TOPIC: Run Profit Calculator

Spurned by earlier discussion, I've created a calculator that you can fiddle with to determine what your likely return on a TD run is.

Go to the document below and:

A. Make your own copy of the document.
B. Edit the numbers in blue to match what you think is reasonable.

You can see the results in rows 59.

For me they are quite bad (extremely unprofitable) - however my travel and lodging costs are high.

The doc:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xo1amNdGn7TA_FxoGvDwF-M95SSZhUMpP3QrtqlarDw/edit#gid=0

My expected results given my estimates of what I can sell stuff for pretty quickly, and my 3 runs at Gen Con last year:

My Total Profits: -$1,953.85
My Hourly Wage: -$53.53

Return on Capital -158.33%

Going to GHC or Origins and doing just 4 runs with my friends (or 4 folks that want to play for free). I figure I would make about $30 an hour by listing on the forums (which cuts my listing time down to 1 hour to list all totals pulled). I delivery at cons to cut down my shipping cost (which i didn’t see in the cost). Since I am going to the cons to see my friends I don’t think I can full count my travel time as a cost. I stay with them for free (it is good to have friends). You are also missing the value of the starter packs which is minimal, but 1:100 should have a UR, so doing buying enough tickets does get you some value out of the starter.

If you really wanted to farm you would buy out as many full runs as you can/be willing to run and then turn around and offer the tickets at significant discounts where the person purchasing understood they keep their 3 tokens and you get the rest. Since those 3 that you miss out on would only be worth around $10 as long as you are charging them at least $15 for the ticket you would be ahead. (I imagine this reselling of tickets would be frowned upon by various cons, but if you are farming you would probably risk it).

That said I think you would have a hard time selling off the quanties of completion tokens, lower trade goods and such for even $1. The economy just isn’t that big. (Going to Pax south would probably currently be your best con for completion tokensto sell if you had 100 Soul Coffers for $20 each, i beat you could move them very quickly).

Lastly just for shits and giggles my per hour goes to $51 with the ISPN if the treasure box percentages were to stay the same in 2 years. If the 2 UR after that only yield 2 each that are stackable with the CoA it jumps to $75 an hour (with percentages staying the same) doing the same number of runs at the same cost (yes ticket costs are likely to go up but i was certain how much in 6 years).

EDIT: I had an error in my formula somewhere so my profitability has been adjust slightly lower. (30 instead of 36).

I said before: you cannot include travel, lodging, or con badges in your “costs.” Those are “sunk costs,” whether you choose to farm or not. Farming is something you can do while at a Con. Nobody, least of all me, said anyone could make a living by going to GenCon specifically to farm.

You can tell the IRS whatever you want, but you can only legitimately use incremental costs in this analysis: tickets.

A lot of trading happens on the forum with fees of zero.

Taking those points into account, your data show you are, at worst, playing for free at GenCon. At a con with $58 tickets, you’d turn a nice profit, multiplied by the number of ghosts you ran.

And this year you have another Nugget

jedibcg wrote: I delivery at cons to cut down my shipping cost (which i didn’t see in the cost).

Yup - I'm assuming one charges enough on shipping to break even.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

jedibcg wrote: I delivery at cons to cut down my shipping cost (which i didn’t see in the cost).

Yup - I'm assuming one charges enough on shipping to break even.

I don't know that most of us do though. I know I don't. I charge $5 and ship priority which is 7 and change. Maybe I am wrong.

jedibcg wrote: Since I am going to the cons to see my friends I don’t think I can full count my travel time as a cost.

You're free to do as you like - but if you're not attributing all the costs and effort of doing a run and liquidating the tokens, your number won't be comparable with other people's numbers.

I.e. you'll come up with some profit per hour (or loss) but since you're not counting your travel time your number will be higher than someone who follows the same procedure but count's their commute time as a cost.

I look at it this way :

Suppose I like TD so much I'd pay $100 to go on a TD run even if there was no treasure.

- I could fill out this sheet and set my my my ticket price as -$22 (e.g. TD pays me $22 for each run).

If I did that, the sheet might calculate for me in some sense the "value" I'm getting from a TD run in some sense.

But this calculation wouldn't shed light on whether or not someone could make money running TD.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

jedibcg wrote: Since I am going to the cons to see my friends I don’t think I can full count my travel time as a cost.

You're free to do as you like - but if you're not attributing all the costs and effort of doing a run and liquidating the tokens, your number won't be comparable with other people's numbers.

I.e. you'll come up with some profit per hour (or loss) but since you're not counting your travel time your number will be higher than someone who follows the same procedure but count's their commute time as a cost.

I look at it this way :

Suppose I like TD so much I'd pay $100 to go on a TD run even if there was no treasure.

- I could fill out this sheet and set my my my ticket price as -$22 (e.g. TD pays me $22 for each run).

If I did that, the sheet might calculate for me in some sense the "value" I'm getting from a TD run in some sense.

But this calculation wouldn't shed light on whether or not someone could make money running TD.

