anis $ guide

Yes I know -_- ANOTHER money guide..but don't worry, this one contains a few special bits and pieces. I know I'm not the most qualified to write a money guide, with my networth being only 800m, but I guess the bit people want to know is how I did it within two weeks, WITHOUT gambling. Yes, WITHOUT gambling. This is safe moneymaking, with little to no risk. So without further ado, let's get right into it! (This is my first thread on the forums, it probably looks like crap but as time goes on I'll structure it to look a little better.)

Activity

Before you even think about making money, you need to ask yourself how active you are. I know on the front page of TORN it says a few minutes a day is enough to stay ahead of the competition, and while that's true to an extent, I feel the more time you put in, the better off you'll be, if not statswise, at least moneywise.

Logins:810 Time played:6d 8h 32m 16s

This was my activity at 26 days, more than most at this age I daresay. Don't watch my logins too hard, I log in from my phone every so often while I'm out to use up my nerve and keep an eye on the faction chat. Now, the reason my actual time played is so high is partly because of the previous reason, but mainly because when I'm free I tend to have trading sessions where I'll sit on Torn for a few hours, trading very aggressively, almost always mug protected. I'll divide up this post into two sections, for the very active ones like myself, and those who can't play as frequently as I can. I understand most have real life commitments that come first, but I'd like to reiterate, time is money. In a single session of an hour or so, I can make anywhere between 2-20m, depending on the deals I find, and I know you can too.

Protecting your money

This also needs to be addressed before we start making money. What's the point in spending an hour trading just to have someone mug it all off you? Now I'm probably the noobiest player in the faction, so I'm going to assume everyone has the same level of knowledge when it comes to protecting your money (Vault, bank, bookies, company, faction, ghost trades etc). These are all great, and personally I use the bookie myself. One neat little tip I didn't know is that all of these pages have ways to speed up your life. For example, if I want to deposit 25.5m, I can simply type in 25.5m into the bar instead of typing $25,500,000. It works great for any of the dedicated vault pages such as vault, faction and companies, and it means you can withdraw the exact amount a deal requires, and save a little time too. Additionally, you can click the little $ button next to the bar to withdraw/deposit ALL your money. This is great for when you've got tonnes of cash on hand and you want to guard it quickly, just click the button and click deposit!

Now I'll talk about mug protecting. Most of you know what this is, some of you may have heard the term thrown around. The majority of you have heard me whining in the faction chat asking for it. To cut a long story short, if I have 100m ad you mug me, for the next 2 hours I can have 100m and if someone mugs me they will gain $0. This was put in place to stop chain mugging happening, where someone would constantly revive/mug you in order to make tonnes of money. After the first 2 hours, the protected amount will drop (I don't know by how much exactly), and then it will continue to slowly fall until after 12 hours, where your entire 100m will be muggable again. A couple more things to note; if I have 100m and you mug me, and I then add another 50m, only the 100m will be protected, not the 50m. Ideally, when being mug protected you should withdraw all your cash so you can protect the full amount. For example, at the time of writing this I have 800m cash. When I want to start my trading session, I'll withdraw my entire 800m and have someone mug me. That way my whole 800m is mug protected, and I can use the entire amount to trade very aggressively. This also means that as my mug protected amount decreases, in 6-10 hours time I'll still have a large amount of money protected (100m+) which means I can still trade, just on a smaller scale. Also, if I have 100m and you mug me, and then someone else mugs me again, the timer will reset and the initial 2 hours will begin again. If you are going to play how I do, and you have a couple of hours to sit down and trade, I'd very highly advise you ask in the faction chat for mug protection. (Do NOT go to an outside source for mug protection, unless you know they will send you the money back after). Usually when I get on, I'll withdraw all my cash, have someone mug me and send the money back, but let them keep 1m. This is a very small price to pay compared to the profit you make, and it's a pretty nice reward for their 25e.

Self hospitalisation is another method people use in order to keep their cash safe, but I don't like this as it limits my actions, and means I can only sell, not buy (Selling is only half of the work). The only times I can see this being more useful than mug protection is if you either won't stay online while your stuff is selling, or if you're exiting a poker table. Either way, make sure you turn your revives off.

