Creating a trading guild - how much work is it?

starkerealm · November 2019

markulrich1966 wrote: »

I think pure trading guilds don't really exist. What I observe in the trading guilds where I am member, the guildmasters are active PVP players in Cyrodiil.

They do exist, but "pure" is a weird way to phrase it. Like, we've got some officers who do PvP extensively. We've got one who nearly lives Cyrodiil. At the same time, we've got people who are prog, people who are overland PvE focused. It's a lot of things. The guild itself is trading. But, everyone's here for their own reasons.

GrimTheReaper45 · November 2019

starkerealm wrote: »

GrimTheReaper45 wrote: »

As a trading guild gm, it is a ton of work. Running a trading guild is as much work as a real life job. My officers, co gm and I spend about 3 hrs a day farming mats, The other gm and I spend about another 3-4 hrs a day between advertising guild in zone chat, putting together auction and raffle packages, managing roaster and spreadsheets for gold donations and promotions, demotions and kicks.

That is just the daily operation of it. Never mind starting one and actually building it. Also as far as your "good monthly profit", I dont know a SINGLE trader guild that is making profit. Any money left over from a week is from your other bids and goes straight back into those other builds. Most trading guild gms and officers are broke unless they are stealing from the gb.

I'm not broke, and I'm not stealing from the bank. But, we do have a member who is extremely active and soaks a lot of the operating costs personally. So, I'm a bad example.

lol i did say most

wenchmore420b14_ESO · November 2019

To address GM's get rich from running a guild? Absolutely not.
I my self have put in millions of gold of my money to support our guild.

To OP's original question, it is a LOT of work. Auctions, Raffles, research bidding spots and cost's, tracking donations and guild bank, etc.

As said earlier, it is like taking on a full time second job with no pay.

Good Hunting!! Huzzah!

reoskit · November 2019

Mariusghost84 wrote: »

I love the idea of having a trading guild just running on its own and making a good monthly profit.

Lemme stop you right there. That first sentence is a doozy.

1. Trade guilds do not "run on their own". LOL. Oh man. Lol. Just no. People who don't run trade guilds will denigrate GMs and say we don't do anything. Let me tell you, they don't have even the slightest idea of what goes into making these things operate.

2. I'm sure some guilds are built with the goal of the GM making a profit. Nauseating, if you ask me. I think a fair few GMs of established guilds (at all tiers) would agree that it costs money to be a GM. We put in a lot of our own money* and wares to the guild; raffle prizes, auction donations, money for bids, etc.

You need to sort out both your expectations and your priorities before you go down this path.

If you're interested in creating a community and being very much responsible for it, great!! If you're looking for a fast and low-effort way to make gold... look elsewhere.

*Edit to clarify: I mean gold, not IRL money. I wouldn't dream of letting my actual money touch running a guild. That said, some do.

Raideen · November 2019

What is required of trade guild leadership in this game is a literal, I mean a LITERAL second job. It's what you will do when you are in game. All the "fun" of ESO (what little there is anymore) takes a back seat.

All the more reason for a central auction house.

What is sad is that many guild leaders have resorted to purchasing crowns and exchanging them for gold in game to help fund the guild. NO GM, not a single one should have to put their real life money into the game in order to sustain a trade guild.

But ZO$ makes a profit from it, and that is all that matters to them.

GrimTheReaper45 · November 2019

Mariusghost84 wrote: »

SteamKitten01 wrote: »

As others have said, being a GM of a successful trade guild is A LOT of work.

First there's recruiting, an absolute essential task for a new guild. You need to get your numbers above 50 members ASAP so you can at least bid on a trader. Many of these players will be brand new to the game and know absolutely nothing about trading because very few established players will want to join a new guild that has yet to win their first trader bid. You'll be spending pretty much the entire next month recruiting as you'll want to build up your number of members as high as you can since more players = more money coming into the guild that you can use for trader bids.

Then there's the trader bids themselves. Once upon a time, you could almost afford trader bids in a lot of locations based purely on sales tax. These days, bids in MANY different locations across Tamriel have more than doubled what they were a year ago which means you need to do a lot of fundraising (raffles, auctions, required dues) to make ends meet. Not to mention that now with multi-bid, you not only need to gather up enough gold to make your first trader bid (and very few guildies will be willing/able to put in any gold before you win your first bid so most will be coming out of your own pocket), but you need to gather up enough gold to place a few backup bids too.

Then there's all the other general guild maintenance activities. Purging inactives off the roster, dealing with guild drama that pops up from time to time, scheduling other events for the guild...

And let's not forget the guild hall. At this point, it's almost expected that a successful trade guild has a guild hall with all the set crafting stations, mundus, transmute station, and more. That's a lot of money (both gold and crowns) needed to invest on completing your hall.

Yes, a lot of GMs are wealthy, but a large portion of that wealth that we earn (from selling on our and other guild traders) goes straight back into the guild to make sure that we make ends meet and can continue to place our ever-increasing bids. I don't know of anyone running a trade guild that is actually making a profit off their guild and not feeding every last penny the guild earns in addition to all their additional contributions that they themselves are making (whether direct gold or items for auctions/raffles). You pretty much need to be already wealthy in order to have the gold to get a new trading guild off the ground.

