bench craft companyCBS announced a number of changes today among the top management team for CBS News, with Jeff Fager taking over as chairman of the division, a newly created position. The company is also bringing in a new face, David Rhodes, ...
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
In a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
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CBS announced a number of changes today among the top management team for CBS News, with Jeff Fager taking over as chairman of the division, a newly created position. The company is also bringing in a new face, David Rhodes, ...
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
In a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
bench craft company[reefeed]
bench craft company
bench craft companyCBS announced a number of changes today among the top management team for CBS News, with Jeff Fager taking over as chairman of the division, a newly created position. The company is also bringing in a new face, David Rhodes, ...
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
In a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
bench craft companybench craft company
bench craft companyCBS announced a number of changes today among the top management team for CBS News, with Jeff Fager taking over as chairman of the division, a newly created position. The company is also bringing in a new face, David Rhodes, ...
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
In a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
bench craft company
bench craft companyCBS announced a number of changes today among the top management team for CBS News, with Jeff Fager taking over as chairman of the division, a newly created position. The company is also bringing in a new face, David Rhodes, ...
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
In a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
bench craft companyCBS announced a number of changes today among the top management team for CBS News, with Jeff Fager taking over as chairman of the division, a newly created position. The company is also bringing in a new face, David Rhodes, ...
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
In a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
bench craft companyCBS announced a number of changes today among the top management team for CBS News, with Jeff Fager taking over as chairman of the division, a newly created position. The company is also bringing in a new face, David Rhodes, ...
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
In a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
bench craft company bench craft company bench craft company
bench craft company bench craft companyCBS announced a number of changes today among the top management team for CBS News, with Jeff Fager taking over as chairman of the division, a newly created position. The company is also bringing in a new face, David Rhodes, ...
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
In a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
bench craft company The Auction HouseThe Auction House is the lifeblood of any gold making strategies in World of Warcraft. It is extremely important that everyone who reads this guide understands how to use Auctionator, MailGet and the Trade Channel. Further, auction trading is a discipline and an art. I can't teach it to you with one paragraph, there's no 1-trick that will give you the edge over other people. Instead, it's a game of patience and knowledge.
Understanding how to properly use the Auction House is very important so I have included an entire chapter focused on it. In this chapter you will learn about the essential addons to use to make buying and selling on the Auction House much easier. You will also learn about buying items and reselling them for a high profit. I will also discuss ways in which you can find your own niche to make tons of gold. Finally, in this chapter you will learn about techniques including market manipulation of the prices of items and about bidding on items and getting them extremely cheap. It is these kinds of strategies that are discussed in this chapter that will make using and selling items on the Auction House much easier. You will be able to quickly assess the value of items and make informed decisions regarding pricing.
Common Mistakes & MisconceptionsIt's best to start by clearing your mind of a few common mistakes and misconceptions about
making gold on the Auction House. These are the problems I encounter most often with people who are struggling in this area. Here's a list of common mistakes that you need to avoid if you're going to learn to make gold on the Auction House the way I do.
Being ImpatientSome people might think that the purpose of this chapter is to teach them how they can log on and in 20 minutes make a few thousand gold off the Auction House. Don't get me wrong, you will 'earn' thousands of gold in short periods of time but
you will likely hold onto those items for several days or even weeks before you cash in on the items you purchased. Trading on the Auction House is a game of patience and wisdom. You won't be able to login on day 1 and earn this type of gold either. You will need to watch the Auction House prices for several days if not weeks before you have the confidence to start capitalizing on the price fluctuations.
Thinking I Can Share With You Magical Numbers That Will Make You RichSome people are looking for magical numbers, like 'buy all the Solid Stormjewels you see that go for less than 500g and repost them at 700g'. This guide is not here to give you price guidelines like that. I might share with you the price ranges
I use but these are dependent on the realm, faction and time that I used those prices. The most important factor in making gold trading on the Auction House is knowing the value of items. If you traded for 2 weeks and watched Abyss Crystals sell for 110g almost every Tuesday evening and now see a stack of 17 Abyss Crystals at 80g each, you need to pull from your experience to quickly make that investment before someone else does and know how long to wait before reposting them. Knowing these price ranges for as many high volume/cost items as possible is going to help you make gold on the Auction House. Unfortunately I can't teach you the
numbers I use, unless you play Alliance on my realm, and even then my criteria for buying/selling changes regularly.
