Exchanging
First, you need to know where the Exchange forum is. It can be located by going to Gaia Forums and clicking on The Gaia Exchange in the Gaia Gaming section. (Or by following this handy link: Exchange Link.) Now that you’ve found it you need to know where to go from there. There are several sub-forums contained within the main Exchange forum. Basucally as long as you are selling some kind of equippable or house item, you can do anything else in the main forum. Buy, sell, sell game items, have contests, etc. If you are not selling (or if you are selling only Game Items) you need to head to the appropriate forum. Because not being in the right place is rude and gets on a lot of people’s nerves. So don’t do it.
Subforums
Explanations of what to do in each sub-forum. You can skip this if you want to.
Lotto/Money Games: This forum is where lotteries and other money games can be held. If
you are an extremely lucky person you might go there to check it out. But I wouldn’t recommend
it. I have never entered that forum but, I suspect, as with many money games they probably
have some way of ripping you off. Especially the lotteries. Most lotteries are “for profit” and can
take years before they’re drawn.
Wanted: This is the place to go to buy things. If you are looking for something for yourself I
suggest listing an offer rather than asking people to name their price because, more than likely,
they’re going to try to get you to pay as much as possible because they know you want the item.
There’s also a way to make money by buying things in the Wanted but I’ll explain that later.
Charity/Quests: The Charity/Quests forum is the forum dedicated to exactly what it sounds
like. If you are on a quest I suggest creating a semi-pretty nicely laid-out quest thread and
bumping it a lot as you will get far more donations than just random begging. On a somewhat
related note, if you have ever been donated to by a charity and you get to have a lot of money,
give back to the Gaia community by donating yourself.
Gaia Marketplace Discussion: This is the place to advertise your shop in the Gaia
Marketplace. I honestly don’t know why you would, or how this would help in anyway. But hey, if
you feel the urge, there’s a forum for it.
Game Item Exchange: This is the place you buy and sell game items. Game items include:
Bugs, other “trash” that can be found in towns, all items obtained from fishing, pinball powerups,
“Electric Love Factory” powerups, credits, tickets, tokens, all zOMG rings, all zOMG recipe
ingredients (but not the recipes themselves or the items created from them.)
The Main Gaia Exchange: Most likely, this will be the place where you are headed to make
money.
Exchanging in the Exchange
Unless it’s eight am (EST, five am PST) on a tuesday morning, any thread on the first page should be just fine for your purposes. (If it does happen to be such a slow time as early morning on a school day you may want to wait until later to avoid becoming frustrated. If you can’t wait for whatever reason then pay attention to the time stamp on the most recent post. If it was more than ten minutes ago, don’t bother.) And by “any thread” I mean, you’re probably not going to head into the one where the title says: “Glaurels, HOTD, Devil Tail, NM Minis” but most of them should be fine. Generally, the post-count doesn’t matter as much as you’d think. A lot of people have perma-threads that get to be extremely large and other people have to bump a lot to keep their thread on the first page.
Once you’ve selected a thread the first thing to do is read the thread owner’s rules (if they have any.) Many rules people will post are common sense. Such as, do not quote anything on the first page (or just the first post itself if it’s not a permanent thread). This causes page-stretching which is just annoying. Even if they don’t have that rule, don’t do it. Many people will ask you not to pm them, although conversely some people only want to be pmed.
My Exchange Rules
If there are no rules posted, or if there are, I have compiled a list of things you should follow. You
may skip this, I suppose, although I would prefer if you did not.
And believe me, I’ve seen at least one person break every rule.
Follow the TOS. Most obvious rule ever. Go read it again just to refresh your memory.
Follow the Exchange rules posted in a stickied thread in the main Exchange.
Use a readable font.
Don’t quote first post/first page posts. Especially if they contain large pictures.
Do not pm the seller unless they give permission in their rules or ask you to.
Look up and know the price of what you’re offering on before you offer.
Never bid more than you have.
Don’t bid on something you don’t intend to buy.
Don’t beg.
Don’t send a trade unless you are told to.
Label all trades as much as possible (there is a HUGE character limit, I promise.)
Be polite.
Offer on items individually. No lump offers for this that and the other thing for 3k.
Try not to use chatspeak. If you’re thoroughly incapable of avoiding it please never come
to my thread I mean... please use only more common chatspeak such as “u”, “2”, or
“brb” instead of expecting the seller to know what “tn34umvsn” means. (To my knowledge that is
not an actual word in 1337, I was just giving a ridiculous example.)
