Introducing new automated trading service tf2mart.net

[tf2mart.net]

To moderator: I checked you rules and at first glance this thread does not violate them. If it does please delete it.

Hi Folks,
I want to introduce new automated trading service. We launched it about a month ago.
Hope it will be useful for some of you. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask. If you have any suggestions how to improve the service let us know.

The service: http://tf2mart.net

How it works:

1. To view the stock of our site just visit it.
2. To make a trade make a login through steam. The link is in upper right corner.
3. Then press "Order"(white button will appear after steam login under login button).
4. After that our bot will read your backpack and will show which items we can accept as a payment for our items.
5. Just select the items you want to get from out service on the left.
6. Then balance the trade with your items which you want to trade in(on the right).
7. The balance to make trade happen should be 0-1000. "Trade" button will become active.
8. After you press "Trade" you will be put into trading queue.
9. You may cancel the order until it started processing. If it started processing you may cancel the trade with bot.
10. Soon after our bot will make a trade with you. You must have steam client running to trade with the bot.
11. The remaining balance of the transaction will be available for future trades.

Few highlights:

• There is just one trade with bot needed, no need to sell items to service in advance. In the web interface you select what items to buy what to use as a payment and then our bot in a single operation will finish the trade.
• We show items which we accept in advance. If the order is accepted by web interface our bot will never tell you its overstocked.

Service has few restrictions at this time:

• No more than 10 items per transaction.
• To make the trade the balance should be 0-1000. This restriction exist because we're not an item bank. We don't want to be overstocked. Our bots has not too many slots so we won't let you sell us much more than you buy.

Stock is not that great yet but we're working on it.
If trade failed for some reason(usually glitches of steam network) your order is still valid and your items are reserved. You may reopen your order.

 

[Cock]

zackychuu
jakksilves

Legit?

 

[tf2mart.net]

If you have any doubts visit our Steam Group at:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/tf2mart

Or read this discussion:
http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/comments/18epug/psa_introducing_a_new_trading_service_tf2martnet/

 

[Gatherix]

zackychuu
jakksilves

Legit?

This isn't the first site like this and many are legit, but I don't trust a service like this that relies upon advertising their service on forums to get traffic.

We just need to wait and see as other people test it and try it out. In the meantime we don't need a blatant advertisement on the forums.

 

[zackychuu]

It's just another one of many as Gatherix said.
Maybe their prices are better than Warehouses? Maybe they're worse? or even the same..

I don't know.
Personally the only automated trade service I bother with is Scrap.tf

 

[tf2mart.net]

This isn't the first site like this and many are legit, but I don't trust a service like this that relies upon advertising their service on forums to get traffic.

No offense meant, but how do you think community sites get the word out? Putting $1M commercial on CNN?

 

[Shotgun Jesus]

I'd be quite impressed with a million dollar commercial on CNN.

 

[tf2mart.net]

I'd be quite impressed with a million dollar commercial on CNN.

I would too:) But we're just community made site:)
And, BTW, I don't know many sites like ours, only tf2wh. If you know another please share, I would be really interested to take a look.
scrap.tf is a nice service but its limited. They have no way to deal with vintages, stranges or hats worth more than 1.33.

And its more than "blatant advertisement". I'm here to answer questions or listen to suggestions.

 

[Fiend]

He's been nice enough. I'll investigate.

 

[Gatherix]

No offense meant, but how do you think community sites get the word out? Putting $1M commercial on CNN?

My point was that it'd be a different situation if you had been here awhile instead of creating a new account, joining the community solely to advertise. That said I assumed you were going to make that one post and be done, so my apologies for making premature conclusions and being hostile.

If I have time later today I'll try it out. I know you said its been operating for a month, but would you guys consider yourselves still in the development stage?

 

[cj4981]

How do you price the items and how much they are worth? For instance i was looking at how much a wep was worth and for the trader, some weps are worth 90 credit while other are worth 95. Both are just a regular wep, so why is there a difference in price?

 

[tf2mart.net]

If I have time later today I'll try it out. I know you said its been operating for a month, but would you guys consider yourselves still in the development stage?

We're open for users for one month. Site is functional but we're still adding features. For example we're planning to add SteamRep check but it is not yet done. Some filters were added recently. Sorting modes are planned but not yet implemented.

 

[tf2mart.net]

How do you price the items and how much they are worth? For instance i was looking at how much a wep was worth and for the trader, some weps are worth 90 credit while other are worth 95. Both are just a regular wep, so why is there a difference in price?

We were encouraging people to bring to us certain weapons because these weapons were needed for new users at cp_degrootkeep server we're running. The difference is negligible anyway.
In general we look at backpack.tf to get the idea how much the item is worth. Then we look how good item trades at current prices.

 

[Gatherix]

Tried it out - it's pretty cool, but there's an underlying problem with it. Since it's understandably so difficult to match up items of equal value, a client almost always ends up with extra credits left over. That's fine in of itself, but that means that eventually a client ends up just buying things with credits, which makes the system exactly like TF2 Warehouse except that Warehouse takes one extra step. This makes it easier to just deposit a bunch of credits via some form of currency, like metal, keys, or whatever, and then buy stuff with said credits, just like TF2 Warehouse. And since you're stock is vastly limited compared to that of TF2 Warehouse, then you've suddenly lost any advantage except that occasional bypassing of a step.

