Position
Always pick a busy warp other shops means increased trafic for you. Try to get as close to the warp as you can. Advertising a shop works better if you can give directions in a short manner. Eg: “Warp shop2, first on the right” Ist way better than “Warp shop3, go to the end of the street, turn left, follow the stairs up and jump down again”
Visibility Exterior
Describe your shop in 3 words or less. Cant do it? change your exterior.
The simplest way would be to add banners like “Rave” does on his shop.
Others might use a certain item like “shop with roses” like Cysteen does.
Advertising
So lets say you get the first shop on the left side of warp shop1, you have “EMIEL” banners hanging over your shop enterance. Its time to advertise! Dont spam chat every x minutes asking people to visit your shop, most will be anoyed and not do so, the ones who do show up being anoyed. Instead /msg people who ASK where to buy an item with your “phrase”.
“go to /warp shop1, first on your left Emiels shop”
Visibilty Interior
Have your items grouped eg: PvP corner, build materials in one place, ores in one place etc.
Have staircases visible, dont build small staircases that are hidden behind pillars etc maybe even ad glass into floors so people see there are more items over/below them.
Brand Recognition
Instead of just selling items you have lying around focus on a certain aspect. If you “just” sell stuff your shop becomes an oppurturnity for a good deal, worth a look.
If you eg: sell all wool colors your shop becomes the wool shop. People will send others to the “Wool shop” if they ask for wool. People will not send others looking for wool to some shop that might be out of stock, or might have changed their stock and is suddenly selling wood instead of wool.
Focus on one or 2 maybe 3 aspects and build a costomer base first, after you might want to move to a more super market type shop and sell basically everything, at this point you will be competing with other long time shop keepers and its less about pricing or items and more about personal preferance. Have your loyal costomer base first before you enter this economic arena, other shop keeps might bad mouth you/ attack you or worse, build your loyal customer base first!
Prices and Underbidding
Selling cheap is not the best way. I see countless shops selling items for half of what I am selling. This might seem to be the way to go to get money fast but I just need to sell half of what they are selling in the same time to make as much money as they do. They will have to restock twice as often as well.
These underbidding shops usually dont last long because their stock is bought fast and it sits unstocked for a while, thus becoming a shop of oppurturnity. Someone who is in a hurry will not check such shops first, he will visit the shop that is known to be stocked even if the prices there are higher!
So dont get mad if someone is selling the same items for a fraction of your price, wait untill they log out, buy their stock and sell at your shop making a profit off of them!
Keep your own shop stocked as much as you can, high frequency items should be linked to hoppers so a stock of more than one double chest can be used.
So dont set your prices looking at the lowest ones available compare with price and stock in mind. If Diamonds are being sold at 5 dollars each, one shop selling a stock of 2 diamonds at 3 dollars each does not change the price of Diamonds, compare items being sold in shops that are known to be stocked.
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