Thinking You Always Need to UndercutA lot of people complain about having to undercut all the time and losing money. This is a bad habit many people make when starting off on the Auction House, especially people who farm something and try to sell it as quick as possible. If you farm 5 stacks of Saronite Ore and just undercut the lowest stacks on the Auction House you're probably not going to make as much gold as you wanted to. More than likely, someone like me will see your lowball post, buy it immediately and post it 2 days later for a 3-digit profit. Prices stay low for periods of time, sometimes days or even weeks. You need to be patient and
watch the prices come up before you post your items. If the prices are low, and you know it, you can buy a lot of inventory to sell during high price periods. This is how I make about half my gold. The other half is made from artificially inflating prices on high cost items such as but not limited to Runed Orbs, Stormjewels and ilvl 213+ items.
My Realm's Economy Is Screwed Up, I Can't Make Gold In ItI've heard this several times. Most of the people who complain are complaining because they are experiencing extreme price fluctuations. You actually want to see these, they are what let you make gold. The people who complain about them are those who made the mistake of buying high and not being patient enough to wait for prices to come back up before selling their inventory. In conclusion, you can make gold on any realm's Auction House. I have been successful on low, medium, and high population realms and there's no reason for you to get discouraged if you're struggling on your realm,
it's not your realm's fault.
I Don't Have Enough Time to Make Gold, I'm a Casual PlayerA lot of people simply don't have time to farm, they would rather raid, do dungeons, daily quests or just chill in Dalaran telling Chuck Norris jokes. That's actually good news, because you can make a lot more gold per hour if you only spend 30 minutes a day checking the Auction House. In the 3-4 hours you spend on the Auction House per week (spending about 30 minutes per day) you can make 2-5,000 gold without much thinking. That's an average of over 1,000 gold an hour! If you don't have a lot of time then you need to start by focusing on this part of the guide.
Prices Always Go Down Because People Keep Undercutting Each OtherThis can't possibly be true, if it were everything would be free, right? It might seem obvious to you but this is a common misconception people have when they only play during peak hours. During these hours most prices have a tendency to plummet. They will come back up, trust me. You don't always have to undercut, each time you post an item you have to figure at what price it will sell and undercutting is only effective if you're posting in your desired price range.
Getting StartedThe first thing you should do is start buying some cheap items and reposting them. Don't expect to get rich right away. This is how I got started when I was new. You might lose a little bit of gold at first but each time you lose gold you will learn a valuable lesson you would otherwise have missed completely. Start with a few items that you can follow by checking their prices with Auctionator a few times a day. As you get comfortable with those items continue to expand your list. Here's a list of some basic items I would recommend monitoring in the beginning:
• Abyss Crystals
• Frozen Orbs
• Dream Shards
• Arctic Fur
• Eternal Fire
• Greater & Lesser Cosmic Essence
• Frost Lotus
• Titansteel Bar
I selected each of the above items because they have both high volume so they are traded often enough to make things happen quickly and set at decent prices so the amount you make per trade is suitable for your time investment (opposed to Infinite Dust, for example). The enchanting materials have no deposit, so they can be traded much easier than the ones with expensive deposits. When you're ready to start monitoring items with higher prices you can take a look at items like Stormjewels (Runed and Solid are the best) and Runed Orbs which you can buy and sell every few days to make several hundred gold per sales.
Tracking PricesAs you're getting started you should keep track of the prices of the items I listed above. The best thing you can do is write down each item's highest price observed and lowest price observed for each day. You will see one of my bonus materials is a Auction House Price Tracking Sheet. As you get started, print out this sheet each week to keep track of prices. This will help you learn item prices and when to purchase and when to sell along with how the prices change throughout the days of the week.
Using the Trade ChannelIf you can, watch trade channel in your free time when you're not actively playing. Leave WoW up in windowed mode so you can see it while you're surfing the net (and while you're reading this). People who are selling rare and epic items will catch your eyes. Keep an eye out for people selling Frozen Orbs, Runed Orbs and other stuff for really low prices. It amazes me that people who just finished a heroic will sell a Frozen Orb for 25 less than it's value opposed to posting it on the AH and waiting a day for it to sell. Make an offer to EVERYONE you see selling ANYTHING, even if they are asking a higher price than you're willing to pay. Most of these people are trying to sell a large inventory of items and are
willing to go very low with their prices if they can find a buyer. Some of the best deals are found in the trade channel. After making a good deal, always ask the person if they have more to sell. 'Anything else to sell?' You already know the person you're dealing with is desperate to make money, so maybe they have some Frozen Orbs, Arctic Fur, etc. Here's your chance to really lowball them, they know they can make the deal immediately and won't go double check prices. Know your prices, and lowball all of them.
