TedBundty’s Flipping/Merchanting Spreadsheet
Mar 30th
Posted by Ted Bundty in Merchanting Guides
This spreadsheet is for merchanters/flippers to use to track trades and see what items are working best. The “Statistics by Item” and “Statistics by Date” tabs give you the most useful information. This spreadsheet is made to handle an unlimited amount of data without being edited i.e. you will never come to a point where you have to paste formulas down or across to continue adding data.
Instructions for use: Fill in everything under blue (Item Name Quantity Buy Price Sell Price Date); the rest is automatic. I have some of the under-blue filled out so you can see how the spreadsheet works. You should of course delete these data when you download it for yourself. Make sure you only delete what’s under blue.
Download instructions: Open the spreadsheet by clicking this link, then hit “File” and “make a copy.” You must be logged into Google Docs to be able to do this. The spreadsheet only works on Google docs because it uses functions that only Google Docs understands.
If the first link doesn’t work, try this one:
Note, if at all possible, download the one up top, since the one below may be outdated.
Beginner’s Guide to Shipping from Home
Mar 16th
Posted by Ted Bundty in Merchanting
Table of Contents
# 1.0 – Introduction
# 2.0 – Supplies You’ll Need
# 3.0 - Paypal Labels
# 4.0 - Blue Boxes
1.0 – Introduction
So many people I know are still driving over to the post office every time they need to ship something. This isn’t necessary anymore, since the USPS will pick up packages from your house as long as they have the proper postage affixed. If your package weighs 13 ounces or less, it can be sent via first class mail, which is almost always the cheapest option (here’s the list of prices or you can try out my Shipping Spreadsheet). You can put the package with postage affixed right into the mailbox, put the flag up, and it’ll be sure to go.
If it’s more than 13 ounces, you’ll have to ship it by either priority or media mail (there are other options, too, but these are usually the best choices), on both of which you may not affix typical postage stamps. Media Mail is cheap ($2.38 for one pound, $2.77 for two – see their site for a list of all prices) but takes longer to ship and can only be used for media items – books, dvds, cds, etc… The USPS will not pick up Media Mail from your home unless you are also shipping out a Priority mail item on the same day.
Priority mail is much more expensive (between $5-$6 for one pound and $5-10 for two pounds – see site for full list or ebay’s shipping calculator for specifics), but ships in 2-3 days and works for all items less than 70 pounds. Often, however, you can save money by using USPS’s Priority Mail Flat-Rate packages (starting at $4.75), which they’ll send straight to your door at no cost. I especially recommend their Padded Flat Rate envelopes for $4.95 because of how much you can fit inside them. To have USPS pick up Priority Mail from your house, first put on the postage (explained later) and then go to their site and fill out the required information.
2.0 – Supplies You’ll Need
Most importantly, you’ll need a shipping scale. If you don’t know how much an item weighs, you won’t be able to determine the correct postage cost. I got this scale (USPS PS-100 10 lb. Desk Top Postal Scale) from Amazon for $20 and it works great, but now it looks like the cheapest price is $30 so you may want to shop around and see if there are any better deals.
Next, you’ll need shipping supplies: mailers to ship your items in, bubble wrap and shipping labels for postage.
1. I recommend poly-mailers since they are more stretchy and easy to work with than paper mailers. I bought a pack of 100 8.5 x 13.5 for $10 here and a pack of 200 7.5 x 10.5 for $10 here. I highly recommend that you buy both. Most items will fit into the 7.5 x 10.5 but you definitely need to have some bigger ones around.
2. As for bubble wrap, you can either salvage it from stuff you buy, buy it somewhere or just use newspaper. I bought a box of 220 feet from walmart for about $23 after tax. Bubble wrap is really only necessary for items that could be easily broken – usually not needed for books, DVDs, or boxed-up items.
3. Shipping labels are optional but I highly recommend them since you quickly get tired of taping paper onto a package and they look more professional. Here are the shipping labels I bought for about $10 (pack of 200). These kind don’t get jammed in the printer.
3.0 – Paypal Labels
The USPS won’t accept normal stamps on anything weighing more than 13 ounces. Using Paypal labels is the cheapest alternative. If you sold something on Ebay, go to your sold list on MyEbay and click “print shipping label” and fill out the various questions. Once that’s done, put your label in the printer, print it, and fix it to your package.
If you sold your item on Amazon or a site other than Ebay, you can still use Paypal labels. Just go to this site and fill out whatever is necessary. You may also want to use the USPS Click N Ship service at times when you want to ship using a padded flat rate envelope or regional flat rate boxes, both of which are not options on Paypal.
