Just my thoughts on these... 1.) How many 4 mil. NB ad's should a person participate in? I dont find that being in 2 ads doubles your sales or 3 ads triples it, etc. I find being 3 a week is my max, and I try to spead them out as much as possible *pushes Xmart to sundays* :P Never heard of that 1ad/mil thing, but i have lots of people on my ads who are sizes 100-200 and I doubt they were making 1m a week before :P And they still find it good to be on the ads. 2.) How much backup NP's should a person have in the till when at the main market level? Erm, what do you need backup NPS for?? I dont really keep any. Tho I do have some items I could liquidate if I really needed to I guess :P 3.) Can you ever have to many pages of inventory? I found that when I had a bookshop, with maybe 5 pages of stock, at least half of my sales were from page 1. I personally wouldnt want to have a 30 page shop, I dont think anyone would ever scroll through them all :P I personally wouldnt bother. But, many people just *like* having as much variety as possible and you probably get some benefits out of it, like a person seeing you have 30 pages might bookmark you and come back to slowly work their way through you items and buy all kinds of stuff.

1.) No idea since my 4MIL ad experience is too early to tell and having the Avatar / Packrat category is just poor when it comes to NB Ad hits! 2.) I don't know about main market but just like the economy in the real world, there are times when the sales really aren't there. I would think having 1-2 million neopoints in the bank would be wise. If there are new items that need to be stocked (due to new plots/new games/neohome upgrade, etc.); maybe everything you sold that day costs more to restock (I hate when this happens to me!); maybe you need/want to change categories; maybe you have a real life thing that makes playing impossible for a while so your sales suffer...upgrades, upgrades, upgrades. 3.) I think if you are using the SW to attract players then having 30 pages is good because you have all those items you can use to attract players. However if you are beyond that (are you ever really beyond that?) then I think having your inventory loaded page 1-3 heavier and the rest is really smart. With portal you should be able to tell the really great sellers so I say stock them and cut the huge numbers of pages. You can always add pages 10 - 30 back if you find that after a month your sales are worse. If you have your prices in your database it isn't too terrible to put the stock back in. 4.)Is there any reason to upgrade other than hut position after you make it to main market when you really can't afford to fill all of your spots and don't have the time to restock your shop fully? Personally it drives me crazy to see a size 2000 shop with 1.5 pages of stock and I just wonder, why? Also, I get dizzy thinking about trying to manage 30 pages of stock. I already spend far too much time restocking and I only have 8 pages and do it from SSW unless it's 1/2 price day. 5.) What motivates you after you can buy everything in Neopia? LOL! I think I understand the strategy of the malling game -- upgrade to be top of the number one hut for the traffic and either price so you don't have to restock 1K items per day and/or don't worry about having 8K open slots. Is that right? I just think if it's neopoints you want to make then a smaller shop with 400 MILLION in stocked items would be the better investment. But maybe neopoints isn't the point since you had 400 million to spend on upgrades and who knows what in stock -- what is the point then, bragging rights? _____________________________________________________ ~ Mimi's Ménagerie Avatars ~ http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=temps_bons&misc

[quote=temps_bons]4.)Is there any reason to upgrade other than hut position after you make it to main market when you really can't afford to fill all of your spots and don't have the time to restock your shop fully? [/quote] I actually have a similar question. Once you are in main, I know that staying at the top of a hut is really important, but does doing mass upgrades really matter? A hut is a hut and the noobies shopping dont know that person in hut 10 spent more to get there, know what I mean? They just click on a random hut! I know that some huts are better than others (a couple that the noobs seems to click more than others), but spending 100m+ doesnt seem to be "worth it" in the sense that you'll get so many more hits that you'll make your profits back. Thoughts?

Shop sizes matter alot, especially if you want to gain entrance into a very good mall. Otherwise i would have never spent 150 million to get to size 1282. At higher sizes, competition is much lower, which means more time at the top end of a hut. Now if the majority of your members were at this size, staying on top of their huts, then you'd got one pwnful mall. As for NB ads, I would say zero. I often get about 500ish NB ad hits on peak day and even in a spot like wearables, benefits are marginal when plugged into the portal. As for inventory stock, i dont think so. At least not for wearables but for other categories, i've noticed that stocking boring basic color stuff hurt sales Edit: However, with that being said, it may not be worth it right now especially since malling is getting worse each year. So sitting in one of the major huts along with mall member help might be best in terms of neopoints profit.

1) personal choice, each person should keep track of how they do from ads via the portal. I rarely benefit greatly from ads, however I take part (so long as i'm not losing nps) for no other reason than to increase exposure. I've never heard about that mil vs one ad thing either. 2)Varies person to person again. I know someone who refuses to drop below 10 mil. Meanwhile my limit is 2 mil but I keep plenty of items in my account ready to liquidate at any time 3)I like many pages, I think it can't damage your sales in any way so long as you bulk your big sellers. The rest is just there as potential sales. @ Mimi, I currently have over 6k space in my shop, WHY would anyone want over 7k items in total in their shop? *unsure* You don't just upgrade for shop space. Much as Dmitri said the huts get more stable at a larger size, which helps explain why i've spent over 260 mil on my shop size and plan to possibly spend a lot more.