Last thing before I move on to the bit you've been waiting for - Download DocTORN. Don't even question it, just do it. For those of you that don't know, I used to play this game right at the start, and stopped about 4 years ago (Before the addiction kicked in again) and I can honestly say this is the most useful tool I've used since I started playing. Not only does it give you notifications whenever you receive an event/message/full nerve/energy, it also shows you how many items are in each country, which is simply amazing. No longer do the days of wasted trips to South Africa exist, you can check all stock in all countries before even setting out! DocTORN offers a host of other features, but the ones I mentioned are the most useful for trading. You can trade with your bank of choice open on another page, and as soon as the notif comes through, just click the $ button and bank all your money almost instantly. Not to mention, it's completely free! I'd say Citywatch is pretty decent too, and only costs a measly 50 points. The Citywatch notifications are much quicker, almost instant, and the sound is a lot louder by default which means it's even better for quickly banking your money after a sale.

Let's make some money baby!

So, either you've just signed up, or you've logged in for the first time in years with nothing left to your name, like several of our members. Either way, you're weak, broke, or both. First things first we have to build up our nest fund. Now I know everyone's heard the generic "Buy and sell bricks, run flowers and plushies etc", but these are the way forward, at least at the very beginning. I promise you, just a week of flying will give you what you need to start. I'm not going to go into all the exact figures, but focus on Jaguar plushies from Mexico, either the Ceibo or Monkey from Argentina, or Xanax from South Africa. I would recommend avoiding the last one unless your pretty inactive, as you lose out on valuable energy, unless you mug/hunt while you're there. You want to be able to carry as many items as possible, join a cruise liner, grab a suitcase, rent a PI. Do whatever it takes to be able to carry more items. At the time of writing this I can carry 29 items, and I'm not in a cruise liner, so you should be looking to carry the same amount, if not more. We're aiming for a bazaar here, so enough for 250 points will be fine, and then a couple million on top to trade with. I'd also suggest donating, if you can. I bought 2 DP's at the very start and it helped me get started quicker for the simple fact I didn't have to travel at the start. I'd highly suggest sticking with flying if you're not an active player, it'll be a better use of your time and is guaranteed money at the end of the day. Also, if you go to rehab buy those frickin' flash grenades as it'll offset the cost of the rehab. Now, you have a bazaar so let's move on.

You have a couple million, and you're right back where you started, except this time you have a bazaar. Now you can charge market, or even above market, and pay no fees to boot. The first thing we need to do is go bargain hunting, so head over to the item market and start shopping, at the same time have trade chat open. We're looking for anything with a use, anything you would use for training mainly. So we're after cans, eDVD's and any supply packs we can get. These things sell pretty quickly, and the profit is usually 50-200k on each. What you don't want to do is post in trade chat, as this draws too much attention to yourself. You keep it open to spot deals, but other than that you just check the item market, alternating between the different pages. It really doesn't take long to find a deal, as people are usually desperate to sell. This is where you jump in. As for the price you'd buy at, at the time of writing, market price for a can of Munster is 1.6m. I'd buy for 1.5m and sell for 1.55m. Sure it's only 50k, but we're talking humble beginnings here. Once you get some more cash you can scale up and buy more, and suddenly your making 500k-1m off a few cans. Keep doing this, and you'll make a million or two a day. Sometimes you get really lucky and find amazing deals, but more often you'll make 50k-100k off each item. I aim to sell the nearest 50k to the cheapest item, rounded down. What this means is if an eDVD is in the cheapest bazaar for 2.75m, I will aim to sell it at 2.7m, and buy it for anything under that. Of course this is all touch and go, as you trade more and more you'll get a feel for how much you should be paying for everything, and that's when you can basically stop reading these kind of guides and just trade away. We're going to be doing this for quite a while; even when I reached 1b I was still doing this simply because the turnaround is so quick for these items, and deals are almost always available. You want to keep an eye out for the players who went inactive after Halloween/Christmas town, and have a bunch of cans - these people show up in trade chat frequently. Usually you can do your maths as to how much you'd be willing to pay, and then knock off another 500k. So if your total amount came to 10m, you could offer them anything from 8m up, and if they reject the offer you can keep raising it all the way up to 10m. This way, instead of making 50k off a can, you can sometimes make 200k+. As your money grows, so will your list of items. You'll start to work with drug packs, donator packs, bulk meds, bulk xanax, FHC's, and you'll keep doing the same thing. Buying a few hundred thousand below, and selling them on while still being cheaper than the cheapest bazaar. If dealing in bulk, sell a few at a time, and if dealing with DP's, FHC's etc sell one or two at a time unless you are mug protected.

