MTGO Library Bot 6.81

ML Bot 6.81 is a maintenance build for 6.80.

• It fixes a problem with the "Trading" mode that was not picking all the cards needed
• It implements a better heuristic engine to shorten the name of the cards in the #shortname# command

Trades are low these days, don't kill your margins

Mtgo economy is a bit slow this week, there is a significant drop of trades among all the bots, ML Bots and not ML bots. I checked online the main chains (see attached screenshot) and I found them at least 60% less frenzy than usual.

Don't cut your margin just because this is a slow week: keep your prices and resist the temptation. Release Events are just 2 weeks ahead.

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MTGO Library Bot 5.99

ML Bot 5.99 is another great update, introducing "Special Buddies".
Who are the "special buddies"? These are persons you want to encourage / discourage from trading with your bot by adjusting their selling and buying prices.
An example: you can give a discount to your friends, or to the members of your clan. You can make cards more expensive for cherry pickers.

ML Bot 5.99 is now also able to recover from a "generic crash" (see image below). This is useful, for example, if Explorer (or some other software) crashes and blocks Mtgo.

Finally, the new version features a better mtgo-launching procedure and has a timer that will automatically restart the launch after waiting 3 hours without errors or feedback of any sort.

Manual intervention (Part 2)

Giving Away Freebies
While giving away free stuff doesn't sound like the right thing to do, many businesses owe their success to this practice. "Freebie Marketing"(link), also known as the razor and blades business model, is a business model where one item is sold at a low price (or given away for free) in order to increase sales of a complementary good, such as supplies (inkjet printers and ink cartridges, "Swiffers" and cleaning fluid, mobile phones and service contracts).





Freebie Marketing in MTGO
While many might think that giving away free cards isn't beneficial within a MTGO business the reality is, after I done some tests, I had some positive results which I will share with you.
Many of my sales out of the client (such as on my bots website and others) are made by MTGO users that never traded with my bots and many of which are quite new to MTGO. While this seems like a perfect combination to have a bit of a chat and introduce them to my bots (and hopefully get a new regular Customer), the reality is that only about 10-15% ended up using my bots after their order.

The Test
My test was to give every customer(that never used my bots before) that made any order above $10 or so a few cents credit on my bot (such as 0.5 - 0.75), explain them my bots unusual pricing and see what happened. While my sample isn't the biggest, I can tell that within one week of giving the "freebie" at least half of my "test subjects" done at least trade with my bots worth over 1 Event Ticket.

Conclusion
Examples of this marketing strategy can be seen all over MTGO. From "free bots" (easily over half of new players hear about mtgotraders "free bot" within 1 month of playing MTGO) which give a massive advertisement to their chain, to discount codes on first orders, etc.
Remember to be wise if you are trying this path as part of my success could be due to the Customer trust made from a very fast delivery and clear helpful communication on their purchased goods in the first place.

On next week, I'll talk about card transfers.

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (Budget)

Introduction:  So you want to play with robots? 

When I recently started my bot-chain using the ML Bot I read everything I could regarding everything related to starting and running a bot chain on MTGO. There are some pretty good guides available, especially on this blog but I still had to spend countless of hours researching information all over the web until I felt I knew enough to start my first bots. Therefore I will be writing yet another guide on how to start your bot chain, and I'll try to make this one as comprehensive as possible.

The first two parts are going to be an introduction that goes through some of the basics to keep in mind before starting a bot and I'll continue going through more advanced stuff in later parts. Since you're reading this I'm assuming you're interested in the world of MTGO botting. This might seem really complicated at first, but the truth is that anyone with some basic computer skills can do it. How complicated it is will be totally up to you, as you could basically start a bot in a matter of minutes with next to no knowledge, or capital investment, if you want. It's your tactics and plan that will determine how much work and how complicated it will be and of course, how successful you will be.

 I'm guessing capital investment is one of the most important factors for any aspiring botter, so here's a quick estimate of how much a new botter needs to invest.