Expect to Maintain an InventoryWhen I say inventory, I mean the items that you currently own. You may have these in your
mailbox, in your backpack or posted on the Auction House. At any given time I have anywhere from 1,000-10,000g in 'inventory' and anywhere between 100 and 200 Auctions posted. Just like any real world sales person you have to hold on to items for a certain period of time before you find an appropriate buyer for them. At first, you won't have enough gold to buy all the 'good deals' you see on the Auction House, this will come as you progress. As you get more involved in your realm's economy your inventory will build and
you will notice your gold isn't going up as fast as you thought it would.
When to UndercutLike I mentioned in the common mistakes section, don't always undercut. However, there are a few important times that undercutting is essential. This is the case when prices spike up and then come down quickly. Arctic Fur for example, on my realm hangs out around 25-35g per. This morning the lowest price was at 65g. Of course they won't stay there for long, they have been plummeting all morning by several gold every time someone posts more Arctic Fur. Even though there are more sellers than buyers and therefore prices are going down, that doesn't mean there aren't SOME buyers paying this high price for Arctic Fur.
In conclusion, when prices are shifting downward rapidly you want to undercut those prices as often as possible so when that rare buyer comes around you make the sale. If you have 6 items you can post 1 every hour or so that you have time to log on, post it in the cheapest position so that your item sells for that high price. Don't post all 6 of your furs every time you undercut, because you'll be paying more in depositors that way.
The other time to undercut is with very expensive items that people are only going to buy 1 of. For example, you can undercut the other Runed Stormjewel that is posted on the Auction House by only 2g. Just try to check the listing more often than your competitor so you have a better chance of selling yours.
Using AddOnsLike I mentioned in the first paragraph, you need to install and use MailGet and Auctionator. I wrote an entire section dedicated to using Auctionator to employ all my favorite tricks. You may also want to install Auctioneer, and Chatter. I use Auctioneer along with Auctionator because it has a few features that Auctionator doesn't have, such as the iLvl and percent columns when browsing the Auction House. Chatter is a very nice chat addon which allows you to use the up arrow to repeat what you just said, I use this for advertising in the trade channel, but I'm sure there are other options.
Ten Tricks to Dominate the Auction House with AuctionatorWhen it comes to making money on the Auction House, Auctionator is the best tool you can learn to use. Let's start by making sure you have the right version of Auctionator installed properly. Head to Curse Gaming and find the Auctionator Addon, when I wrote this guide it was at http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/auctionator.aspx. There are two options, automatic install and manual install. I have used both but I would recommend automatic install. If you use automatic install, Curse will have you install a program called Curse Client. It will run in your system tray and allow you to quickly and efficiently update your addons without knowing how they work.
Otherwise, if you choose to use manual install, you will have to download updated versions
manually when new patches come out. If you choose this option, download and extract the
contents of the zip file from Curse into your World of Warcraft/Interface/Addons directory:
Once the Auctionator folder is inside your World of Warcraft/Interface/AddOns folder you can load up World of Warcraft (restart it if it's still running) and it will be installed.
Knowing PricesThe first and most important point I'm including in this section is that knowing prices is THE MOST IMPORTANT aspect to making gold with Auctionator. Auctionator DOES NOT tell you prices (although it gives you SOME informational tooltips), only you can figure these out. It takes awhile to get a feel for each market, and you might make a few mistakes learning it. This is not something I can teach you. I can't tell you that Frozen Orbs will sell between 60-80g consistently or that Dream Shards sell above 20g pretty well so if you see them lower buy them. This is only true for the realms I play on and at the time I wrote this section.
I'm also not going to keep these price estimates updated as time goes by, since they will
inevitably fluctuate. There is also no right answer when you ask what is a Dream Shard worth. This is dependent on too many variables, what day of the week it is, what time of the day, how many people are playing, if it's Super Bowl Sunday, etc. Once you get a feel for the prices you'll realize that prices are dependent not only on the current market but also on the amount of time you're willing to spend finding a buyer. If you post Dream Shards up for 10g they will sell in minutes. You can sell a single Dream Shard at 30g and it will probably sell but it will take a week or more to find a buyer. The skill here is watching the prices, logging on and posting your inventory at the right time in the right quantities depending on how fast you want to liquidate it. When Dream Shard demand rises above supply the Auction House will start to get depleted and prices will rise. If you're paying attention you can post remaining inventory at higher prices and they will sell, instead of undercutting the cheapest post.
