Advanced Gold Making For Pros At The Auction House
Posted on July 2nd, 2009 by Lawbringer under General Tips, Gold Building, Gold Farming, World of Warcraft, WotLK
How To Solo Stabilize A Price Push By Raising A Price Cap
Just a note before we get started on this one. This tip is for seriously anal-retentive, ah hawking, accountant style people who have the patience for investing in things like hedge funds.
People (even those using the AH Mastery Guide) will ask me from time to time some questions that seem odd to me. “Hey you just got undercut, what are you going to do about it?” UM . . .nothing? Some folks watch every auction they post; that’s not for me. I prefer to list thousands of auctions based on tried and true numbers and then go to bed. We developed the AH Mastery Guide to teach people exactly how to do this.
When you’re running that many auctions and trying to level toons and raid and do WG and run a guild and and and – you just don’t have time to watch things. Besides, I’m not real big on sitting around staring at the competition; its like watching paint dry. No, I would much rather have fun and make gold while I’m doing other things.
But the questions finally got me thinking. I wonder if there really IS a way to make sure the undercuts don’t kill you? Up until now I’ve just lived with the fact that the markets cycle. Undercuts happen for a while until there is no profit in it for the stupid farmers, then they all leave and the price points return to normal. I break even half the time and make a big profit the other 50%. Since I was already averaging over 750g a day in the process I didn’t feel the need to take drastic measures.
But while I was working to refine certain aspects of the gold guide on a new server I noticed something odd in the wool market. We have said from the beginning that mats are maybe the second best play in the market. We even resurrected one of those tips from 2006 and updated it in the post “Making Gold With Mats” to show just how timeless this advice can be.
So as we went to work to completely Dominate every part of the mats market on this new server (I’m not saying which one yet) I noticed that when I set the new price for wool it stayed up – way up. But it wasn’t my banker keeping the price high. As a matter of fact a random toon gave me this technique and I’ve spread it to lots of other mats as well.
Here’s what happened; there was this one dude who just keeps about 20 full stacks of wool on the AH at about 3 times market price. He probably sells a few from time to time, but everyone is undercutting him. I love the fact that he exists because he is keeping the 100% price artificially high. It makes my price push point look cheap in comparison. His price represents something we don’t have a name for – so we’ll call it the price cap.
Price Cap = the highest price in the market
So I thought – what if I just did this myself? Since I have several accounts, I have to have a toon doing auction house scans on each one. So there are already 3 “banker” toons just sitting at the AH doing nothing. So my main banker (let’s call him A) send a few stacks of all the best mats to banker “B.” B then posts those mats (or anything else for that matter) at a sort of silly price and just keeps rolling those auctions forever.
Now instead of my price push (buying out most or all of an item and re-listing it at a higher price) representing the price cap, I can raise a new cap over my push to protect the push. The push will actually look reasonable against the cap. (confused yet)?
Now everyone who scans the AH using AADV will scan the inflated price cap items along with everything else (such as the price push items) and AADV will return a higher normal market price for them to post their items. In just two weeks I’ve been able to stabilize price points for more than 2 dozen items at more than 100% above their previous market level doing this very thing.
And it’s painfully simple to boot. I just log on every couple of days to B and roll the auctions back onto the house. I sell just enough from those piles to cover the listing fees. Breaking even in one place to ensure a much higher profit in another is a Dominating win.
Now, if you’ve EVER written in the threads something along the lines of “I’ve tried this for 23 minutes and haven’t made a single copper yet!” Or, “I spent 176 silver and so far I’ve lost money using your techniques!” Then please, PLEASE, PLEASE ignore this post and go back to your farming. This takes a mountain of patience and expertise and thousands and thousands of gold invested on a daily basis. If you’re not working with more than about 10k gold and it wouldn’t hurt your feelings to lose every copper of it then don’t do this.
There isn’t really that much risk involved – so much for the disclaimers. But keep in mind that this is not an easy play. You’ll have to concentrate for a while to keep it straight in your head since AADV doesn’t have a module to track it for you.
So (those of you who know what you’re doing) grab yourself another anonymous banker and park a few stacks of the more profitable mats on the guy. Have him roll the auctions for those on 48 hours for 300-500% of market value. (Short stacks might also be a good idea).
It’s also a good idea when you end up stuck with a whole lot of something that isn’t selling well. Instead of undercutting the market price and losing profit; push the perceived value of the item higher by price capping on one toon to make the regular price look more appealing to people. In other words – if the demand isn’t there, then manipulate your pricing to give the appearance of value. Your regular items will look cheaper next to your higher priced auctions.
For instance: I have about 100 stacks of medium leather on banker A. Apparently someone went nuts and farmed their butts off for some silly reason and then dumped it all onto the AH at once. It killed the price but I’m never going to pass on a good deal. I can get that price back up there faster than it dropped.