A really handy tip, and one that has worked great for me - if you see the market price for morphine is 40k, and someone has flooded the item market with them for 30k, chat them ASAP. They are usually an inactive player who has just logged in after years, and cashed in their medical points. I guarantee if you click their profile they will be in the medical job. The last time they played was probably before bazaars even existed, and they just want quick money. You wouldn't believe how many thousands of morphines I've bought for half price doing this, and most people don't do it. Just ask them to take their morphine off the market, and you'll be happy to trade it all in one go. On my first few days I got lucky and found players doing this, and made over 100m from buying huge amounts of morphine and selling them on. This trick also works with eDVD's, lotto vouchers, FHC's and drug packs, as some players bought the correct stock before they went inactive and came back to a bunch of payouts. However, this is much more rare than with meds. I did find a player who sold eDVD's on the item market for 300k under market price, and ended up buying 150 eDVD's for 400k under market price after some negotiation, netting me a sweet 60m profit from a single person.

With these items, you want to aim to sell them before you go offline, as they can fluctuate in value, especially DP's. I've been lucky so far but I know someone who bought a bunch of DP's at 26m each, with market being around 25.5m. You don't want to be that person, as that is now money tied up in stock, maybe for a couple of days, which can't be used for trading. Make sure you're constantly banking your money while you're trading, or even better, stay mug protected. You'll get to 100m quicker than you think, especially if you combine this with flying when you go offline. Remember the key is being active.

As I said earlier, you will be doing that for quite a while. However the more money you have, the more you make, and the profit lies in bulk. Don't post on trade, stay mug protected and don't gamble.

Now you have a few hundred mill, it's time to flood the markets. We're going to focus on the points market. With this, you have to be mug protected at all times. The way this works is we buy up all the points, and push the price up before selling them on. At the time of writing, points fluctuate between 53-54k. I buy on the lower end, so from 53-53.5k, and resell at 53.7k. I make sure my entire cash fund is mug protected, and go to town on that points market, buying and refreshing, buying and refreshing. As you buy, people will add more to undercut you; buy those too. Say you have 200m available. You want to use about 120m on the initial push, and then the other 80m when people start to add more. If you're mug protected, feel free to sell thousands at a time. If not, sell at 25-100 points a pop. Sometimes people will put points up for a few thousand less, and those people are your friends. Keep refreshing, keep buying. For each 100 points, if you're making $400 per point it'll be 40k. You won't make more than you would trading items, but points go VERY fast so you'll now have two sources of income. The trick is to know the market, and be sure that the price of points is relatively stable. You want to trade the items listed previously, and points, and make your way up to 500m+.

You've got experience working with smaller items, now we're going to take what we know and apply it to bigger ones. The method remains the same; you want to buy low enough that you can still sell below market. We're working with stat enhancers, casino passes, and maybe a couple of artifacts. Stay away from cesium as I've noticed it's a bit funny, with quite a few being similarly priced, no gaps in pricing etc. At the time of writing, the market for stat enhancers is 445m, and I know big players will buy for a max of 430m. Anything below that, we snatch up. Usually, the big respectable players won't buy mug you, as you trade direct with them, but you might want to have some kind of protection, just to be safe. Casino passes, you want to be real careful but the profit is great. Currently, market is 220ish m, and I know I can buy from a desperate player for 180ish m, and sell for 200m pretty quick. These deals are much more rare than the previous ones we were working on, but the profit is really nice considering it's just one item at a time. However I have to stress, do not tie up all your money in a pair of dumbbells. Please, just don't. You could be stuck for ages with no income because of this. Due to the rarity of these deals, you can move onto the next tip, and work on these things simultaneously.

Stocks, stocks, stocks

I put this one in bold because so far, it's made me the most money out of all the above. Here, you have to question your activity again. How active are you? If you're not that active, just invest into a few BB's, and keep flying. The most value for money stocks currently are LSC, SYM, and FHG. If you have all three of these it'll average out to about 18ish m a week. Keep flying on top of that, and you'll be loaded. But let's say you are active, and you're enjoying trading. Welcome to the world of flipping BB's. It's simple, you just buy for lower than the system price, and sell it back to the system. Don't bother with the fancy graphs, the forecast and demand. Just buy it off someone for cheap, and sell it back to the system. Aim to make a 5-10m profit, and allow room for maneuverability, as the price of the stock will fluctuate. At the time of writing, FHG was worth 745m. I bought it for 725, and by the time it sold back to the system I made 740m back, instead of the predicted 745m. This is what I mean when I say leave room to maneuver, as the price could drop.

You could also try to hold onto stocks, if there are none available on the market, but I reckon if you are active enough you can make more money just using that money to trade normal items. This is more for someone who logs in once or twice a day.

And that's it!

This is a very drafty sort of draft, meaning it's nowhere near complete. I'll add to it and make it look pretty as time goes on. This to an age to write, so I'd appreciate your appreciation, and I'd love if you gave it a thumbs up, and posted any feedback down below. Keep in mind I'm not a pro, and this is to help those that have asked me.