Post tonight

Hey again, just coming in for a quick update. I have things in better working order now and will have a post up later tonight. Sorry for the wait!

Glyphs, glyphs, glyphs!

Hey there! I'm back again with the post I promised; my scribe! I've been figuring out what works for me and doesn't the past two weeks or so, and I'm hoping I'll be able to improve profits even further, although I'm not exactly disappointed with the income.

My biggest problem are undercutters. There are only a couple that really ruin my profits, but they have a lot of free time and are on quite often, so I have to dodge them as best as I can. Without them hindering my sales, I'm certain I would have sold twice as much as I have.





As I mentioned in my last post, Friday is the most lucrative day for me as far as inscription goes. Here's what my analyst window looks like from yesterday:










The reason my auctions posted to auctions sold ratio is so high is that Analyst does not discriminate between items posted and items canceled and reposted, so when I cancel to undercut it counts that as an additional auction posted.

I craft 1-3 of each glyph, depending upon their sales price and history, and put anything up on the AH that is above a threshold. That threshold depends on the price of ink of the sea for that day, and how much I've been paying for adder's tongue. I need to make sure every glyph I make is profit, and this is how I do so.

If you are a crafter and you are using the default blizzard crafting frame, I suggest you download one of these AddOns:

Skillet or ATSW. Both are excellent AddOns, though I prefer the former for some minor differences. I would also suggest that you download LilSparky's Workshop. This AddOn allows you to view the market price and value of the reagents you are using for each recipe in your crafting window. LilSparky has, for the time being, taken over development of Skillet, so LilSparky's Workshop works well with it, though he still manages compatibility with other AddOns. Take a look at both and see which you like more. Just make sure that if you download Skillet that you do so at the site I linked.

People seem to think that if a Glyph is bad by most player's standards that it won't sell. This simply isn't true; first of all, people like to try all types of different glyphs to see which ones they like more, and not everyone is a pro and can differentiate between what is 'good' and what is 'bad'. Second of all, people buy glyphs while leveling up and sometimes that is either their best option, or the glyph that they simply like more during that period. It doesn't really matter since they're leveling, so they figure they might as well go with what they like. Sell by market prices and sales history and you should always make gold. If one particular glyph doesn't sell well, stop making it!

Meanwhile things have slowed down significantly on Rifampin's server, and I'm still looking for more sales ideas, so feel free to throw in a suggestion and I'll let you know how it works. I'm also brainstorming for my own ideas, and I have a few (we'll get to that), but I've been a bit busy with raiding on my main's server so I haven't gotten to exercise them.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I'll see you guys next time! : )

Another (disappointing) slow down.

Hey guys, here with another update regarding my progress. I have two things to mention before we get started, though. Number 1, I'm sorry for the infrequent updates. This still hasn't become a habitual process for me and so sometimes I drop the ball. I'll get better, I promise : P I'd also like to apologize for not accepting your comments; I was under the impression that they would send an e-mail notification when I received one, but apparently that's not the case. It's fixed now, so no worries for the future. My gold spread is 1900g in coin, 730g on the auction house, and about 230g worth of items waiting to be sold.

My analyst window is not from just today; it's the breakdown of about the last three or four days. As you can see, I've sold most of what I post. I maintain a low amount of auctions per market to circumvent flooding issues, which serves the dual-purpose of allowing me to undercut the undercutters. For ore and herbs, I'll generally throw up 3-4 stacks of 20, and up to 12 stacks of 5 per market. For cloth, I'll usually put up 6-8 stacks in any given market.

When I first started this blog I did not expect to advance this quickly. I have never broken 2Kg on a new character and am very pleased with my progress. I'm telling you, if any of you have any difficulty with making gold, especially on a new server, you should really start reading some of the blogs available. They have helped me enormously and I know they can do the same for you.

I've recently been trying to decide what to dive into next. With my current resource pool my income is capped. There is only so much ore, herbs, and cloth to purchase and resell. I need a new market! Eternals fluctuate quite a bit on this server and I haven't really figured a pattern out yet, so I'm still reluctant to invest much there. I have managed to make some from eternal fire, though. If any of you have suggestions I'd be glad to hear you out and give them a try. I can always update you on how they worked for me in my next post. I would have more options available if I had a crafter, like netherweave bags, eternal belt buckles, gems, glyphs, armor patches, enchanting scrolls, and much more. Unfortunately, though, my scope is relatively limited.

