A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (MLBot Basics 2) Part 11

MTGO Library Bot part 2:

Last time I talked about some basic preparations and basic information about ML Bot.
This time I'm going through the settings tabs of MTGO Library Bot.

Getting started:
First of all you should register your own account on mtgolibrary.com and then log in and click "Register new bot" and register your first bot. If you're going to run more than one bot, go into "Sharing credits" with each bot and add them to the same chain. This ensures that your customers can use any leftover credits on each of your bots.

General Tab:
Now start MTGO Library Bot and insert your bot's name into "Username" and the bot account's password into "MTGO Password" and lastly the password you use on the mtgolibrary site in "Bot Password"

I would recommend setting it to restart every 2 hours or so as MTGO can get a bit sluggish.
Mtgo also has a bug where it believes you're in a trade even though you're not, which will give potential customers a message that states that you're busy even though you're not when they try to trade.
A restart fixes this.

Make sure to uncheck "Make all tradeable". It automatically makes all cards you own tradeable which means your Lite bots will be selling valuable cards at bulk prices.

"Free download mtgolibrary.com prices at update" should always be checked as even Lite bots use the pricelist for certain things, otherwise it won't be able to buy new sets that gets released.

Also make sure to set the Bot type to whatever you're planning on using it for. Some people prefer to have one bot that buys and one that sells, in that case set the selling bot to only be a "Seller" and vice versa.
A "Trader" is a bot that allows a user to both sell to your bot and purchase at the same time.

Most bots have all these checked at the same time and that's what I would recommend.

Collection Tab: 
Here you can choose which sets to buy and how many of each rarity within each set to purchase.
For a Pro bot that is just starting out without a huge collection I would recommend buying only Standard and only 4 of each Common, Uncommon, Rare and Mythic. Foil is something I would recommend buying further down the road, the same goes for other sets. I would also recommend you to not buy basic lands or boosters in the beginning.

You can select set-categories in the "Quick selection" box and then choose rarities and quantities and lastly hit "Submit to collection". This is great for changing a lot of collection settings at once.

Buyer Tab: 
I wouldn't recommend you to change anything here except for maybe "Buyer Search Order", for example if you're not buying Foil you might as well move them down to prioritizing stuff you're actually buying.


Prices Tab:  This one differs depending on which bot type you're using and I'll go through this one for each type in upcoming posts.

Administrator Tab:
Here you can set your own account as Administrator which gives you privileges to execute commands for certain bot tasks as well as setting up automatic transferring of cards between your bots.

I wouldn't really recommend you to use the auto transfer as it's not very good at the moment and I think you're better off spending maybe 5 minutes every day to transfer them by hand.

Messages Tab:
"1st welcome message": Is the message your bot will greet a new customer with.

"General welcome message": Is the message your bot will post to returning customers upon opening of a new trade.

"Additional info message 1,2 and 3": These can be used for anything you would like to tell your customers. For example an email address where they can reach you on, or which bots are part of your chain.

"End of trade message": This message will be posted when a trade is completed.

"Display WIKI price message at the beginning of trade": This one should be checked. It will advertise the wikiprice site where they can find bot prices, but it also reduces the fee you'll have to pay to MTGO Library for each transaction from 3.5% to 2.5%.

"Classified message": This is the message the bot will post in the classifieds tab in MTGO. A good idea is to write either your bulk prices here or advertise cards you have for sale.

"Buy class. message": here you can set if you want to use a different message when your bot is busy. For example you could put (Busy Trading) or something similar in front of your normal classified message.

"Trading room message": this determines what your bot will post in the trading room.

Store and Accounts Tab:
Here you can find some licensing information about your bot.

Next time I'll go through how you can set up your first Lite bot and start botting for real.
Until next time, have fun!

-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5 

MTGO Library: Bot Customization

We host a series of articles from our friends blog http://www.mtgeconomist.com , a blog dealing with mtg and mtgo economics.