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4.0 – Blue Boxes
Chances are there’s a USPS blue box near your home or on your way to work. Try this site to find the closest one. You can drop off any packages in these as long as the postage is already affixed and as long as the package can fit through the hole. These are great for when you need to ship something via media mail which the USPS won’t pick up from your home unless you are also shipping out something by Priority Mail on the same day, or you have a nice mailman. Also, if you have a lot of packages weighing 13 ounces or less, you may not be able to fit them all in your mailbox so you can drop those off in a blue box, too, though I personally just sit the packages around my mailbox and my mailman doesn’t seem to mind picking them up.
My Deal of the Day Sites
Mar 10th
Posted by Ted Bundty in Merchanting
Table of Contents
# 1.0 – Introduction
# 2.0 – Being Careful
# 3.0 - List of my Sites
# 4.0 - Sites I’m Checking out
1.0 – Introduction
A friend of mine introduced me to deal of the day sites several months ago and since then I’ve gotten more and more into them. Basically, they’re sites that sell one (or sometimes several) items per day at a (supposedly) very low price.
Not only can these sites be great for getting stuff for cheap but I’ve found that it’s possible to make a decent amount of money off them if you look out for good deals. It actually works a lot like merchanting on Runescape except that, before buying, you need to also assess the costs for selling and shipping the item.
2.0 – Being Careful
Let’s say you find a deal of a day site that is selling a one pound book for $20 and you see it going on Amazon for $30 ($25 + $5 shipping). Amazon charges $1.49 for selling any item + $1.35 since it’s a book + 15% of the final price. Shipping will cost $2.38 if you ship it via media mail (the cheapest option) and most likely about $0.22 for shipping supplies. Add that all together and you end up with $6.09 in Amazon fees and $2.60 for shipping, or a total of $8.69 in fees.
Even though you got $30, you really only ended up with $21.31, so it would probably not be worth buying, especially because you take on the risk of it not selling or having to sell it for less and you have to put your own time into listing the item, packaging it up, putting postage on, and so on. However, if you sold it on Ebay the fee would be less and you might be able to make some profit, though, in general, people pay more for stuff on Amazon than Ebay.
So, before you buy from Deal of the Day sites, make sure there are wide enough profit margins that you can still make profit after selling and shipping fees. I made a spreadsheet that helps a lot with this that I highly recommend you use. Here’s the link (you can preview it below). I also highly recommend this guy’s Amazon Marketplace Fee Calculator which I use all the time.
3.0 – List of Sites
A lot of deal of the day sites out there aren’t all that great. Here are the ones I’ve bought from and recommend. If you find some other good ones, please post in a comment and I’ll check it out and will add it to the list if it’s good.
1. Dailysteals – My favorite site. They have some of the best deals out there. The only downside is that it usually takes them about two weeks to send you your items.
2. Shnoop - Sometimes has deals that offer a lot of potential to make money but also often have stuff that would be difficult to sell or ship. It’s sort of a hit or miss site. They offer free shipping and ship pretty quickly
3. 1saleaday - Is pretty close to Dailysteals and except usually not quite as cheap. Shipping also takes about two weeks.
4. Midnightbox – This site often sells “recertified items” for very cheap which are actually completely new. The only reason they’re called recertified is that either the item was returned because parts were missing (in which case the parts are replaced) or because the box was damaged. The items themselves have not been used, have not had any problems, and have not in any way been refurbished. Shipping is usually fast (less than a week in most cases).
5. TotallyAnything – Every so often this site sells what they call “Mystery Boxes”, boxes of random stuff. I’ve bought these a couple times and I always make some good money reselling the stuff as well as finding good stuff to keep or give away. Shipping takes several days. Shipping is free for each additional item you buy, which can be nice sometimes.
6. Woot – This site almost always has good deals and I have bought from them, but, in general, their items are high priced and often what they sell is hard to resell since they’re unwanted items (which explains why they were able to buy them for so cheap). Their sales also tend to cause a crash in prices. Shipping takes at least two weeks and, like TotallyAnything, shipping is free for each additional item you buy. Woot.com also has a great Shirt and Community section on their site which I’m into.
7. BeDeals – Very much a hit or miss site. Shippping is free and takes about a week. They tend to sell lower priced items.
8. Retrevo Daily Deal – Usually their items are priced to high to make any profit but occasionally you’ll find items you can make money on. Shipping is free and takes less than a week.
