TIP: How to break even with your awesome shop

Even before TecThor realized diamonds are awesome, we have already known that those shiny items were satisfying to collect. They are the source for great items such as jukeboxes and diamond hoes, with which you can listen to your favorite track "11" while turning an entire plains biome into farmland. Oh, and, if you want to use them in a more boring way, they are the main currency in VMC-Tec server.

As valuable as they are, collecting diamonds is quite a tedious task. It's not very fun to branchmine unless you have steel nerves like TinFoilChef has. The alternative is to make people mine for you. How? Of course with legal slavery! Of course with opening a shop that will attract everyone! In this blog post I will give some tips on how you can start up a successful business. If you have an answer to all of the questions below, you are ready to rule the economy!

(This post was sponsored by Xiad's Shops.)

An old photo from the spawn area

1. Are you sure?

The promise is great; in the end, who doesn't want a stable income? Despite the fact that a shop saves you some time from branchmining, that does not mean you will be sleeping as diamonds flood in. Restocking is a pain depending on what you sell.

• Some goods like slimeballs, bone meal, iron ingots and sea lanterns are farmable. You can "AFK" around a certain region and produce tons of them with barely any effort. However, keep in mind that building the farm, staying around the region, and crafting the items if necessary also take a lot of time! So even though the production part of the process will require not much of an effort, it still requires some kind of dedication and some time.
• Villager trading is also a way of producing goods but dealing with those creatures is not the most fun thing out there. Moving the villagers? No, thank you! Placing and breaking workstations over and over until you are satisfied with the trades? Nah! Zombifying the villagers a couple of time and praying that they won't despawn or die during and after the process? Never! You got the point. (Oh, not even mentioning the time you will spend walking back and forth between villagers for the rest of the season!)
• For the rest of the items like dirt, stone, shulker shell and concrete you will need to actively participate in the gathering process. The average player does not like spending hours to dig shulker boxes of sand. It's often quicker to buy from someone who did the boring part for them. Therefore, the demand is higher. Do you see a problem? You will need to restock your shop quite often; which means, you will spend a lot of time using and repairing your shovels. It leaves you less time for exciting stuff!

Now that you know how painful maintaining a shop is, think again: Do you want to take the responsibility? Do you have enough time to dedicate? If not, consider your plans about having an economic empire. But if you still want to proceed, good luck!

That said, your shop does not need to sell a product. You can also be building a service shop, where you do some terraforming/building etc in exchange for diamonds. You can take Wolfboy248's music shop as an example. If your plan is to have a shop like that one, you may still find some useful tips on this post!

2. What will you sell?

It looks like an easy question. "Oh, I dug a huge hole in my backyard so I have a lot of dirt now! I should open a dirt shop!" is not the most logical way to go. It's correct that you swim in dirt now, but what will you do when you run out of your initial stock? Then you will need to go back to digging again. All of the painful processes I talked about in the previous section will haunt you.

A more correct way to approach this question is to do a market research. What do people already sell? For how much? What do people need? If you can find one item that everyone needs but no one has a shop for (*cough* leather *cough*), no time to lose! Get to work! Because you will have no competitors in the shopping district, which makes you the go-to person in need of that material! If you have competition on that specific item, make sure they don't have a stronger farm/dedication than yours! Your opponent may drop prices to the point you can't compete, then you are out of the diamond game!

Another important question to answer here is "What can you sell?" Abundance of some material at your base does not necessarily mean that you will always have a vast amount of it. So, make sure the item you are going to sell is feasible; either with a farm or with some dedicated resource-gathering time. So to sum up, whatever you will sell, make sure it is feasible and preferably out of competition zone!

3. How will it look?

Think about it: Would you prefer shopping in a shop that only consists of a chest and a sign, or in one that has a fancy design or user interface? (You may consider visiting a therapist if you answered with the former.) Of course the fancy design is more attention-grabbing! I will give you some successful examples to explain what the defining characteristics of a good shop design are.

