So, as you may have noticed I hosted a grief party on my smp1 residence - the reason being I would like to start a small shop there. I hope to have it up and running by my one year on EMC, but I make no guarantees. I want to generate some small income from selling wood, cobble, wool, logs, and then hopefully expand it so it becomes something of a mall, and then later becoming a mega mall, selling a large variety of items. I have tried to start up a mall many times in the past. My most successful being my first, when my friend spammed the shop signs and bought everything I had for sale, and then some people bought from it too, and then people complained I was overpricing things blah blah blah - so I made a few stalls, and people complained they were always out of stock - so I ripped them down, started a small building with shop signs in it, ripped it down, and didn't try to start a shop for a few months. I then carried on building the first floor of what was to be 'Endermart' but I burnt it down earlier today and gathered its redstone, redstone lamps, and pistons. I am now in the process of building my shop on 2128. I would like to avoid the problems I have had in the past - so that means i'm open to your suggestions!What prices would you like to see on items? What items would you like to be sold?I will be making a cobble generator and a tree farm on my smp3 res - so those supplies will be cheaply priced - it's ores and things I want to know what you want to be priced at.
You should edit the title, so it says: Any Ideas for my Shop? Otherwise, it's kinda confusing x) Look on many other shops on that server, look at the price, and either make it cheeper, or make it the same. There, people will go to your shop occasionally. Don't advertise it, and block the chest, like fill it with dirt so nobody oversells it to you.
I think something many people don't realize is that building the structure of the shop is the easy part - running the shop is the difficult part. Even widely known shops need to manage inventory and keep up with ever changing prices. Small shops have to get noticed, and staying in stock is even more crucial. A large shop being out of stock on an item - the players will return - a small shop will get passed over and forgotten if everything is out of stock. I've been happy to stay out of the shop business (that's krysyy's game). If I had to give what advice I can - pick something (whatever you have lots of / easy access to). And start selling that. If you're always in stock with logs / stone / redstone / or whatever item you choose - people will know they can come to you. Expanding from there will be much easier than starting with too much to stock.
It sounds like you've let people's complaints control your decisions a bit. Don't let them. People will always complain anyways so check prices, pick prices that seem logical and fair, then stick to them. Check the active shops for prices. So-and-so selling diamonds for 25r means zilch if he never supplies his chest. People buy from shops because they don't want to wait or don't want to put the effort into getting the materials themselves. If someone wants materials and they know your chests are full, they will come to you. If you are willing to put the time into resource collection and crafting, there's no reason you shouldn't profit from it either. So consider how much time you've invested to collect or craft something when you put a price on it. There's one other thing you might want to think about. I see a lot of people making shops but relying on other people to stock them. Buy/Sell shops. If you are going to do this, you need to make the price margin attractive enough for me to want to supply your shop. Otherwise, if I see you are paying 5r per stack for Cobble then selling it for 30r, I'll just set up a chest myself and sell it for 25 or 30r.
I agree with Pab. The same thing happenes to me when people come to my shop. They dont understand how hard it is to have a profitabl shop on 24/7. I would just kindly tell them to go mine their own stuff. I think EMC once tried for a global price for everything, i dont know how that turned out I would look into it a lilltle more.
