WoW Auction House: Podcast Character Reaches 50k
Feb 19th, 2009 by tyson
Just earlier today I was responding to a reader who was having trouble hitting a new money plateau. This evening, I finally reached one of my own – the 50k gold barrier after a few tough weeks within the realm of 40k.
Continuing the spirit of the tutorial podcast series, this was on my level 14 druid who knows no one on the server and is my only character there, which makes a pretty strong statement for transferring over to my current main server and somehow getting 50k over to the horde side (- with the AH cut, that would be nearly an 8k loss just on fees. Ouch!!). That or other unlikely options: giving it away, deleting it, or simply continue playing him. I suppose there are some good roleplay options available.
Anyway, it reminds me of an important point. No matter how much gold you have liquid, chances are you have a comfort level. For me, it was a pretty linear progression from sort of random rare deals, to low priced recipes, to rare armor and weapons, then to more expensive recipes mixed in with rare armor and weapons. The problem was that once I reached the 1 or 2k barrier, my comfort level was the rare armor and weapons categories, and not so much the epics.
Here’s the point. From the beginning, I practiced and taught that to make money faster you needed to reinvest a % of newfound wealth into new, higher priced markets. Well for me, even at the 1-2k gold plateau there still existed a market out of my comfort level I hadn’t yet tapped into much. The highest priced epic armor and weapons. If I hadn’t plunged into this new market, I imagine I’d still now be at around 6-10k.
I’d recommend to anyone who questions whether there’s a market where they are do a quick scan of “all” of the AH items and then sort by price. Check out the market just beyond yours and see if you can learn a little about it. Check allakhazam for a few of the items to see if they appear as good deals. Heck, I saw a grey “useless” bind on use item that was simply there for flavor averaging 300 gold. Overall, WoW has a pretty tight economy. There really isn’t a huge range of item prices out there. In EQ way back when (we’re talking 1999-2000), I was making 20k platinum multi-item deals at the trade channel bazaar, simply because the game supported tradeable items that were much, much better than things any normal mortal had time or patience to acquire. This game isn’t like that. For better or worse.
Great article. I’ve kind of hit a 10k limit because I’m absolutly terrifed of getting into the level 80 epic market. I’ve had a little success with a few items, so maybe I’ll just take the plunge and do it.
More questions!
How do you approach an item like this: http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/price.html?witem=41778;locale=enUS;source=live
It’s got a Std. Dev of over 900g; and on my server is selling for ~750g. I bought one for that price, hoping to capitalize on it; only to check back later and see 3 other cuts for the same price pop up. Do you generally avoid items like this, with such varied prices?
Thanks Wes. With regard to the question, I’m actually selling that item too on Horde side and it’s been a bit of a struggle, but I got it cheap. The std. deviation isn’t something that I talked about but of course is another decent measure, and this one is all over the place.
I’d wait until you’re the only one with the item to be listed then post it as low as you can with the amount of profit you want. For example, the median right now is 1.85k, then sell for 1299 or 1399, something like that. Provides both incentive and profit. Lower if you really feel like you need the money now. Almost guaranteed to at least break even on this one. Jewelcrafting recipes are still hotter than room temp.
Very true. I go out of my way to look for them specifically. I picked up the recipe for +crit +spirit forest emerald for 600g, and sold it for 1200g on the second listing.
BC cuts don’t have much money in their recipes, but you can get lucky. I haven’t researched them much, though.
Hey Tyson,
One quick thing I think would be worth looking into is various commodities. Not necessarily cornering a market, but buy low / sell high. For example, buy ore on the weekend for cheap and slowly feed it back into the market during the week when prices go back up.
I’m mostly curious about the time involved to do something like this, and if the money is there; and how long it would take to set up a proper ceiling on purchase prices.
Commodities isn’t something I’ve been involved with too much. I know greedy goblin’s website was at some point (link on right of page) and he’s also discussed auctioneer. For me, that process was too tedious but I’d suggest downloading the auctioneer add-on and learning it if you’re going to be looking into that.
I know it can be profitable, but requires a lot of micromanaging too. There are certain patches that come with new recipe and honor requirements so if you can time the market and buy up lots before hand, that’s one way. That’s about all I can say about it, but good luck and I think most of us would be interested in hearing about your results!
all i can say, is…
HERBALISM, HERBALISM, HERBALISM!!!
the market herbs, even low lvl herbs (silverleaf, peacebloom), has gone OUT OF CONTROL because of inscription! even if its not yur main form of income, it is quite a nice suppliment to yur investments also.
if u make a bad investment, herbalism wont just be yur saftey blanket, it will be your saftey trampoline!
sigh.
