Awhile ago (jeeze. At least... 6 months ago?) I promised you guys to basically tell my own story about how I became a maller. I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of malling yet, I'm hoping that those smart enough to infer them from the story I'm about to tell do so. Chapter 1 My journey started in... I believe late 2004. I heard about malling and decided to try my hand at being in a mini-mall. My memory's a bit foggy at this point, but I remember being in several mini-malls. I made 10k a day or so, since nobody was even in Main Market. I believe I was leader in a mini-mall at one point, though I could be mistaken. In early 2005, the Neopian Main Market went from having 500 huts to having 770 huts. This shrank the minimum necessary shop size from over 400 down to just over 300. Meaning the cost to get to main market was about 10 million. This also meant an explosion of new malls and new mallers. It was cheaper than ever to get into the marketplace. My own net worth was around 10 million at the time, so I looked around the battledome chat for new malls that were being started. I finally found one that would take me in the Petpets spot (the spot that I was mini-malling in). Looking back, any mall that took someone who wasn't even main market (I was only size 200 or so at the time) as petpets spot probably wasn't very good. But I did amazingly well. Summer 2005 hit, and I was pulling 300k a day (And by that, I don't mean my till. My till was 900k. 300k of that was PROFIT). However, I didn't have time to keep my shop stocked, due to having the absolute best summer of my entire life. I was away at camp a lot, and my mall got pissed off at me for never being around. I wasn't even main market yet. I guess I sort of abused their kindness. Instead of pouring all of my profits into my shopsize, I saved it. I finally restocked a Dark Faerie Doll some time in the summer, which I sold soon after for 6 million and got to main market. At that time, my mall had begun to die. It was made up of people who really didn't know what they were doing, and weren't really that active. They only made the minimum upgrades necessary to stay in main market, and didn't really care about where in the huts they were. I'm going to be posting the next few chapters below these posts. Feel free to comment if you want, but mods, don't get rid of my placeholder posts please
Chapter 2 It was the end of summer 2005. School was starting up for my customers, and profits began to dwindle. My 300k a day dropped to 100k a day on GOOD days. So something had to be done. Something drastic. So I left my mall and started a new one. Keep in mind that 1. I had NO experience with how to actually make profit malling. I thought you could just collect a bunch of people who would sit in the bottom main market huts (at this point, it was size 400), and hope to do well. 2. I couldn't do graphics for crap. I was AWFUL. Hardcore. I barely knew how to use photoshop, but more than that, I didn't know what was aesthetically pleasing. I sort of just tried to copy another one of the maps on the marketplace. And it turned out badly. My new mall kept going until November. Members came and went, nobody really knew that much about malling. I did learn stuff on my own though. I learned how to post notices. Back in the day, everyone thought 4m noticeboards were the way to go to make money. And sure, they did boost profit and make you momentarily feel great about malling. I learned that you can't just be stagnant with your malling. You only get profit when you're at the top of your hut, which was difficult without your members helping you out by moving in and out of main market. Especially with SMALL huts, the movement between huts was RIDICULOUS. So again, I decided that something drastic needed to be done with my mall. I had a group of inactive noobs who really didn't give a crap about malling. They were in it for the same reason I was originally in it: to make as much profit with as little effort as possible. And that wasn't the way I was going to play any more. So I utilized a tactic that business all over the world use: Make yourself seem better than you really are to attract "investors" (Wait for chapter 3!)
Chapter 3 It was fall of 2005. My mall was junk. So i shut that crap down. It had no hope. But not before I made sure I had a new mall to fall back on. I noticed a few things about the marketplace and malling in general. -The vast majority (meaning over 95%) of the malls out there were pretty much all around size 400. This was the size that was minimum for main market. Meaning that they had a whole bunch of people all the same size not doing much to help the mall. -The older, more successful malls were all made up of a variety of shop sizes -The older, more successful malls all had nice graphics. So I scoured the marketplace for people. I mailed everyone over size 550 who wasn't in a mall, saying something along the lines of: "Hi there, I noticed that you have a fairly large shop, and you aren't in a mall. I'm going to be upgrading to around size 700 and starting a mall of other large shops on the marketplace, and I was wondering if you'd like to be a part of it. I've got a few other large shops interested, let me know if you'd like more information" Basically, I'm sure the people are neomailed by smaller malls trying to recruit them. So I differentiated myself from them by saying that we'd be a mall of larger mallers. When they mailed me back asking the shop sizes, I waited a day, then quoted them with shop sizes of the OTHER people who also did the same. For example, a size 550, a 650 and an 800 mailed me back, so I told the 550 that I had a 650 and an 800 interested, and so on. The people who I mailed (since they weren't in malls) really weren't experienced mallers. They aren't the type of people who had been malling forever, and aren't active in the malling community. I also didn't take petpets (the best spot) for myself. I kept myself open minded for spots, since I was going to be the smallest in the mall, and I gave the large mallers choice of spots. Once I had some larger people interested, I started actively recruiting within the malling community. On the bd boards, in the Mallers of Neopia guild. I got some big-name mallers interested, people with HUGE shops who'd been malling for a long time. And I formed a great mall. I finally made a banner that I liked (my Photoshop skills got better!), and I took food spot in the mall. We had a good variety of shop sizes, all larger than the minimum of 400. And profit was good, I was pulling in far more than the average maller. Things were looking up.
Interesting... so would you say that it's definitely worth it to upgrade to get into the main market, despite how ridiculously expensive it is?
If you don't get into the main market, be prepared for very slow profits. You only start making profits when you get to main. So in the long run (meaning playing legit and stuff) its worth it. Otherwise, if you get frozen then that's a crapload of NP down the drain. Anyways, nice story Hally I'll be reading it as the next installments come out
That's true, my account isn't spotless now (though not very dirty), but I still think I'll try it . (The guys who are just barely outside of main tend to get really annoyed about frozen accounts taking up space in the main, lol.)
realistically how much can you make malling? I have never really tried it Ive always made my fortune reselling bdome items and banking on retired items.
Have you experienced less profits when they changed the shop banner? I had a mall that took in 100k a day in profit, but from my experience it went down to only 50k a day.. can you corroborate that?
Guys, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be answering all of your questions in my later posts. Just keep checking back!
Do something in TV. No wait, don't. Because then I would have to wait a week for a new episode of yours to come out. :|
looking forward to it got a learn somewhere before i give it a shot. p.s Your sig reaches a whole new level of awesomeness not previously attained.
hmm... i feel like a noob, but what does it mean to be "in the main market"? and to be on top or on the bottom of your hut? I don't have any clue... can someone please explain?
When you click the shops link on neo and go to the Marketplace, that's the main market. A lot of newbies will go there when they don't know how to use the SW. I use the Marketplace when I get a faerie quest. I'm not positive what the top or bottom of the hut means. I think it's when you go the Marketplace there's huts you click on to take you to the shops according to user shop sizes. There's huts for shops 1-10, 10-20 etc. So being at the top of your hut would be if you were shop #1, #10, #20 and so on. I also am looking forward to the next Chapter installment.
It's actually shop 1, 11, 21, 31, etc. Next chapter going up soon! I /probably/ shouldn't even be posting this stuff, some of the stuff that I did was pretty bad.