Wednesday 8 August 2012

Different Markets, Different Tactics

Ferris Wheel by Andy Cardiff, under creative commons from Flickr
It's that time again, thinking of a post for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival proves a challenge most months for me. This month is no different. I'm not the most organised gold maker or a particularly deep thinker about tactics or strategy so this was really tough! Thanks Cold! lol

Compare & Contrast 2 Different AH Markets and How Your Gold Making Strategy Varies In Each Market



Market 1 - Glyphs & Gems

I've written several times now about my glyph selling method & about the only organised part of it is the regularity of doing the same thing every time. I also do virtually the same routine for my gems. Both these markets have a lot of competition, regular undercutting occurs & can be rather time intensive to make the most of them. I'm not particularly greedy about owning a market or even dominating it - I just take what I can squeeze out of it so I don't really worry too much about what my competition is doing.
  • empty mailbox of cash & expired glyphs
  • cancel any remaining glyph auctions using TSM
  • relist glyphs per TSM settings
  • run TSM Inscription only scan
  • rinse & repeat 2-3 times per day
Depending on sales from day to day, I then add the following crafting routine maybe once or twice a week
  • cherry pick top priced glyphs to craft using TSM crafting
  • run Buy materials module in TSM
  • mill herbs, make inks
  • craft cherry picked glyphs
  • list new batch of glyphs

Market 2 - Almost Everything Else I Sell

One thing I've never quite got my head around is sales groups in TSM. I know how to set them up in principal but I can never decide what should go in which group! So as a result, almost everything except glyphs & gems get posted manually.

I have general prices for many things in my head & I find it fairly easy to remember approximately how much I bought something for. Trying to explain my thought processes is one of the most difficult things for me to do. I've had problems at work when trying to teach someone else my system there & the Auction House is very much like that too.

I almost always go in at the bottom of the market as long as the price is still within my happy zone unless some idiot has undercut by a large amount. You know the one - the idiot who thinks that 50 gold is too much so posts his for 20 gold? Yeah that one! Then I usually undercut the next sensible price & if that bottom price is within my buy range, I may buy it & flip it straight away.

The other thing I do is to vary my stack size - again depending what the item is, I may sell my stock as full 20 stack or I may post as 10's, 5' or singles. Items like hypnotic dust, infinite dust or mid range leather are fairly expensive now so I usually list those in mixed stacks. People who don't care about the price & just want a lot will buy the full stacks but people who just need a few will buy the singles or 5's where they may hesitate to buy the full expensive stack.

Summary

So there ya go - very organised, precise cherry picking for glyphs & gems, total gut/instinctive reactions for everything else - couldn't get much further apart in methodology but it works for me. I certainly wouldn't suggest it as good for everyone but I can't be the only disorganised gold maker out there, surely? lol

4 comments:

  1. "You know the one - the idiot who thinks that 50 gold is too much so posts his for 20 gold?"

    I hate that guy.

    A friend of mine who recently admitted to being that guy says he does it because he "doesn't like inflated markets." I may have converted him when I told him there's a 90% chance his item goes to a person like me who is going to repost for market value and make the gold he should have (for no effort) rather than helping deflate a market.

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  2. You know, you can actually undercut by large amounts with a clear goal: Making the market less attractive for auction house campers. When my competetors put up a glyph for 60g, I put up glyphs for ~35g instead of 59g99s99c for a reason: Either he feels obliged to buy them all up, but then the burden of selling them is up to him (and guess who will just post another 10 for ~35g afterwards) or he'll have to adjust his price massively, making him angry, writing hate mails to me that I "ruin the market" and finally going to greener pastures because he can't keep up his gold per hour rate, leaving it all to me. I'm making roughly 20k per hour this way (I invest roughly an hour per month as it does not scale any better with more invested time). I don't know if it's "the best way", but it sure pays the bills in no time at all.

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    Replies
    1. I understand what you are saying & in my glyph or gem market, yes, I can see the reasoning. In fact, any item that has a strong market with lots of competitors would probably react similarly. However, in this post, I really meant the inexperienced player who just has 1 or 2 of an item that he wants to get rid of quickly.

      I make a fair amount on these big undercutters stuff too - they are perfect target items for flipping after all :)

      Delete
  3. You know, you can actually undercut by large amounts with a clear goal: Making the market less attractive for auction house campers. buy world of warcraft

    ReplyDelete

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