Equilibrium Point, Part 3 of 2.

Last time I went through the procedure to determine the equilibrium point of the pay-as-you-go model and the rental model. I finished by posting a table with the appropriate values. To repeat, they are as follows:

But what do these numbers mean?

These are simply the starting points. These are theoretical answers based on ideal circumstances. Your mileage will vary. If you are running a part-time bot, have a limited inventory, or not even enough ticket reserve, all of these factors will hinder the number of trades your bot will make during the day.

But if you have a high volume bot, making dozens of trades each day, then it is worth it to look at this.

While they may look scary, when you break them down into daily average, it is easier to get your head around this. Let's use the example I used last time: A LITE Bot, 2.5% fee and a one (1) month term; which yields that the bot must complete 200 tickets worth of trades in the month.

First off, 200 tickets worth of trades is not the same as profit. It can be 100 tickets coming in and 100 tickets going out over the course of the month.

Convert those 200 tickets to a daily rate, divide by 30, and you get 6 2/3 tickets per day. These numbers are easier to grasp. I'll leave it up to you to do the others.

Now check your logs. How many trades does your bot make over the course of a normal day? Yes, there will be ebbs and flows. Some days are better than others. Some weeks are better than others. Dark Ascension is being released, so we'll have more traffic now than we did a couple of weeks ago. Days with downtime also affect numbers. But over the course of a month, how many are you making? Only you can answer that one.

Suppose you determine that you're over-paying and you need to switch? That's no problem. Send a note to that wonderful Albert and he'll take of everything.