Grand Exchange Impact on Making Money in Runescape

Jagex released the Grand Exchange in Runescape onto an inexperienced market audience. As a result, making money in runescape has became much harder in the current market conditions. Too many people are panicking and trying to sell all their unused stock of items as quick as possible in order to make money before the items become worthless.

Naturally, this should be a short term problem to the whole runescape economy as now all players can trade through different worlds as well as trading while they are offline. This means supply for most items far outweighs demand and prices have fallen rapidly.

The best way to make use of the grand exchange is to both BUY and SELL items on there. Most people are simply trying to sell all items and therefore do not have room to buy anything. This is adding further problems as people keep lowering item prices thinking they will get sold quicker if at minimum.

The main problem is NOT the price, but the fact EVERYONE is doing the same thing - continually lowering the price they want to sell items at. If sellers, as a whole, were more patient and kept prices at a fair and reasonable price, then anyone buying items would eventually have to pay the price requested, otherwise they would not match any sellers price.

Merchanting has been impacted a lot, as has the ability to be self sufficient through using your own hard earned runescape skills. All players should remember this should only be a short term situation and in time, the market will return to a much more stable place.

Anyone who is into their runescape skills should be realistic in the prices they sell their items. Ideally, the skiller would be able to make money or at least break even when using high level skills.

Currently, due to the panic stricken runescape economy, there are very few skills that enable players to make money efficiently. This WILL change in the long term, but only after the majority of runescape players fully understand that it is the people who SELL the items that are driving the prices of resources down and not Jagex.

I ask all players who read this that they make their friends aware that in order to regain stability to the runescape economy, people selling items need to set realistic selling prices rather than trying to undercut other players to try and gain faster sales... this will only continue the downward spiral in resource prices and will affect all future sales and ability to make money through skills.

Bulk Items and Runescape Merchanting

Merchanting in runescape is one the the best methods to make money. The main reason merchanting makes considerable money in runescape is the fact higher level players (skill based players) will generally deal in bulk items.

Bulk items can be any resource (depending which skill is being trained). It is normally 1000 or more of a single resource, so 1000 iron ores would be consider bulk whereas 100 iron ores wouldn't.

The desire of players raising their skills by buying in bulk is obvious, it saves them a lot of time accumulating the resources in bulk rather than in smaller quanities, so they are willing to pay to have a larger amount guaranteed in order to gain the level they desire quicker.

This desire leaves it open as an ideal situation for merchanters to take advantage and offer their services to gather up items in smaller quanitities. Runescape merchants will spend their time gathering up smaller quantities of items initially and building up their supplier line for specific resources. In the long term, they can request their suppliers provide them with higher amounts of items (thereby reducing time taken to acquire resources).

As a supply line of workers is established for a merchant in runescape, it makes it easier for them to merchant other items - they simply ask their supply line to gather up the required items. This enables merchants to diversify a bit, although they shouldn't try and merchant everything, 3 or 4 items is normally enough for novice merchants to handle adequately.

One the supply line for bulk items is in place, it just remains to have an outlet - or a buyer. This is the person or people who will be training a skill and will normally want to buy in bulk to reduce the time of gathering up resources. The profit from merchant trades will vary from resource to resource, but any profit will add up in the long term and improve a merchants communication lines and ability to react to changes in the runescape economy.

Once firmly established as a bulk trader or merchant, any runescape player will have the chance to pursue some of the rare items such as party hats or santa hats. They will likely be able to afford them, but whether they decide to actually merchant the party hats or santa hats is another question entirely. That decision I will leave to the runescape player involved, although massive price growth is unlikely and prices will be unstable at different times of the year... so if deciding to merchant those rare items, tread with caution.

Runescape Bowstrings

Bowstrings in runescape are a member only item and is an easy money making method. The process is very simple and can take a while to gather up enough money to effectively merchant them. However, bowstrings are always in demand by other members who are fletching and is therefore a useful item to stockpile.