My scribe has been having a lot of trouble with undercutters. There is one person in question who parks himself in a major city all day, logs in quite frequently (every hour or two), and routinely undercuts my auctions by a couple of silver. The best way I've been able to combat this is by adding him to my main's friend's list, and 15-20 minutes after he logs out, logging into my scribe and cancel/undercut him once more. Unfortunately he can do the same thing, and some of the time I just have to bite the bullet and either fight him tooth and nail, or give up and come back later. I still make a pretty hefty income from inscription, but I'm certain that I could make more if I didn't have him to worry about. Do any of you have a similar issue? How have you solved your problem? I have considered compromising with him, and if this continues it seems to be my only option.

I'd like to show all of the barkers out there a neat AddOn that could help with their advertising needs. Advertiser is quite customizable and will automatically advertise your tradeskill(s) whenever you are in a major city. I currently do not use it for inscription since my trading is done solely on the auction house, but once I level my jewelcrafting I'll be sure to have this enabled.

I've decided, in an attempt to provide more content, to introduce my scribe into the mix of things. My next post will be sooner than the last has been, and will cover his current pool of glyphs to choose from, and my progress this week (using analyst to display the data.)

I appreciate all of the kind comments and I promise that I'll be better about updating in the future. Later!

Moving on up...

I'm back again, and the past few days have been much better to me than last week! I really don't have as many auctions going in and out as I'd like, but as my resource pool grows I'll be able to do more and more trading. My assets are currently 1400g in bags, ~600g in mats, and ~600g on the auction house.


I've actually been having difficulty finding deals lately, so most of my income has been from items I purchased several days back, or longer. Ore is still my top seller, with herbs, bars, and enchanting mats trailing closely behind. Unfortunately I do not have any professions to utilize, so I can't use any of the neat tricks available to crafters. I might just level up a DK to 65 so that I can power-level jewelcrafting or inscription, but if I do end up doing that I will keep his stock separate from Rifampin's so that I can track their progress individually. Still just an idea, though.

I would actually like to advise you *not* to invest in the enchanting market unless you know exactly what you are doing. I find that the market fluctuates waaaay too much, and because there is no deposit for posting these items people are not afraid to cancel and relist, which drives prices down even farther. The sheer abundancy of shards, dust, and the like also contributes to the fluctuation, and so unless you have done quite a bit of research or know the beast you are trying to handle it can be a large hassle to deal with. I've learned this lesson the hard way, but at least I'm learning!

I can't decide if I prefer weekdays or weekends more, although it depends in large part on the market you are trying to push. For glyphs, friday-sunday seem to be ideal, with the earlier portion of the weekend yielding the best results. For ore and other widely used trade goods, I'm actually not entirely sure what is best. It seems to me that the weekdays have higher prices due to scarcity, but there are, of course, less buyers. However, you only need one power-leveler buying out your stock to make you a ton of cash, so I think I'll side with weekdays on this end. Not to mention that weekends are a great time to buy up all the cheap ore people are posting. This assessment is entirely anecdotal, and I encourage any of you to submit your own opinions/data. I'm all ears!

Anyway, that's all for now. I might just start logging my glyph sales on my main's server, so stay tuned for that. Do any of you happen to make a large percentage of your profits from crafting? What works well for you? I happen to find inscription very lucrative and will be milking the cow until something is done to stop me. Until next time!

Slow days...

Hello again! As the title suggests, the past few days have been awfully slow with very little real income, though I have been able to snag a few deals that will likely prove quite lucrative in the coming week or so. I have 346g on person, 312g worth of materials in my bags, and about 1044g worth of items on the auction house as of this morning.



My trading has recently been almost entirely focused on trade goods, like herbs and ore. There simply haven't been many other deals around, or I haven't caught them, and as such I'm stuck to reselling trade goods. At least it's an ever-changing market with plenty of opportunities! By the way, on the rare occasion that you find an empty herb, ore, or other trade good market, gouge the prices! You can put a ridiculously high value on an item, well above its 'market' value (I use this term loosely), and if you are the only seller up at the time, it will likely sell. People want their items and they want them NOW, especially when it comes to commonly used items like ore and herbs. People feel like they can't afford to wait to make 'X' item for the raid (sometimes they can't, use this to your advantage), or 'Y' item to enhance their character's stats, and it really shows in their purchasing habits.

This also serves the dual-purpose of resetting the market price to a higher value; people will undercut you, sure, but they will (usually) not do so by a large amount, so you are essentially setting a new value to a particular item. However, more and more people are using auctioneer, and thus sometimes you will find someone who posts something for the market price, completely neglecting the potential profit that they could be making.


Anyway, I'd like to show you all another AddOn that I use, which does an excellent job of organizing my inventory and bank. It's called Baggins, and it looks like this (at least for my config):




















Now, the reason I really like this AddOn is the sheer amount of sorting customization available. You can create groups for virtually any type of item that you want to, and set rules for what is placed in each category. The possibilities are nearly limitless. There are several plugins, including an anywhere bags plugin, though I feel it is a bit lacking. There are alternatives to Baggins that do a similarly good job, like ArkInventory. I simply prefer its user-interface to that of AI, and so I use it instead. I haven't set it up (yet) to manage the different trade goods; I do use it for glyphs, though, and it does a fantastic job of that.


