RuneScape Merchanting Guide

Name	Merchanting Guide
Category	General

This article you are about to read is an in-depth guide explaining what to merchant, how to merchant, what merchanting is (for those who don’t know), the different types of merchanting, and how to make a crap load of money out of no money at all in just a little time.

I’m going to explain something most other guides don’t explain; it is kind of hard for a level 3 to make a lot of money from merchanting (unlike other guides say). So I suggest to raise a few money-making stats like mining, smithing, fishing, woodcutting, or anything that can make you money. If not, it will be really hard to start off, but once you get your starting money you should be alright.

When I started out in RuneScape (in “started out” I mean first started training non-combat skills) I was around level 37 with absolutely no idea how to do anything except woodcutting. It took me a while but I went from 1 woodcutting to level 73 (still level 73 B.T.W) in about a week and started selling everything I cut and got around 400k which is a great amount of starting cash for merchanting. Here, I will show you ways that you can start with around 50k and I will show you how to get to 50k.

SO WHAT IS MERCHANTING?

The dictionary definition of merchant (root word of merchanting) is to deal or trade as a merchant, to deal or trade in wholesale. Merchanting is solely the buying of a specific or group of the same item, and selling it for more then the bought price, or buy low sell high.

I mean, how do you think all those low-level accounts (lower than level 60) have all these rares? If you ask them they usually say PKing, friends, Staking, but most of the time they are lying when all they actually do is merchant; merchanting sounds easy, right? Well, not really. If you get some good items you can always go to world 1 or world 2 and sell the item for a lot more than you bought, but how do you get the item in the first place? I will tell you.

How do I get starting cash for merchanting?

Well, I know you hear this all the time…but just kill chickens and collect feathers. There is a chicken farm right outside of the Falador walls.

Each chicken drops between 5-15 feathers (some drop none so don’t get discouraged); in small amounts feathers are useless but when you sell 1k+ of feathers you can easily get 10 each for them or more. I suggest you look on the forums to see what the current price is that members are paying; if you are F2P then just write down the name of the guy that’s buying the feathers on the forums and add him in-game then Instant message him and tell him to meet you in a F2P world so you can sell them to him. Using this method you should easily get 50k in no time and train your combat stats.

What Items Should I Merchant?

First I will start with what to merchant for F2P, then for P2P (members). The first thing you should do is look at the forums and see what is for sale that F2P members can have that is also cheaper than what most people pay for them in game (check world 1 or 2 to check what the items are selling for).

Let me use Yew logs as an example; scout through the fletching forums and check if there are a lot of people “buying yews”. If there are, go to world 1 and stand outside the bank in Varrock or Falador (yew trees near here) and keep typing “Buying Yews 40 gp each”. I usually buy for 100-200 each. If anyone wants to sell for higher than that, just tell them no and keep typing (or use a auto typer) because if you buy for more than 200gp you cut into your profits…which is what merchanting is all about.

After you bought all the logs you can buy (forgot to say, make sure they’re noted so you don’t need to keep running to the bank) and spent all the money you had, go to the forums and look for someone that is buying yew longs for 250+gp each and make a profit (notice this should take no longer than 2 hours for the whole process). Oh, and also make sure you look at the final trade window because some people like to try and scam you like taking away how many logs they’re selling to you, like they’re going to sell 5k logs and take away 4500 logs when you up the cash and you actually just bought 500 logs for the price of 5k.

So let’s look at our calculations:

You bought 250 yew logs for 50k at a price of 200 each, then you sell them for 300 each which then gives you 75k, which makes a 25k profit.

Now if you repeat the process over and over with more money, you can make your first million.

For P2P (members) players, I would personally go to world 2 and merchant prayer pots. In world 2 you can buy prayer potions for 6k to 6.5k each, and then go to world 18 or another world near Edgeville or Canifis and sell them for 7.5k each. This gives you a total of 1k-1.5k profit for each potion you bought.

As an alternative, you can go to world 2 and buy-and-sell barrows in which you can make an easy 100-200k profit off of each time, by buying dharroks plate for 1 million gp then selling them for 1.1 – 1.2 million gold pieces. This makes a total profit of 100-200k each time.

Also, members can also go into F2P worlds and buy items much cheaper there, then sell them for more in Pay to play worlds. One hint on auto typing, DON’T AUTO TYPE TOO FAST! If you set your auto typer to type things like flash:wave:Buying (item here) – (Price here) – (username here) every second you will most likely get banned and lose all the money you worked hard to earn.

So, you now know what to merchant, and where to merchant. Now I will tell you two different ways that I know of on how to merchant.

Different Ways To Merchant

There are two different ways to merchant. The first one is just like I stated above, to buy single items or small groups of items (i.e. feathers, yew logs) and to sell to the people on the forums without posting threads but rather Instant Messaging them in-game which you have to give much effort, etc.

Alright then, let’s say that the way I’m teaching you to merchant helps you out a lot and you make -- let’s say 5 million -- so you made 5 million gp and are tired of buying yew logs that are 200-300 gold pieces each and are tired of making so little profit from it. Well, there is another way with which you will make a lot more profit, and it is called mass merchanting (mostly members only but you can do it for F2P Essence).

Mass merchanting is pretty self-explanatory; this time though, you are going to post on the forums and keep your private chat on public so people can message you. For example, I would post “Buying All Pure Essence For 80 gold pieces Each Pm me to sell.” Now, all you have to do is wait, just keep bumping your thread so it stays at the top and just respond to people’s private messages and buy the pure rune essence they have to sell while leveling your characters skills (to keep you occupied). I usually fish or wood cut to pass the time.

Okay, let’s say you spent all your gold on pure essence. You should then wait a few days and sell them all for 100-110 each; this way since you are mass merchanting, you are making a crap load of cash for something so easy. Let’s make some calculations:

You bought 62,500 pure rune essences for 5 million gold pieces, then you turned right around and sold them for 100 each making you 6.25 million gold pieces, which means 1.25m profit. Now let’s say you sold them for 110 each, which would make you 6.875m which is 1 million 875 thousand GP Profit.

It’s fun making money, isn’t it? Now all you have to do is keep doing this and soon you will be able to afford all those rares that you dream about owning one day.

So there you have it, the perfect merchanting guide. It takes some practice to get used to merchanting, but is well worth it.