I talked about my account in Old School Runescape over a week ago, and I wanted to expand more on how I earn GP in that game. I did talk about it a bit, but since I had one of my best weeks flipping items, I thought I would talk about it because it could also apply to other MMOs. It just depends on the economy because all I am doing is buying low and selling high. After earning some starting capital in the game, I have been flipping to increase my cash stack since day 1. It's fun to do, and honestly, I don't have to do much other than set some buy/sell offers into the Grand Exchange.
Grand Exchange
First off, let's discuss what the Grand Exchange is in Old School Runescape. There is a wiki page that goes into more detail here if you want more details, because I will just be talking about the basics. This is located in the northwest corner of Varrock, or north of Lumbridge, where you first spawn into the game after the tutorial.
The Grand Exchange is a large trading hub where players can buy or sell items. This is done by choosing buy and finding an item or by selecting an item in your inventory to sell. After doing so, you can select how much you want to buy/sell and the price at which you want to do so. Your order can be filled right away if there is an offer that is at your price or better, but if it doesn't, then it is left on the market until it fills.
If you are a seller, there is also a tax or convenience fee for selling the item. This is at 2% of the value or 5 million GP, whichever is cheaper.
What is flipping?
The general idea behind flipping is to buy low and sell high. Above you can see the statistics that I have for the past week. This was one of my best weeks flipping items because I took advantage of the release of the new skill to flip cannonballs and demon tears for massive returns. Those two items alone make up for around 40% of my profit this week.
There are two types of items that you can flip: high-volume items and low-volume items. You can think of high-volume items as things that people use quite often, as they are supplies to train skills, or supplies for combat. The benefits of high-volume items are that their price tends to be stable, so you are less likely to see the item crash in price. However, the amount of money you can put into it is limited, and that is where low-volume flips work better. If you are willing to flip high-priced items, you can earn more, but at the cost of that stability. I prefer high volume flipping as the stability works better for me, and I don't have to worry about large price crashes.
Above is the information on demon tears. I have bought each demon tear for an average buy price of 190, and sold them for 206 after the tax. This item alone gave me an ROI of 8.29% and made me close to 5.6 million GP.
Old School Runescape has some great sites that track the price of items over time, and the volume at which they were sold. I use this site the most, but sometimes I go to other sites if this one is having issues. Above, you can see the price chart for blood runes. With this, you can pick the low price, and the cost of the tax is 4 GP (2% of 211). So if you buy blood runes for any price lower than 207, you can make a profit.
Conclusion
I think this can be applied to more than just Old School Runescape, but I like the system and tools that Runescape has. It's fairly easy, as all I have to do is pick the items and prices. Then I can just come back a few times a day to place those orders or modify them if needed. Not all trades work out, but I focus on the high-volume items so they work out more than not. If a trade doesn't work out, I just take the loss and move on because you never know what will happen to the prices of items. Buy low, sell high. That is all you need to do, and I am sure that there are plenty of games with some type of system for you to do that. Let your own cash work for you, and earn more in-game money without that much work.
Have you flipped before in MMO games?