While this would require a large amount of reworking (which, since you're already so deep into your current setup, I understand if you're hesitant or unwilling to try), you might consider making the fee of your service a flat time-based fee instead of an item-based one, i.e. charge a small fee every month to use the service. Then eliminate all item-based fees. This would allow users to swap items of equal value without losing money, which is exactly what they're looking for when trying to get certain items, acquire trade fodder, et cetera. Plus it would make your service unique, as the only thing similar to that is scrap.tf, which is limited to mostly weapons. This would allow users to swap items quickly without loss of money, and since they're of equal value it would be no loss to you either, except for the profit you would gain from the time-based fees. Provided the fee isn't outrageous I feel like this would let your service fill an unfilled crevice in the automated TF2-traded "industry".

Alternatively, you could make the idea I suggested above an optional service, and allow players to pay an item-based fee instead if they so desire.

 

[tf2mart.net]

Tried it out - it's pretty cool, but there's an underlying problem with it. Since it's understandably so difficult to match up items of equal value, a client almost always ends up with extra credits left over. That's fine in of itself, but that means that eventually a client ends up just buying things with credits, which makes the system exactly like TF2 Warehouse except that Warehouse takes one extra step. This makes it easier to just deposit a bunch of credits via some form of currency, like metal, keys, or whatever, and then buy stuff with said credits, just like TF2 Warehouse. And since you're stock is vastly limited compared to that of TF2 Warehouse, then you've suddenly lost any advantage except that occasional bypassing of a step.

Thank you for trying our service. Let me explain few ideas which make our service different from the WH:
The entire concept of our service started when two users of WH got fed up with overstock on most of items on WH. Buying from the WH was convenient but selling was a *real* pain. We discussed how we would improve the WH between us. We were about to give WH our ideas but after reading their forums it became clear that its easier to build system from the scratch than to communicate something to WH.
So the differences:
1) WH makes you get credits in advance by selling items to them. The main problem is overstock, whichever you try to sell is most likely overstocked. If you tried to use WH you know its a pain. In our case trade is balanced before bots are involved. We show in advance items we can accept. And if we accept the order you never worry that bot will say something is overstocked. Selling to us is easy. Another advantage is user in not required to trust us. He doesn't give us anything in advance. Trade can be balanced down to the cheapest available item. I'd prefer to balance it to zero, but we don't have fractional currency. If something happens to our system(i.e. Valve bans our bots) the maximum our user can *possibly* lose is 1000 credits. Its less than 2 rec. That is if he keeps something in his account. And nobody required to have something in his account.
2) We implemented limit on the amount of credits user can accumulate in his account. Its 1000. The idea is to prevent dumping items by few power sellers who will then skim rare items while common users will be unable to sell.
3) Currency items. WH has hard limit even on currency items. They went as far as to not accept the metal.
We have limits too but if we ever get close to them we will raise these limits. The idea is you don't need to accumulate our credits. Whenever you visit us with currency items you will be able to buy with them directly.

While this would require a large amount of reworking (which, since you're already so deep into your current setup, I understand if you're hesitant or unwilling to try), you might consider making the fee of your service a flat time-based fee instead of an item-based one, i.e. charge a small fee every month to use the service. Then eliminate all item-based fees. This would allow users to swap items of equal value without losing money, which is exactly what they're looking for when trying to get certain items, acquire trade fodder, et cetera. Plus it would make your service unique, as the only thing similar to that is scrap.tf, which is limited to mostly weapons. This would allow users to swap items quickly without loss of money, and since they're of equal value it would be no loss to you either, except for the profit you would gain from the time-based fees. Provided the fee isn't outrageous I feel like this would let your service fill an unfilled crevice in the automated TF2-traded "industry".

Alternatively, you could make the idea I suggested above an optional service, and allow players to pay an item-based fee instead if they so desire.

We considered providing premium services for monthly fees. Services like consignment, backordering out of stock items, smaller trade margins and so on. But we're not at this point yet. And btw margin between buy/sell price is not only fee, its a hedge against market movements. If prices were fixed we would be able to keep smaller margins. We do for items like hats worth 1.33 refs.

Complains about our limited stock are valid. But it has nothing to do with our platform. As more users will use the service the stock will improve. If you would saw the stock one month ago you would notice the improvement:)

 

[jakksilves]

I don't like this anymore that I like TF2WareHouse. On the legitimacy question, its similar to WH...which I don't go/do/associate with anything of the sorts.

I don't like advertising for other communities when we have our own to promote and support. If others want it use/pass it around, it's their choice. I don't care.

 

[Rage]

I tried this out for myself.
I loved it. Way better than tf2wh.com. Faster, quick bots, with less errors.
Prices are actually cheaper too, but only on the right stuff if you can find them.

I couldn't help but make a header for you guys since you didn't have one.

 

[14bux]

That's actually a pretty sweet banner.

I tried this out for myself.
I loved it. Way better than tf2wh.com. Faster, quick bots, with less errors.
Prices are actually cheaper too, but only on the right stuff if you can find them.

I couldn't help but make a header for you guys since you didn't have one.

 

[tf2mart.net]

Thanks!:) It looks cool. I mean *awesome* :)
I will talk to other member of our team about using it.

And btw our site is tf2mart.net, not tf2mart.com

 

[Wrath]

Ha! Automated...what a load of crap.

Technical problems will cause more losses than humans, because the risk is always there that someone will hijack/hack accounts,, forums, etc...just for that sweet, sweet cash. Plus, nothing feels more fun than trading with people. :3