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=> I'm sorry for the images that follow, You'll have to right click and "View Image" to see them in full screen. I'm working on smaller versions ! <=

I think a lot of you know the newspaper : ‘The underdog’s bark’, a newspaper that published several very popular articles about investment opportunities all around the eRepublik world. Thousands of people subscribed to this newspaper, as I did. Unfortunately, the last 3 month, no new article was published. Gold was still coming in and some may have wondered : where can I invest it? Where can I start my own business and make money?

I was in the same situation, that’s why I decided to continue the fantastic work of the publisher of the Underdog’s Bark. All the credit is his, you’ll find a link to his newspaper here : so if you like what I’m writing, please subscribe here and to his newspaper. This way, he may get his second MMG and, maybe, continue to publish.

I’ll try to publish this repport as soon as possible, often in another country : so subscribe if you want to catch them all !!

The method SKIP if you don't care



The method is very simple, but asks a lot of time to gather all the data. You’d be astonished how much time it take to convert everything to gold and put everything in an excel sheet. Anyway, in this article several assumptions are made. To make it possible for you to understand, and if you don’t agree to change the numbers and make other assumptions, I’ll explain to you those I thought where relevant.

First of all, as all of you know, the wellness of your workers is very important as a worker with high wellness will produce more. Having people with high wellness is always an advantage. Depending on the skill of the player, I assumed they had an average level of wellness. This average changes a lot at low level as players learn the game. I assumed that a skill 1 worker has an average of 45, a skill 2 an average of 80 and a skill 3 and above 90. As you may have noticed, skill 0 workers are not included. This is a choice, but you can assume they have the same wellness as a skill 1 (as it takes 2 days to get a skill 1).

Secondly, depending in the quality of your company you won’t have the same level of players working for it. High quality companies have generally high skill workers, and the other way round is also true. I assumed that quality 1 and 2 companies are pretty new and have on average 5 skill 2 and 5 skill 3 workers, with skill 1 workers you’ll hardly make money. But don’t hesitate to take skill 1 workers if the wages for a skill 2 are too high or if it takes too long (as all your employees will produce less if there are only 9 employees). For skill 3 and above I supposed a composition of 5 skill 4, 3 skill 5 and 2 skill 6.

Thirdly, you’ll see that the wages evolve when you raise the quality. I assumed that the wages on the job market aren’t a reflection of the reality, this because people expect to be paid more in a Q5 company than in a Q1. This is logical just because they will have to buy higher quality food to maintain wellness. I assumed that it raises by 5% for each quality level.

In this article I’ll give an overview of land companies at first. I supposed that land companies are competing on a local and on the international market. Why? Often manufacturing companies have a organization place in a country with the lowest prices for the raw they need. This way they buy at the lowest price and then donate to their company. Of course, some do buy local but it is good to not only rely on the local market and try to think global. The best is always to own a land and a manufacturing company. To help, all prices are converted in gold thanks to eReptools.

You have always to take the calculation and graphics with care. They are only numbers and leave a lot of things behind. It can be very interesting to buy a company that is not rentable on the local and international market, but that has an export license to a country with very high prices and low taxes. Of course I do make assumptions and some may be wrong, this can make a graphic wrong and give you a wrong impression (that’s a lot of wrongs in one sentence. Wow).

The last assumption that may be wrong is that I suppose that the market buys automatically everything you want to sell. This is often wrong, as it can take some time before you can sell something. This way it is possible that you sell on the local market and on the black market (international market) at the same time. This is not reflected in the graphics, as how longer it takes to sell something, how more money you will need to invest. This in order to cover the delay between sells and production.

So please take the time to read through all the data and the graphs, and do make your own research before doing something. And don’t forget, the market can change quickly and you may have to close your business before you earned your money back. Don’t hesitate to read the articles of the Underdog’s Bark, this will give you an idea of the changes the last three months. To give you an idea, you will need in general, 40 days or more to earn your investment back (often more !).

Al the data that is presented here was collected on day 739 and 740 in eRepublik.



Welcome back ! If you skipped the part where I explain the method and my assumptions I do suggest you try reading it before investing any capital. This will give you more knowledge and will force you to think about the consequences and the market.

You will find the complete data linked below. Everything was made in Excel and after woods transferred in a google spreadsheet. For the graphs, you may look at them in higher resolution by clicking on them (or right-clic and “View Image”). About the graphics : The red part is wages and the blue part is profit (or earnings). All units are expressed in Gold.

The data !