You can read the original article here: 

http://www.mtgeconomist.com/en/mtgo-library-personalizacion-del-bot-parte-6-2/

Previously I introduced the MTGO Library bot and all its advantages for increasing your collection. In this chapter of the series I will roughly explain how you can make the bot customization, so that you can differentiate your digital card shop from the rest at Magic Online.

Before we begin, I remind you that in the MTGO Library home page there is a link to the bot manual in PDF format. This document describes all the required steps to start using the bot, however in this article I will focus on the most important functionalities so you know how to make the bot customization.

MTGO Library versions: Pro and Lite

The first thing to know is that you can install two versions of the bot: Pro and Lite. The Pro one lets you customize the price of each card separately, whereas the Lite one sets prices which mainly depends on rarity. To set these prices, the bot Lite version features an additional tab in your control panel entitled “Prices”.

Which version should you choose? Well, it depends on the sales and marketing strategy you have. Either way, the answer to this question needs a separate article that I have plans to publish soon.

From the bot customization of both versions point of view, almost all features are the same, thus I will comment them indifferently for both cases and I will only clarify the version when an option is only available for such version.

General features

I will assume you’ve installed the software and you are in the control panel, from where you will make all the necessary changes to the bot configuration.

The “General” section includes the information of the user account on MTGO Library as well as the Magic Online one. Besides, from here you can change certain bot behaviors like:

• Maximum duration and inactivity period of a trade 
• Automatically reload MTGO price lists 
• Operating modes of the bot (buy, sell and/or trade) 
• Management of the screenshots of your trades 
• Usage of prices and/or percentage changes stated by you on an aside personal price list 
• Set corrections for the buy prices never exceed sell prices 
• Also, you can force the bot restarts Magic Online periodically, which is a good practice because the longer MTGO client is running, the easier it stops from receiving new trades.

Finally, it must be said that there is a function that allows the robot to go faster than normal, but requires that the computer also reacts very fast. From my experience, this mode would only be used with an OS that is not run on a virtual machine (VM) neither it runs other VMs, and despite this fast mode the difference in performance is not too high in practice.

Choosing which cards to buy and sell

The “Collection” section introduces all sets that are available at Magic Online. When choosing one of them, you can limit the number of copies for each rarity on both, normal and foil cards. If you want to buy only some specific letters of a set, then you should put those cards on the personal price list instead. You can also choose to buy boosters of collections you want.

But these are not the only options available for customizing the bot regarding to the price list. You can also modify (for all cards and using percentages on the “Limits” section), the prices of all the cards in a certain rarity, as well as limit their minimum/maximum price. One of the benefits of using this option consists of avoiding bugs on the MTGO Library price list. For example, we may want to not buy common cards for more than 2 tickets (although there are some with higher value) to avoid price peak of a card that is not worth that amount. This way, all cards that have a higher price will be bought at a price of 2 tickets instead.

Bot customization on the classifieds

For me, “Messages” sections is one of the most important ones. Here you will be able to customize your store ad and messages sent to a client who is performing a trade.

There are two possible texts for the ad: one is shown when the bot is available for customers, whereas the other one appears when the bot is busy. Also, you can automatically add a text at the beginning to indicate this state (OPEN or BUSY). It is important to maximize the usage of the 255 character limit on each text in order to achieve two main goals:

1. Users shall find your store on the classified with the search engine. Ask yourself which are the words that someone would use to find a store of cards/boosters/sets… and add them to your ad. 
2. Shines against the rest. Some people are directly looking for stores by scrolling down the classifieds list, so it is important to highlight from the other ads. For this purpose, you can add special codes that draw typical Magic icons (you can find a list here). 
3. Clearly state what your store offers. Do not lie or give inaccurate information about the offer on your store. Customers will soon realize and will not return.

