Ranking the Best Money-Making Activities

[Metropolis Man]

Making gobs of money for our Sims is something everyone can relate to. But, what is truly the cream of the crop? Fishing? Gardening? Writing? Painting? Guitar playing? I could turn this into a challenge, but let's just make this a casual forum-wide endeavor and get some good, solid hard data for the site. Once we have a nice collection of the absolute best money-making activities that Sims can do, then maybe Carl can take this piece and turn it into a guide.

Here's how you can help. First of all, give a shout that you want to help and tell me what activity you want to pursue. Then, I'll edit this first post and designate your name with the activity — similar to what Carl and Pam do for the Guide Agenda. Second, keep accurate notes. What we're looking for is total simoleans earned over a given period of time. So, you need to keep track of how long it takes to actually do the activity and how much money was made in that time period. Then, we can break it down to simoleans earned/hour and rank the activities as the data comes in.

I've got guitar playing covered, so no one needs to duplicate that activity. And I'm also going to keep detailed notes for guitar playing — sort of a mini-skill guide. Note anything that is going to affect your income — traits, Lifetime Happiness Rewards, etc. What I'm envisioning eventually is not a table presented like a challenge table, but something with more meat to it — a short paragraph presented by the player with the hard data at the end.

So, if you consider yourself an expert in an area of the game and would like to help out with this project, then let me know. Thanks, everyone.

Contributors:

Activity
Guitar Playing (Metro) Done
Gardening (Wildredchild)
Writing (Da Vinci)
Painting (Metro) Done
Medical Career (Metro)

Results:
#1. Guitar Playing (Playing for Tips), $31,837 simoleans/hour. I got some baseline data for a lvl 10 guitarist performing many sessions over a weekend in front of the Sunset Valley theatre. Saturday's results ended up being an average of $369 simoleans an hour. Sunday's results were nearly identical at $380 simoleans an hour. So, the next step is to train the guitarist by cueing "Perform" of various songs and then canceling the cue quickly to rack up the Skill Journal performance statistic.

@300 performances (training basically non-stop Monday through Friday) my Saturday results were $7417/hour. Sunday's average was just a little lower at $6446/hour.
@600 performances the results from the following weekend was $13566/hour (Saturday) and $19053/hour on Sunday. The 12-hour shift on Sunday brought in nearly a quarter of a million in tips.
@1200 performances I was beginning to lose my mind. This kind of fanatical playing is quite similar to what's required in Diablo when you have to grind characters repeatedly for them to be able to handle the toughest areas in the game. Saturday's average hourly income was 31837/hour. Sunday's was a little lower at 30069. But, that's it for me at least for guitar playing and this test. I have my limits. What's amazing is that there just seems to be no ceiling because of the relationship between "number of times compositions have been performed" and the tip amount. It's exponential. That's not the case really with painting and writing. Assuming you have a lvl 10 painting or writing skill to begin with — how much more is your 10th Masterpiece vs your very 1st Masterpiece going to be worth? It's definitely going to be worth more, but not like the impact that the guitar training has. Oh, the traits I gave my guitarist: Over-Emotional, Artistic, Loves the Outdoors, Virtuoso, and Charismatic. The only Lifetime Happiness Rewards I gave my character were Steel Bladder and Meditative Trance Sleep. If no one jumps on painting in the next few days I'll give this guy a Mid-Life Crisis, tweak him a little, and then see what kind of numbers painting can bring in.

#2. Painting (Small canvas size), $862 simoleans/hour. I'm pretty sure Wildredchild's and Da Vinci's numbers will top painting, but we'll just leave this at slot #2 for now. I've definitely pushed this painter farther then I've ever taken a painter before. His highest value small painting sold for $1733 which is really high for that size. I was under the impression that a huge total number of paintings finished would aid in boosting the value when I shifted to the larger size. It didn't. Or at least it didn't make doing large canvases worth the extra time because beyond my belief, once I crunched the numbers....small canvas size was the clear winner when you look at simoleans per hour. That was a strange discovery. The only thing I can figure is the Perfectionist trait adds so much additional time once you get to the larger canvas size that the small amount of extra money is clearly not worth it.

[wildredchild]

I am no expert, but will be more then willing to take on gardening.  Question  though.  Do we start from scratch, or do a sim we may already have and is just sitting around gathering dust, like some peoples legacy families when they are done with them?  I can start Monday gathering data and such.

[Metropolis Man]

I am no expert, but will be more then willing to take on gardening.  Question  though.  Do we start from scratch, or do a sim we may already have and is just sitting around gathering dust, like some peoples legacy families when they are done with them?

