Pink Poogle Toy Forum

Because they don't pay attention, that's why. Same reason they ask the same 50 million obvious questions on the boards.

There probably exploring the map and see the houses in the market, click, and browse buying stuff they THINK is a good deal

Which is exactly what I did as a newbie to find my faerie quest items.

I've also been wondering if a mall is worth doing. Looking at the stats on NeoHero, married2mike is raking in the np.

I'm jealous!

Weezel: Your ideas intrigue me, do you have a newsletter?

*grin*

The only problem with this is, in order to do this you need a size 437+ shop, which costs:

En = 1/2 n(A1 + An)

if An = 200n

In other words:

Total cost = 1/2 x 437(200+87000)

Total cost = 1/2 x 437 x 87200 = 437 x 43600 = 19053200 NP

Quite a lot of money to pay. And even then, you have to pay upfront on items to stock your shop with, which must be really time-consuming the first time around. If you can break into this market, it's a gold mine, but it's out of reach for pretty much everyone, unless you pooled your funds with some people, which could open the door to scamming.

The cost is do-able over time. The question is: Is it worth the investment? Do you make more np in a mall than you do as a stand-alone shop?

Where do you get the size 437 requirement?

Nevermind, I just went to the page and figured it out. The smallest shops are size 435 (Neopia Central), 153 (Mystery Island), and 145 (Haunted Woods). *disgusted look*

But would linking shops (i.e. simple affiliation) still increase income, even without the spiffy real-estate?

No need to double-post there. Yes, linking to your shop would definitely increase income. However, most of the head mall owners (the ones with the 437+ sized shops) charge a substantial fee for this service. The challenge is in making more money than that.

I admit to having used malls when I first started, but only during faerie quests because they prohibit use of the shop wizard. I knew they weren't the best prices but I wasn't planning to buy from them on a regular basis, just the item for the faerie quest. How I found these malls...I found them by clicking around the Marketplace (linked from the Neopian Bazaar). The malls came up first and had the biggest ads.

Anyone ever click on the Noticeboard on your shop/inventory toolbar? That looks to be another place with lots of mall ads. My question is - there's a number 4,000,000 in the corner - does that mean these malls pay 4,000,000 NP's every week to advertise in that spot?

yes, we pay 4mil to run those ads. so there's a lot of NP that gets circulated in that way.. newbies plays game, make NP, buy from malls, and the malls pay for the nb. split between members... well i pay 171k for the nb alone.

i think malling is worth it, but it takes a lot of time, and sometimes sales are just SLOW. you need to be really patient, and constantly restocking your shop.

the noticeboards are usually for shops that don't have main market status (now known as "mini-malls" because their shop size is not 435 yet. it's another way of catching people's eye.

i'm not sure what's up with the equation used before, but neofx's shop calculator says to get from 0 to 435, it takes 18 MILLION NP. and that's about right, since i upgraded from 160 to 200 this week and it took almost 1.5 mil.

anyway, i think i might make a clearer statement about WHO buys from malls... cause of my sales history. about 75% are account under 6 months old. the rest is a splatter of old accounts that are VERY underdeveloped (no user lookup, few avatars) and a few nice accounts too. but just a few =p

Sorry about the double, I saw the thread drifting away and bumped it. *looks contrite*

Bumpty85: Thanks for the insider's view.

So it seems to boil down to: If your shop is over 435, malling is definetly the way to go. Under 435? Sonetimes yes, sometimes no. Your milage may vary.

The equation I used before assumed a cost of 50 NP x the level you were upgrading to. For instance, if you were going from a size 7 to a size 8, is would cost 400 NP. If I'm wrong there, let me know. Also, isn't there a random event that doubles your shop size? I know there's one that increases it by 1. I really think it would be cool to get in on this racket. I'm saving my WC winnings for an H4K, but I'm starting to think they might be better invested in a group mall.

can i also assume, that if the malls have a much higher price for items than the shop wiz, you can just buy some of your items from the shop wiz and still make a profit, rather than restocking all of them...?

Yes, that's the idea. I sell scratchcards near the shop wiz price, but the guy who has the largest shop (I am not mentioning his name) comes once a week and generally buys my full stock, and sells them 3-4 times costlier, for example race to riches scratchcard for 1999 NP. And there are guys who even buy it from him.

I am pretty sure he empties 10-15 such shops a week, based on the volume he stocks at a time, so he is selling around 3000-4000 scratchcards every week at 3-4 times the normal price. I dont know what he does with all this money.

I have a hard time just figuring what I am ready to give up for my shop as is and the prices I can't imagine trying to run one in a mall

You mean gawdawful_books? He has a size 3500 shop, I think. I don't know what you would do with that kind of money, besides save for really good BD weapons, etc. Don't forget, that is probably a tiny fraction of the money he makes. However, in a shop like that, you have to constantly re-invest your profits in order to keep it stocked.

By the way, I edited my equation from above. It turns out that upgrading your shop costs 4 times as much as I thought it did! Silly me. The cost of going from a size 1 to size 437 is 19073000 NP (!) That's a lot of NP. In case you're interested, it took gawdawful_books 1225350000 NP to get a size 3500 shop, not taking into account random events, etc. I'm still wondering if there's a random event that doubles the size of your shop.

To get a shop in the Haunted Marketplace (IMHO the best place because the Shop Wizard is hard to pick out), you need 2146000 NP, a much more reasonable goal.