To meet these assumptions you have special tools and icon codes I just mentioned above. However, MTGO Library also offers the option of submitting the current prices of your cards, which can be published in your ad. Typically most bots show the most traded cards of the moment because there will be many people looking for them. But you also have many other options, for example:

• Buy/sell price of a card at random 
• Price of cards with a minimum/maximum value 
• Random cards from specific sets 
• Specific regular/foil cards…

The format to show a card with its current price is found on the bot manual. If you don’t select one specific card, the bot changes it periodically so the ad does not always show the same card. The more you show, the more likely it is that someone will find the price you have for that card. But keep in mind that there are competitors that will do the same. Thus, if your prices are visible they should be one of the best because people can easily compare them.

MTGO Library… Online

Once you have configured your bot, you can track the status and trades performed by your store if you login to your account on MTGO Library site. Full details on what you can do within your personal page will be discussed in the next chapter of this series.

Magic Online Economy: Fundamentals

We host the first of a series of articles from our friends blog http://www.mtgeconomist.com , a top blog dealing with mtg and mtgo economics.
You can read the original article here: 
http://www.mtgeconomist.com/en/economia-de-magic-online-parte-3/

In this article I will talk you about the fundamentals of the Magic Online economy. With this information you will have an idea of ​​how to perform your purchases/sales of cards and the reasons that justify the price of a card. This comparison will not only be related to digital cards, but also between the value of an online and a physical card.

The main currency on Magic Online economy

Certainly there is no official currency on Magic Online. Since the beginning of the game the material was bought from the Magic Online official store, which can be accessed within the game itself. The only options available for sale are: boosters, pre-constructed decks and Event Tickets. These tickets allow you to enter at Magic Online tournaments where you can win prizes, and each of these items costs $1 plus taxes.

Due to the price of the tickets and their intrinsic value, soon people started to use them as the main currency. Their market price depends on factors such as the amount available on Magic Online, the number of drafts/limited queues to be launched, and recently also the high value of the mythic cards. Today their market price is slightly higher than $1 each, and it is unlikely to rise much more because if their value is very close to the official price ($1 + VAT) people would directly buy them from the store.

The evolution of prices

A particular feature of the Magic Online economy is that the price of each card evolves very fast. The reason is that the trades of cards can be done immediately without shipment delays, something that cannot be avoided on the physical market.

For this reason, the digital market behaves much more likely the real stock markets, and price changes are motivated by reasons like fear or speculation. However, in the Magic Online economy itself predictions can be made without being a financial guru. The important thing is that you must have a lot of experience in the game and know the cards, so you can correctly analyze the new sets and their possible interactions with the old cards in different game formats. In this way, you can overtake the market and buy a card that will be probably played (and, therefore, will rise in price) cheaper.

Giving a value to a Magic Online card

You might think that digital cards should have almost no value at all. After all, it is something that you can not own physically. In fact, your collection is not even stored on your own computer, but on a remote server managed by Wizards. However, if you look at the price of the cards at Magic Online, you can see that their value is not so different from the printed version. Normally, the digital market value is lower but sometimes happens exactly the opposite.

Why does this happen? Like I stated for the physical market, the value of the cards depends on many factors. Some of them are the same in both the virtual and real world, but others are specific to the Magic Online economy. Moreover, the effect of each factor is usually much larger in
the digital version because the changes happens instantly. Below I summarize some of them:

• Tournaments and prices: like the physical format, when a major tournament is announced for a certain format, the cards increase their price and then they stabilize again after that tournament finishes. Besides, when there are announces of drafts for a certain set the prices also get lower in anticipation of higher stock and less demand. And so on… 
• Reprints: Due to high speculation and the fast changes at Magic Online economy, the announcement of a reprint for a card makes its price collapse, especially if the card has a high economic value.
• Banning/Restriction: When a card is forbidden for using on certain constructed formats, its price usually gets lower because noone is able to play with it.
• Rarity: Although this is not a general rule, the rarest cards usually are more expensive and their foil version also have a higher value than normal ones.

These factors are may apply to both, the physical and digital market of Magic. However, there is another factor that, togeteher with the tournaments one, may have the highest impact on Magic Online economy: the redemption option.