So I sent 15 stacks to B and posted it at 500% of market price in stacks of 5 to set the price cap. The rest I put back on the AH in stacks of 20 at 125% of past market value as a price push. The price cap protects the price push and the overall market price as well. Since I bought the leather at 40% of past market value, and now have a way of raising the past market value even when flooding the market it’s only a matter of time before the cash box is full.
Before I did this I had sold maybe 2-3 stacks out of the original lot of 100. Once I put the cap price above my own new push price they sell much better; along the lines of 5-10 stacks a day.
So you will use this whenever you have a glut or whenever you’re doing a price push. If you have way too much of something anyway, make sure that if you’re going to flood the market (which depresses prices as supply goes above demand) that you protect the price by putting the artificial cap over it. The very same method works even when you have limited supply items if you will raise a cap over your new price push.
People will assume there is just some idiot out there who thinks that his stuff is worth more just because it’s his stuff. No one will ever suspect that it is a purposeful ploy to protect you own price push. Who would ever think that undercutting yourself could be worth so much gold?
That is a really good Idea, and I can see how it can make a ton of money.
On another Note, Could you guys PLEASE make a enchanting leveling guide PLEASE! It would be a huge help. Keep up the good work!
A great tip that works well. If your cheeky, you can even bitch about your alts stupidly high prices in trade chat and then offer yours at a much lower (but still inflated) price!
Most people who use the AH alot to sell only seem to concentrate on 1 or 2 types of thing, meaning theres a lot of sellable stuff out there which no one bothers trying to control the prices of. Lawbringers Medium Leather is a good example. With a few exceptions, I would expect most pre wotlk things to be pretty much uncontrolled markets which are almost begging for the Lawbringers on each server to take control of them
Apart from Titanium Ore, do you DYS guys have any hawt tips for 3.2? The next massive quick gold earner cant be too far away eh
The other thing to do is have your own toons buy the stupid priced items at 500%. (All you will lose in the cut the AH takes) and then auctioneer should recognise a sale price in the in last 7 days at a higher price!
you cant buy your own auctions unless its on a seperate account
Great tip, I’ll add this to my knowledge gained from your AH guide and become a even more powerfull money maker. Thanks for all of your guys hard work.
I have used your tips, including the quick-scan, vendors-search bid/buyout which works well on 3 of my servers; however, it doesn’t work on my main server. My husband can scan/bid/buy from his computer right next to mine, but when I scan/bid/buy (even if I do this before he tries) NO ITEMS show up??? I have cross-checked all my settings with his and it still shows up as no items for bid/buy (I used your suggestions of 10s and 0.5%). I do this on 4 servers: on 3 of them there is no problem. Can anyone help with suggestions, please?
eesh. I made a big boo-boo buying frozen orbs. in retrospect, I paid too much (about 100g each) but at the time the competition was up around 120g or so. My problem is I grabbed too many, and only sold a couple before suddenly there was a glut in the market, and theres probably 1k worth of them up there for somewhere around 90g-95g each. I know that these cost me zero to post, so I am trying to be patient, wait for an upturn in my favor so I can at least get my money back, and hopefully see a little profit for my efforts. But judging by the suddenly slow movement of this item, even at 90g, I figured I had nothing to lose and posted them for a silly price (stack of 10 for 8000g per!) to mess auctioneer up a little. This was a week or two ago (you guys must be reading my mind!). So far it has had an effect, the market value has gone up from 120ish to well over 300g. I used to bitch about folks that did what I am doing, b/c it makes a mockery of auctioneer’s math, and suddenly it is a meaningless number. Anyone who looks will see what happened. I have one concern though. Given that the market value is now just a silly number, I am worried that folks will go to thottbot or similar site for a price check, which would backfire on me since its currently listing around 87g. I am tempted to just buy up the 1k worth of idiots who decided to go 30g under the formerly profitable price point, but that has potential to burn me even more, and I don’t have 10k gold to play with (im only around 2k in liquid $). Do you think I should wait it out (I can be patient) or should I take a hit, lose 5-10g each by posting em now before the market really tanks and call it a lesson learned? I am willing to do that…but only to avoid worse losses down the road. And I wonder if it is smarter to sell these orbs as singles or should I sell em in stacks of say, 10, hoping for a wealthy buyer? I am so depressed, specific advice on this issue would be greatly appreciated!
Have you ever considered that gold farmers must love you for pushing up prices, and that much of the gold that you make comes from people who bought gold in order to be able to afford to buy mats on the AH? I submit that your AH dominating relies on, and is funding and encouraging, gold sellers.
lol
/ROFLMFAO
HAHA this is just like one of my secret methods which is to get an alt to throw up say 5 stacks of high priced goods of which there is a low supply. I then advertise like the gold farmers do… Half price whats on the ah if they take everything and now… I then sell the goods ive orignally picked up for say 3g to a buyer who looks at the ah sees my 20g goods and will hapilly buy my farmer alts stack at say 15g just ebcause i want get rid of say 10 lots of whatever ive listed.. Only works if uve got a fast turnaround but its very easy…
On Hydraxis a Horde gold fanatic called Aluren does just this with Infinite Dust. She always has loads of the dust on the AH at about 125% of the next highest rate. Most of the time it keeps the price of infinite dust well above what I have seen on other servers. We know that at least one other toon selling is hers too, so that is where she is making her killing.
