Home Economics: Making Money

Day 666, 23:02 Published in United Kingdom USA by United Underdog
Extra! I have just written an article From Baby to Young Adult: Your First 45 Days that is of special interest to young players (and those who love them... or just employ them).

My previous articles "Business Opportunities in 27 Countries" and "Finding and Funding Your New Business Plan" have provided some basic info on how to start a business, some pitfalls to beware, and some markets that might be promising. In this article, the newspaper will take a detour through "Home Economics," things which every player can do to get more money and to get more out of their money, before returning to business and other, more ambitious endeavors.

This time, I have decided to host the article in the eUK.



This article will show you ways (a) Gold can be created, (b) your daily wage can be increased, and (c) money can be invested for passive income. It is followed by "Home Economics: Saving Money," published in eUkraine, which talks about ways to buy less or spend more effectively.

(A) Gold is Both Created and Destroyed

However, as thrifty citizens, we are interested in the ways that Gold is created. I am leaving aside for now ways Gold is transferred among players (such as work, trade, tax, the monetary market, etc).

Leveling

At level six, or 35 exp, most players notice that they have received 5 free gold for leveling. That is not the only time you can get gold for leveling, however. As noted in the eRepublik Wiki, levels 16 through 24 have 5 gold rewards, while higher levels have been designated as having even higher rewards (while requiring as much as 10,000 exp per level). Level 16, however, is quite achievable at only 500 exp required, level 17 at 750 exp required, lvl 18 at 1000 exp required, and further levels at increments of 1000 or more... just see the chart already if you care about the numbers.

While it is not a lot, it is something, and there's no reason not to do the most important thing for leveling anyway... which is fighting. Every fight gives you 2 exp, so you can gain 10 exp on a day with 5 fights in addition to the 3 exp received for work, training, and eating. That means the rate of experience gain is more than quadrupled on days on which you fight.

Achievements

Every achievement carries a reward of 5 gold per time achieved. There are eight achievements:

** Hard Worker: Citizen has worked for thirty (30) days in a row. This can be for any number of employers, or even for employers in different countries.
** Super Soldier: Citizen has fought at least once and has advanced five (5) strength levels.
** Battle Hero: Citizen has inflicted the highest total damage in a battle for one of the sides.
** Resistance Hero: Citizen has initiated a successful resistance war.
** Country President: Citizen has been elected as the Country President.
** Congress Member: Citizen has been elected as a Member of Congress.
** Media Mogul: Citizen has gained one-thousand (1000) subscribers for his/her newspaper.
** Society Builder: Citizen has invited ten (10) people who have reached experience level 6.

Phony Friend

If somebody is invited and reaches level 6, you will get 5 gold at the same time that the invited citizen does.

Buying Gold with Real Money

This is mentioned for completeness and not because I would try to persuade anyone to do this (or, for that matter, not to do this).

Of the options provided by eRepublik, the best ratio is the 10 euro for 20 gold. Although you can do this only once per week, this is a weak restriction given that you can create Organizations for 5 gold apiece and that all your Organizations have different timers than your citizen and from each other. So you could buy 200 gold for 100 euro each and every week with 9 different Organizations... if that is how you roll.



So... what's the best way to create Gold?

Everyone should try to take advantage of the slow and steady ways of making Gol😛

(1) Hard Worker medals
(2) Super Soldier medals
(3) Leveling at 6 and 16+

In some countries, rising to congress is easy enough, and that will give you another 5 gold a month.

Media mogul is considered one of the hardest medals to achieve, with some people spending gold on ads to get there. If you get there without either spending gold or enrolling in one of the "media mogul drives" in which you donate the 5 gold from it, you have my respect.

Both resistance hero and, usually, battle hero will cost more Gold to attain than the 5 that is awarded.

The one that is easiest to mess up is the Hard Worker, as it requires you to log in for 30 consecutive eRepublik days to work. Super soldier and leveling are inevitable if you train and gain experience.

Uh... so I'm lucky to create over 5 or 10 gold a month?

