ore buyers.....that can be done simultaneously while u r stocking up your commodity.Approx 50% of my profit used to come through buyers who posted in the forums saying the were buying iron.........

and the forums are one place to dig up if u want to get buyers buying loads of iron in a go....

i know my post is quite confusing but i hope it helps some aspiring iron ore merchant shooting for his first santa etc........and maybe ill edit it and make it into an orderly manner someday later

very guide guide, very helpful for f2p

Very nice guide mate, i would say this would help alot of people, i merchant myself :D . Im gonna try some of this out and post if it works well, because there is alot of effort put into this. =D>

thanks people.

I originally wrote it when i was f2p. Useing that method i gained 26m as f2p (says so in my signature). So it is directed twards f2p.

bump

I know its a long guide but read it all please.

good guide, although its not as much about merchating as it is about smelting.

add a section on communicating in trade screens.

i.e. If the other person has 110k up, but they should have 120k up, you can put 120 gp up to show the other person what they should have.

Great guide, add tadertot and ingame or c-il-u-t-c-h to talk :)

How much have you made from all your businesses :shock:

I'm going to try this, currently I have a measly 1.1 mil :(

~Jer

JeremyM - um i think its around 35M+ atm

mchainmail - hmmm good idea ill work on it.

piman1053 - ya i guess... i specialize in smelting+merchanting so i guess it might have something to do with that. (got 82 smithing form it so far :D)

lol forgot about this for a bit...

bump (sorry if "i revied an old topic") wasnt suppposed to be old just forgot about it.

now @ version # 2.65

Made some fixes.

an ok profit maker that you could add to your fletching guide is :

Buy 10k yew logs 250-300ea

Buy 10k Bow strings 150-200ea

(total 4m-5m)

go to the fletching forums and trade for yew longs (s)

then go world 2 seers and sell the yew longs (s) for 550-600ea which is

500k-2m profit sometimes

this guide was the basis for me ganing a cool 4 million from selling willow logs and getting some nice experience :thumbsup:

gonna try it with coal since i heard theirs a lot of money to be made and i want some cool rune armour :x

id reccomend this guide =D> :thumbsup:

Regarding your definition of billion: I would like to remind you that it varies in different countries, there are 2 systems commonly used in the world. Wikipedia has an article that explains it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales

well, i didn't see the whole guide, but did you intend to leave out rcers? i've been able to merchant well with ess and nats. maybe its cuz ur f2p, i dunno :-k

piman1053 - um not so much that im f2p (im member now)... but more that i dont do it... ill have to reasearch it... maybe try it out.

Gugge - hmmm that is a good point. however a million millions... is not possible as if i remember right the max cash is like 100bil (10^11 (i think)) therefor no offense but the billion u are talking about is impossible to have... as the cash doesnt go that high... however i will note it. Thanks for pointing this out.

krisc6 - tyvm props are always nice lol.

radmix - ya that is possible. hmmm something i should look into myself. ill quote it...

thanks to all for help

edit: Now up to Version 2.7

Nice guide, I have never merchanted and I never will, I dont like buying cheap off lower levels who have poured their hard work into mining or woodcutting, and then getting ripped off. But good guide 9/10

Nice guide, I have never merchanted and I never will, I dont like buying cheap off lower levels who have poured their hard work into mining or woodcutting, and then getting ripped off. But good guide 9/10

i dont like ripping off noobs either. thats like buying real low... i buy more medium/high sell high/real high (so high u need perm buyers just to sell them).

Should aspiring merchants keep money in bank that they never use as a fall back or safety net?

i like it, i'll use the 1m-5m 'cause im not rich :(

The max cash is (2 ^ 31)-1 = 2,147,483,647 ~ 2.15 B

Hope that helps :D

eyehawk78 - ya thanks have to adjust that.

daxter727 - cool

y0_u_g0_t_pk - might be a good idea. i like to keep about 3m or so in cash at all times (about 1/10th of what i have total) just cause i dont like being poor, if u dont have cash u cant buy new stuff... until u get rid of the old. and that may cause u to sell for less then profitible prices.

ty for all the posts.

i've been using the coal method, hopefully that gets me to about 10m from 1m easy.

poochu - well good luck

Im gonna be updating to V3.0 soon i hope. With all the things u suggested hopefully.

again thanks for all the posts.

~I find this one of the best guides around, yet i have some comments.~

~The max cap in Runescape is roughly 2,100,000,000 of any item (It's 2,147,483,647 to be exact, as far as i am concerned.)~

~Hence, no player can have over 2,147,483,647 of any item, including gp. I personally have had over 260,000,000 gp cash, so it's definately not 100,000,000.~

~Otherwise, your guide looks good.~

~Homer~

~Please quote whatever you like out of this. I'm a somewhat well-known player, it might help people to post their support.~