What is redemption and why is it so important?

The redemption is an option offered on Magic Online to link the virtual world with the physical one, from both the ownership of the cards and their economic value point of view. Redemption consists of ordering a full set of physical cards to your home, only if you own all the cards of that set on your Magic Online account. You must have one copy of every card and they cannot be replaced by a foil nor another set version.

This option was introduced since the beginning of Magic Online to give extra value to the digital cards. Although nowadays the impact of this option on the Magic Online economy is smaller, it yet has a considerable weight.

The main advantage of this option is that you can buy digital cards in Magic Online at lower prices than the same printed cards. Likewise, you only apply the shipping costs once for receiving the cards in your house. Thus, it may be a very profitable option for collectors or even if you just want some very expensive cards of a specific set.

The main problem of redemption is that the big sellers flood the market with a huge amount of collections, lowering the price of both redeemed sets and those collected by opening boosters. For this reason, Wizards has recently increased the price of each collection requested the $5 to $25 (shipping not included). Although it is still an affordable price to individuals who wish from 1-4 sets, this new value limits the benefits obtained by directly selling the redeemed collections.

In my opinion, the redemption is one of the best options offered on Magic Online, and is also an excellent regulator of the economy. I could write a whole article dedicated to this topic, but I think I have offered you the basic information to know the fundamentals of Magic Online economy and how redemption works. In the next chapter I will discuss the profiles of players you can find on Magic Online. This analysis will aid you to better understand the market movements of digital cards.

Unlimited free pricelists - avalaible now !

Mtgolibrary.com is launching a new tool, the Unlimited Pricelists.

- The current situation

Before today, one had to pay 0.200 tixs for each download of the pricelist. For example, if one has 3 bots and each bot updates the prices every 6 hours, the account globally downloads a total of 360 pricelists per month. At 0.2 tixs / download, it's 72 tixs / month, a lot of money. To prevent the expense one can adopt a number of strategies, for example reducing the numbers of download per day (1 per day instead of  4) or switch some bots from PRO to LITE.
In fact all the solutions are suboptimal, and I have to admit this has been a big problem so far.

- Unlimited pricelists
From today, you can now sign for Unlimited Pricelists. What is it? In a nutshell it's a subscription that allows the download of the pricelist for free. The subscription applies to all your bots, regardless of the number, even to bots you will add in the future.

The cost, valid till next Friday,  is 8 usd/month or 12 tixs/month: in the majority of the cases this is much less than the sum of the 0.2 downloads mentioned above.
*** UPDATE: Just a quick note, because I received many emails with the same question: the Unlimited Pricelist applies also to the automatic downloads from the bot. ***

- Benefits for the botter
The benefits for the botter are mainly economical - paying less for more pricelists. Having a bot always updated with the prices means a better market for the collection.
I won't talk more about this, I think every botter could explain the benefits better than me.
.
- Benefits for mtgolibrary.com
Altough -economically speaking- the Unlimited Pricelists seems a non-sense for mtgolibrary.com, we don't think so. We discussed a lot before the launch, and the general feeling is that we can offer a better product and that having "bots more updated on the market" will benefit us indirectly (for examples with more trades, or more PRO licenses subscriptions).

- Single downloads
Of course the old 0.2 downloads still hold. We don't force you at this, just think to Unlimited Pricelists as a new tool strapped on your belt.

New feature: Unlimited Price Updates.

Hello fellow botters,

I have a great announcement to make, starting April 5th (tomorrow) ML Bot will be offering unlimited downloads of the pricelist, for all your bots, at one fixed price. No more worrying about old prices or struggling trying to balance the number of downloads to keep competitive: you can have all your bots download the pricelist as often as you want.


The unlimited price list applies to all your bots, including future ones and regardless of the number.
The price you are wondering? 12 usd a month or 15 tickets a month, but there will be an introductory price for the first week (from April 05th till April 12th) of just 8 usd or 10 tixs.

