Where did all the auctioneers go?

I'm back to writing my blog again. I took a break from WoW to play Rift and check out some console games I had been putting off. My blood started craving a good profit streak and I could not wait to get back into the swing of things.

I moved to a newer lower population server recently and my Glyphs don't sell as much as they used to but I was still able to pull ~150k within a few weeks by lowering my volume and micro managing the market (re-posting a lot)

It's nice to see that not a lot has changed since my break began, I wonder what happened to the podcast "Call to Auction", I really enjoyed that and elaborated a lot on some of their points in my writing. Those guys really inspired me to take more dedication in understanding Auctioning and I wish they were still making shows. :(

I'm still using TSM with inscription, but I hand post some items that fall into a special category for me. Ember cuts are very rare on this server and so is truegold so I post those by hand overcutting because I know the "Sweet Spot" of the market.

The Sweet Spot
This falls into understanding your server and the specific items that have a higher value and are less common. lets say you have noticed that truegold moves ~40 bars a night on your servers "busy" nights. You can shoot to be the 12-16th less expensive auction and still sell your stock. This can increase your profit a lot, for me sometimes 50% or more.

point: You don't always need to undercut if you believe your price is fair and the demand will consume your goods.

Have a good time and make some gold.

Volume Over Margin

I recently have been playing in the glyph market in addition to my usual gem areas of crafting. A principle that all craftsmen should take in to consideration when manufacturing goods from materials in the auction house is the volume of sales you expect to get on a set of items compared to the ROI you anticipate. (ROI == return on investment)

Within a 24 hour period I may sell 4 austere shadowspirit diamond and 1 Effulgent Shadowspirit Diamond

My ROI on the Austere is about 50g, my margin on the effulgent is 150g

Selling the 4 Austere's provides me with more profit then selling 1 Effulgent, likewise if I could sell two Effulgent SDs a day it would be like selling 6 Austere (I wish I could sell 2 eff's a day, they just don't appeal to my server)

Knowing the average of volume of a certain good per day is a great way to maximize your profits when deciding what to make and how much to make how often. Let me be clear that I do not choose to make one of these cuts over the other, I make them both. I use my knowledge of volume trends to know how much I am making, what I expect to get back and how many to list at a time to avoid over spending in deposits from returned auctions.

Everything's Better Down Where It's Wetter

Take if from me.

Okay so I started farming again. Even though I was making a pretty penny in the AH crafting gems (which I am still making great money at). I recently had a large amount of extra time to play, rather than level one of my many alt projects I decided to do a little farming since Azshara's Veil is running for about 7-9g a piece (140-180g per stack). I noticed that I had barely any competition when farming this at peak hours. Then a /who let me discover something I always knew. People hate water levels.

I think it may have started in Super Mario 2-2. Maybe even TMNT, the damn dam level. You know what I am talking about. Diffusing bombs, running out of air, reaching out and finding those first pre-middle school cuss words that dad says when he hurts himself in the garage.

So killing time waiting for my stock of meta gems to move I was able to farm about 3 stacks of Azshara in about 20-30 minutes. I also managed to farm obsidium ore at the same time (dual gathering rogue) and I netted about 1200g total with the stormvine.

1200g in 30 minutes isn't too bad for a boring evening. If herb prices are rocketing pre-raid days on your server get a beverage, some tunes and do a circuit. I also run windowed mode and stream netflix sometimes.

Watch Die Hard, make about 4800g for kicks at the same time. I also bind my water mount to "Z" since I think drawing weapons is a pretty stupid key binding.

Processing Elementium

There has not been a post here in quite some time. This has a lot to do with waiting for the cata tweaks and inflation to adjust. While waiting for the markets to normalize I have been busy making tons of gold in the meta market.

Why meta gems?

1.) I have 2 transmutation specialist alchemists so I can proc on making my meta gems (not that two matters since there is no cooldown on making meta gems).
2.) there is no cooldown on making meta gems.
3.) I have two jewelcrafters at my disposal  so we can double the rate at which we acquire recipes
4.) There are not a lot of people saturating the meta market so competition across many patterns is very low

So I purchase large amounts of elementium which on my server range from 2g to 5+g per peice (I am thresholding this at about 3.5-3.8g) prospect all this while playing internet poker and then load the ah every night.

I'm making a decent profit off of this and an additional amount when I add in the blue gems I am cutting and auctioning or auctioning raw depending on the current market position. I notice that Ocean sapphires are going well over their cut versions often.

I'll be posting more soon!