14 days free trials

Starting from tomorrow, all the new accounts will enjoy a 14-days free trial instead of 7. ML Bot is a complex software, more than in 2007 when we started, and we thought that 7 days were not enough to fully evaluate it.

If you started a new bot this week, please write us (staff@mtgolibrary.com) and we will extend the free trial.

Competitive Pricing, Regulars Only!

Special Buddies Explained

Theros release did teach us many things, to both experienced and new bot owners.
Firstly, most of us noticed a massive increase in the volume of trades. This was not just caused by the influx of new MTGO players but also by the massive price swings on Theros cards.
As we all know, new sets are not so easy to judge and deal with as older ones are, which have more consistent prices. When it comes to set releases some of us choose to not buy them all together for a while, others will deal it, but with big profit margins and others take a gamble and buy it at a high rate (this one often disappoints).

While the Theros set release might sound a bit off-topic, it has some of the features which cause us to think about which profit margins to go with. Like I have shown on my last article, on the same card, some will buy for 28 and sell for 36; others will go with buying for 30 and sell for 34.
The first bot isn't simply a "rip-off" bot, there can be many reasons for a higher profit margin. Some botters don't have as much time to tune their pricing as often as others (personal prices), or have higher rental fees. Higher profit margins will reduce dramatically the number of bad trades.

I don't want to open a discussion about Bot-Raiders, but often, when I buy a card for too much, or sell it too cheaply I have this thought: "I wouldn't have minded selling it this low (or buying too high), if it was one of my regulars, instead of being someone that never used my bot that came in and bought (or sold) 12 copies of it at once.". Special buddies will not solve the occasional "bad deal" but will make it more likely to happen to your regulars.

Assuming the values above: The riskier bot that buys for 30 and sell for 34 and your "safer" bot that buys for 28 and sell for 36;  you now have a chance to compete and give a deal to your regular customers. If you give , for example, a 5% bonus on buying and 5% discount on selling to regular customers, you will now buy that card for 29.4 and sell for 34.2, this makes you a very fair bot to your regular customers, and if the card value goes up from 34 to 35, the chances are that you will sell it to your regular customers for 34.2 (while the riskier bot sold all his copies to a raider for 34 that won't come back, which means that his regulars will look for it elsewhere).

Special buddies feature will allow you to be the "safe" bot to new customers, and the "riskier" one to your regulars, which will make sure the regulars carry on being regulars and give you a "safe gap" against professional traders.

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.

Everyone loves Discounts!

CLEARANCE SALES

May 1, also known as the International Workers' Day, is a Bank Holiday in over 80 Countries.

In 2012, a Portuguese Supermarket decided that for that day only, everyone with a shopping basket of over €100 would get a 50% discount (on top of any current discounts/promotions) .
This caused total chaos across the whole country resulting in fights over items on shelves (and own trolleys), police interventions and the struggle to fit it all into the cars, just to turn around and go back inside get more. Aside from all the accusations of dumping, this supermarket got away with it, as the investigation found out that only 2 items were sold for a minimal loss.

Although it doesnt seem relevant to us, this is a great reminder that consumers love discounts. What we can learn from this is that sometimes we can change the tactics, sacrifice part of the stock(or profit) and undercut every other bot, (announcing it as a clearance/promotion), resulting in a massive influx of Event Tickets but more importantly, Customers! Even if this process results in some loss, part of those new Customers will be back even when your prices normalize, which maximizes long-run profits.

Unlimited Pricelist Downloads ends tomorrow

Just a quick reminder for those who forgot about it.

Tomorrow will be the last day we'll be offering the Unlimited Pricelist Downloads at 8usd/month.

Starting from Saturday, the price will be 12 usd/month or 15 tixs/month. (the increase will thus be +50%).

Don't miss the chance to subscribe at this exceptional price!

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.
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- 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.

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.

Independence Day

For those in the United States, today is July 4th, Independence Day.  It is a day of hot dogs, barbeques, going to the beach, going to a baseball game, watching fireworks, and getting together with friends for a nice summer day.
Note the commonality of the things listed above, virtually nothing is done indoors.  Until WotC comes up with an app that allows trading, or a client where you can play MTGO on a smartphone, Magic Online will continue to be played indoors and online.

Oh great.  Another dead day where I won’t be making any money.

Not necessarily.  There are those who prefer indoor activities and will not be playing Diablo 3, KOTOR, or WoW.  Some may be unwilling or unable to go and risk skin cancer.  In any event, while the majority of people will be doing festive summer activities, it does not mean that MTGO will be offline as there will be more users on MTGO than on a normal Wednesday.

So, why not use this information to your advantage?  Change your advertising messages; and even offer a sale celebrating the birthday of the United States!