First of all you need a basic computer, almost any old junk will be able to run a bot or two. When I started I ran 2 bots on an old Core 2 duo CPU, a 128gb SSD and 4gb ram. GPU is irrelevant as long as it can run MTGO.
An SSD is a good idea but not necessary in the beginning.

Each bot needs around:

• 5-10gb on your HDD
• 1.1 gb RAM (for MTGO 3.0) or 2-2.5 gb RAM (for MTGO 4.0 when it's released) 
• preferably one core of a shitty CPU. 

I'll assume you have a computer at home that meets these requirements so initial investment on hardware shouldn't be much. Other than hardware you need to buy accounts for each bot, which is $9.9 and I'd recommend buying at least 50 Event Tickets per bot.

• Hardware: 0 
• Accounts: $9.90 (per account) 
• Tickets: ~$50 (per account) 
• Total: ~$59.90 (per account) 

 More next time!
 I'll gladly answer any questions you might have in the comments.

Cheers!
-Tom (Sitrec) 
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3 & ArchBot4

World of Warcraft vs MTGO: the Client

Yesterday I wondered why Wizards of the Coast needs to build (totally from scratches) and deploy a new version of Magic Online every 5 years. A software is not like an hardware (read: PlayStation, Xbox) that needs to be completely redesigned every 5 years to keep up with the market. A software can be updated every week (even without a downtime) using Continuos Integration.

Blizzard developed one client (the famous World of Warcraft) in 2004, and continuosly updated it, patched it, added new lands, fixed the rules and so on so forth. I am sure that the World of Warcraft client running today on our PCs does not share any single line of code with the first client of  2004. Still, Blizzard never imposed an abrupt transiction to the user base.

Welcome to botrunners.net

www.botrunners.net is a friend forum mainly focused on business and on ML Bot. The forum launched one week ago, it's still pretty new but promizing: let's make it grow! Bot users in fact do not have a dedicated place to discuss, to know each other and possibly have business together.

I strongly think it will be wonderful to have a place where you can post suggestions, ask for advices, post your "hey, I sell tixs" advertisement and this kind of things. The official WotC forums are so moderated that you cannot even talk about bot, business and tixs - we bot owners deserve more.

Visit it daily, write there something - at first it will be boring because you will be "alone" but in 1-2 months the ML Bot user and business men will have a new powerful tool strapped on their
belt.

Building Customer Confidence

Building confidence with customers is simple and productive part of operating a business. When a potential customer is confident they are dealing with a reputable company they are much more likely to make a purchase. There are many ways to increase a customers confidence in your brand but one of the easiest methods is to make yourself available to a customer and provide them with as much information about your business as you can. Here are a few thoughts to consider while you initiate or update your botting business.

Email

Perhaps the most important thing you can do to improve your relationship and trust with customers is to provide an email address for them to contact you if they need assistance with your bot. You can use any free service to operate an email address for your bot and it takes only moments each day to check.

Website

There are many free website services that you can use as a base of operations for your botting chain. There are also paid services if you can spare the money for a domain and hosting. A website is a great place to include additional information on your business and any activities your business is participating in(Prizes, events, products, etc). A bot with a website will draw more trust and interest than a bot without a website because of its professional appearance and availability of information. 

Brick and Mortar Location

While this is certainly not necessary for many online businesses some people are more willing to trust a company if they make openly available that they have a brick and mortar location where an individual could meet in person. If you run a Ma and Pa card shop be sure to let your MTGO customers know that! It shows that you have an investment in your business and wont just disappear in the middle of the night.

Phone Number

People like to meet in person before they make a large purchase, the next best thing to meeting is to hear a humans voice on the phone. If you are comfortable with the occasional phone call from an angry, concerned or excited customer then you may wish to explore this option. It lends a great deal of credibility to what you are doing if you make yourself personally available to customers.