I just have four drives. 3 of the which I switch between regularly.
Mostly I only change one drive once a week. This way I have a two week old backup ready. Just buy some more drives if needed:)
I sold three accounts for $550 and bought two for $450 in under and it only took 25 minutes. (some waiting to get PayPal confirmations etc.)
The guy I bought the two accounts from, had sold 4 other accounts the last 24 hours. Two for around $300 each.
Look at this: E-Bay (ebay). Several transactions going to take place in the $100+ range.
Adding to this, you don't have to live in the US/western Europe to play $1000 could actually be a lot of money.
For the smaller transactions I know a lot of people buy something from someone on E-Bay, and when everything is ok, they later just contact the guy without using E-Bay and just pay them through PayPal, knowing that they can trust the seller. When that happens you have people just sending, lets say, $5 through paypal, and the seller shows up at a location providing them with 500k ingame cash (or whatever goods they wanted).
It's like pay infront, and get free delievery. Also, in Asheron's Call you can have bots running, controlled from IRC, so whenever you recieve a confirmation from PayPal that GI Joe paid you $7 for 100 health elexirs, you just add 100 HE. to GI Joe's account on your bot (this is done from IRC).
GI Joe shows up at your ingame house and picks up the 100 elexirs and you didn't even have to go ingame to controll the transactions.
This way, I don't see a problem with doing a lot of small transactions every day.
I think you are blocking your vision with too many real life problematic constrains, like most of us. But some people can make money out of anything, and they live at the stock exchange, run big corporations, earn lots of money from mmorpgs.... And they most likely have lots of fun doing it!
Especially if you are from contries outside North America/Western Europe.
There are a lot of these people out there. I knew someone from eastern Europe doing this. He was playing Asheron's Call and he with the help from someone in the US they used to by and sell things by using E-bay/tradeboards etc. Some of them play a lot but he also make more money of this than having some ordinary job. And making a living off a computer game is not hard if you live in Ukraine. PayPal, Ebay and mmorpgs have made us a new border free worldwide market. Where $10 is just as easy to obtain in US, Norway, or in Ukraine, where $10 is valued so much more than in western countries.
For those that think this only applies to 'super nerds' you are way off! These are people who are just very good at buying and selling things, just like a good broker. They have the ability to analyse the game and to guess what the next patches/improvements to the game, by the developers, will be. A nerd would probably be happy to sell something to the first person giving a reasonable offer, so he could go back and play the game, the buyer however, most likely one of these guys, have probably already found another buyer willing to pay twice the price.
I tried this for a bit when I played Asheron's Call too. But problem is that you spend more time on boards/talking to people than you spend ingame playing. Also, with the insane economy we have in Norway it would probably be one of the worst places to actually do this kind of business from.:) For comparison, I could buy a powerful ingame character (something I have done several times), which would have taken someone several months of ingame playing time to level up, for the money I make in one day in real life. But for someone in a less wealthy nation the money might be comparable to half a year of ordinary income. For some it would probably be a pretty ok job.
You need some luck tho. The guy I knew had a mother working at some school/university in Ukraine, so he had pretty much free access to internet.
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I just have four drives. 3 of the which I switch between regularly. Mostly I only change one drive once a week. This way I have a two week old backup ready. Just buy some more drives if needed :)
Just backup to harddrives.
I'm using Araid99-1000 units in my computers, and backup is just replacing the slave drive (even while the computer is on and running).
The price for say, WD120mb drives are so cheap now that it is probably close to the cheapest, safest and most accessable backup format available.
I sold three accounts for $550 and bought two for $450 in under and it only took 25 minutes. (some waiting to get PayPal confirmations etc.) The guy I bought the two accounts from, had sold 4 other accounts the last 24 hours. Two for around $300 each. Look at this: E-Bay (ebay). Several transactions going to take place in the $100+ range. Adding to this, you don't have to live in the US/western Europe to play $1000 could actually be a lot of money. For the smaller transactions I know a lot of people buy something from someone on E-Bay, and when everything is ok, they later just contact the guy without using E-Bay and just pay them through PayPal, knowing that they can trust the seller. When that happens you have people just sending, lets say, $5 through paypal, and the seller shows up at a location providing them with 500k ingame cash (or whatever goods they wanted). It's like pay infront, and get free delievery. Also, in Asheron's Call you can have bots running, controlled from IRC, so whenever you recieve a confirmation from PayPal that GI Joe paid you $7 for 100 health elexirs, you just add 100 HE. to GI Joe's account on your bot (this is done from IRC). GI Joe shows up at your ingame house and picks up the 100 elexirs and you didn't even have to go ingame to controll the transactions. This way, I don't see a problem with doing a lot of small transactions every day. I think you are blocking your vision with too many real life problematic constrains, like most of us. But some people can make money out of anything, and they live at the stock exchange, run big corporations, earn lots of money from mmorpgs.... And they most likely have lots of fun doing it!
Especially if you are from contries outside North America/Western Europe.
:)
There are a lot of these people out there.
I knew someone from eastern Europe doing this. He was playing Asheron's Call and he with the help from someone in the US they used to by and sell things by using E-bay/tradeboards etc.
Some of them play a lot but he also make more money of this than having some ordinary job. And making a living off a computer game is not hard if you live in Ukraine.
PayPal, Ebay and mmorpgs have made us a new border free worldwide market. Where $10 is just as easy to obtain in US, Norway, or in Ukraine, where $10 is valued so much more than in western countries.
For those that think this only applies to 'super nerds' you are way off!
These are people who are just very good at buying and selling things, just like a good broker. They have the ability to analyse the game and to guess what the next patches/improvements to the game, by the developers, will be. A nerd would probably be happy to sell something to the first person giving a reasonable offer, so he could go back and play the game, the buyer however, most likely one of these guys, have probably already found another buyer willing to pay twice the price.
I tried this for a bit when I played Asheron's Call too. But problem is that you spend more time on boards/talking to people than you spend ingame playing. Also, with the insane economy we have in Norway it would probably be one of the worst places to actually do this kind of business from.
For comparison, I could buy a powerful ingame character (something I have done several times), which would have taken someone several months of ingame playing time to level up, for the money I make in one day in real life. But for someone in a less wealthy nation the money might be comparable to half a year of ordinary income.
For some it would probably be a pretty ok job.
You need some luck tho. The guy I knew had a mother working at some school/university in Ukraine, so he had pretty much free access to internet.