Be patient. Don’t requote your offer every minute or leave after three minutes of no response. I
follow the guide-line of re-posting my offer after a few minutes if and only if the seller has
already responded to someone who posted after me and leave the thread if the seller has not
posted at all in ten minutes. Before I leave I requote my offer with the further message asking if
they can pm me or send a trade later if they like any of my offers and that I don’t want to wait
longer than ten minutes.
The next thing to do after reading a seller’s rules is to look over their items and see if there is something or multiple items you want to buy. Sometimes people post pictures of what they’re selling, sometimes they have lists, sometimes they put items in the “show inventory” box or equip everything they want to sell. But anyway, try to figure out everything you want to buy (within your price range) before posting. Also before posting: Check and see that the items you want to buy aren’t already sold. Then post the item name and your offer. Offer individually for each item. Make sure you have enough for what you want to buy and hopefully a little more for wiggle room in case the seller wants to haggle.
How do you offer, you wonder? Because, I know, it seems bizarre to buy things to earn gold. But, that’s how it works. You’re going to want to offer less than what you think you can sell it for in the marketplace. There are a few different things to consider when offering on something. You need to keep in mind the two percent tax. You need to pay attention to both the Average Buy Price and the Lowest Buy Now Price as well at the little red or green percentage next to the average buy price. A small green number (five or less) is good. A huge green or red number (+/-10% or more) is bad, I’d avoid buying it. A small red number is okay you just may want to offer a little lower on that item. When offering always make offers off whichever price is lower, LMP (Lowest Market Price/Lowest Buy Now Price) or average buy price.
Rule of thumb for offering. If the item is worth less than 1.5k offer 100-400g off the MP (Market Price). Most people will accept that. For items 2-4k offer 500-700g off. 4-11k offer 1k off. 11-30k offer 2k off. 30-70k 3-4k off. 70-90k offer 3-5k off. 90-120k offer 10k off. For items over these amounts (or just in general if you’re the calculations type, it’s usually safe to offer 80-90% of the price. Not off, but of the price, which is 10-20% off. As you become more experienced it becomes easier to offer on items and to know which items to offer a little more or a little less on.
If the seller accepts your offer send them a labeled trade with the correct amount of gold (or items if you’re trading). Once the trade is complete you’re all set to start earning money from your investments.
Okay! So you have now bought a few items. You want to list your items so that they sell quickly in the MP and you can re-invest your gold (especially if you have very little). This is why it’s important to offer off the LMP if it’s lower than the Average buy price. So that you can sell right away and still profit. List your items for less than the current lowest price (even if only 1g lower). If you have a little more gold or a little more patience you can make more profit by listing your item a little higher, especially if you plan to leave it overnight when the supply is lower and the demand tends to remain the same.
Ideally you will have ten different items selling in your shop at the same time while you search for or wait on more deals. That is where you want to be to make the most profit. But having items sit in your shop (or your inventory, waiting for a slot in your shop) for days at a time is no good. You need to price to sell relatively quickly so that you can move on and re-invest.
Wanted Exchanging
Exchanging through the Wanted subforum is a lot like owning a pawn shop. You typically want to have at least 100k before trying this. People will come to you and offer you items to buy from them. They do this because they’re too impatient to sell in the marketplace. They want gold and they want it now, not in an hour. You profit through patience. You offer on their items much like you would to a seller in the regular Exchange, if they agree to sell you do a trade and then you list the item in the Marketplace just like you would with any item you bought from someone. Often, you can offer even lower than you would usually in the regular Exchange because the sellers are just so impatient and eager for your pure. It depends on your strategy in the Wanted. If you give better offers you’ll likely get a higher volume of items. But if you offer lower you might buy fewer items but have a higher profit margin. Whatever works for you.
Game Item Exchanging
Buying game items for cheap in the Exchange at inventory sales and such and then selling them to collectors in the Game Exchange or turning bugs into ink, etc. is a decent way to make profit. The highest profit game items to buy are black, green, red, & blue bugs, black, blue, green, red & white ink, and tickets. Bugs can typically be bought for 1 gold each while the inks (made from fifty bugs) can be considerably more than that. Particularly black and white ink. White ink can be made from five of each red, blue and green inks (250 bugs of each color) so you spent 750g on it and you can sell it for up to 2k per bottle due to the high demand for white body dyes. Tickets should be bought for about .5g each less than the average buy price per unit for tickets. The best way to sell them is to turn them into the best selling prize and joy items. To know what these are you must do research. The same goes if you’re going to turn your cheap ink into tattoos. The goal here is to always make the most profit from your investment.
