Post by omphale on Jan 12, 2011 22:12:35 GMT -8
Opening a Stall -
** You should wait until you are ranked *at least* Officer in the crew before you open a stall. Fleet officer is recommended if you don't have a lot of your own ships, because you will not be able to transfer commodities to your stall from any ship but your own unless you are an FO or higher.**
Should you decide to try your hand at shopkeeping, there are a few things you should do before you invest in a location.
1) Be confident you can make a profit. Do your homework. Find out what raw material bids typically cost per unit. Find out what wages are typically paid to workers. Find out what finished products are selling for in the area. Many of us shopkeepers use crabdance, this resource, to find sellers of raw materials and buyers of finished products. Very helpful tool!
2) Be sure you have the time and poe to invest in running your stall. Beyond opening cost, rent, and raw materials, this includes paying attractive wages and advertising strategies to recruit a labor force. Crew labor cannot be solely relied upon to run a stall , as there are already quite a few crew-run businesses and not enough crew laborers.
- Wages - Scout out what other business of the same type are paying their workers, both in your 'wanted stall' archipelago, and in the ocean in general (I'd pick a couple islands in each arch as a comparison group.) Be prepared to price your wages to compete with what you find.
- Advertising - The "throw a party" feature at a business, in my experience, rarely attracts new workers. Only pirates on the island can see the party invitation, and only if they happen to look under the event tab on the notice board in the next hour. Waste of poe.
--Instead, there's this thread on the Ypp forums. Also, many places advertise by hosting tournaments on the tourney boards. You could purchase a writable trinket from the palace, and inscribe it with the name and location of your business. You could say you're newly opened and advertise your wages. You don't get a lot of characters, so you have to be brief. Ex - "Grand Opening! Omphale's IM@Heph. Paying 26/33/70". Of course, you don't want to advertise until you actually open. I'm saying this, now, just to give you an idea of other types of time-consumptions and costs - time writing a post in the ypp forum thread, 1k per tournament card trinket.
(To reuse your trinkets, contact the winner of the tournament and ask for it back. Most pirates are happy to just give it back, but offering a bottle of whisk or some tidbit in exchange never hurts, and reusing trinkets this way costs much less than constantly buying new ones.)
--Also check for advertising space on the event tab of the island or on the news in the main entry of the bazaar. Some governors rent out that ad space, and if the price seems reasonable to you, it may be good to utilize it, at least until your work force is established.
3) Be sure the location you've selected is within a reasonable distance from your main raw material spawns. Spawn locations can be found on Yppedia, by entering the raw material name (ex: wood) into the search box and looking under the Cerulean column.
--"Reasonable distance" can be slightly subjective, depending on your abilities to manage commodity runs. (One way to practice evading in the same setting would be to do your route memorizing, Duty Nav, before you open. Another way to practice is in tip #4. ) Some comms, like iron, don't take up much space in a hold, and can be easily be transported by sloop. Other comms, like hemp and wood, are bulky, and need to be sailed in a larger ship like an MB. MBs can be solo'ed successfully, but the longer the distance, the harder it becomes. (I, myself, won't solo-sail an MB full of comms more than 10 lps. But that's my limit. Your limit may be lower or higher than mine.) Experiment before you commit to a location.
4) Enter bid tickets for your raw materials, and wait until they fill. And, if applicable, sail them into the port of the island on which you want to open up a stall. Using a ship with a large hold, such as an MB, WF, or MG, to leave at port to collect smaller shipments as you sail them in is advisable.
--- The reason you should have materials ready to go at the island you want your stall is that you don't want to be paying rent while unable to sell anything. That'd be wasted poe.
5) Purchase your stall. After purchasing your stall, there will be a lot of "paperwork" to do, inputting numbers for wages paid and wages charged, as well as dockside buy/sell and use costs (and amounts), also which items you'll want to be available for order from your stall. It's my personal opinion that you find an experienced crew mate to help you with these menus. You may have to temporarily make them a manager of your stall in order for them to see your screens. (You don't want to accidentally be buying a cheap comm for a high price dockside... or selling an expensive one too low... silly mistakes have been made in the past, and it's a hard lesson. Another pair of eyes helps!)
6) Transfer in all your accumulated raw materials, put some poe in the stall coffers, and take a job.
