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So I wrote an article which many people praised me for. You can find it here.

I realized in re-reading it today that I left out a few very important points which I wish to point out very quickly in this addendum.

[Point One: Pricing]
So I mentioned about how to decide where you should sell your product. That's all well and good, what's more important is let us posit that you're the only person who sells that quality item, as I didn't bother to mention (but mentioned when speaking with someone else).

I sell Q3 Iron. The production costs are not three times that of Q1, but the price should be, at most three times that of Q1. This is why sometimes checking the other quality levels is good, you might find a great deal.

Let us posit that Q1 Iron (in the US) is selling for 1.75 USD (that's very high to be honest). By the logic I just said, Q2 should be around 3.50 USD, but no greater. So any price between 1.75 USD and 3.50 USD is a good price. Q3 should be no more than 5.25 USD but should not be around 1.75 USD, so let us set the lower limit at 3.50 USD. Q4 would then be around 7.00 USD, and Q5 8.75.

Ok given those upper limits, let us give examples of the market actually works (using those examples).

The lowest price is currently 1.75 USD (Q1). After Q1, the lowest prices are 3.00 USD (Q2), 5.00 USD (Q3), 6.80 USD (Q4), and 8.00 USD (Q5). Now if you say, "Oh look, Q5 has the largest difference in what it should be, and what it actually is!" You are not doing all the work necessary. Again, a few simple calculations are easy, fast, and quite handy.

If you think logically, Q2 is really two times Q1 yes? And if you ever watch a weapons company that purchases Q2, their raw materials are (if you assume they start from 0) twice the size of what they purchased. Therefore, if you divide the price of Q2 by 2, then you have the price per unit iron that a weapons company purchases.

The same logic applies to all quality levels. To complete this thought (and because I love numbers) let's do the calculations on the "current" US market (the one I made up in the previous paragraph).
Q1 = 1.75 USD
Q2 = 3.00 USD or (1.50 USD (Q1))*2
Q3 = 5.00 USD or (1.66667 USD (Q1))*3
Q4 = 6.80 USD or (1.70 USD (Q1))*4
Q5 = 8.00 USD or (1.60 USD (Q1))*5

Do you now see why saying "Oh look at the largest difference" isn't always exactly the best idea?

[Point Two: I ONLY COVERED RAW MATERIALS!!! WHAT WAS I THINKING?!]
So naturally I just covered a huge part of owning a manufacturing or construction business.

Pricing Raw Materials is relatively simple. Why? It is mostly supply and demand. Right now, on the US markets, Iron is dropping like a fly, at least the higher qualities. We have a large number of foreign countries dumping their unused iron here just to meet payroll and not necessarily because of profit reasons. So they price it lowest, then someone else comes in lower. We're seeing price wars and a bad market for people who are in it for the profit (like myself 😛). The rest of it is watching your workers' wellnesses and skill levels and paying them according to what you can afford and not what they demand.

So if you're in a high material area, and they're pumping out 25 pieces per day for about 33 USD (not including income taxes because that comes off of their end, not yours). You should be (to break even) selling it at at least 1.32 USD per item. (This is assuming a skill 7.2 worker with high wellness in a high region and 9 other workers present to produce maximum efficiency.) This assures that you will break even.

Pricing a manufactured good, however, takes quite a few more calculations and are not as simple (I'm not as devoted to this game as others, you can tell why he-who-likes-math went into a Raw Materials business 😛). In a sense, pricing them is easier because you do not need to worry about high materials areas, but you need to ensure that your workers maintain a high wellness, and you maintain at least 10 workers to ensure maximum efficiency.

Depending upon the skill level of the worker, they will use up a different amount of raw materials in your inventory then a different skill level worker, because they will produce more or less depending on the difference.

So factored into the cost ar the following:
Labor
Raw Materials
Minimum price to break even

The following calculations were used by Congressman Tarik Ibn Ziad in a private Congressional Thread. I have modified the wording slightly to take it out of its context and apply it more generally.

Assume the company is at maximum efficiency with 10 workers, all at skill level 4.5 and being paid 12.50 USD per day, if each were at 100 wellness every day, you would need 203 units of raw materials every day (1421 per week). Let us also assume that the General Manager does not purchase their materials off the US markets, because they can find it cheaper elsewhere and it is (in theory) 0.0148 Gold per day.

This means that per day the employees are using up 150.22 USD (0.0148 gold/unit * 50 USD/gold * 203 units) of materials per day. (1052 USD per week) The daily combined wages are 125.00 USD (12.50 USD/worker * 10 workers). (875 USD per week). These 10 workers would all make 40.5 products per day (283.5 per week).

The cost per day of operating this company would be 150.22 USD + 125.00 USD = 175.22 USD per day. To break even, 175.22 USD / 40.5 products = 4.33 USD per product

For those of you who have read the original proposal, you'll notice differences: Tarik included buffers for budgetary reasons to ensure for any unexpected costs.

Now 4.33 USD per product is just to break even If they make 40.5 per day, and decide to price it at 4.50 USD per product, they are making a total profit of 6.89 USD per day (6.885 to be exact).

I have to be honest, you will never have a too many consecutive days where ALL of your employees report. You'll have maybe 70 or 80% but that isn't a big worry, because you're not paying the inactive ones and they're not hurting you either. That is why sometimes you may work for a company with 2 or 3 people who haven't worked in a few weeks.

Rather than find replacements, on a more expensive job market, the owner would rather maintain maximum efficiency and not have to worry about having to over pay some other player.

I hope this covers what I missed. Please do not ask about the proposal I borrowed from.