A Beginner’s Guide to the Steam Community Market

Whether you want to sell an item you received from a game or wish to speculate item prices and make money on the Steam Community Market, it’s best to be equipped with the knowledge on how to use the Community Market.

We’ll go over the most important features and things you should pay attention to when buying or selling your Steam Inventory items.

Steam Community Market is is , commonly known Steam Market , Steam way letting Steam users sell items Steam Wallet currency .

Valve does not interfere with the market prices as the users name their prices whether they’re selling or buying. The Steam Community Market is Steam’s own economy where you can even invest and speculate like a trader. However, do beware that just like any speculative trading, you can make money, but also lose it.

Besides the Steam Community Market, you should check out the other features on Steam you probably didn’t know existed. These features are pretty useful to improve your Steam gaming experience.

The Steam Community Market is a very safe place to make transactions. It’s so safe that it’s sometimes a pain to make multiple transactions at once on the Steam Market. These Chrome extensions for Steam could help with that though.

The Steam Market has multiple safety measures like newly created accounts not being able to access it or needing to have two-factor authentication enabled and needing to make a legitimate purchase on Steam’s platform first.

All transactions have to go through Valve’s system and users need to verify (above a certain price) their intent to sell on Steam Guard. There is practically no chance for anyone to take your items for free unless you mistakenly put the wrong price in a sell order.

Image Credit: Jhet Borja

If you haven’t used the Steam Community Market yet and don’t have access to it, there are a few things you need to do first:

You’ll need to have Steam Guard enabled to protect your account. You can enable Steam Guard through the iOS or Android app or through your email. You’ll have to wait 15 days as well since you’ve just activated Steam Guard.

Lastly, you should add funds to your Steam Wallet or purchase a game, DLC, or software. You also need to wait seven days as you need to have made a purchase that’s at least seven days old. If you don’t have access and meet the requirements, you can check out the Steam Community Market FAQ for your specific case.

If you’re looking for a certain item, it’s best that you choose the game it’s from first. Searching the item’s name in the search bar directly will have results from other games pop up, which could be confusing.

browsing experience easier , ClickCommunity > Market; below the search bar, click Show advanced options…. Search for the game the item is from and click on that. From there, all your searches will be filtered to just that game.

certain games like Counter – Strike , Team Fortress 2 , DOTA 2 , , you is click clickShow advanced options… again to filter it even further like narrowing it down to certain collections, rarity, item types, etc. These are especially useful if you’re browsing for items and not necessarily looking for something specific.

How to Buy and Sell on the Steam Community Market

If you want to buy or sell an item, you’ll need to put up a buy or sell order. It’s not a guarantee that your order will be the first to be catered to, however, there are ways to speed up your transaction.

If you want to buy or sell your item immediately, check the item’s listing page first to check the current orders for that item. It’s best to match your price to the current bidder; if you’re selling, match it to the lowest buyer and vice versa for buying.

However, if you want to sell higher or buy lower than the current price, the transaction might take a while to go through. If you price it too far and the market goes the wrong way, your order might not go through until the market goes back to your desired price.

You can also sell directly from your Steam Inventory by clicking on your username beside Community and clicking on Inventory. Choose the item you want to sell, and there will be a green Sell button below the description and selling price. If you can’t find a sell button, check for a Not Marketable tag at the bottom; not all items can be sold in the Steam Market.

There are two graphs on the Steam Market; the median sale prices over time, and the cumulative buy and sell orders. Both graphs help you understand the state of the market and help you make informed buying decisions if you’re concerned with profits.

The price history shows the prices people were willing to transact at. This updates as often as there are transactions on the market, and you could use this to speculate on whether to buy or not depending on where the market is headed.

The buy and sell orders chart is quite useful if you know how to read it. The vertical axis represents the number of orders, and the horizontal axis represents the price. The blue area represents the buy orders, and the green represents the sell orders. Where they meet in the middle is where transactions happen.

You can use this graph to get an idea of where the trend might go; if the blue area is big with plenty of buy orders and the green area is small, this tells you that there is more demand than supply. This gives you more insight into whether the price might go up or down based on supply and demand.

The Steam Market unfortunately comes with pretty hefty fees. However, it is still possible to make a profit so long as you account for this in your future selling prices.

In most cases, Valve takes 5% and 10% goes to the publisher for a total of 15%. In the image above, there are two boxes; Buyer is pays pays and You receive. You can enter a number on any box and the other box will automatically adjust for the fees so you can directly see how much you’ll make when selling the item.

The Steam Community Market is a great way to make money from items in your Steam Inventory that you probably don’t care about. Some people even make money by buying and selling items on the Steam Community Market.

Instead of topping your Steam Wallet up, check your Steam Inventory; you might just have a few extra dollars lying around for that game you always wanted to buy.