Let's take Oxeye Dyesy as an example. It is a giant flower pot surrounded by other organic elements, and is instantly recognizable anywhere in the shopping district. The distinct color palette makes the build eye-catching. Not only that, the link between what it is and what it sells is clear. The shop sells flowers and dyes, therefore the shape of it makes sense in this context. Similar applications of this can be found in Wildbarbecue124's turtle shell shop, Wolfboy248's rocket shop, and more. No one will forget what those shops exactly sell after one visit, or even without visiting. That link between product and shape is really important, and it's a key element of Minecraft branding/marketing.

Interesting for me to say, but TecTower. It doesn't exactly look like a shulker box, or an iron block, or a beacon. However, it's one of the three high buildings in the area! It's impossible to miss where it is because of the gigantic size, thus it attracts potential customers even from a distance. That's clever, indeed. What makes the shop more memorable is the interior design, though. Points reduced for the confusing elevator system, but bonus points for the unique design for each floor. You feel like in the end dimension when shopping for shulker shells. Or, it feels like nether when you leave your kidney for a beacon. The atmosphere inside the building satisfies the link I mentioned in Oxeye Dyesy description.

So whatever you sell, try to make it authentic. So that people will know what the shop sells just from a glance, or will visit your shop for the unique design it has. This is an effective marketing strategy!

4. Alternative to the last question: What makes it unique/distinct?

As I mentioned, you don't have to sell a product when opening a shop. There are plenty of examples of these already: Music shop, surprise shop, BLUFF... If you want to open one of these, a new set of challenges have to be dealt with. The question is simple: What makes it unique?

Unless your shop is about labor (excavating, build copying, terraforming, ...) your concept must be fresh. Is it as simple as "Give the coordinates -> Pay me diamonds -> I will dig it"? Then there is something wrong. Such efficiency will bring you some positive feedback about the easiness of your user interface; that is not a bad thing. But think about that: There are some people on the server (let's take me as an example) who do not actually need any excavation. If there were to be a twist to the entire process, I would use your service just for the fun of it. (Yes, more people = more diamonds!) For instance, you can add a surprise element. Tell them you'll give them a "surprise artifact" per 16x16x16 area dug.

...or go simple. Give them cookies for their purchases :) Wildbarbecue124's campaign worked as such!

An example of "surprise element" can be seen at BLUFF: You can blatantly scam people and they will still shop!

5. How much will the items/service cost?

It is debatable. We had a debate about the price of shulker boxes with TecThor before, and there doesn't seem to be an optimal way of pricing. I believe we both had strong arguments, so I will leave it up to you.

XiadMabsax's Way of Pricing: If it's fun to collect, it's fun to collect. I personally enjoy PvP and PvE a lot, so going to the end to hunt for shulkers is not a pain for me.

• Your opponents cannot compete! TecTower sells shulker boxes for more expensive than End Ship End Shop does. Therefore, I have a monopoly on shulker boxes while I am online.
• You do something you enjoy. As I said, I don't see a problem in going to the end dimension at all.

TecThor's Way of Pricing: Gathering resources consume time, and the price of an item should be defined with "How much diamonds could I mine if I weren't collecting this resource?"

• As it is relatively more expensive compared to the previous one, you do not run out of stock frequently. That means less time spent on restocking!
• Less tiring in the long run for the reasons already mentioned.
• It gives others opportunity to compete, resulting in an increase in the quality of your product (if applicable). This also means you don't damage the server economy.

From my experience, both of them work successfully. I am suffering from restocking pain when I have less time to login, while TecThor struggles with the "initial affording barrier." I can define that as "Some people don't have enough diamonds to afford some products. It's a potential customer loss."

6. What will you call it?

Name is the other half of the marketing! Your shop isn't "that shop which sells gold." It is "Gold & Cold." It's your brand name! Be different and stand out! From my experience puns (Oxeye Dyesy), strong/short/simple names (TecTower) and sonical/rhytmical rhymes (End Ship End Shop) are the most memorable. This helps customers to directly remember of your shop when in need of something.

If you are not sure about how effective this is, fill in the blank: "Hotel? _________." See?

Now that you are ready to rule the economy, go and pay for your rent! As of this post, the price of land is 1 diamond block per 16x16 area (infinite height) and is paid on top of the spawn portal. Come up with a design, twist, concept and a name! Soon you will need to build a separate room to store your diamond pile!

Good luck on your journey!