Hello everyone, I decided to create this thread to explain some of my ideas on how to find efficient and effective money-making methods on ArcheAge. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to post below!
So starting off, the four metrics that I use are: Liquidity, Profitability, Timeframe, and Barriers.
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1. Liquidity - Liquids flow, so naturally, liquidity is all about the flow of money. Just like any business in real life, the inflows and outflows of cash are extremely important to any good money-making method.
Here's an example: Let's say you run some trade packs to another continent. 22 hours after you turn in the packs, you will be rewarded with X amount of charcoal. According to the market (auction house) this charcoal is worth a certain amount of gold, however, you have to sell the charcoal first if you want to purchase something from another player. So while you technically made money as soon as you turned in those trade packs, you still had to wait 22 hours to receive the charcoal, and then you had to spend another unspecified amount of time selling the charcoal before you received actual gold in your pocket.
The bottom line is that the faster you can convert whatever it is you are farming/crafting/acquiring back into gold, the better.
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2. Profitability - Profit is important, ask anyone. Why would you spend your time doing something that costs more than it makes you? When deciding how to make money on ArcheAge, it's important to find something that can yield a good return on the time/resources you put in.
A common way to measure profitability is in SPL, or silver per labor. Essentially, players compute how much silver (the same thing as gold but multiply by 100) they made from doing a specific task, as well as how much labor they spent doing so.
A simple example: You mine a rock, it takes 15 labor and you receive 45 silver (or .45 gold) worth of ore. To calculate the silver per labor, divide the 45 silver by 15 labor, the result is 3 SPL (silver per labor).
While higher SPL methods are generally better than lower SPL methods, it's important to also factor in the metric of Liquidity. Maybe one of your methods is mining and it makes you 20 SPL, and another one is fishing but it only makes you 18 SPL. You probably think that the 20 SPL method is automatically better, and on paper you might be correct. However, let's say that the ore you earn (and eventually sell) from the 20 SPL method usually takes 1 week to sell for gold. Contrastingly, the material you got from the 18 SPL fishing method usually sells within 1 hour of you listing it on the auction house.
If this were the case, would you still go with the 20 SPL method? You might theoretically be making more with the 20 SPL method, but the fact of the matter is that the 18 SPL method offers much higher liquidity for only a slight difference in Profitability. Overall, you are much better off with the 18 SPL method in this hypothetical scenario.
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3. Timeframe - Everyone knows the saying, "Time is money", but what does that really mean? Well let's put things this way, if your boss said that you weren't going to be paid at your job anymore, would you still go? Probably not I imagine. Just like money, time is a resource that everyone has a finite amount of.
Some money-making methods don't take very much time, while others require lots of attention and multiple hours of grinding.
Here's an example, you do a trade run that takes 1 hour and you burn 600 labor to make 120 gold profit (20 SPL). On another day, you find some materials on the auction house for a good price (100 gold), and you craft some potions to sell. You burn 600 labor in 5 minutes crafting potions, and you sell the finished potions for 220 gold. Now you subtract the 100 gold in materials from the 220 gold in revenue, and you're left with 120 gold profit for crafting the potions. 120 Gold / 600 Labor = 20 SPL.
You made 20 SPL with each method, but were they really equal? The answer is no. With the first method, you spent an entire hour of your time doing that trade run, whereas with the second method, all you had to do was buy a few materials off of the auction house and teleport to a crafting house to craft some potions, all of which took less than 5 minutes.
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4. Barriers - Market crashes happen. Sometimes people go overboard and dump lots of a resource onto the auction house, which drastically lowers the price. Whenever you're making money in ArcheAge, it's important to consider how many other people are doing the same method as you, and if their activities will have any effect on your operations.
Let's say that everyone decides to do trade runs one day, and all of the rates for the packs are bottomed out at 70%. Would you want to run packs on that day? I don't think so.
Good money-making methods often have some Barriers to entry. What I mean by this is that there are certain requirements to do the activity. For example, to run a lot of packs overseas for charcoal, you'll need a merchant schooner, the cost of creating a merchant schooner is a barrier to entry for that money-making method.
Here's another example, let's say you craft a specific potion to make gold. However, this potion requires a very high proficiency in Alchemy to create, and obviously takes it a decent amount of time to get to that level in alchemy. Your money-making method has barriers to entry because not everyone has the required skills necessary to participate in this activity.
Lastly, let's say that there's a world boss that drops a rare item worth 5,000 gold, but to kill the boss, you need a raid of 20 players. In this case, the difficulty of the boss is a barrier to entry, if you don't have a large enough raid, you can't make money in this manner.
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My Final Tip: While certain methods shine in specific areas, the best money-making methods generally possess a good balance of all four of the metrics because they all go hand in hand with one another.