The Shopping ListThe Shopping List is an amazing feature that you've got to be aware of. Every time you do a
search with Auctionator it saves the term in the left side, (which is called Recent Searches) and it saves the term even if it's a typo :(. Next time, all you have to do is click on the name of the item on the left and it will automatically search for the item and list the results in the appropriate format! You don't even need a keyboard to make hundreds of gold in a sitting with Auctionator. 'Recent Searches' gets pretty packed, pretty quick. It keeps the most recently and most popularly searched items at the top so the typos and less often search items sink down. It's even more effective to keep Shopping Lists of your favorite items. This way when you login you can load up your Shopping Lists to remember the hot items you have been tracking, you won't forget to look at Dream Shards or Small Dream Shards because they'll be right there. And best of all, you won't need a keyboard :).
Buy Buy BuyThe buy feature in Auctionator is amazing. It will search, sort and organize all the auctions for a specific item. The best part is that it even shows how many items are in each price range. For instance it will say: 3 stacks of 20 or, for example, 20 stacks of 1; this tells you a lot. After you click on the Buy tab, all you have to do is either type in the search term or click on one of the items on the left bar. The left bar is automatically populated with recent searches or manually populated with items if you're viewing a shopping list. Play around with the interface to get a feel for how it works. The coolest thing is that it makes it so easy to buy a ton of auctions. All you have to do is click on the row with the price that you want to pay and click buy in the bottom right. It will then prompt you asking how many of the stacks you want to purchase. This is how I start out most of my auction sessions. I use my recent searches on the left (or shopping lists) to search for my favorite items. When I see the right prices I'll buy them out and post them higher.
Sell Sell SellThe Sell tab is the most useful part of Auctionator. Instead of selling things individually, calculating and entering the values for each item, you can rapidly sell dozens of an item in a matter of seconds. Once you have the Sell tab selected, you just drag the item from your inventory into the Auction Item box in the top left. You can see here I put up my 149 Relic(s) of Ulduar. Auctionator will automatically load the list of matching items in the right column and let you select which position you want to sell them at. I had a friend who didn't know he could select the price on the right side, he thought that Auctionator always undercut the lowest price. I showed him how to do this and he was extremely pleased. In the screen shot below I will probably post the Relics above the 2g 11s or maybe above the Relics for 2g 0s. Either way, all I have to do is select the price that I want to undercut and it will calculate the new individual and total prices. Once you have the price highlighted you can select the duration of your auction. Always keep track of what the deposit is, if this goes too high you might need to lower your price to ensure that the auction will sell before the time expires. Finally, click either Create Auction, which, if possible, will sell everything in 1 stack or select Create Multiple Auctions and it will bring up a dialog.This dialog lets you post auctions in the stack size that you want. For Dream Shards I wouldmostly do 5-10 stacks of 1, in this case I will do a 1 stack of 100 Relic(s) of Ulduar since this stack
size sells very good.
Big Stack Small StackA lot of people post large stacks of high volume items at low prices so that they will sell quickly. It almost seems like they do this so people like me can pickup the stack, split it up and repost it for a profit. Who else is going to buy, for example, 20 Frozen Orbs for 50g each? All 3 tabs in Auctionator are really good ways to hunt down big stacks. You can even do this from the default search screen, but I don't recommend EVER using that (unless Auctionator starts saying there are no auctions and if that happens then logout or switch auction NPCs.
This guy posted 80 Dream Shards at 17g each. I had already bought 1 stack and sold 12 of them for 24.55 and after this screenshot I bought the rest. These have been consistently selling for 22-30g on my realm, so I'm very confident that I will be able to sell them. So for a 1360g investment I can immediately start posting these up at the positions I want, and I don't have to wait for prices to adjust to make my profit. I'll probably sell these over the next several days for a total of, AT LEAST, 1800g for a nice ~440g profit. It's good to keep stack size in mind when posting or buying. Imagine a scenario where you want to post 5 Dream Shards and the cheapest price listed is 17g. You need to look at that 17g listing
and see how big the stack is. If it says 1 stack of 20, or 2 stacks of 20, you don't need to go that low with your price. Most people who buy things like Dream Shards don't buy stacks of Dream Shards the buy individuals. They will search for the cheapest individually priced Dream Shard and buy that one. The above image is a good example of this. I'll post 5-10 Dream Shards at 24g
24s right after I buy them for 17g each.
