Sunday, November 9, 2014

How to start your bot the right way Part 7

Hi Everyone!

Today is the 7th installment of my series on how to start a bot and it's the last installment in this series. This last installment is about how you run your bot once it's up and running.

 There's a lot to say about strategy regarding what road to take to maximize profits and to be honest, I have seen people be profitable and fail from all the strategies. 95% of these failures are due to poor execution of the plan, the other 5% of failure is due to having a bad plan.

All I can say about your plan is to make sure it's realistic. Don't think you're going to be a billionaire in a week by marking prices way up, that doesn't work. You have to treat Magic Online cards like commodities in a perfect competition market. Yes, there are ways to differentiate your products, but for the majority of buyers, it's all about price. Many buyers will even go to bots with the lowest prices even if they have very small inventories, so keep that in mind.

Now to the important part, executing your plan. All I can tell you is to be vigilant. Always monitor what's going on in the market as well as what trades you see a lot of, if you're setting your own prices, make sure that if you notice you can never keep a card in stock to raise the price, if you're never able to buy a copy of a certain card it's possible that you're buy price is too low.

The other tip I can give regarding vigilance and your bot is to think about what your decisions can do to your business. Think about any positive as well as negative consequences (everyone seems to forget about the negative consequences). Don't let yourself focus your vision firmly on your goal while moving backward.

One last thing. When new sets come out, I strongly recommend not buying any cards for the first couple weeks they are online. Look at historical prices for any set on Magic Online. You will see that 100% of the time the cards cost much more when they are new. While it may be part of your strategy to acquire those new cards, don't buy them unless it's a necessary part of your plans for success.

No comments:

Post a Comment