Judging by the responses in this thread , why on earth would anyone WANT to become the GM of a trading guild? If its such a time and money sink , and it legitimately sounds like a second Job - what are the advantages here?

For the most part I think gm's of trading guilds want to provide players a cheap friendly place to sell goods. A lot hear "all the trader guild are charging 15k a week" and think that is bs and want to start one to give players an alternative, thinking that if they put in effort they can manage it. Some are successful, up until multibid dropped our guild was doing very well as a donation based trader. Some end up going paid because as much work as a trader guild is ingeneral, going paid at least makes sure you can survive reliably.

code65536 · November 2019

Mariusghost84 wrote: »

Judging by the responses in this thread , why on earth would anyone WANT to become the GM of a trading guild? If its such a time and money sink , and it legitimately sounds like a second Job - what are the advantages here?

"Why would anyone want to play SimCity or Transport Tycoon or any of those other economic simulation games? It's just hours and hours of managing things, can't they see that's like a job?"

You could basically say the same thing about any hobby. Just like every hobby, managing a trade guild is just about time. Any in-game resources you put in ultimately comes from time spent. If you are enjoying yourself, that time is fun. If you are not enjoying yourself, that time spent feels like a job.

It's definitely not for everyone, but some people enjoy it. If you are bored, sitting on many tens of millions of gold burning a hole in your pocket, you might think that building up a guild that eventually becomes a recognizable institution in a major city would be a cool and fun thing.

Soella wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Well, the biggest problem is that ZOS does not allow us to set tax rates.

Did ZOS ever explained why? I would gladly pay higher tax to the guild instead of more or less standard dues every week. It might be large difference in income for guilds (obviously, for example, that during events we have more sales), but it should be predictable. But it would allow more people join trade guilds. As of now, joining a guild with mandatory dues is a risk for a new player.

That's just the way it's always been. 3.5% was mostly fine initially, all those years ago, back when you could win a Wayrest bid for 500K. Since then, population has grown, the amount of gold sloshing around has increased substantially, and you can tack an extra zero onto the end of that bid; the system just hasn't scaled well with the changing realities.

Raideen · November 2019

code65536 wrote: »

That's just the way it's always been. 3.5% was mostly fine initially, all those years ago, back when you could win a Wayrest bid for 100K. Since then, population has grown, and the amount of gold sloshing around has increased substantially and the system hasn't scaled well with these changes.

BTW I was in your trade guild last year before I left the game. You always worked hard for us. I never got to say thank you when I quit ESO.

Thank you for all you did for the guild.

Pauls · November 2019

I saw from start how good trading guild was raised since spring 2019 by one player alone with 2 alt accounts (plus some good will donations from members). Now we're peacefully sitting in one of capitals and without extra weekly fee. May his titanic efforts be blessed

reoskit · November 2019

starkerealm wrote: »

markulrich1966 wrote: »

I think pure trading guilds don't really exist. What I observe in the trading guilds where I am member, the guildmasters are active PVP players in Cyrodiil.

They do exist, but "pure" is a weird way to phrase it. Like, we've got some officers who do PvP extensively. We've got one who nearly lives Cyrodiil. At the same time, we've got people who are prog, people who are overland PvE focused. It's a lot of things. The guild itself is trading. But, everyone's here for their own reasons.

We're the same. Some of our officers have nothing to do with generating funds, but are still exceptionally important to how our guild operates. We have social events planned every week. One officer does PvP, another does trials, others do overland/event-specific stuff.

As I said, at least for us, *community* is a big part of a successful guild. It builds trust and loyalty. Not to mention, ya know... it's fun.

Pevey · November 2019

reoskit wrote: »

Mariusghost84 wrote: »

I love the idea of having a trading guild just running on its own and making a good monthly profit.

Lemme stop you right there. That first sentence is a doozy.

1. Trade guilds do not "run on their own". LOL. Oh man. Lol. Just no. People who don't run trade guilds will denigrate GMs and say we don't do anything. Let me tell you, they don't have even the slightest idea of what goes into making these things operate.

2. I'm sure some guilds are built with the goal of the GM making a profit. Nauseating, if you ask me. I think a fair few GMs of established guilds (at all tiers) would agree that it costs money to be a GM. We put in a lot of our own money and wares to the guild; raffle prizes, auction donations, money for bids, etc.

You need to sort out both your expectations and your priorities before you go down this path.

If you're interested in creating a community and being very much responsible for it, great!! If you're looking for a fast and low-effort way to make gold... look elsewhere.

I think there is quite a variety of trade guilds. I’m in Reo’s guild (^), and I love it. It is a very well-run guild, with countless hours put into making sure we have enough gold for top level bids. That said, there is a wide variety of guilds, and someone who is individually netting a few mil a week in other trade guilds can easily start their own guild and fund it with their own gold indefinitely without fundraising of any sort. Not in a top tier spot, by any means. But it’s doable. There are reasons you might want to do this, mostly social. Also, the fact that Zos gives us almost nothing to spend our gold on other than this trader system. It will definitely cost gold and not be a profit center. That is by design.