(edited out Midnight-Cobalt Labor trading, no longer applicable.)
** You should wait until you are ranked *at least* Officer in the crew before you open a stall. Fleet officer is recommended if you don't have a lot of your own ships, because you will not be able to transfer commodities to your stall from any ship but your own unless you are an FO or higher.**
Should you decide to try your hand at shopkeeping, there are a few things you should do before you invest in a location.
1) Be confident you can make a profit. Do your homework. Find out what raw material bids typically cost per unit. Find out what wages are typically paid to workers. Find out what finished products are selling for in the area. Many of us shopkeepers use crabdance, this resource, to find sellers of raw materials and buyers of finished products. Very helpful tool!
2) Be sure you have the time and poe to invest in running your stall. Beyond opening cost, rent, and raw materials, this includes paying attractive wages and advertising strategies to recruit a labor force. Crew labor cannot be solely relied upon to run a stall , as there are already quite a few crew-run businesses and not enough crew laborers.
- Wages - Scout out what other business of the same type are paying their workers, both in your 'wanted stall' archipelago, and in the ocean in general (I'd pick a couple islands in each arch as a comparison group.) Be prepared to price your wages to compete with what you find.
- Advertising - The "throw a party" feature at a business, in my experience, rarely attracts new workers. Only pirates on the island can see the party invitation, and only if they happen to look under the event tab on the notice board in the next hour. Waste of poe.
--Instead, there's this thread on the Ypp forums. Also, many places advertise by hosting tournaments on the tourney boards. You could purchase a writable trinket from the palace, and inscribe it with the name and location of your business. You could say you're newly opened and advertise your wages. You don't get a lot of characters, so you have to be brief. Ex - "Grand Opening! Omphale's IM@Heph. Paying 26/33/70". Of course, you don't want to advertise until you actually open. I'm saying this, now, just to give you an idea of other types of time-consumptions and costs - time writing a post in the ypp forum thread, 1k per tournament card trinket.
(To reuse your trinkets, contact the winner of the tournament and ask for it back. Most pirates are happy to just give it back, but offering a bottle of whisk or some tidbit in exchange never hurts, and reusing trinkets this way costs much less than constantly buying new ones.)
--Also check for advertising space on the event tab of the island or on the news in the main entry of the bazaar. Some governors rent out that ad space, and if the price seems reasonable to you, it may be good to utilize it, at least until your work force is established.
3) Be sure the location you've selected is within a reasonable distance from your main raw material spawns. Spawn locations can be found on Yppedia, by entering the raw material name (ex: wood) into the search box and looking under the Cerulean column.
--"Reasonable distance" can be slightly subjective, depending on your abilities to manage commodity runs. (One way to practice evading in the same setting would be to do your route memorizing, Duty Nav, before you open. Another way to practice is in tip #4. ) Some comms, like iron, don't take up much space in a hold, and can be easily be transported by sloop. Other comms, like hemp and wood, are bulky, and need to be sailed in a larger ship like an MB. MBs can be solo'ed successfully, but the longer the distance, the harder it becomes. (I, myself, won't solo-sail an MB full of comms more than 10 lps. But that's my limit. Your limit may be lower or higher than mine.) Experiment before you commit to a location.
4) Enter bid tickets for your raw materials, and wait until they fill. And, if applicable, sail them into the port of the island on which you want to open up a stall. Using a ship with a large hold, such as an MB, WF, or MG, to leave at port to collect smaller shipments as you sail them in is advisable.
--- The reason you should have materials ready to go at the island you want your stall is that you don't want to be paying rent while unable to sell anything. That'd be wasted poe.
5) Purchase your stall. After purchasing your stall, there will be a lot of "paperwork" to do, inputting numbers for wages paid and wages charged, as well as dockside buy/sell and use costs (and amounts), also which items you'll want to be available for order from your stall. It's my personal opinion that you find an experienced crew mate to help you with these menus. You may have to temporarily make them a manager of your stall in order for them to see your screens. (You don't want to accidentally be buying a cheap comm for a high price dockside... or selling an expensive one too low... silly mistakes have been made in the past, and it's a hard lesson. Another pair of eyes helps!)
6) Transfer in all your accumulated raw materials, put some poe in the stall coffers, and take a job.
(edited out Midnight-Cobalt Labor trading, no longer applicable.)
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