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Last time I published this business opportunity report, in Greece, it achieved #2 International, just behind the eRepublik Insider, with OVER 1000 votes. But, we're in America now, once again officially the most populous country of the New World! We did it... OVER 1000 and #1 in All Countries... thank you, America!

So, what is this? Basically, it's about putting your money to work to make more money. Alternatively, it's about providing jobs and goods to allied or neutral countries without running into the red at the same time. It assumes a good grasp of business basics in eRepublik and goes beyond them with charts, based on data gathered over the last 48 hours, that will show you possible investment opportunities in 27 different countries.

If you need some brushing up on those basics and a few tips and tricks besides, make sure you're subscribed. I also write articles such as Finding and Funding Your New Business Plan to help you succeed. My two part series Home Economics: Making Money and Home Economics: Saving Money are must-read for anyone who wants to earn more and stretch their dollar. This report itself gets a new edition every two weeks... and the countries of publication change, so you gotta subscribe to catch 'em all.

Method... skip if you don't care

Please do skip ahead to the good stuff, but of course, I wouldn't mind if you showed some love right now with a vote or even a subscription...



This was yet again the most challenging of the three articles to write (especially when I found out that I was finished three hours ago but had all the currency conversions wrong), and I had to make some simplifications and even some assumptions. The first and possibly most drastic simplification that I made was to pre-determine the quantity of each skill of worker used based on the type of company; if it were a Quality 1 or 2 company, I used all or mostly skill 1 to 3 workers; but if it were a Quality 3 or higher company, I used all or mostly skill 4 to 6 workers. I assumed a perfect quota of 10 or 20 workers, as appropriate, and I assumed them all to be at 95 wellness on average; except for skill 3, at an average of 90; skill 2, at an average of 80; and skill 1, at an average of 45.

Some other assumptions include the idea that raw materials and houses are sold purely on the global market at (roughly) the lowest global bid. The raw materials prices used for this week's article are 0.0058 Gold per Grain, 0.074 Gold per Oil, 0.0076 Gold per Wood, 0.0085 Gold per Diamonds, and 0.0105 Gold per Iron. Housing prices are pegged at 3.75 gold for Q1, 8 gold for Q2, 15.5 gold for Q3, 25 gold for Q4, and 40 gold for Q5. By way of contrast, Manufacture products are assumed to have both a global market and local markets, so I have indicated both where the cheapest Manufacture labor can be found (for a black market or export strategy) as well as given charts for the more complex question of filling the local low bid price with local labor. The conversion of currency to Gold, in both the case of wages and market prices, was computed by reference to the best offer of Gold in exchange for currency at that time (the "flip side" of the currency market, which allows more resolution than three decimals of Gold). All prices referenced here and in the Google spreadsheets are in Gold.

There are lots of issues that go unadressed by these graphs, which themselves are rigidly produced to certain assumptions that are not always true. (This is because, although I welcome refinement of method, I dislike doing the guesstimation that is best left to the reader.) One issue is that the graphs are created in accordance with an assumption that the market consumes all the products of the company just about as fast as they are made. If not, black market sales or exportation will need to make up the difference, and so it becomes important to be able to make a profit at the global low bid price and to have such a sales strategy. There are also interesting questions that are not answered, such as which markets are the best for the import of high Quality Food and Weapons, given the prices in those markets and the Import Taxes. Those would make good subjects for separate articles. In general, the reader should always practice every good caution and research as thoroughly as he or she would without these graphs and data; he or she should, however, enjoy the benefit of the ideas suggested by them.

The biggest caveat is that the market may change radically, even in the near future or before the 40 or more days have elapsed that it typically takes for a business to make profits equal to its creation cost. The data on wages and market prices were gathered on days 669 and 670 of the New World.



Even if you skipped the above now, I do suggest trying to read it before investing any capital. Having an understanding of your own will both help you prevent mistakes and improve your store of wisdom and technique in the future.

The Google spreadsheets (four of them) used to create the graphs are linked from the images. If you just want to see the graphs in higher resolution, your browser may let you right-click and choose "View Image" to do so. The red part is wages, the blue part is profit. All units are in Gold.