However, THIS IS NOT TRUE FOR ALL ITEMS; particularly I've noticed that Relic(s) of Ulduar sell better in large stacks (of course so does cloth, ore, bars, herbs, etc). This is probably because people want to buy large even numbers for turn ins. I've been buying ALL RELICS for
Closing SpreadsI call it a spread when items get listed with a large range of prices as a result of several poorly
planned undercuts. Here's a hypothetical example of what I mean. Let's say you search for Dream
Shards and see (5x1 means 5 stacks of 1):
10x1@24g
5x1@23g
12x1@22g
1x1@21g1x5@20g
1x1@19g3x1@18g What we see here is that the 1x5 stack isn't an individual stack so most buyers aren't going to buy this stack. So now we see the spread a little different, 3 items are blocking the price at 18g, 1 is sitting at 19g, the one at 20g isn't going to sell to most buyers and there is only 1 at 21g. What you can do here is buy the 5 individual Dream Shards at 18g, 19g and 20g and repost them either at 21g 90s or competitively somewhere higher on the stack. This might seem obscure or unlikely, maybe it seems obvious to you (that's good) my point is that sometimes items are priced lower than they seem. In this example the 18g Shards are a steal, ESPECIALLY considering the range that Dream Shards usually sell. You really have to look at stack sizes and the quantity of items that are selling at the prices to determine how much you can afford or risk to move to higher prices. Just last night I saw Abyssal
Crystals in a similar setup, however the price differences were in 5g segments so it was a much better deal. I was able to buyout all the individual Abyssal Crystals below 100g and repost them all and sell them all that night. I believe my total investment there was about 400g and I resold them for just a little less than 500g. If I hadn't bought out the low posted Crystals the perceived value of the Crystals would have stayed well below 100 gold and I wouldn't have been able to sell the others that high.
Watching Your Existing AuctionsAfter you've posted everything and spent 20-30 minutes shopping, buying, selling and making numerous trips from the mailbox and back you've got to remember to check your More tab. This will give you a recap of what you're doing. It will even show you if you're still holding the cheapest position with all the items you have posted (green check mark) or if you have been undercut (red X). Most of the time if you've been undercut it's not the end of the world, prices will adjust and your item will have its time. Notice how many Dream Shards I have up right now, I took this picture in the evening when everyone was posting so prices were dropping quickly, they'll come back up though. Other times you might need to immediately repost your item and undercut the other guy. Items like Frozen Orbs, Abyssal Shards and lvl 213 epics might experience price inflation and you might know that's about as high as they are going to go. To milk that opportunity you need to undercut by a small amount keeping the price high but keeping the best position so that when a buyer comes around your item sells. In times like this (when demand is lower than supply but the prices remain inflated), you want to keep the best position on the Auction House while prices adjust downward. Just because there are more sellers than buyers doesn't mean there aren't buyers who aren't going to wait for prices to adjust before making a purchase. There's a button on the bottom you can click to refresh all active auctions or you can select them individually and they will update.
No Deposit ItemsYou don't have to be an enchanter to make a ton off enchants. Items like Dream Shards, Small Dream Shards, Lesser & Greater Cosmic Essences, Abyssal Crystals and even Frozen Orbs (this isn't an all inclusive list, there are more!) have ABSOLUTELY NO DEPOSIT! That means you can post them at any price you want for up to 48 hours and not pay anything if they don't sell. You can even take them down if you want to reposition them. I don't know why Blizzard did this, maybe to create an economy just around these items, whatever the reason this is the best place to start for beginners to start playing the WoW market.
Start with a few items at a time, like Dream Shards and Greater Cosmic Essences, start watching them and learning how their prices move. If you're a risk taker, which you'll need to be in order to be really successful, buy a stack or a few low priced items and sneak them in at different prices. This way you can see that it's not only the lowest item that sells (well, it is, but during times of heavy buying an expensive Dream Shard will EVENTUALLY sell even though it wasn't posted as the cheapest). Posting your items in the cheapest spot isn't ALWAYS the best strategy, it's mostly for people who are impatient or have a lot of inventory. With no deposit items, you can play around without risking a deposit. It's also useful for high volume items you have a ton of and need to get rid of, just make sure you're making a suitable profit.