9. RedTag – Usually sells laptops except one day I got a really good deal from them on headphones and, another day, rechargeable batteries. I’m not sure about how long the shipping takes, but I know that you don’t have to pay shipping for additional items.
10. EMTcompany – Some great deals every now and then. Free shipping.
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4.0 – Sites I’m Checking out
1. CowBoom
2. Yugster
4. Pricegrabber
How to Fill Your Penance Horn Fast
Feb 28th
Posted by Ted Bundty in Efficiency Guides
Table of Contents
# 1.0 – Introduction
# 2.0 – Suiciding
# 3.0 – Getting a Pro Team
# 4.0 – The Rest
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1.0 – Introduction
In case you haven’t realized it already, master penance horns are awesome. Once full, they give you double xp while training some of the most tedious skills – agility, mining and fire making. You fill it by playing Barbarian Assault. If you can fill it quickly enough, you’ll actually end up making significantly more xp/hour than training without it. But filling it can be difficult and frustrating when you first begin, so here are a few basic steps to succeeding.
2.0 – Suiciding
Suiciding is a must. It’s so important and so few people know about it that you should always be the one to make sure it happens. In order to fill your horn the quickest, the Healer needs to heal 528 Life Points each round, but in the first five rounds they’re usually unable because players do not take enough damage. There are two ways to remedy this:
1. Be a suicide collector. If you pick up the wrong colored egg, you take 50 damage. So pick up 11 eggs or less (less are needed depending on how much damage you and other players take) and then have the healer heal you.
2. Be a suicide Attacker. If you drink a dose of a Zamorak Brew, you’ll take 10% + 2 damage. So keep at least 6 Zamorak Brews (4) in your inventory and then, at the beginning of each round, drinking two doses. Then, have the healer heal you. Repeat 3 times or until 528 life points is reached. Furthermore, Zamorak brews lower your defense level so you’ll be able to take damage more. Wearing weak armor will help too, of course.
It’s a little better to be a suicide Attacker than a suicide Collector for several reasons. (1) You don’t lose points like you do if you pick up the wrong colored eggs as a collector. (2) Because teams are usually made up of two attackers, having one attacker being delayed for a short amount of time during the beginning rounds shouldn’t be a big deal. (3) If Collector’s don’t do the suiciding, they’ll have time to stock up the cannons to shoot the penance runners. (4) It takes less time for the healer to heal the attacker since he can do it at the beginning of the round next to the pool.
3.0 - Getting a Pro Team
If you play Barbarian Assault without a pro team, you will get very frustrated. Having all level 5 team members will make filling your horn quicker and more peaceful. Never go to the auto-pairing lobby because you’ll almost always get paired with unprofessional players if you go there. Only go there if you’re not level 5 in any of the Barbarian Assault roles.
There are three basic ways to get a pro team.
1. Apply for a Pro Barbarian Assault clan on a Runescape Forum.
2. Tell people you will only join pro teams.
3. Make your own team and only accept people that are level 5 in their role.
I’ve found that #3 usually gets you the best team members, since you are the one who decides who can join and who can’t. However, it is definitely a job to be a team leader, especially if you plan to do quick starting at the beginning of each round (quick starting is when one person leaves the room after the end of the wave then comes back in and rejoins so you can start the game immediately instead of having to wait 30 seconds).__________________________________________________________________________
4.0 – The Rest
Since there are so many other guides out there I see no point in making a completely thorough guide going over every role, how to get there, how much double xp to each skill the Master Penance horn will give you, etc…. Try these three links from Runescape Wiki for this – Barbarian Assault General Guide, Strategy Guide and the Master Penance Horn.
My Runescape Merches Spreadsheeted for public
Nov 18th
Posted by Ted Bundty in Merchanting
Back in June I made a spreadsheet to help myself and you guys track your trades and be able to see at a glance which items have worked well and which haven’t. I haven’t started using it until about October and now I see how useful and important it to spreadsheet your trades when merchanting. This was one of my first spreadsheets so it has some issues (which you’ll see when looking over it) and I plan to make a new way better one as soon as I have time.
Anyway, I’m posting the spreadsheet that I fill in everyday so you can see my trades. It’s my hope that you guys will also send me the code to embed your spreadsheets so people can see yours, too. You can do this by uploading the spreadsheet to Google Docs, clicking ‘share’ and then chose the ‘embed to web page’ option and copy and paste that code in a comment on this post.
Look out for my new merchanting spreadsheet coming soon and please offer your ideas!
