Re: eRepublik - America Under Attack

**Math_Magician** · 12-24-2009, 02:47 PM

OK, I have a grain harvesting company, and I don't know how to make money. The employees are getting paid more than the grain they make for the price I can sell them at.
Are you making money in your company?

**Scattershot** · 12-24-2009, 09:23 PM

Just a couple questions.

Was your company set up in a high grain region?
Do you have exactly 10 employees?
Is the grain market currently at a low point?
Are your employees being over paid for their skill?
Do you know if your employees are working at 90+ health or not?
Have you tried any of the business tools/productivity calculators to get a base productivity idea?

**Scattershot** · 12-24-2009, 11:38 PM

After doing some research on the current market I don't see how the Q1 grain companies in the eUS market are staying afloat with the current market prices. Based on my numbers I figure they could only afford to pay around 1.15 per full skill point or lose money. Things get better with a Q2 or Q3 company though.

I found a Q1 grain company that is paying $5.14 for skill 2 so maybe my numbers are off but I can't figure out where.

**Math_Magician** · 12-24-2009, 11:52 PM

Yeah, I've used the calculators, losing money. Might have to shut down until prices go up.
Ex. I'm paying someone $2.62 for 1 skill level, and they make 2 products, which I can sell for $.60 in total.

I'm trying to sell my company now, and going to buy one in Poland, the calculators say I can make money there, yay!

**Scattershot** · 12-25-2009, 05:41 AM

The other thing to keep in mind is that a Q3 grain company is more effective than a Q1 so you could always save up to upgrade it to Q3.

Edit
Oh and before you sell off and get that company in Poland make sure to calculate all your numbers based on % of gold. That way you have an actual 1-1 comparison to figure out if it really is better.

**Kulmar** · 12-25-2009, 06:55 AM

Yeah, for my company I made a nifty program of mine to see if I'm making money. I am for the most part, just don't have enough capital to be able to steady through the hard times. Upgrading to Q3 really makes you be able to have competitive wages on the job market.

Grain is an iffy company market to get into... everyone sees it as a place that everyone has to buy food, but when everyone sees that.. people flock towards it and overproduce. Driving the prices down. And don't be afraid to shut down while the prices are low, you can always start up again later.

I found that working at my own company wasn't the best way to raise money. First off, if you are the only one working there, you're only making half the products you can make. Therefore, your only making half the wage you can make working in a regular company. So if you work in another company, then you can toss your wages into your company.

The new training system does work backwards, and the admins know this. They covered it up with the 'babies will get stronger, tanks will get weaker' dream. It is just to drain gold as someone said earlier. Also to make people buy more gold... but who would do that in this buggy game anyway?

**Scattershot** · 12-25-2009, 10:54 PM

I used the training grounds to get my strength up to 10 and now I'm not paying any more into it. I need to save up for my Q5 house again now.

**Kulmar** · 12-26-2009, 04:47 AM

I don't know if I would buy anything yet, as the new modules are coming out. You never know what they are going to do. Might as well just save up the gold now.

**Math_Magician** · 12-27-2009, 11:29 PM

Yeah can't wait.
Don't know if that's a good thing or not, hopefully they get rid of the training program.

**Tarenth** · 12-28-2009, 04:43 AM

25 is a good benchmark if you don't screw it up like I did and give away gold.

I suggest you pick up a 'for sale' company instead of creating your own. Just watch the market and pick up a good one when its under 20 gold (cost of creation). You can change the name and logo however you wish, but its location is set (duh). I learned that people tend to drop companies when they're no longer profitable and sometimes leave things like finances (gold and cash) as well as resources in stock which can give you a jump start and lower your start up cost.

The real kicker is Q1 companies are pretty unprofitable because your raw materials get eaten up very quickly while the end products are sold at low value. Q2 companies are more efficient and have a higher return, but you'll kill anyone new to the game who doesn't either own a Q5 house or know how to play the war/hospital game for wellness. Not to mention it takes 20 gold to upgrade from a Q1 to a Q2.