Not so much lucky as rich or in a good position to abuse referrer links. The most easily abused method for creating Gold is the referrer link. For every 10 citizens who reach level 6, you will gain 55 gold between the medal and the 10 bonuses. That's not to say it's easy; you will have to get many more people to see and click your link in order to get that many to level 6. However, it can be better than buying gold, with the added benefit that you could be adding people to a country of interest to you.

Yes, Gold creation is a depressing subject and is such by design, as the company depends on Gold sales for existence. Moving right along...



(😎 Another Day, Another Pound

The most obvious way in which a citizen can get money, even more obvious (to most players) than the occasional awards of 5 Gold, is the daily paycheck.

There are a few considerations that go into how much you get paid every day, and they are worth considering:

(1) Your Skill Level -- As much as 4, 5, 6, 7+
(2) Your Skill -- Land, Manufacture, or Construction
(3) Your Country of Employment
(4) Your Wellness
(5) Your Company's Quality
(6) Economic Conditions at the Time

We'll take these one at a time.

(1) Your Skill Level at your job... this is one of the three most important factors along with the type of skill and country, and it is a factor that increases linearly after a certain point. The eRepublik wiki will tell you precisely how things work out. Notice that you can achieve skill 4 after 36 days, and skill 3 after a mere 16 days, but that it takes 50 days for each skill point after 4. What does this mean to you?

It means that dual-skilling is an entirely viable tactic, especially if there is any chance you will ever work in a country for any reason other than the job opportunities there (such as fighting in a war). In 6 days you could get skill 2, or in 16 days skill 3, either of which would most likely prevent you from being entirely unable to find a job (which happens sometimes at skills 0 and 1). If your primary skill is Land, consider taking a second skill in Manufacture. If it is Construction, consider taking the second skill in Manufacture. If it is Manufacture, you have the most portable job and don't need to worry about this much.

On the other hand, pursuing two skills evenly is, generally speaking, a bad tactic. One could, conceivably, pursue a couple of them to 7, if they frequently switch jobs. However, employers are usually willing to pay more for extra levels of skill beyond 7. Therefore, every point of skill in your primary skill sector is worth more, now and for the the rest of your days working in that sector.

Not only do you skill faster at first, but once you get to skill 4 and higher, your total pay per skill point will jump up. The reason for this effect is, mostly, the fact that you should have figured out Wellness by now.

(2) Your Skill -- Land, Manufacture, or Construction

Construction is good for making the finished products of Woo😛 Houses, Hospitals, and Defense Systems. However, Hospitals and Defense Systems are small and, usually, government-run industries. Manufacture, on the other hand, is good for making Weapons from Iron, which is the largest of the five industries. Manufacture is also good for Food, Gifts, and Moving Tickets. It's easy to see that there's more demand for Manufacture than Construction. That fact, combined with the fact that Construction is visible as 1 of 3 equal job paths to a new player, means that Construction usually receives less pay than Manufacture (if I am correct to deduce more supply relative to demand in the field of Construction).

Manufacture usually receives more pay than Land in countries with no very valuable High resources, while Land usually receives more pay than Manufacture in countries with valuable High resources (such as Iron and Diamonds). At the same time, Manufacture workers in countries with valuable High resources usually receive more pay than their counterparts in Manufacture in countries without valuable High resources. The upshot of all this is that Manufacture receives decent pay everywhere, but that the high end of pay is received by Land workers in countries producing Iron (and, sometimes, Diamonds or Wood) in regions that have the resource in High amounts.

If you're willing to live in such a country, your best pick is Land. If not, or if you want to stay flexible, your best pick is Manufacture.

(3) Your Country of Employment

These first three factors are connected, so I have already said enough on this. You can see more in the articles on "Job Opportunities in Allied Countries" and "Job Opportunities in Neutral Countries," if not for the specific wage quotes, at least for the correlation between having High resources like Iron in a country and higher wages.

(4) Your Wellness

Just like in the real world, turnover has a cost in eRepublik. The manager must spend RL time adjusting his job offers to get the new employee, and there's no guarantee that he won't have to fire the recruit and look some more because of very low wellness of the new hire.