And that sums up my post! Thanks for reading.
So starting off, the four metrics that I use are: Liquidity, Profitability, Timeframe, and Barriers.
___
1. Liquidity - Liquids flow, so naturally, liquidity is all about the flow of money. Just like any business in real life, the inflows and outflows of cash are extremely important to any good money-making method.
Here's an example: Let's say you run some trade packs to another continent. 22 hours after you turn in the packs, you will be rewarded with X amount of charcoal. According to the market (auction house) this charcoal is worth a certain amount of gold, however, you have to sell the charcoal first if you want to purchase something from another player. So while you technically made money as soon as you turned in those trade packs, you still had to wait 22 hours to receive the charcoal, and then you had to spend another unspecified amount of time selling the charcoal before you received actual gold in your pocket.
The bottom line is that the faster you can convert whatever it is you are farming/crafting/acquiring back into gold, the better.
___
2. Profitability - Profit is important, ask anyone. Why would you spend your time doing something that costs more than it makes you? When deciding how to make money on ArcheAge, it's important to find something that can yield a good return on the time/resources you put in.
A common way to measure profitability is in SPL, or silver per labor. Essentially, players compute how much silver (the same thing as gold but multiply by 100) they made from doing a specific task, as well as how much labor they spent doing so.
A simple example: You mine a rock, it takes 15 labor and you receive 45 silver (or .45 gold) worth of ore. To calculate the silver per labor, divide the 45 silver by 15 labor, the result is 3 SPL (silver per labor).
While higher SPL methods are generally better than lower SPL methods, it's important to also factor in the metric of Liquidity. Maybe one of your methods is mining and it makes you 20 SPL, and another one is fishing but it only makes you 18 SPL. You probably think that the 20 SPL method is automatically better, and on paper you might be correct. However, let's say that the ore you earn (and eventually sell) from the 20 SPL method usually takes 1 week to sell for gold. Contrastingly, the material you got from the 18 SPL fishing method usually sells within 1 hour of you listing it on the auction house.
If this were the case, would you still go with the 20 SPL method? You might theoretically be making more with the 20 SPL method, but the fact of the matter is that the 18 SPL method offers much higher liquidity for only a slight difference in Profitability. Overall, you are much better off with the 18 SPL method in this hypothetical scenario.
___
3. Timeframe - Everyone knows the saying, "Time is money", but what does that really mean? Well let's put things this way, if your boss said that you weren't going to be paid at your job anymore, would you still go? Probably not I imagine. Just like money, time is a resource that everyone has a finite amount of.
Some money-making methods don't take very much time, while others require lots of attention and multiple hours of grinding.
Here's an example, you do a trade run that takes 1 hour and you burn 600 labor to make 120 gold profit (20 SPL). On another day, you find some materials on the auction house for a good price (100 gold), and you craft some potions to sell. You burn 600 labor in 5 minutes crafting potions, and you sell the finished potions for 220 gold. Now you subtract the 100 gold in materials from the 220 gold in revenue, and you're left with 120 gold profit for crafting the potions. 120 Gold / 600 Labor = 20 SPL.
You made 20 SPL with each method, but were they really equal? The answer is no. With the first method, you spent an entire hour of your time doing that trade run, whereas with the second method, all you had to do was buy a few materials off of the auction house and teleport to a crafting house to craft some potions, all of which took less than 5 minutes.
___
4. Barriers - Market crashes happen. Sometimes people go overboard and dump lots of a resource onto the auction house, which drastically lowers the price. Whenever you're making money in ArcheAge, it's important to consider how many other people are doing the same method as you, and if their activities will have any effect on your operations.
Let's say that everyone decides to do trade runs one day, and all of the rates for the packs are bottomed out at 70%. Would you want to run packs on that day? I don't think so.
Good money-making methods often have some Barriers to entry. What I mean by this is that there are certain requirements to do the activity. For example, to run a lot of packs overseas for charcoal, you'll need a merchant schooner, the cost of creating a merchant schooner is a barrier to entry for that money-making method.
Here's another example, let's say you craft a specific potion to make gold. However, this potion requires a very high proficiency in Alchemy to create, and obviously takes it a decent amount of time to get to that level in alchemy. Your money-making method has barriers to entry because not everyone has the required skills necessary to participate in this activity.
Lastly, let's say that there's a world boss that drops a rare item worth 5,000 gold, but to kill the boss, you need a raid of 20 players. In this case, the difficulty of the boss is a barrier to entry, if you don't have a large enough raid, you can't make money in this manner.
___
My Final Tip: While certain methods shine in specific areas, the best money-making methods generally possess a good balance of all four of the metrics because they all go hand in hand with one another.
And that sums up my post! Thanks for reading.