You'll also be 'burning cash' if your employee count is under the 'efficiency' marker. For manufacturing there is a penalty to output if you have less than or over 10 workers. This means you'll be paying people the same wages for less work and get less in returns. If your skill is high enough you can make up the remainder on your own, but its even odds if its more efficient to work for your own company for little/no wage or to just work for someone else and refinance your income into the company. After working for myself at 1 USD a day I seem to etch out a return of 1 USD from sales per working day as opposed to the 10 USD in donations I'd make working at skill 5 for someone else.

Higher skill workers have a greater output, but if you want to just 'fill seats' till your efficiency rises then lower skill workers seem to join faster (but don't stick around without incentive). If you try to hire skilled workers from the onset without a large nest egg you'll probably spend all your money on labor before you make any returns from sales.

Its probably a good idea to have enough resources for 5-6 days of work from everyone involved in case sales slow down or raw material price rises.

Oh yeah! There's no tax to INVEST (put money into) your company, but there is a tax to COLLECT (remove money from) your company. That means unless you want Uncle eSam dipping into your coffers its not a good idea to bounce the finances between your organization and company.

**Math_Magician** · 12-30-2009, 02:57 PM

Yeah I found that out the hard way, took out 10 gold and lost a bunch to the treasury.

anyways I might shut down my company, and I have it up for sale for 18 gold on the market. Unfortunately, no one seems to want to buy it.

**Tarenth** · 12-31-2009, 06:15 PM

What's your company/eRepublik name anyhow?

**Math_Magician** · 12-31-2009, 09:52 PM

Company name: HIGH RESOURCES FOOD
GM: Store4me
Citizen: Alexxxxi

My company is in Canada (Alberta), which is why I named it HIGH RESOURCES FOOD because I'm trying to sell it (Alberta has high grain source).

**Tarenth** · 01-01-2010, 01:47 PM

I thought that was you, but there's also a MATH_MAGICIAN at level 6 so I was a bit confused.

There are a number of reasons why you're losing money:

Productivity Guide in the Wiki

1) Your employee lil'g has a wellness of 13! If you work at full capacity at 100 wellness, and at around 90% at 90 wellness then working at 13 means you're paying them full wage for only 13% of their capacity! That's why most companies require 90 wellness or more in order to maintain employment. I'd fire him since he's already level 8 and hasn't improved since then.

2) You only have 3 employees. Your maximum output is achieved by having 10 people and each person who works has a penalty under 10 and over 10.
An example of this is that at 1/10 employees my level 5 manufacturing character has an output of 12.38 at 100 wellness, at 4/10 employees my output is 15.75, and at 10/10 is would be 22.5

I would suggest the following in order to try and turn a profit.

1) Fire that extremely low wellness employee. He's just making a high wage for little output. If eCanada has assistance programs I'd direct him there, but kick him to the curb ASAP.

2) Put out some low skill/pay 'filler' jobs to get your employee count up to the maximum level. This will almost double your current output. After you hit the maximum output amount you can play around with employees by firing absentees (new players tend to drop eRepublik FAST and stop working) and rehiring higher skill workers (higher skill means longer with the game means higher chance of working per day and productivity), but for the moment a person sitting in your company and not working will make you money since they're increasing productivity without taking a wage.

3) Hope the admit fix the business module. Currently after the new year every detail in the company is 0'ed which makes it impossible to monitor productivity and wage adjustments.

I'm taking the 'teaching and retention' model of business since I've always wanted to play around with it. At 10/10 employees (4 absentees

) I'm pulling in around 10 USD per day from their improved output and 2 of my employees I've retained since skill 0 and are at skill 2 which means their output has gone up around 200%.

I'm playing around with the idea of buying gold to open up a steel company in Katana to supplement my weapon company, but I don't want to spread myself too thin with weapon prices dropping under 4.2 locally. Alternatively I'm tempted to upgrade to Q2 to increase the profit margin of goods once I'm staffed with people who can survive it, but I don't want to kill off new players. -_-

**Scattershot** · 01-01-2010, 04:42 PM

Nobody is going to like working for your iron company in katana. The income taxes on iron workers was just boosted to 50% to prevent people from opening companies in our new overseas territories since we are planning on giving them back.

If your interested in an iron company open one in one of our allies countries.

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