How to make money - Importing and Exporting
Day 1,698, 02:46
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Published in United Kingdom 
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by
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by Max Blue
People are always asking me know can I make money? Well there are still ways of doing this. One of the most overlooked ways is importing or exporting goods.
First you must go to the marketplace and select an industry. Then flick through the different countries and view prices. Countries like Macedonia, Serbia and Poland often have the lowest prices. I recommend only trading between nations that are friendly/neutral with your nation as supporting the economic markets of your enemies just feels wrong. Furthermore when you increase your operation you could find you are giving enemies of your nation a lot in tax revenues.
Once you have found goods you wish to purchase, travel to that nation and buy them. Don't put all your eggs in one basket and buy goods of different qualities.
If you can make a profit selling these in your nation sell them there, if not find a country where the goods are expensive and buy a license for it (this costs 20 Gold). Do check embargoes from/to your citizenship country before doing that in order to avoid being left out of pocket. Also you can never do to much research on the country and product market. I strongly recommend you start your operation small and grow it as things go wrong to start with and you will need time to learn and iron out errors.
Things to avoid
Avoid trying to sell raw materials as this takes up a large amount of your storage and the profits are not economically worth it (you could use your storage better). Avoid moving tickets as they don't sell, and avoid Q6 items as for some reason they don't sell so well. Also bear in mind the initial cost of buying these products as you don't want to be investing large amounts of currency in products that take a long time to sell, or don't make you much profit. It is important to aim for either products that sell quickly (and usually cheap/er), or for products that sell slowly for large/r amounts.
Caution! Taxes!
Each country has different tax rates. Look at the import tax and the VAT (value added tax) that apply in the nation you are looking to sell. These reduce your profits and can potentially make you a loss. But if you do your calculations correctly you can avoid the most highly taxed markets, and reap the rewards. If you import products into your citizenship country you do not pay any import tax which makes this a 'safe' option.
Maximising the profit and scaling your investment
It pays off a lot if you don't buy all of the same quality, rather spread your investment. Players and 'the bot' buy a certain amounts of each Q daily and you will turn over money more quickly if you spread you investment.
Here is an example of how much money you could make per product:
The profit from one sold Q3 weapon is around 0.4 GBP. What about buying 1000 units? The profit becomes 0.4GBP * 1000 = 400 GBP.
Now lets say for example you sold more than 1000 or you sold Q1,2,3,4&5 food and Q1,2,3,4&5 weapons. The profits are just rolling in. Now what if you sold in more than one country!?
You can scale that down as well as up depending on your starting finances, but in theory you could start with as little as your daily wage. Although for it to be worthwhile I would wait until you have a little more behind yourself such as 5 Gold's worth of currency.
Keep your eyes open and your mind switched on
Keep in mind that buying prices do change over time and that usually means going down.
While doing this be alert for prices changes and game circumstances changing. I have lost out before on changes, but at times I have also reaped the rewards.
If you have any questions send me a message here: http://www.erepublik.com/en/citizen/profile/1478060
First you must go to the marketplace and select an industry. Then flick through the different countries and view prices. Countries like Macedonia, Serbia and Poland often have the lowest prices. I recommend only trading between nations that are friendly/neutral with your nation as supporting the economic markets of your enemies just feels wrong. Furthermore when you increase your operation you could find you are giving enemies of your nation a lot in tax revenues.
Once you have found goods you wish to purchase, travel to that nation and buy them. Don't put all your eggs in one basket and buy goods of different qualities.
If you can make a profit selling these in your nation sell them there, if not find a country where the goods are expensive and buy a license for it (this costs 20 Gold). Do check embargoes from/to your citizenship country before doing that in order to avoid being left out of pocket. Also you can never do to much research on the country and product market. I strongly recommend you start your operation small and grow it as things go wrong to start with and you will need time to learn and iron out errors.
Things to avoid
Avoid trying to sell raw materials as this takes up a large amount of your storage and the profits are not economically worth it (you could use your storage better). Avoid moving tickets as they don't sell, and avoid Q6 items as for some reason they don't sell so well. Also bear in mind the initial cost of buying these products as you don't want to be investing large amounts of currency in products that take a long time to sell, or don't make you much profit. It is important to aim for either products that sell quickly (and usually cheap/er), or for products that sell slowly for large/r amounts.