True but if I am going to see my friends already (which I am) then how exactly can I count that cost as fully TD's. It is the same as my living in Indy. Should I count the cost of my mortgage as my housing cost for Gen Con when I stay at my home? It is already a cost that I deal without TD. To travel to see my friends is a cost I am already accruing without TD. I could be 'working' TD well I am already in the city to see my friends, because the best time to see them is at the cons when everyone else travels to them.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

jedibcg wrote: Since I am going to the cons to see my friends I don’t think I can full count my travel time as a cost.

You're free to do as you like - but if you're not attributing all the costs and effort of doing a run and liquidating the tokens, your number won't be comparable with other people's numbers.

I.e. you'll come up with some profit per hour (or loss) but since you're not counting your travel time your number will be higher than someone who follows the same procedure but count's their commute time as a cost.

I look at it this way :

Suppose I like TD so much I'd pay $100 to go on a TD run even if there was no treasure.

- I could fill out this sheet and set my my my ticket price as -$22 (e.g. TD pays me $22 for each run).

If I did that, the sheet might calculate for me in some sense the "value" I'm getting from a TD run in some sense.

But this calculation wouldn't shed light on whether or not someone could make money running TD.

Sorry, but that’s absolute nonsense from a business analysis perspective.

Jedi is going to GC whether or not he farms. Travel, lodging, and badge costs are fixed. It makes no sense to attribute any of those costs to determining whether farming would be profitable.

Now, if the ONLY reason he went to the Con was to farm, then it would make sense to include all those expenses. But literally NOBODY is suggesting that’s remotely viable.

You’ve essentially constructed a straw man to debunk the idea that loot levels affect TD behavior by super-inflating the costs. I’m not saying that was your intent, but by this flawed assumption you’re suggesting a cap of 200TCs is reasonable and supportable.

Brad Mortensen wrote: I said before: you cannot include travel, lodging, or con badges in your “costs.” Those are “sunk costs,” whether you choose to farm or not. Farming is something you can do while at a Con. Nobody, least of all me, said anyone could make a living by going to GenCon specifically to farm.

If you don't like this way of calculating things I'm sure you can produce your own method and share it with us.

The question I am trying to answer here is: "Can one make money running TD, if they treat it like a business or job."

To answer that question it is necessary to consider all relevant costs - including the costs above you designate as 'sunk costs.'


I am a bit curious about what you think about farming now. Based on your past statements I had thought you believed that:

a. Farming is a bad thing, to be avoided.
b. Farming is either on the rise now, or will rise in the future with more TEs.
c. Farming, whatever its particulars, involves buying tickets in TD one wouldn't have bought otherwise in order to make profit (actual, real profit as if one were running a business or working a job).

What do you mean when you say farming?

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

jedibcg wrote: Since I am going to the cons to see my friends I don’t think I can full count my travel time as a cost.

You're free to do as you like - but if you're not attributing all the costs and effort of doing a run and liquidating the tokens, your number won't be comparable with other people's numbers.

I.e. you'll come up with some profit per hour (or loss) but since you're not counting your travel time your number will be higher than someone who follows the same procedure but count's their commute time as a cost.

I look at it this way :

Suppose I like TD so much I'd pay $100 to go on a TD run even if there was no treasure.

- I could fill out this sheet and set my my my ticket price as -$22 (e.g. TD pays me $22 for each run).

If I did that, the sheet might calculate for me in some sense the "value" I'm getting from a TD run in some sense.

But this calculation wouldn't shed light on whether or not someone could make money running TD.

Sorry, but that’s nonsense from a business analysis perspective.

Jedi is going to GC whether or not he farms. Travel, lodging, and badge costs are fixed. It makes no sense to attribute any of those costs to determining whether farming would be profitable.

Now, if the ONLY reason he went to the Con was to farm, then it would make sense to include all those expenses.

See prior post, I'm trying to answer the question of "Can one make money at TD if they treat it like a business or job."

You seem to be trying to answer some other question.

I'm not sure what question you're trying to answer.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: I said before: you cannot include travel, lodging, or con badges in your “costs.” Those are “sunk costs,” whether you choose to farm or not. Farming is something you can do while at a Con. Nobody, least of all me, said anyone could make a living by going to GenCon specifically to farm.

If you don't like this way of calculating things I'm sure you can produce your own method and share it with us.

The question I am trying to answer here is: "Can one make money running TD, if they treat it like a business or job."

To answer that question it is necessary to consider all relevant costs - including the costs above you designate as 'sunk costs.'


I am a bit curious about what you think about farming now. Based on your past statements I had thought you believed that:

a. Farming is a bad thing, to be avoided.
b. Farming is either on the rise now, or will rise in the future with more TEs.
c. Farming, whatever its particulars, involves buying tickets in TD one wouldn't have bought otherwise in order to make profit (actual, real profit as if one were running a business or working a job).

What do you mean when you say farming?

Farming = “playing for profit.” Buying tickets and playing because the material rewards exceed to cost.

If I’m at Origins, and I have an hour or two to kill, and I decide to spend $348 on tickets and ghost five because I can expect a more than $100 profit (with both Nuggets) then that’s farming

And if I do it with premeditation, I shut out six newbies who just wanted to play for fun.

I’m thinking of farming as a part-time job. Your analysis is treating it like a full-time job. And I only think it’s bad as it affects other players who just want to play for fun, not profit.