Land Companies

Although there are good times to start a Q4 land company (particularly when you have very high skill workers that can help recoup the additional starting costs faster), I will consider here only the Q2 and Q3. The Q2 land company will be said to have 5 skill 2 workers and 5 skill 3 workers (at 80 and 90 average wellness, respectively). Sales will be said to have been made at the global low bid price mentioned already: 0.0105 for Iron, 0.0085 for Diamonds, 0.0076 for Wood, 0.0074 for Oil, and 0.0058 for Grain (if sale prices are higher, that means more profit, naturally).



The Q3 land company will be said to have 5 skill 4 workers, 3 skill 5 workers, and 2 skill 6 workers and, again, sales will be said to have been made at the global low bid prices mentioned.



Q1 Manufacture Companies

The Manufacture products that will be considered are Q1 Gifts, Moving Tickets, and Weapons as well as Q3 or higher Food and Weapons. Food at lower qualities is generally overproduced and overcompetitive, while Weapons at Q2 are not especially more profitable than Q1 Weapons, a staple of any nation, but carry higher startup costs.

Of the three Q1 Manufacture products, the most profitable at the global low bid price is Weapons. It is fortunate, then, that they are also the easiest to sell on the black market.



And here are the profits and wages for Q1 weapons companies using local labor and selling at the local low bid price. As in all the Q1 manufacture companies, it is assumed that the staff consists of 5 skill 2 workers (at 80 average wellness) and 5 skill 3 workers (at 90 average wellness).



The next chart is for Gifts, a product with steady consumption relative to Weapons and Moving Tickets.



And the last one is for Moving Tickets. This market should enjoy a little spike on the 24th and 25th in countries that inspire voters to move to vote for congressional candidates in different regions (i.e., a lot of them but not, say, Singapore). That fact isn't captured by the graph.



Q3+ Manufacture Companies

The first graph will present the wages paid in gold by a Manufacture company employing 5 skill 4 workers, 3 skill 5, and 2 skill 6 based on the job market data already stated. This is as a guide for those who are interested primarily in black market or export sales (lower wages are better).



This is for Q3 Food. In all the graphs for higher quality Manfuacture goods, keep in mind that the top end is largely illusory; while they may remain good markets for selling your goods, they won't remain as good.



This is for Q4 Food; where not listed on the market, it was assigned a 0.14 gold value.



This is for Q5 Food; where not listed on the market, it was assigned a 0.24 gold value.



Q3+ Weapons will be playing the role of Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Report. Here's the really condensed version, however. The Q3 and Q4 Weapons industries are marginally better than the Q2 Weapons industry, but that is mostly by dint of less competition than very strong demand. All three of the "middle child" Weapons lack one thing: purpose. The Q1 Weapon is the best for cost efficiency. The Q5 Weapon packs the most punch. The compromises do sell but not like hotcakes, not even in time of war, as the Q1 and Q5 do. I'd even suggest building 4 Q1 Weapons companies over building 1 Q3 Weapons company, unless you were planning to proceed from Q3 to Q5. I would never, however, suggest building 4 Q3 Weapons companies over building a Q5 Weapons company! With Q5 Weapons, you can build up a client list (generally, tanks) so that selling your supply of Q5 Weapons, usually at about 1 Gold each, in a black market fashion will never be a problem in the long run. That cannot be said of Q2, Q3, or Q4. It's also possible to sell Q1 Weapons directly to consumers by donation fairly easily.

Given that Iron and Weapons form the largest Raw-Product combined industry, and given that Q1 Weapons form the vast majority of the use of Iron, and given that you need several Q1 Weapons companies (on the order of about 4) in order to match the output of one Q3 High Iron company even with the same skill of workers in each... the New World demands that entrepeneurs build more Q1 Weapons companies than any other type whatsoever. I recommend it as anyone's first business. On top of everything, if you build your Q1 Weapons company in a country with cheap labor, you can immediately start saving on what is typically your largest personal expense by buying your own stock.