Caution! Taxes!
Each country has different tax rates. Look at the import tax and the VAT (value added tax) that apply in the nation you are looking to sell. These reduce your profits and can potentially make you a loss. But if you do your calculations correctly you can avoid the most highly taxed markets, and reap the rewards. If you import products into your citizenship country you do not pay any import tax which makes this a 'safe' option.
Maximising the profit and scaling your investment
It pays off a lot if you don't buy all of the same quality, rather spread your investment. Players and 'the bot' buy a certain amounts of each Q daily and you will turn over money more quickly if you spread you investment.
Here is an example of how much money you could make per product:
The profit from one sold Q3 weapon is around 0.4 GBP. What about buying 1000 units? The profit becomes 0.4GBP * 1000 = 400 GBP.
Now lets say for example you sold more than 1000 or you sold Q1,2,3,4&5 food and Q1,2,3,4&5 weapons. The profits are just rolling in. Now what if you sold in more than one country!?
You can scale that down as well as up depending on your starting finances, but in theory you could start with as little as your daily wage. Although for it to be worthwhile I would wait until you have a little more behind yourself such as 5 Gold's worth of currency.
Keep your eyes open and your mind switched on
Keep in mind that buying prices do change over time and that usually means going down.
While doing this be alert for prices changes and game circumstances changing. I have lost out before on changes, but at times I have also reaped the rewards.
If you have any questions send me a message here: http://www.erepublik.com/en/citizen/profile/1478060
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Comments
thx a lot for this
Great article : ) v !
Very informative . Thanks !
Vote
I've been doing this for quite a time. It's nice with a income over 1000 a day without an effort.
good article, but you have to be careful, always consider all VAT and Import taxes in each country, the 20g licence will take some time to get back
sub for sub, http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/sub-for-sub1-2081303/1/20
Great article I've started trading
Of course, this only works if you are the only one doing this... if everyone starts to do the same then you kill the market...
While importing and exporting is good for those who do it, it also leads to the kind of situation we currently find ourselves in.
With wages outstripping the value of products from an employee and that products are so undervalued in comparison to wages that there is no profit to be made at all in producing the product in the first place.
For instance 250(wages)/12(amount of products)=20.83 so you need to sell at around 22 to break even due to taxes. Undercutting is killing production.
Tried this today
Q6 weapons were 36 GBP in U.K. and only 30 in Albania. As I bought 30 even with the moving costs I saved a packet. Thanks Max
Also, if I may add, as it happens so, the prices are usually low in the mornings, when the eRepublik day starts and get higher in the evenings, around the twelfth eRepublik hour. Now this might not always be the case, but usually if a q6 wep. is, say 36 GBP now, it might be about 33 - 34 GBP in the mornings. The reason for this , as I am sure you all are aware, is that 60-70% of the people playing eRep. do their daily tasks when the wake up, or before the go to work!
@fkrjd - so if you check the eAlbania prices tomorrow morning, you might find q6 at the price of 28-29. But have in mind that this might prove to be quite a gamble and thus result in a loss of money! The good thing about q6 wep. is though, that it will always have a price about 30, so the loss won't be as big. By the way, eGreece is also low in prices (which may be so because of their ignorance of economy - no matter if we're talking about RL of eRep. 😛) - the q6 wep. was about 30GBP! 😉
"importing and exporting (...) also leads to the kind of situation we currently find ourselves in."
Just my two cents: not really. Importing/exporting has always been possible in a way. Yet we had a great economy/production module and strong local currencies. The fact that importing/exporting has become profitable, is rather a symptom than a cause of our messed up economy module.
(Yes, I can point out the causes, but the report button is too close in this rather censored environment.)
You're probably right Boklevski, but by importing from nations with high bonuses and then selling in say the UK, if that's your home nation, you are effectively flooding your own Market and forcing current producers to sell at a loss.
If this continues (in UKs case who knows how long we will be without bonuses for) then we will end uP with increasingly less production. At which point import and export will be the only option.