Adjusting Your UndercutIn the Auctionator menu (in the top right) there's an Undercutting menu. You've got to adjust your undercut. This won't only help you make money but it will help everyone else who is playing this game. Ever notice how prices step downward. For instance someone posts a Dream Shard at 30g, then someone posts one for 29g 90s, next someone for 28g, next 27g 90s, next 27g 80s, etc. The people who undercut by exactly 10s are probably using an addon, the people who undercut by a whole number of gold are both impatient, crazy and not using an addon. Now if everyone used an addon it would take 10 posters to undercut 1 gold (10 silver per poster). This isn't bad, but if everyone used an addon that undercut by only 1 silver instead of 10 it would take 100 posters to bring the price down by 1 gold. Of course that's pretty idealistic. Some people might say that if you don't lower the prices enough people won't buy, that's hogwash. Most people who need a Dream Shard for an enchant aren't going to shop around for it, they are just going to pay the cheapest price on the Auction House. When they do this, they get a warm fuzzy feeling inside because they think they got a great deal. Here are the undercuts I use. This will instantly increase all of your profits.
Finding, Buying and Reselling Hot ItemsFinding, buying and reselling hot items on the Auction House is one of the best things you can do with any character, regardless of it's level and with only a little bit of gold. The trick is to know which items will sell, how long they will take to sell and how much that buyer will pay. Some items, like specific greens, might appear to be worth only 10-25g but in reality a new level 68 Death Knight might have the bank to drop 150g on a chest piece with the right stats. Twinks will also buy some items for insane amounts, since your realm might only see a few of a specific item get posted every month. Disenchanters also have the ability to scan the Auction House and buy greens within certain level ranges below their disenchant value (see the Enchanting section for more details). Below I'm going to share the items that I watch for, and the approximate values they are worth.
My Favorite Hot Items (enchanting, crafting mats and gems)Dream Shards and Abyss Crystals are my favorite items to watch. They regularly fluctuate in price and sell in high volume (read the Getting Started section above for more details on how to start tracking your realm's prices) and the same goes for Frozen and Runed Orbs.
Frozen Orbs sell in high volume and most buyers are impulsive. Runed Orbs are a bit more tricky, get a good feel for what they are actually selling for on your server, don't use their posted Auction House prices as the only guide. I bought my first Runed Orb at 1100g and sold it for 1050g, later I learned that just because they were posted at 1300-1500g doesn't mean they sell for that much quick enough to make a the profit I wanted. Although, when a buyer comes around they might buyout up to 6 of them straight up off the Auction House so undercutting and being the lowest priced Runed Orb isn't necessary. I buy almost all of my Runed Orbs from the trade channel now, since people are willing to sell them quickly for much less than they are worth. Stormjewels have a very small drop rate (from level 80 Fishing Dailies), it's between 2-5 per 1,000. So you're not going to see a lot of these on most realms. My favorites are Runed and Solid but I also trade Delicate and Bold, this is just personal preference. Always check bid prices on high priced items, sometimes a Stormjewel will be posted with a buyout of 800g but a bid of 400g, you can bid on it and pick it up and sit on it for a few days until it sells for well over 800g (these are the prices on my realm, not yours - learn yours first). I buy most my Stormjewels off the Auction
House, since they are still very rare and thus seldom traded in the trade channel.
Raid Bind on EquipsA lot of PUGs are running Naxx, Malygos, Obsidian Sanctum and even Ulduar these days, and when BoEs drop either the raid leader nabs them or they do a roll. Shortly afterwards you'll see a confused person in trade trying to sell a ilvl 200+ epic item. The secret is, they usually have no idea how much it is worth. To be honest, sometimes I don't, but that doesn't stop me from being the first person to offer them 500g, or 1000 gold after doing a quick wowhead search to confirm it's a valuable item. Whenever you see someone in trade selling a level 80 epic, check the iLvl, and if it's above or equal to 200 look up the item as quickly as possible and if you can, ask someone who plays the class who would equip it how good it is. If it's a BiS (best in slot) item, make a lowball offer and see if you can resell it.
