Fantastic Merching/Flipping Guide

I posted this a while ago (like a couple of months) but everything is still valid. I actually really enjoying flipping Full Dragon Plate sets. The are consistently in the 50m-65m range and never shift to unpredictably. When they get to high they always crash and slowly make their way back up again. I can usually make 1.5m-2.5m a flip with anywhere from 4-8 flips a day. Pretty easy money for only having to check twice a day. It does have large start up costs though. Anyhow this is the guide enjoy.

How much money to start with

Before you start to merch you should make sure that you have enough spare money so that if stuff goes sour you will not rage quit. Also its hard to turn profits with less than 500k to start.

How to select your item

Choosing your item is different depending on your merching experience as well as wealth. If you have little to no experience with merching start with small items to build confidence and skill. Do not merch an item that will take all of your money to buy one. I recommend that you can at least buy 3-4 of an item before you start to buy it.

All items that you merch should first be searched for on the runescape GE data base. Graphs are what are important here. Only the data from after free trade is relevant to you. There is only three possible graphs that you care about.
1)The staircase graph-The GE only updates its price by 5% when it
updates. If the graph is rising up like a staircase that means it is
constantly jumping its 5% and is not close to where it will level out.

2)The dip-Look for a graph that was stable for a really long time then
dipped really far and is now curving back up. Make sure that this item
is a relevant item and has a reason to be climbing again.

3)Stable graph-This graph is looks like the teeth of a saw and has no
major ups or downs found in it. This graph may also have a gentle
slope either up or down.

How to merch your item

First off all merching should be done with flipping because it is the only way to make fast money. Investing should only be done if you are sure you will not be playing runescape for a long time.

1)The staircase-This item will ALWAYS have to be bought for over the GE price. This is because this items is on the rise. To find the buying price of the object set it for the GE price. After a couple hours increase the price by about 5%. Continue to do this until you find where this item buys easily. Buy a small amount of the item for this price. Now you need to sell the item. Set the price to quite a bit more than you paid and wait for a couple hours. If all items sold fast then you are to low and should raise your prices. If items didn't sell or took a long time lower your price until they do. At this point you just need to adjust your prices so that you make the most profit. This could either be less profit per sale but lots of sales, or large profit per sale but low amount of sales.

2)The dip-With the dip other people are also anticipating an increase in prices. This will help you to make a profit, but will also provide competition. The same process for buying should be done with the staircase. If the item buys fast and for cheap be careful, this could be a fake raise in the graph and the item may drop further. Once the item is bought raise the price and resell. Follow the same steps and staircase to find your buying and selling range.

3)Stable-This is the safest type of item to merch. Because this item is stable you don't stand to lose much if your merching doesn't work. For buying this item you should start by purchasing below the GE price. Slowly work your way up to a price that the item will buy for. Once you get the item sell it for a slight profit. Adjust your selling price depending on how fast your item is selling. The biggest technique to making money is adjusting after the price in the GE changes. As soon as the GE price updates prices will change. Make sure that you repeat the process of finding your buying and selling prices again. The market will be unstable for a while after the change but will calm down after a while. I find when the GE price goes up often prices will go down slightly and when GE price goes down prices will go up slightly. This is why the graph continually goes up and down like a saw blade.

When to merch

I find that during the week merching is a lot easier. Less people are playing so that when people want to buy and item there is less people selling at the updated price. People also will want to sell stuff from monster drops and there will be less people to buy. Weekend are tough because so many people are on the profit margins will shrink. You are fighting with a lot more people to buy and sell. Holidays are the worst. There are so many people online and competing with you that it can be very hard to make money.

You should check the GE at least 3 times a day. Once when you wake up. Once when you get home from school/work. And once when you go to bed. Obviously more is better, but only if you have time.

General Tips

1)Never let anybody know what you are merching. If they think that you are making money off an item they will also attempt to do so and your profit margins will shrink.

2)Never bother selling your stuff on the street. Its not worth your time and people will hardly ever buy your overpriced items.

3)New items often spike then crash so be wary of merching a new item.

4)Merching popular items often means more sales.

5)Be very wary when using merching clans as it can be risky. The higher members may screw you over to make their profits. If you find a good clan this can be a great way to make tons of profit. (Edited to take into account what Psycho mentioned in his post.)