Whatever you want. Just keep accurate notes. And with an activity like gardening, you'll probably want to differentiate between various plants. Maybe. That might be a little too much legwork.

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EDIT: My test guitarist just mastered the guitar skill. I want some baseline data first on tip earnings, so I'm not going to perform any compositions before I do the initial tip playing sessions. That way I'll know all money earned is simply due to the skill level. Then, I'll start training him with performing compositions to see exactly how that number affects tips. I'm also hopeful I can finally get the Guitar Star challenge finished this time. But, it might take a miracle for that one.

[Da Vinci]

oh, I would like to work on writing!

[Metropolis Man]

oh, I would like to work on writing!

You got it.

[Da Vinci]

oh, I would like to work on writing!

You got it.

Yes! I'll do masterpieces with all the challenges completed, so try to make whatever you do the highest quality you can !

[Metropolis Man]

I guess I'll jump on painting instead of waiting for someone to volunteer. If someone still wants to get info on painting later that's fine and we can just combine results.

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EDIT: I don't know if it's worth getting hourly stats on all of the careers, but I'm going to turn my guitarist/painter into a doctor for a few weeks. He has so much money from the guitar playing and so many nice Happiness rewards that he should be able to get a promotion every single day. The Medical career has the highest base pay, so it would be nice to see the hourly wage of a really high lvl 10 doctor compared to self-employed options.

[sims96fan]

You get a significant boost to writing speed once you have read 50 books, too.

[Metropolis Man]

You get a significant boost to writing speed once you have read 50 books, too.

Just out of curiosity, where is this documented? And are you talking just 50 of any books or 50 different books?

[e^(pi*i)]

How about nectar-making?

Admittedly, it'd start off pretty slow, although not necessarily THAT slow, but, if you can afford a gigantic basement with thousands of bottles each worth, say, 400 simoleons, base value, that would be 40 a day per bottle. Hypothetically, let's say you get 1,000 bottles, which I don't think is that crazy, but I'm not sure because I haven't done the appropriate mental legwork, that'd be 40,000 simoleons a day, which translates to 1,666.6 repeating simoleons per hour, but it's 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with no actual working once you have your collection established.

If one were to constantly work, one could replace the aging bottles cyclically, which would not only produce the "interest" of the aging nectar and liquidize the profits, but it would also liquidize the actual base value of the nectar. This would also help defeat the evil trap of "I've got so much equity in my basement, but I can't cash it out because then I would no longer be able to get interest on new bottles of nectar."

[Metropolis Man]

How about nectar-making?

Go for it and give everyone some good numbers. But, forget about the whole aging thing for this study because it just gets too whacked out. Then, you'd have to look at painting and how it adds up over time. And heck, what about a painting's value after a painter dies? It gets real complicated. All I'm interested in is the amount of time it takes to do a given activity and the net income for said activity. So, in the case of nectar-making you'd time how long it takes to make the most valuable batch of nectar possible and then do the math by immediately selling the nectar.

[e^(pi*i)]

Ruining my fun!

I wouldn't waste my time, because we all know that the most expensive bottles known are like... what, 500? 600? Assuming you could make prime bottles 5 at a time, which I don't believe you can, that'd be like 2500 every batch, which is like... 3 hours long? Point is that, even with a million nectar makers and no need for sleep, it wouldn't come CLOSE to what you've got for guitar playing.

I vote that, because the question is how much money can be made in an hour, we amend the measurement.

[Metropolis Man]

I vote that, because the question is how much money can be made in an hour, we amend the measurement.

Well, perhaps in some other study, but for now I just want to keep it simple and the way I set this up. At the moment I've kind of lost interest in this study.

Admittedly, guitar playing is freakish. I honestly thought EA would fix the obvious exploit. And that's all it is, pure and simple. When you can make in one single tip the same amount as a Masterpiece painting, then something's wrong.

[e^(pi*i)]

I agree.

I might go ahead and do the nectar-making thing anyways. I'll do it the same way as my original method, but I'll keep good notes to keep track of how much I'm making just based on the base value, while I'll also mark how much I get by selling period.

[Metropolis Man]

Thanks. All help is appreciated. I'm pretty sure your estimates of 500-600 simoleans a bottle are spot-on. In the Bottomless Nectar Cellar LTW walkthrough I recently wrote for the Guide, that was around the amount I received for the 9 Life Fruit/1 Pomegranate combo. I never did time the Extended Nectaration cycle. I'm guessing it was maybe 4 hours.