Always post these items with a different character than the one you trade with. Throw them up for 2-3x as much as you expect to get for them. Then, sit in trade with your trade character selling the same item offering to undercut the person who is selling it on the Auction House for the ridiculous price. Buyers will feel like they are getting a good deal and you'll be able to work down to a fair price. This strategy is covered in more detailed in the Artificially Inflating Prices section below. Here's the WoTLK raid BoE lists, you should familiarize yourself with the lists when you have time:
Ulduar Normal:http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=qu=4:5:6;cr=105:2;crs=4273:2;crv=0:0#0-2+1
Ulduar Heroic:http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=qu=4:5:6;cr=106:2;crs=4273:2;crv=0:0
Eye of Eternity (Malygos) Normal:http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=qu=4:5:6;cr=105:2;crs=4500:2;crv=0:0
Eye of Eternity (Malygos) Heroic:http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=qu=4:5:6;cr=106:2;crs=4500:2;crv=0:0
Naxxramas Normal:http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=qu=4:5:6;cr=105:2;crs=3456:2;crv=0:0
Naxxramas Heroic:http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=qu=4:5:6;cr=106:2;crs=3456:2;crv=0:0
Obsidian Sanctum Normal:http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=qu=4:5:6;cr=105:2;crs=4493:2;crv=0:0
Obsidian Sanctum Heroic:http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=qu=4:5:6;cr=106:2;crs=4493:2;crv=0:0
How to Find your Own Niche to SellFinding your own niche is not as hard as it sounds. What you want to do here is start with
everything you're knowledgeable with. For example, if you're a Blacksmith, you know exactly what you can make and you know exactly how much it should sell for...or maybe you don't and that's why you need to search for items you craft in the Auction House to see if anyone is selling them and how much they are selling for. You can do this with every profession you have. Another way to find a niche is to base it off what you are currently doing in game. If you're doing daily quests and you recognize a quest requires a reagent that is in high demand by other players, see what that reagent is going for on the Auction House. Or maybe you run instances all day and you have Frozen Orbs or something else that drops in the instance and you can control those niches. Anything you regularly obtain or regularly sell gives you a huge advantage over other players when looking for your own niche to make money off of. Let's say you've been farming Relics of Ulduar in The Storm Peaks to sell on the Auction House, well you are already aware of how much you get for them, so what's to stop you from buying out any of them that are cheap and reselling them. I'm just using these as examples, there's no limit to how many items you can control.
Some people on my server don't craft or even do anything in the game except check the Auction House. You'll find them buying out gear that they know is cheap just to resell it at a higher price. This one guy buys "of the champion" tanking gear from Wrath of the Lich King and resells it for over 100g a piece. Normal players who randomly obtain these items have no idea what their value is and when they list it in the Auction House for 10g he's already in there buying it and relisting it for a much higher price. When you focus on things that you already know and do (area of competence), making gold is that much easier for you because you're always one step ahead of the competition.
Miscellaneous StrategiesArtificially Inflating PricesThis strategy involves using two or more characters in order to convince a potential buyer that an item is worth more than it actually is. In many of the crafting professions I've outlined specific pieces of gear that can be crafted and posted, in other cases I've talked about particular rare items which have prices that are very negotiable. These exclude items that are easy to obtain. A great example would be a bind on equip epic from normal Naxxramas, or the BoE epics that drop from heroic instances. The price might be difficult to gauge and if you begin negotiations with another player you'll want to make sure you have something to base your offer on. You can do this by putting the item on the Auction House using an alt with a different name. Put it up for, say, 2200g, and then advertise in trade that you're selling the same item for only 1500g (700g less than the Auction House), but only for a limited time because you need gold NOW! Alternatively, if you're quiet about it, a buyer might ask 'how much?' and you can respond with 'hold on, let me check the Auction House'. Keep this trick in mind when dealing with low supply/questionable valued items.
Pre-Patch BuyoutsOn Tuesday's the servers oftentimes go down for maintenance or patch. When these servers go offline people aren't able to access anything, not even login. But you'll be surprised to learn that the Auction House doesn't stop ticking time away on the auctions. This means if you post an auction sometime before the server goes down, there will be a period of time when no one is able to buy it. So how does this work in your favor? Simple! If you know a patch day or maintenance day is coming, the night before or hours before the patch, you go into the Auction House and just bid on everything that's priced low. Not buyout, BID! It's important that you bid because the buyout price is usually significant higher than the bid price. If you find auctions that will expire before the server goes down no one else will be able to bid on that same item and best of all, if the person who posted the Auction didn't get a bid for what they wanted, they won't be able to login and cancel the auction. This means you can basically steal items for bid that are expiring prior to maintenance / patch days. This also means you shouldn't post auctions before these days because the same could happen to you!