Anyway, I'd like to cut this post short before I go into ramblings about this or that, and instead I will focus my energy into brainstorming for the next post.

Stay tuned! : )

Analyst and more...

Hello again! I've got an update on Rifampin's progress, and hopefully more frequent updates now that I'm less busy and more motivated to continue! For reference I'm up to 420g in coin, 260g worth of bag items, and 560g worth of items on the AH.











As you can see, I've bought myself some stylish clothing to match my new-found wealth. I've always enjoyed outfitting my bank alts with the tuxedo sets, as it brings a distinguished look to my character. Hopefully I'll be able to come across a monocle soon to complete the set!

Anyway, I've been buying and selling the same 'ol items. Mithril ore, adamantite ore, individual saronite and cobalt bars, and small radiant shards have all been pretty decent sellers. I came across a huge deal the other day; a stack of 15 titanium bars for 150g which I sold individually for 19.8g or so a piece. I also sold two stacks of five for a bit less than that per bar, providing a 100g profit or so. Not bad for one purchase. If you look closely you can usually come across deals like this once or twice per week because sellers can be quite careless.

I'd like to talk about an AddOn that I use to track my economic actions, called Anaylst. It's a neat AddOn that allows you to view information like gold gained, gold spent, auctions posted, and auctions sold. You can download it from here. I will be posting daily updates at night with my analyst window for the day from now on. Here is my first one, totaled for the week:































As you can see, I have a net gain of about 400g (total gold gained - total gold spent) for this week. I've spent the excess on auctions that are posted now, and items in my inventory that I am waiting to sell. You should really pick up this AddOn, or another one similar to it (there are a few; check curse) to track your expenses. It'll truly come in handy.

I've also purchased 4 netherweave bags for space, since I was getting tired of running back and forth. The next step is purchasing all of my bank slots and outfitting that with netherweave bags. Space is incredibly important, as it saves time and allows you to stockpile goods that will sell for a greater amount at a later date, easily paying for itself and then some over time.

I think Markco at JM2C mentioned this in a recent post, but I'd like to reiterate for posterity. You can make a lot of money simply by purchasing stacks of a particular item and then selling the individual items for a highly marked up price. I do this with saronite bars; I buy them at about 35g per stack or lower, and sell them for 4.5g per, for a profit of 55g when they all sell. It takes a little while, but it's supplemental income that you should be making!

Anyway, as I've been busy with a few things lately (and have been lazy, oops) I haven't had much more of a planned post, but in the future I'll try and work out what I'm going to write in advance (which will include theory posts and the like), so stay tuned for updates!

Gold Everywhere!

Hello Again! I'm back with an update on Rifampin's progress. Afterwards, I'll explain why stack size is important like I promised in my previous post. For reference, I am up to 6g 65s in my bags, and 435g worth of items on the AH.




So after having made a decent wage from the items I bought earlier, I decided to invest MORE (tough choice, huh?)

Here are some of the items I bought:



























































As you can see, most of my investments are commodities, such as cloth and ore. They tend to sell well and sell OFTEN. Prices fluctuate, so you can grab cheap items and then relist them immediately, or one or two days later when prices rise (depends on your server's economy.) Be careful with these investments, though. You NEED to scope out the market fluctuations first so that you know when to buy, and when to sell.

An excellent AddOn for this specific purpose is Market Watcher. It'll allow you to scan and save data for items that you specify, and then view the market prices in a convenient graph form. Obviously you need to have scanned for at least a week or two (more would be ideal) before you begin to trust its data, so go pick it up now! I will let you in on other AddOns I use as time goes by.

Anyway, after those investments, I threw my remaining stock and the new items all on the AH for a marked up price:
























































I believe I also had some ore up on the AH that is not pictured. You should be posting a few, small stacks (generally) of each particular item up when there are fewer of that particular item on the AH. You should also make sure not to post when prices are low for that particular day. The less auctions up at the time the better. If there are none up at the time, and the item is in high demand, you can really gouge prices, so keep that in mind.

Here is my progress as far as sales go (the daggers sold!):



























































What this image doesn't show is what hasn't been selling for me. I had to relist the two daggers, leather, and enchanting mats several times before they sold. This is okay! As long as you have money in your mailbox, you're doing it right!

You are almost definitely not going to sell everything, and you will probably end up relisting most items at least once before they sell. This is why I suggest that you set your default auction time in Auctioneer to 24 hrs. I prefer this setting because I can manage my auctions at the same time everyday, and I'll be able to match prices more consistently than if I were putting them up for 48 hrs.