DragonRacer · November 2019

Everyone has already succinctly laid out the pros and cons, so really all I have to add is... I'm a bit gobsmacked at the thought of collecting other peoples' gold - whether by donations or forced dues - and then personally pocketing ANY of that.

That's not your gold. That's the guild's gold, which is needed for running the guild - mainly, for trader bids and the backup bids. I know some guilds that need to use a little to purchase high-end raffle prizes because more will come in via raffle tickets to make up that cost plus add extra gold for the trader bid coffer, but other than that... the gold sits in the bank and waits to be bid at traders.

Period.

I would not want to join any guild where I knew the GM was personally taking my dues or donations and stuffing it into their own pockets. Hell, I left a guild simply because I knew they bought ghost guilds (back when that was a thing) and I was abhorred at the thought that my weekly dues were helping to fund purchasing a ghost spot while my own guild, honor-bound not to buy ghosts and feed the problem our server had, sat in the cold if a bid lost.

ghastley · November 2019

Getting away from trading for a moment, there's a case for creating a guild just to share attuned crafting stations. There are a lot of craftable sets, and for one player to gather them all is a major task, and a lot of writ vouchers are needed to buy them. So it makes sense to pool resources with a group of friends, especially if you're running group content with the same people, and you know they have the same needs.

BansheeVT · November 2019

I just love this question

please don't create a guild. A guild running on it's own and giving you some nice profit? Dream on

You won't get rich from creating a trading guild, it's an unpaid part time job like some people already mentioned and you will rather lose millions of gold instead of making them

Zephard · November 2019

I have seen several people show feeling of dismay at the idea of making a guild to get some of the money it makes. Here in ESO that might seem like something bad. But remember not all MMOs run the same way. I have played several MMOs that have had GMs making money by being the GM, for the effort of the guild/crew/clan.

A person not knowing how ESO trading guilds bleed the gold, would coming from other MMOs, might have the view that is how some of the wealthiest got their money.

I to thought that until I joined a trading guild and started to realize, and still don't know a ton of stuff outside of what has been discussed in this thread already.

Questions like:
1) When you lose a bid, do you know what bid won? Or just that you lost.
2)Do you get a list of what all the different bids were, for all the locations?
3) Is there a ZOS set min bid, or is it totally driven by guild bidding (so instead of 500K, we could be 1 gold if that is all that was bid)?

cyclonus11 · November 2019

One of my trading guilds just quit being a trading guild because of the time/stress involved. It is now a social guild with 'Trading' in its name.

hiyde · November 2019

Zephard wrote: »

Questions like:
1) When you lose a bid, do you know what bid won? Or just that you lost.
2)Do you get a list of what all the different bids were, for all the locations?
3) Is there a ZOS set min bid, or is it totally driven by guild bidding (so instead of 500K, we could be 1 gold if that is all that was bid)?

1: There's a notification in guild history for each bid result. If you win a bid, you get an email, but the quickest way to know is stand in front of your preferred kiosk and/or look at the Guild page to see if a trader is listed post-flip.

2: See above + there's a button to click on BEFORE bids process that lists out all your pending bids

3: Min bid is 10,000G

jazsper77 · November 2019

Founding GM on PS4 NA with a Trader success rate of 97% and never charged a dime to anyone. I bid the Guild with the available funds and spend 0 of my own gold. I spend less then 2 hrs a week that includes bids,kicks, promotions and accepting applications.

But everyone wants to be Mafia level Trader and the population can’t support this. Guild is maxed at 500 and had to kick the last 20 over 30 day offline. So all my members have been active in the last 30 days. We run no auctions,raffles,50/50 ,keep your listings full is all I ask.

So yes you can have a successful Guild without it being a part time job. Now if you want capital/ mafia level then yes lots of time and gold.

DragonRacer · November 2019

Zephard wrote: »

I have seen several people show feeling of dismay at the idea of making a guild to get some of the money it makes. Here in ESO that might seem like something bad. But remember not all MMOs run the same way. I have played several MMOs that have had GMs making money by being the GM, for the effort of the guild/crew/clan.

A person not knowing how ESO trading guilds bleed the gold, would coming from other MMOs, might have the view that is how some of the wealthiest got their money.

I to thought that until I joined a trading guild and started to realize, and still don't know a ton of stuff outside of what has been discussed in this thread already.

Questions like:
1) When you lose a bid, do you know what bid won? Or just that you lost.
2)Do you get a list of what all the different bids were, for all the locations?
3) Is there a ZOS set min bid, or is it totally driven by guild bidding (so instead of 500K, we could be 1 gold if that is all that was bid)?

@Zephard

Questions like:
1) No, you do not know what bid won, only that you lost and someone else's tabard is on that trader instead of yours.
2) You do not, this is a blind bid system. You only know if the X amount you put down won or lost. You have no idea if you way "overpaid" compared to what surrounding traders were won for or if you're in similar pricing with them.
3) The minimum is 10k. Technically. That... will not win you a trader even in the furthest-most outer reaches of outer space.