There are three methods that can be used to make money in runescape when dealing with bowstrings:

1. Picking and Spinning Bowstrings
2. Using Miscellania for Flax and then Spinning into Bowstrings
3. Merchanting Bowstrings at Seers
   

Money Making Method 1:
The first money making method is the more labour intensive and requires more dedication - although players will gain some crafting experience in the process as well. It simply involves players collecting up flax at the flax field and spinning their own bowstrings at the spinning wheel near Seers Bank.

Obviously, players can choose to sell the flax or make into the bowstring and sell that. Flax can expect to fetch 100gp while bowstrings should easily fetch 150gp each. Each bowsting will add 15 experience for crafting in runescape.

Money Making Method 2:
The second method of making money in runescape with bowstrings is to use the Kingdom of Miscellania to stockpile the required flax resources. When you collect the flax from the kingdom you can spin it into bowstrings and again expect to get at least 150 gp per bowstring.

Players will need to have completed the relevant quests in order to manage their kingdom and have deposited sufficient money in the coffers to pay the workers.

Money Making Method 3:
This method is basically merchanting bow strings. There are many resources in runescape that players can merchant, with some resources returning greater profit as well as involving greater risk.

Bowstring merchanting is simple. When buying the bowstrings the best location is normally Seers Bank or directly at the spinning wheel near the bank. Players who are spinning their flax may sell frequently in smaller quantities and therefore enable the merchanting player to buy at a price lower than the expected market value. The absolute maximum price to pay for bowstrings when looking to merchant them is 150 gp.

Ideally players will sell below 150gp and enable the merchant player to sell in bulk for 180 - 200gp. This can provide a decent profit margin. It is also a good opportunity for merchanters to build up a chain of suppliers for more reliable returns on their time investment.

Runescape Cow Hides

Collecting cow hides in runescape is an easy way of making money for both free to play and runescape members. The method of making money will normally depend on the person collecting the hides.

There are generally three basic methods to make money in runescape through cow hides:

• Merchant cow hides
• Collect them yourself
• A combination of both of the above

Merchanting Cow Hides:
Many low level players will normally collect up an inventory of cow hides and want a good price for them - they will generally not be able to get a good price and consequently sell cheap. Players can buy up these smaller quantities of cow hides from many different sources and sell their stockpile to another player who is training their crafting skill. In effect, you will be merchanting cow hides.

Collect the yourself:
This is very obvious - instead of buying the cow hides from other players you will simply fight the cows and stockpile them on your own. This is obviously a more time consuming method but you will be training your combat in runescape at the same time. This can help you make money and improve your overall levels.

A combination of both methods:
The smartest way to make money in runescape with using cow hides is to combine both of the first two methods. To effectively do this, when you are training your combat at the cow field (normally lumbridge), ask other players if they will sell their cow hides to you for a set price. Obviously the price can be negotiated by you but it will have to be lower than the price you intend selling.

Collecting the hides yourself will help improve your combat and asking others to sell their hides to you will help you establish a chain of suppliers. This means you should already have a buyer lined up and that you should have sufficient money available to always pay your suppliers. After all, a happy worker is a healthy worker that will continue to work for you and continue to make profit for you as well as earn a decent income themselves.

Overall, one key thing to note is the prices of items (07 runescape price guide or checking the grand exchange in EoC runescaoe), specifically cow hides in this case. The price is generally stable - but it can vary from buyer to buyer, so it is in your best interest to line up more than one buyer to be able to sell large quantities when you want and not have to wait for that one person to log on to buy. This increases your buying power and can enable you to hire much more workers and stockpile cow hides at a much faster rate. Ultimately improving your overall profit level.

Establish a chain of suppliers

A good tip for earning money in the longer term is to establish a chain of suppliers of the raw material that you want to focus on.

If you have a lot of regular suppliers of any resources then you can quickly accumulate a bulk amount to be able to sell on and profit from.

This approach is especially helpful for all players that are wishing to get into merchanting as a means to increase their wealth on runescape. Generally, the more suppliers you have, the less liklihood that you will ever run out of being able to supply people the raw materials they demand. This makes it easy for you to sell quickly and therefore making a quicker profit.