House Construction Companies

Although there are many markets in which it is possible to sell Houses for more than the listed prices, especially Q1 and Q2, it is also true that houses are, more than any product, subject to the exchange of a global market. It was thought more honest to use prices that are just about the lowest in the market for all countries; usually a price sandwiched between the second and third offers from the bottom.

The Q1 Houses company was assumed to have 5 skill 1 workers, 8 skill 2 workers, and 7 skill 3 workers at an average of 45, 80, and 90 wellness respectively.



The Q2 Houses company was assumed to have 10 skill 2 workers and 10 skill 3 workers.



The Q3 Houses company was assumed to have 4 skill 2 workers, 4 skill 3 workers, 6 skill 4 workers, 3 skill 5 workers, and 3 skill 6 workers.



The Q4 Houses company was assumed to have a distribution of staff identical to that of the Q3 Houses company.



The Q5 Houses company was assigned 5 skill 3 workers, 5 skill 4 workers, 5 skill 5 workers, and 5 skill 6 workers to reflect the fact that it should, of all companies building Houses, seek the most highly skilled staff.



Summary: What Business Is For Me?

You may have noticed that the opportunities for very profitable ventures in the land industries are limited, if you follow the generic business plan developed for Land companies. This is necessarily the case because of two factors, the first being that the global marketplace for raw materials is a cutthroat one, and the second being that Land workers themselves frequently fail to be self-interested enough to work in countries with valuable raw materials (primarily, Iron, and to a lesser extent, Diamonds, Wood, and Oil in roughly that order) for reasons that depend on the individual but, for the most part, stem from pride of being in their home country. This creates intense competition for Land workers in countries with those High resource regions. However, there are strategies for making Land companies more profitable despite all that (e.g., taking advantage of export licenses) that may be discussed in a future article.

Housing is currently very easy to make money in at the quality levels Q3, Q4, and Q5. Your customers will literally come to you and buy in your country's market, if your offer is near the top of the list on sites such as ereptools.net for checking market prices, as it is a large purchase made only once or (if upgrading) twice. The market has gotten even better than it was two weeks ago. Wood prices have declined, and the prices on Q5 Houses are higher than ever on the Marketplace, while the Construction labor force is still cheaper than Manufacture (in most countries) by a small landslide.

However, at the same time, higher-quality Food (Q3, Q4, and Q5) presents some of the most lucrative situations of "arbitrage" opportunity: using an export license or even placing yourself in a relatively uncompetitive market in order to benefit from high prices. This is especially the case for Food, as most people don't bother to look beyond the local market. Further, if you can afford the 390 Gold cost of creating a Q5 company, Q5 Weapons will always be in-demand (in times of conflict) and profitable.

For those who are starting out and can't afford the 90 Gold startup costs of a Q3 company, my recommendation is to look at the Q1 Manufacture opportunities in Weapons, Gifts, and Moving Tickets. These are typically highly competitive but, armed with the information in this article, you can get yours off to a good start with above-average profit margins. These are usually the only types of companies that are very consistently profitable at Q1 and, thus, make good opportunities for the beginner entrepreneur. Food is usually too crowded and at thin margins at Q1, and Land companies should be upgraded to Q2, Q3, or higher as a must.



This concludes the three-part trilogy of this second edition of the opportunities report:

- Job Opportunities in Allied Countries (Sweden)
- Job Opportunities in Neutral Countries (Peru)
- Business Opportunities in 27 Countries (this article - in the USA)

Vote and subscribe to be sure to join me again in another two weeks for the next edition of the opportunities report. I will also be bringing you more articles helping you run a business or manage your money... including, most likely, some kind of "Guide for the Perplexed" who see this data and have no clue what they can do with it. This is Buck Roger wishing you the very best in all your dealings and hoping you can make yourself a little richer while contributing to the economic growth of these countries.

PS-- Are you wondering how to pay for this new business? Or wondering if you can get in on this stuff but have fears about managing yourself? Try expressing your interest for free [url=http://http://tinyurl.com/ntn5zl]on this form[/url] in partnering with other business investors. Sometime around Friday I'll start introducing potential investors to managers-to-be.