How does this help me?

This new feature will allow you to download prices every hour unlimited, therefore keep your card prices in the current market. This will keep you safe from sudden price fluctuations that can potentially cost you money. 

Is it cost efficient?  

Yes, for  92% of ML bots this is a better option than individual price updates. I created a chart for pricing that shows you what you would pay without Unlimited price updates! (the chart refers to 12 usd, not the initial 8 usd price).
  

To me this is a no brainer, April 5th I will be signing up my account for this new great feature and gain the peace of mind. Have any questions? Email me. 


Modo handle: Teamstoge
Teamstoge@gmail.com

Happy Botting!

The good of the new Redeem Fee

Much has been said about the new Redemption Fee, and for sure there are many negative aspects. Today I forced myself to find out some positive effects. I cannot think that WotC decided the increase just to put more money in the pocket.... I am sure WotC has a long time view... at least I hope.


- First of all, the price of the cards will drop 5%-10%. We will have the same amount of tixs online, but cheaper cards. What does it means? It means that our bots will buy more cards for the same amount of money, and that their collection will be better stocked. This is positive because, as I always say, the return factor of a customer is greatly influenced by the stock / the collection, rather than low prices. Many great chains have so-so prices, still they are full of customers because they simply have very well stocked collections.

- Secondly, cheaper cards and boosters means more newcomers. Mtgo is a very expensive game, and the average teenager cannot afford it. But what if he/she could? This type of new players could account for a large % of the base players. And once a teenager gets its first salary (after 2/3 years)...... he is already attracted to Mtgo and willing to spend money there.

- Finally, for redeemers, the situation won't change much. The drop in price will compensate the new fee, and more or less they will earn the same as before. The professional redeemers won't be affected too much - they will, but nothing dramatic will happen.

Return to Ravnica Lifetime Licenses

We are ahead of a very exciting period in the history of Magic Online. Return to Ravnica release events has just started out and also the new client (Mtgo v4) is going to be released in the next few months. To celebrate this, mtgolibrary.com discounts the lifetime PRO license to 1380 usd and the lifetime LITE license to 138 usd!

Mtgolibrary.com offers a second discount too - the lifetime PRO license to 1200 usd and the lifetime LITE license to 120 usd. These extra discounted licenses will be active from the release of Mtgo v4. Of course all the other license will still work and will smoothly work on Mtgo v4.

What is the best license for me to pick? (Part 3)

 Previously on part 2 I explained how I've ended up with each of the four options available for bots licensing.
Today I will be revealing how my BestDeal bots chain works. The graph below shows how I set up the buy limits (quantities) and refilling schedule in a way that BestDeal4 regularly refills BestDeal's "bulky" card sales (BestDeal wont need to refill itself unless it sells 8 of the same card within 6 hours). This setup results in most trades happening on BestDeal and BestDeal4.

This is how BestDeal is set at the moment and I manage to please a wide range of customers, from the drafters that require a regular bulk bot to drop their "junk" to the player that has valuable cards and wishes the highest value. I've also do monthly/weekly deals like, for example, "10% cheaper boosters" "foil buy price +15%" etc..

Feel free to drop any questions or comments and I will answer ASAP.

What is the best license for me to pick? (Part 2)

On my last post I let you know that I use one of each of the four options when it comes to licenses, Proving that there isn't a best option, all depending on what type and quantity of trades you do.

Firstly you need to understand that all my bots don't use the same pricing. Its part of my marketing strategy to attract all types of customers and the way I setup my bots gives both the option of selling bulk commons for 0.01 tickets as bulk (attracting new players that don't intend to spend a lot into MTGO) and at the same type buy a specific top Mythic for more than any other bot.

So how are my bots set up in terms of Licensing?

On my fourth bot (BestDeal4) I set it up as the Cheap BulkBot with a Lifetime Lite license buying all bulk for a minimum and selling it all cheaply as well. Because 80% of the stock on all 4 bots comes from here, this bot buys in high quantity and regularly usually refilling whats sold on not just on BestDeal4 but also the other three bots.

