Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Sparter's Commission Rate Doubles to 20% - Ouch

Here's the notification from Sparter:

Since launching earlier this year, Sparter has succeeded in transforming the landscape of trade in virtual goods. As a Sparter seller, you have been a key contributor to this success.

We have continually been making changes to meet the needs of our buyers and sellers. Just in the past month we have offered new market pricing charts, seller profile pages displaying your offers (with unique URLs), and alerts that allow buyers to 'subscribe' to their favorite sellers.

Today, we want to inform you of other changes we are making to Sparter - changes intended to allow us to stay competitive in attracting more buyers for your offers, and to keep Sparter the safest place to trade.

Effective November 1, 2007, Sparter's commission on completed trades will be 20%. In addition, disbursements will now be processed semi-monthly - sellers will be disbursed on the 15th and last day of each month, for sales credited in the previous period. For example, the proceeds from a sale credited on November 10 would be disbursed on November 30.

We are confident that these changes are necessary to allow Sparter to remain the easiest and safest place to trade virtual goods. We understand these changes will impact your business on Sparter, thus we are informing you now so that you may incorporate them into your plans for the future.

Thank you for using Sparter.


So I was under the impression that I was going to hoard my gold till the prices come up to sell them. Now I get an e-mail from Sparter stating that the commission rate is going up to a whopping 20% on each sale. So if I sell 1k gold at $50(the current market price), I would get only $40). While it might not seem like much, as I mentioned before I have about 10k gold meaning I would lose out about $100. Also payouts are now bi-monthly instead of nightly.

Now I'm trying to figure exactly what I should do. Sell what I got now or wait till afterwards. This move will probably make gold farming companies happy as player to player trades cut out the middle man. However in light of this news I kind of expect the prices to hit rock bottom as people try to sell their products before the big 20% commission rate kicks in. Or I can just sit, and wait and charge an extra 10% once the new rate kicks in. Decisions, decisions.

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