Now I'd like to explain why stack size is important. For items like ore and herbs, selling in stacks of five is ideal because this is the stack size required to prospect or mill these items. Think of it as the lowest common denominator; if someone wants to purchase 40 of a particular item, they will still buy your stacks of five. However, if someone only needs to prospect or mill for one more gem or pigment, they will not want to purchase an entire stack!

For other items, like bars, spider's silk, or crafting parts, people almost invariably need less than a full stack to craft or use for their purpose. They do not want to sell the excess, and so they would rather pay a bit more per item for their stack, at a lower total cost to them. You can use this perception for your own gain, and not simply when setting prices. If you need a particular item, you can always buy a full stack and gouge prices for the excess to make some of your money back!

The reason I do not sell cloth in small stacks is because most items that require cloth are either crafted in bulk, or require an entire stack per item. It's much better to simply sell stack by stack than to try and fiddle with a lower number, especially considering how common cloth is.

If you have a differing opinion, extra advice, or any comments, please feel free to express them!

Meet Rifampin

This is my new bank alt; Rifampin. Yes, he's named after an antibiotic. Don't ask.



He started out on an alt's realm (highest character level 24) with 3g, a couple of greens, and some spider's silk. I know that I started out with more than most people do with their alt bank alts (heh), but I'd like to delve right into the action, and I didn't get the idea for this blog until I had already begun.

So let's get started, shall we? Here is his progress so far (he is currently at 60g 32s 22c.)

This is my BeanCounter list (from Auctioneer) of all the items I have bought in an effort to create a larger investment pool from which I can draw funds:

Let's analyze exactly what I've done here. First let me mention that this is done on the pretense of an AMATEUR; I am in no way advocating myself as an expert!

Anyway, with the few gold I started out with I bought a green dagger (the Sacrificial Kris), which I re-posted at about 500% profit. It eventually sold, but this was a risky move, and let me explain why.

First of all, I had not scanned more than once or twice on this server, so auctioneer's data was obviously skewed. Not to mention that investing a large majority of my funds on an unnecessary (for the buyer) item could have turned out poorly for me. I stuck with it, though, and bought an undercutter's auction, and sure enough, I made a hefty return, despite not having sold the second dagger yet.

*EDIT* I was mistaken! I have not sold either of those daggers. This is a perfect example of why it's a risky maneuver; there were other people posting the same (or similar) items. That, in combination with the fact that I am pricing it relatively high, and that it is a non-necessity item, means that I will have a difficult time selling it. Fear not, in failure there is a lesson, and you should always improve upon your mistakes!

After that, I sifted through the trade goods looking for oddly numbered stacks and inexpensive items. I also bought a few cheap recipes that I knew would sell. Here is what my auction's list looked like after a day or two of trading:




























































I had bought and posted a lot of different items after having sold a recipe, a green, and some spider's silk (which go for 9-10g per piece on this server.)

Note that I have put up most of the trade goods in stacks LOWER than 20; you can raise the price of materials if you put them in lower sized stacks. Remember, not everyone wants a full stack! I'll explain the logistics of it at a later date.

The results:










































That's it for my first post, I hope it was informative and look forward to writing another soon! I'll be updating this with Rifampin's progress frequently, and I'll also try and fit in some of my own theory posts, and analyze what I have gathered from other sources that has granted me some success.

Until next time!

What's this here for?!

Hello, and welcome to the first post on my AH blog.

It's inspired in large part by Gevlon over at Greedy Goblin, Markco over at Just My 2 Copper, Tyson at MMOAuctioneer, and a variety of other informative AH blogs. After having read a bit (or more : P) of what all of these fine individuals have written, I decided to try my hand at playing the AH myself.

In the past I had only bought and sold cheap, rare weapons and armor for a considerable, but unremarkable profit. I had learned this technique from Tyson at MMOAuctioneer.

Anyway, I decided I wanted to go further this time, and try to really capture the essence of the AH market. My main server's bank alt has been doing well, having completed his first week and a half (or so.) I'm up to 4.2K with about 1.5K in assets. I hope to continue this progress and eventually be making as much as Gevlon!

I am, by all means, an amateur. I created this blog so that I could catalogue my experiences and hopefully hand out just a bit of (if not more) useful information for those starting out, and those hoping to increase their profits.

I am not going to recycle old information, but I might explain some of the better known techniques just the same as the lesser ones, as I know exactly what I wish I knew starting out.

I will not initially be covering my main server's economy. Instead, I will be using a bank alt on an old server of mine, who started out with only 3g, a couple of greens, and some spider's silk to his name.