Recognizing Opportunities During Market Shifts

Once you’ve been working the AH for a while you should begin to notice things you never saw before.  Today we’re going to give you an example of that so you can see how we look at the marketplace as a whole – and how to profit from it no matter what’s going on.

Petitepowerhouse made a little comment the other day which led to this teaching session.  She said “it’s sad you can’t make money off of silk any more, now it’s worth more to just vendor it.”  Instantly I knew why, and so we discussed exactly what to do about it to not only make up for the lost profits on silk, but make even more off of other things.

Silk prices have dropped because supply has far outstripped demand.  This can only mean one thing.  It means that on the horde side of Fenris there are a lot of people leveling new toons.  Not just lots of new toons, lots of new toons between levels 20-40ish.

As those guys grind through mobs, they are picking up tons of silk.  Since they already have mains (more than likely) they don’t need the cloth once they get enough silk to level first aid and do the cloth turn ins (if they remember to do so).  All in all that would take about 15 stacks of silk.  Needless to say most people end up with more than this through 20 levels.  If you only got one stack per level it would be too much.

So since there is too much silk already, even though folks probably aren’t using all they could, the price drops like a rock and soon you find yourself in the situation Petitepowerhouse is in – vendoring the stuff.  What I see is a huge market for other things.  That’s how you make gold all the time at the AH – recognizing trends.

So, if there are all these alts leveling up, what can I sell them instead of silk?  Since I’m also leveling some alts while working on a project, I know exactly what I needed a little while ago.  Or, more importantly, wanted.  Want always makes you more money than need.  People will spend far more money on want than need.  If you catch them wanting what they also need, that’s when you make a fortune.  That’s not just in WoW, that’s real life too.

So the average alt leveling toon needs mats and greens.  So instead of silk, we should be selling ore, herbs and world drops.  But not just any drops, we can also specialize in suffixes on equipment that are always popular such as of the monkey/bandit/bear/eagle. You can see by the screenshot above from the AH we’re not the only ones to see the recent trend and push prices for ‘of the monkey’ gear higher recently in the level 30 range.

Every few levels, those guys are going to run over to the AH and see if they can get some gear upgrades.  For the alt, this means they won’t fret over spending 2-5g each on items that make the leveling process go a lot faster.  And since probably very few other people are aware of the minor temporary market shift there is money to be made on lower end herbs and ore as well.

The seasoned pro might be trying to get a head start on blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting, alchemy or any number of professions.  So you can probably buy out all of the copper, tin, bronze and iron for not a ton of change and bump the prices a bit.  It will still sell like hotcakes and you’ll turn a tidy profit and never farm a lick.

That’s always the way you want to do it.  If you recognize a market and then go farm to fill it you’re not seeing a real good opportunity.  Real fortunes are only made where you can multiply your effectiveness using the effort of others.  Let other people go farm the raw materials, you just buy low and sell high.

That way you can sell in about 15 minutes worth of work what it took 20 other people 60 hours to farm.  Yes, your margin is lower, but you will make far more gold that way than you ever will farming.

So keep your eye out on your server for opportunities like this.  It turns out Petitepowerhouse was already doing everything she needed to be doing to take maximum advantage of the situation and she didn’t even know it.  Our Auction House Mastery Guide had her already in position because it works all aspects of the market all the time.

It’s a system so sophisticated that you never have to think about making gold again.  Always be where the market is hot, with as little time, effort and guesswork possible.  All we did was tweak our AADV settings a touch and then we can just forget about it for a month or two.

But if you’re still doing this the old fashioned way we did want to point out how to take what seems like a loss and turn it into bigger gains.  Finding the opportunity in a problem is what separates the also-rans from the Dominating.