How to setup a successful shop

Discussion in 'Community Discussion' started by thecontroller, Mar 15, 2012.

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  1. I've seen allot of people make shops and I noticed they weren't going anywhere. The problem could have been their prices, how they can keep up with demand, or the customer isn't satisfied what they are selling. Some new members don't understand how to be successful and they just go on and copy successful BIG shop owners and fail and run out of money that's why I'm making this guide!

    Things you need to know; people these days try to be a high roller and expect to be successful but they're wrong. You have to build your empire from dirt to the clouds! Let's start with something simple, we have to know whats trending in the market and what is in high demand that you know you can keep up with. When you find out whats trending in the market or what people really want, you can setup a small shop for starters. But before we open our shop we need to hold our horses and stock up! In the wilderness there is an infinite amount of resources you can gather, once you have gathered enough items that we want to sell we can move on to our next step. We almost have everything in position, we just need one more thing before we open our shop. We need to find the average price for items. We need to find the average price because we don't want our items to be expensive nor too cheap! If we sell too expensive you might not earn business at all, if you sell cheap then you might not keep up with the demand, but if we get the right price we can balance things out. The way we can find the average price is by visiting long established shops on the server you are currently on. Once you have found the average price and the average amount of items it sells for, then you can use that in your shop. We now need to make a shop sign, if you do not have knowledge for making a shop visit http://empireminecraft.com/guide/rupees. Once we have setup our little business it's time to catch the fish. We want our shop to be recognized in the chat without being a nuisance to everyone. There are 2 methods for your shop to get recognized. You can advertise aimlessly by typing a simple sentence without spamming the chat, for example "Shop 10030 is selling Coal, Iron, Gold, and Diamonds!". Or you can wait for the fish to get to you, for example "I need coal, does anyone sell coal for an average fair price?" you reply in the chat "10030 sells coal for an average fair price". These methods of advertising can get your shop running and sooner or later you don't even need to advertise.

    If you think you have done a great job by following the methods above and you think you can be a successful big shop owner then continue reading. Once your shop gets popular with the community your wallet will grow larger and larger. We need to set our goal on where we start growing our shop. We first need to make a rupee marking when you can say, "This is enough rupees to setup myself a big shop!" In my goal I set my rupee marking in 20,000 rupees. Once we reach past our rupees marking we now need to open our shops inventory wider to a more broader selection of items! We shall do what we have done above with our small shop, repeat the process above for all the items you want to sell. We also need a way for our shop to keep in stock, one way of easily doing that is setting up a "Buy and Sell" shop. The players that visit your shop might be able to help you by selling items they can focus on. We need to set our sell price below the buy price. We decrease the amount of the sell price by 25-40%. Your customers/suppliers don't want a price like this
    We want a fair sell and buy price so your suppliers will be interested on selling you items while still earning rupees. For example:
    Once we have our big shop setup you'll notice that your rupees become very unstable, relax this is normal. Your rupees will fluctuate and that's when we get into budgeting. We are now a big shop with players coming in and out every day. We lose and earn money all the time so we need to balance on what we spend on. We need to find our average rupee balance. My average rupees balance is 60k so I set my budget as 20% of what I can spend personally, 20% of 60k is 12k and that's my limit each week so I don't lose money. We now have setup ourselves a simple business that we can manage without worrying about losing money. If you find yourself in a touch situation, don't worry. You can always make it to the top without even having rupees in the first place. All you have to do is think and when you think you process and when you process you make business.

    I hope you all have a great business and adventure in EMC!
    P.S. Notify me if I made any grammar/spelling mistakes or any info that is missing.
  2. This is a nice post :) This might help those who but they :S value to low to make people even sell to them, like azoundria ;)
    thecontroller likes this.
  3. I don't like azoundria's method of his shop. I consider it monopolizing. I ban people (on my residence) who misuse my shop to make their shop look good without barely doing any work and ripping off people by selling items higher from the original price they bought it from. People like azoundria should be banned from most successful shops because all he/she is doing is monopolizing business in smp2.
    krysyyjane9191 likes this.
  4. Jup, thats why I buy my stuff at Leo :)
  5. Leo's 3456 FTW
    got everything :D
    cheap tnt. ( I'm lazy dirt digger :/ )
  6. Any and all input is welcome! You go into more detail on the numbers than I do. :)