A Question for the Crafters

I had a discussion with a linkshell friend of mine about charging for crafting services. He has spent a lot of time and resources into getting 100+2 (or 3) Woodworking and capping all other crafts at 60, and thought it was only fair that people pay him for his services for the effort he has put into the craft. And because he generally doesn’t have all that much gil these days, he thinks this is partly because no one offers to pay him for helping them.

I have tried to do some reading on the matter, and although I do not charge myself, I have received donations for crafting for others. Some crafters tend to charge an arbitrary amount of gil depending on the outcome of the synth, I told my friend that he could look into charging a flat fee of 10%, which he thought sounded fair. Say you craft someone a high quality elemental staff, which goes for 500-600,000 gil where I come from, he would net 50,000 gil for the job. Now, if he were to get a normal Thunder Staff instead, he would only net about 800 gil for the job (and the client would bear the losses for the actual material costs as you lose like 150,000 gil per normal quality synth on staves).

So, do you charge for your services, or do you hope that people will donate?

Scarlet Ribbon

Just yesterday I was hired to make a Noble’s Ribbon, a synthesis that should give me a tier three chance at HQ as I’m 38 levels above the synth cap. It was new moon and I the client had all the materials up front. I did a total of 14 attempts, and only got one Noble’s Ribbon, the rest were Scarlet Ribbons which goes for the same on the auction house but is next to useless other than that.

My linkshell friend that I had the discussion with earlier that day told me that people tend not to pay for the services, but the client I had gave me all of the scarlet ribbons as a thank you for helping him. What a nice guy! (^^=)