BestDeal3 is also a BulkBot but this one buys for more and also sells for much more. Although it seems that this bot would buy much more bulk than BestDeal4 that doesn't happen. BestDeal3 runs on a rental Lite license.

BestDeal2 is my entry Pro bot with a rental license, this bot sells cheaper than BestDeal but also buys for less, because this bot refills BestDeal, it has much lesser trades involving high valued cards making it the reason why it doesn't compensate the lifetime pro license.

BestDeal is the main bot, it has the most stock, buys for the highest (up to 30% over price list) and in this bot I don't aim to be the cheapest selling bot (selling +5%~). Due to the high amount of trades involving big cards, the Pro lifetime license on this bot is a "must".

How do you think I've set it all up in terms of buying and refilling to avoid buying bulk at high prices? What have I done to get most trades happening on BestDeal and BestDeal4, the 0% fee bots? This and any questions you ask on comments will be answered in the next few days.

What is the best license for me to pick?

This is one of the big questions to most of MTGO Library bot users.

Thrillski in a previous series of posts you read HERE explained what would be the best option for your bot based on quantity of trades over a certain amount of time, but for users like me that could still leave  many questions unanswered as I have multiple bots with different pricing and customer bases. On the long run if I followed those "formulas" I would have to end up deciding to get three lifetime licenses on four of my main bots. I tweaked the way my bots refill each others, buy, and manage the cards between them in a way that I've ended up with all four of the possible choices in my four bots. One PRO Lifetime 0% license, one Pro Rental License, one Lite Lifetime 0% license and one Lite Rental License.


On the Next post I will Explain how I've set BestDeal Bots to work with different Pricing and Licenses.

Digital economy still growing

The web-based economy is steadly growing. Digital goods and services can be sold, moved and transferred much more efficiently and quickly than the real counterparts. While some goods will of course remain real (food, clothes), many will move and become digital.

We see the trend in the numbers of Magic Online as well. Magic Online v3 is not the perfect software (it is slow, the UI is bad designed, there are still bugs in the trading interface...) still the number of online players is increasing and the popularity of the format is growing.

Being a bot owner in Magic Online is a great way to start a web-based business with few risks and, most important, with a low amount of money (read more here). I found myself in a surprisingly good  position: I started my bot in Magic Online v2, and now it is doing much better than my initial guesses. There are no excuses not to give a try.

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.

Equilibrium Point Part 2

Last time I asked a question: Where is the equilibrium point when it comes to the fee structure?

As you can imagine, the answer will vary based on length of time chosen, whether Paypal or tickets are used as payment, and whether the Wikiprice message is displayed. For this example, we shall use that Wikiprice is being displayed, the bot is the LITE version and since this is a new bot, only one month is being considered. The rental price is $5.

At 2.5%, it takes 40 tickets worth of trades to accrue a fee of one (1) ticket.

So five (5) tickets means that two hundred (200) tickets worth of trades (in a month) is the equilibrium point.

That sounds like a lot of transactions I can hear you say. And it is.

These numbers were specifically chosen to make the math easy. Algebraically, it can be written as:

1/(amount of trades needed to accrue 1 ticket of fee ) = (rental price)/(X tickets worth of trades.)

Or, to make this into a spreadsheet-friendly form, also known as “solving for X:

X = ((amount of trades needed to accrue 1 ticket of fee )) x (rental price)

Looks ugly, doesn't it? It's easier than it looks. 1/40=5/X is how this looks for the example chosen.

X = 40 * 5 is how it looks for the spreadsheet version.

But I'll save you the trouble of opening up a spreadsheet: here are the final values and next time, we'll go over these scary numbers and draw some conclusions.

(Apologies for this. The table I drew up looks awful in the final draft. So I took a snippet as a picture and this became shrunk. Clicking each picture will put it normal sized.)