6)Never buy and sell using nice numbers. If you bid 75000 on something and so does someone else it goes to whoever bid first, but if you bid 75011 you are higher so you will win. Alternatively when selling sell for 74989 so that you will sell before the people at 75000. Also never hit the +5% or -5% button and leave it, always take a few bucks off or put some on so that you win easier.

7)Try to only merch a couple items. The fewer items your merch and the longer you merch them the more familiar you become with their prices and how they behave on the market.




Thanks for reading my guide. I will update this if I think of anything else that I want to add. Also feel free to make suggestions.

K-Mart

EDIT:

I'm releasing the item that I made my first 100m on. This item has slowed down a bit now plus I am now able merch higher priced items for faster profit. The item I was merching is God pages. Particularly Saradomin page 3. The reason this item was and still is so valuable to people is you need to collect four God pages of either Zammy, Guthix, or Sara. Because the price of Zammy and Guthix is much higher than Sara poorer players opt to use Sara pages for the quest. When people quest the like to finish the quest as soon as possible so they are willing to pay more for items related to the quest.

This is a staircase graph(Example number 1)


This is the trend that the all three sets of God pages were following. I was typically buying for 50k over the GE price and flipping for 150-800k over the GE price. There was times where I was able to make over 1m gp in a single flip because people were so desperate to get their pages.

 

nice guide could add more pictures though.

 

You should provide examples (images) of the above types of graphs just to add a couple more images to this guide.

Not a bad guide, moderately detailed although describes what most merchanting/flipping guides describe.

 

This was a really good guide, I read every word. It seems that you know your stuff quite well.

I do have some suggestions for you though, if you are open to suggestions? I think if you spiced this guide up a little more with pictures & examples it would make it alot nicer to look at. Some people absolutely cannot stand the "wall of text" posts and they just completely skip them and miss out on important info. Maybe add colour to your text too, and organize it so that the format is a little nicer.

Secondly, maybe you could go more in depth on how to initially find your buy/sell prices, using pictures and examples. I know when I was learning to flip, this was one of the parts I had a hard time understanding at first. After I found a good guide with picture examples, I realized how easy it was.

Thirdly, maybe you could give a few more examples of items to flip? Obviously you don't want to give away your secrets and let people on to your items, as they will just copy them. But for people who are just beginning, their biggest challenge is often finding an item to flip. What you could do, is talk about easy, obvious items that everybody can flip, just to get them started. Stuff like ores, logs, herbs, runes, arrows, etc. Flipping resources can be very profitable if you buy them in large quantities, even if you are only selling them for 2-3gp higher. This is a good place to start for people, rather than risking their cash buying an item that is much more expensive and could potentially lose them money while they are first beginning.

Other than that - great guide Very well written and some great tips!

 

I don't know how many times per day the ge resets, you suggested to check it 3 times per day, but that doesn't really answer my question... are there also bots that check if someone has an higher offer than the bot and that the bot makes it higher so you have to do also higher, it's a battle against a bot that u can't win...
That's not a reflection bot is it?

 

Hey guys, thanks for your input, I'll look at making some revisions this weekend(putting in some more info, examples, and pictures). Also I do not use bots for my merching so I am not able to help you Reinier. As for ge resets, i typically like to merch items that take a decent amount of my wealth so that I am checking 3 times a day to sell stuff that i bought, buy stuff with money from sold stuff, adjust prices if stuff is not selling. I think you will find the ge price means nothing about the real price with the more expensive stuff and only effects the prices if it has a drastic change.

 

Great in depth guide that you have wrote here . This shows that you definitely know your stuff on merchanting and runescape in general. It has taught me many things like before i read this guide i was quite a nooby. I would feel quite happy now with merchanting camml items .

 

Great guide, might try flipping again before BXP announcement. Just wondering, how much have you made from flipping?

 

Yea, you should add more pictures.

OT: Very good guide tho

 

Thanks for this man! Definitely going to try "flipping" now

 

Very nice. Even taught an experienced flipper like me some new tips

 

Good Guide, im fresh back and shocked at prices of Book Pages !!!

 

Its hard to merch i think i am not good at it nice guide !