Although there are good times to start a Q4 land company (particularly when you have very high skill workers that can help recoup the additional starting costs faster), I will consider here only the Q2 and Q3. The Q2 land company will be said to have 5 skill 2 workers and 5 skill 3 workers (at 80 and 90 average wellness, respectively). To be honest, a Q1 land company is almost never profitable. In all the data only 2 are profitable. I will mention them, but no more.
As I already said, I supposed that there are two markets for each product : a local and a international market. For the international market, I supposed you where selling at the global low bid price. This prices were as follow when I collected my data, everything in gold (of course) :

Grain Q1 - 0.004 Q2 - 0.008 Q3 - 0.012 Q4 - 0.016 Q5 - 0.021
Diamonds Q1 - 0.008 Q2 - 0.015 Q3 - 0.021 Q4 - 0.030 Q5 - 0.043
Iron Q1 - 0.009 Q2 - 0.017 Q3 - 0.025 Q4 - 0.033 Q5 - 0.044
Oil Q1 - 0.005 Q2 - 0.009 Q3 - 0.014 Q4 - 0.018 Q5 - 0.043
Wood Q1 - 0.007 Q2 - 0.015 Q3 - 0.022 Q4 - 0.029 Q5 - 0.043

For the local prices I invite you to check the google spreadsheet, you’ll find them in the formula for “sales”.
Most of the time I’ll only mention Q4 and Q5 companies, they are very expensive to start and not very profitable. Going above level 3 in a land company isn’t very useful.

Grain

For grain you’ll see that only two countries stand out, at nearly every quality level you are able to earn money. This is a very good sign, because it happens that at Q2 you earn money and when you switch you can lose some. This is of course due to my assumptions, but it shows a gap between skill2 and skill3 workers, which can be a problem because you may lose your employees.

The countries I am talking about are China and Croatia. The both have a high population, so you can be sure that you’ll have a market to sell your products and find workers. As Grain is a very competitive market, the earnings aren’t very high. But you have at least some earnings (which is better than losses).




Oil

Only a few countries in the world have oil, which is an advantage as you won’t have much competitors. This implies also that you’ll only have a small market. One country stands out and it is China, the only country where you can earn money with the international market at nearly every quality level.

If you sell local, you’ll have a little more choice. The problem than is that the earnings come only at high quality level.




Wood

Wood is now one of the most profitable raws that you will find. A lot of countries are interesting and you’ll be able to make very high profits in a very small amount of time, especially at high quality wood. So don’t hesitate to invest, especially as this is true if you sell at global low price ! You’ll make even more money if you sell on the local market. So if you have something to invest, don’t hesitate to invest it here.



Diamonds

If you want to invest in Diamonds go especially to Australia or Canada. They have high earnings and relative low wages.




Iron

Iron is not the most interesting at the moment, you may notice that only at high quality you will earn something on the international market (in the countries I present). If you plan on selling local, consider Ukrain, even if it will take a while to earn your money back.




Resumé

The make the comparison easier, here are regrouped all the data you saw before. As I said, only Q2 and Q3 businesses are really interesting starting up. Others are far too expensive for the money you’ll earn with them. If you really want to start a Q4 or Q5 company, you’ll find the same graphics for Q4 and Q5 in the google spreadsheet that I will link a little lower.

In Q2 here is an overview with local and international :



In Q3 here is an overview with local and international :




In Q4 here is an overview with local and international :




What business for me?

You may have noticed that the opportunities for very profitable ventures in the land industries are limited, if you follow the generic business plan developed for Land companies. This is necessarily the case because of two factors, the first being that the global marketplace for raw materials is a cutthroat one, and the second being that Land workers themselves frequently fail to be self-interested enough to work in countries with valuable raw materials (primarily, Iron, and to a lesser extent, Diamonds, Wood, and Oil in roughly that order) for reasons that depend on the individual but, for the most part, stem from pride of being in their home country. This creates intense competition for Land workers in countries with those High resource regions. However, there are strategies for making Land companies more profitable despite all that (e.g., taking advantage of export licenses) that may be discussed in a future article.

The other industries will also be discussed in a further article.

SO VOTE ! and subscribe so that I will have the courage to continue and publish more of these articles. As I am sure, a lot of you are interested in making money. Also don’t hesitate to involve your friends and show them this article. You’ll see that with hard data it will be easier for you to find capital to start a Q2 or Q3 company than on your own !

And to finish, sorry if my English isn’t perfect, but as you’ll notice I’m not native English. Also don’t hesitate to comment and give me more ideas to publish in the future. If you have questions, post a comment below (please don’t PM) and I’ll read them for a future article !

All the data is stored here : http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0At5WemNJeesYdC1qNzlMRlpweUI5cTJQWWdxSllZcWc&hl=en

Grtz to all !

Apotygma

P.S. : As Google docs doesn’t upload automatically the charts, I’ll save them in another file and post it at the following link :
http://img263.imageshack.us/slideshow/webplayer.php?id=diamondinternational.jpg