For this reason, some managers may add a premium to workers with high wellness, or with high skill within their skill bracket (such as skill from 4.5 to 4.9😎, so as to reduce the chance of losing that employee due to fluctuation in the current wage offer for that skill level.

Contrariwise, a worker with high wellness can wait around for a high job offer to show up, take it, and not have to go day-by-day being fired constantly.

(5) Your Company's Quality

A Q4 or Q5 company will take away more wellness than a Q3 company and much more than a Q1 company. This fact is often reflected in a premium paid for workers at the highest Quality companies.

(6) Economic Conditions at the Time

The economy is always changing. Raw materials prices on the global exchange can move in value, consumer tendencies can change in response to war, and the exchange of regions can lead to the loss or gain of resources and companies for countries.

On top of all this, currency values relative to Gold are also changing, and managers will tend to think of wages in terms of Gold. This could mean that the wages you got last week are now worth more (if the currency went up in value), and that should soften the blow of having a lower wage now (in currency). On the other hand, you might have gotten a raise in response to falling currency value, but that might mean that your savings in the local currency have been devalued.

Basically...

After three months or so at a job, you can have 5 skill at it, and you'll be taking more money from your job (paying currency) each month than you get in achievement medals and leveling... assuming you are working in a country with a High resource such as Iron as a Land worker, or in any strong economy as a Manufacture worker (or, sometimes, as Construction too).



(C) Wall Street It Ain't . . .

But there are ways to put your gold to work to make even more gold. Here are three:

** Investments, such as placing your money with a person making loans as a "bank" operation or with a business as a partnership.
** Monetary Market use, such as brokering the spread between the offers of currency for Gold and vice-versa, or buying when you predict an upswing.
** Business creation, which is what the previous articles have talked about (and future articles will talk about).

I will also talk more about the Monetary Market in future articles. So, here I will just look at some opportunities for investment, which are the most passive (or, least active) of these three methods.

Partnerships

Without doing the work or learning all the ins and outs of running a business, you can partner with a business manager and receive dividends for as long as you have capital invested with them. Most people will probably find partners through trusted networks of friends and similar connections. At the same time, I have begun a matchmaker service that will allow you to see several managers who could be worth investing in. Best of all the matches are free. Just fill out the interest form to get the ball rolling.

Direct Lending

This is very similar to partnerships; it is also similar to depositing Gold in a bank, but with more risk. The terms of the agreement differ, however, chiefly in that a loan usually does not establish any interest in the asset (the business) unless there is a failure to pay a pre-specified amount, while a partnership usually involves split profits in a shared business. You would be surprised at how many are looking for 10, 15, or 20 gold to start or expand a business... but, at the same time, should be wary that they will lose it somehow.

Savings Accounts

The t'jelle bank is now, perhaps, the most famous of the "banks" currently in operation in eRepublik, although it is not the only one. It doesn't promise the highest returns, but with over 100 people holding deposits, it does promise to have the most drama if it should ever fail. Fortunately, that doesn't look all that likely in the near future. Think of the bank as a "middleman" between lenders and borrowers, who charges a "markup" but also has the value-added service of absorbing any losses from bad loans (and, of course, finds the good borrowers and does all the work).

What should you do?

My opinion is expressed in the age-old advice: don't put all your eggs in one basket. Perhaps you should save up 50 gold to deposit in t'jelle bank. After you have that, however, consider withdrawing your 5 gold of interest monthly and also consider investing into a few direct loans or partnerships for even higher rates of return. By spreading your risk around, you can get more money and have less exposure to any single point of failure.

Oh, and as a special bit of news for those with eUK citizenship, your government is selling bonds that pay Gold for your GBP for a limited time, as reported here.

Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt...

Wait, no, that's not right... I mean, "another day older and wiser!"



Please also subscribe if you'd like to read more articles like this one. This newspaper is dedicated to articles on money, business, and charts-and-graphs statistics-type stuff. I try to leave politics at the door; or, rather, in my citizen's paper.

I split apart the section on "Saving Money" because there's "tl; dr" and there's "I do enjoy a nice article now and then, but that was entirely too long for me to read!"

Until next time, have fun, and stay safe!