[quote=Dmitri]As for inventory stock, i dont think so. At least not for wearables but for other categories, i've noticed that stocking boring basic color stuff hurt sales Edit: However, with that being said, it may not be worth it right now especially since malling is getting worse each year. So sitting in one of the major huts along with mall member help might be best in terms of neopoints profit.[/quote] Could you say more about that first part of your comment, I am not following (sorry). Makes sense about the basic color items hurting sales! I am glad to see that you were willing to admit that malling is getting worse each year. I have noticed a big difference in the small amount of time I have been on Neo. What would you say is making this happen? My opinion is that while competition is good the noob malls are hurting the legitimate malls. Malls are losing their "special-ness" and I feel there is a pervasive negative feeling about malls now. The massive numbers of 4 MIL ads is annoying as well. I knew there had to be some logical reasons to upgrade to that size but just didn't know what they were. I like the idea of stability in the huts so that you aren't constantly being bumped out. Is there any data about the best malls on Neo? Could we add that as a component here? We could come up with some criteria for rating a mall as good (shop sizes, graphics, etc.). I would love to see this since I am trying to motivate myself with a long-term plan because I do not want to be a mall hopper or get to size 1,000 and realize that I don't want to have a shop any more. Also, I wasn't referring to anyone on here with my comments on upgrading -- I click around in the marketplace and am amazed at the huge shops that have no inventory or a page or two and of course none of the regulars here fall into that category. I agree, why would anyone want to stock more than 7,000 items in their shop? Bless you and your 6K free spots! I read that your shop value was 9MIL before your marathon upgrades -- and yes, you will get back to that!! EDIT: 6.) Is it possible to get 300 Million neopoints within a three year period? I play games each day, restock 6 days a week and wonder if I will ever get there. Granted it takes neopoints to make neopoints and it is a exponential growth pattern (neopoints, upgrades, more stock, larger mall, more hits, repeat....) and I haven't reached any market place yet. Can anyone tell me the point they saw the biggest difference in sales (if you can remember) -- spooky market; spooky market + summer-time; island market; size 350...etc. I am not talking total sales but maybe you joined a really great mall and you noticed a huge difference or something. _____________________________________________________ ~ Mimi's Ménagerie Avatars ~ http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=temps_bons&misc

Because your first page is sorta like an eye opener, it is important that stuff on there look pleasing to the eye. It is your chance to grab the user's attention and let them know that you have good stuff and not "junky looking items" And malling is dying because of NC Mall. Tnt is focusing more on that and drawing people away from neopets itself. \ As for mall rating, I've thought of it but quickly decided to scrap the idea since it will cause drama. However, its not that hard to see which malls are good and which arent, especially if you've been malling for a while. Her shop was probably around 50m i think. Even mine is 35 already and it's still half stocked

Because your first page is sorta like an eye opener, it is important that stuff on there look pleasing to the eye. It is your chance to grab the user's attention and let them know that you have good stuff and not "junky looking items" And malling is dying because of NC Mall. Tnt is focusing more on that and drawing people away from neopets itself. \ As for mall rating, I've thought of it but quickly decided to scrap the idea since it will cause drama. However, its not that hard to see which malls are good and which arent, especially if you've been malling for a while. Her shop was probably around 50m i think. Even mine is 35 already and it's still half stocked 300m should be fairly easy in 3 year period especially when combined with restocking from the neopets main shops. I currently make about 170m a year with my current stock/rate and im sure there are those who do better so yeah, possible.

[quote=Dmitri]As for mall rating, I've thought of it but quickly decided to scrap the idea since it will cause drama. However, its not that hard to see which malls are good and which arent, especially if you've been malling for a while. [/quote] I would like to see which malls I should be shooting for entrance to. As for the drama, *rolls eyes* -- if we came up with criteria that wasn't biased and are objective then the results should not be questioned. Yeah graphics is subjective (X-mart has the best ones period but people would whine about that assertion) but other things aren't like how long has the mall been around, what is the turn-over, etc. _____________________________________________________ ~ Mimi's Ménagerie Avatars ~ http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=temps_bons&misc

Well I've noticed that many malls have stated how long they've been business but that information is only good in judging whether or not it's going to be around next week, etc. Graphics quality is also a matter of taste too. some people like colder looking graphics, while other prefer warmer colors. But personally, the way I rate a mall is graphics, shop sizes, and any extra info i know about the members. i dont really take into account the length of time the mall's been active for since i know a lot of malls that's been there for many years and has a not-so-good reputation whereas there are also lots of malls that started this year and are doing pretty good