I’m hitting my wall and I’m not liking it. Maybe it’s just me not being patient, but it’s tough to feel optimistic when I’ve got about a half dozen items that just won’t sell. One is a Relentless Blade that has been relisted for its second full week (or is it third?). I’ve also got half my current money tied up in a gem recipe that won’t sell right away either.
Armor and weapons seems mostly flat right now, at least in Wrath gear; and the profit margins are comparatively low at lower levels of gear. There’s either a glut of the same item, or the unique ones are priced out of my current bankroll (which sucks because I saw a pair of best-in-slot mage boots last night that would have easily sold for double their value).
I’ve been entertaining myself by trying to sell off what I made to level JC on my main, and searching for a “profession market.” I think I’ve found one, but I need to do some more work to see just how good it is.
Perhaps the player baseon my server is almost too educated. If the price drops on a given item, it rarely sells where it should. I know for a fact if I set up an alt on another server, that I would be successful. However, there would be almost no vehicle to transport said gold to my server; short of continually rolling and transferring DKs (and costs real world money).
Sorry, I’m just frustrated. I may be looking at the AH the wrong way. Last night I worked my way through the AH on my auctioneer character and only found 2-3 items that seemed worth buying/relisting.
Hi Mike, you bring up a good point and I’m sorry to hear about your current item stagnation situation. It is also affecting me and my next post is going to be about it.
May I suggest being very frugal after you clear your inventory… and you will.
Sorry to keep clogging up the comments, but I enjoy having a place to air my thoughts on this kind of stuff.
I’m considering looking at other servers to make money, then transferring characters to make use of the money. I was considering trying Greedy Goblin’s technique/challenge. Start on a server with a lopsided proportion of Horde to Alliance and sell bags (level Tailoring and/or Ench on a DK) and cross-faction recipes/pets. Plus, if the Alliance population is fairly low, low-level mats such as bars could be profitable. This of course runs the risk of having a lack of a market; which is why it would be easier to focus on cross-faction selling.
I’m going to go back and re-read where you started your experiment, too, Tyson, to try to grab some more info – not to hop on the same server, but to get some tips on where to start for moneymaking and check out other servers. I think this may be the easiest way for me to make money, since it appears things are pretty overrun on my server, with lots of competition (AH scan this morning yielded 14k auctions).
It’d be an interesting experiment to try. I’ve done a lot of cross faction trading actually. Mostly when I see an item on the Horde side that I know isn’t going to sell very well due to low demand or population, I’d have a horde character parked in Tanaris to receive the item from the Org mailbox near the auction house. Then I’d have an alliance parked at the Stranglethorn Vale mailbox (to buy the items as soon as I listed them – the cheaper they are, the less AH cut and the faster you need to be), then immediately send them to my AH alt in Stormwind to sell.
It will take some time setting something like that up on a new server, but could be a fun if not interesting challenge. Props to GG for coming up with something specific like this. Let us know if it works – either in the forum or here.
Well, he just straight sold using the Neutral AH. I’m still figuring things out in my head how this stuff would work. Having a DK and then a bank alt would help tons. Depending on the server and whether or not the market has been already controlled, you could easily buy up Netherweave on the cheap and get good turn around on the bags. Also, low level stuff like Bronze bars could make some decent money (JC, BS, Eng leveling).
GG was reporting he was selling Alliance cooking recipes and pets for 15-25g each on the Neutral AH, and they were selling moderately well. However, I see that market as only useful in the short term since only the Achievement hounds and cooking powerlevelers would be both interested and willing to pay the premium.
I small update. I took a shot at selling cross-faction recipes and have been somewhat successful. There’s a little bit of competition so I’m not seeing the kind of profits I hope for, but the percentage profit is through the roof.
Selling 12 recipes that are bought for avg. 12s each; for just under 5g a piece. There are apparently enough people still doing cooking leveling that there is decent demand. I’ve set up one of my alts at Booty Bay; so I lose an extra 30s per sale now, but I feel it’s worth it for the time saved (after AH cut, I’m netting right around 4g per recipe). Previously, the AH char was grabbing the recipes and flying to BB himself; and he doesn’t have a mount (lvl 20) so it actually takes some time to run from the AH to the vendor in SW, then to the flight master. I find the ~10 mins saved on running and flying worth the price.
I’m still monitoring armor, weapons, and recipes, but I’m trying to hold myself back a little so I don’t get burned like before. I did finally sell my one gem recipe for 950g after buying it for 750g. I was hoping for ~1150g; but there were three of us trying to offload the same recipe at varying times (over 2 weeks). I decided to eat part of the profit in order to free up some money. I think it was a good move because the other guys are still posting their recipes religiously.