The best part of course: no listing fees! So no cost, little if any risk, high returns.
Sigh
UM – that may be the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. You are more than entitled to your opinion of course – but that certainly doesn’t mean it has any validity whatsoever.
I’m not going to deny that certain methodologies we use have the side effect of being beneficial for other people, but that does not mean that those methodologies rely in any way on anyone else. If the method doesn’t work in a vacuum it’s probably not a good method.
Since there is no way to verify with any veracity the existence of gold sellers by number on any server there is also no way of knowing how our techniques benefit from them or provide a benefit to them.
It’s like saying: You only sell bubblegum by the truckload because people with big teeth like it. If it wasn’t for people with big teeth you wouldn’t be selling much bubblegum in bulk at all. It’s so impossible to prove or disprove that it cannot be taken seriously as a thesis statement for further analysis.
This has nothing to do with anything but buying my own wooly mammoth and motorcycle mount and epic flyers for all 8-10 of my 80’s if I want to. And, by the way, statistically MOST gold farmers do exactly that – farm mats. It’s just fine and dandy with me if that’s who I’m buying from. If I never have to strike a mine again and there’s some dude in Hunan who will – okie dokie. But I certainly can’t aim at a target I can’t see.
So my answer to you is:
EH?
My suggestion is to just sell down your stock and bail out of that market as a cornerstone. The next step?
Have no cornerstone item.
Take your money into 150 other items and spread out your chances of loss and maximize your chance of gains.
There’s this old business analogy using a stool which explains this very well.
You have to think of your business like a stool. A stool with one leg is pretty much not a stool. Two legs don’t make it a stool either. Three legs and now you’re getting somewhere. If your stool had 10 legs it would still be a stool, just a lot more stable.
What happens to every business over time is that you can lose legs on your stool. Products get replaced, customers get fickle, patches change things – you see where I’m going with this? The key to long term success in making gold or anything else for that matter is having multiple streams of income. Each leg of your stool represents one thing that makes you gold. The more legs your stool has, the easier it is to cope if you lose a leg here and there.
If your only leg is abyss crystals you’re in serious trouble already. You better add a dozen other enchanting mats, some regular mats, a boatload of greens for resale, and everything else you can think of right away. Put 1,000 legs on that stool – 1,000 more ways to make gold and then it won’t matter a lick if you ever sell another abyss crystal as long as you live.
I try my dangdest to keep 1,000-1,500 auctions running at all times, more on weekends. I never put all my eggs in one basket (in case you weren’t tired of the platitudes quite yet). Spread your potential for income into multiple paths and you will never worry about those silly purple crystals again.
And, by the way, the price for Abyss Crystals will probably NEVER go up again unless you’re doing exactly what you’re doing now. Keep price capping and selling down to get your costs back and then purchase yourself another 500 legs for that stool.
OH – before you read the next part:
Auctioneer’s math is all made up anyway. It’s a closed economy in a fantasy world, the prices are just being made up anyway. None of it has any intrinsic value whatsoever (except maybe for a time conversion somewhere in there but good gravy how would you ever find a basis for it).
In one sense every price anyone ever sells anything for is just as made up as any other, so who is to say your inflated price is a mockery? Maybe all the other prices were silly to begin with. None of it exists, so how can you peg it?
You can’t even do it in real economics (create true monetary stability that is). The Federal Reserve and Stock Markets mess with real monetary systems all the time. If you can manipulate the real world by shifting the Federal Reserve rate two tenths of a point, what’s so goofy about manipulating the value of a thing that doesn’t exist by setting a price for the thing to whatever you want it to be?
crud we could go on about this forever, so I won’t.
I ramble – on to the real answer:
I personally don’t try to dominate the AH. I don’t really see much point in it. If I was the type of person that got off on making deals, and getting bargains and undercutting and price fixing … I’d go out and become a stock broker or an accountant or something. Bottom line, it’s boring. I also find it dodgy. I’d personally prefer it if the AH was removed from the game. It’s a ridiculous market system in this type of fantasy setting. Seriously, there should be local markets, distinct price differences in goods based on region and no way to get your product to the entire server as a market. Oh well.
However, I’m surprised to see that this tip wasn’t in your AH mastery guide in the first place. It always struck me as a simple way to inflate your prices and I’m always wary when I see a whole lot of items priced way high in the AH. I figure that they’re trying to artificially inflate the base price of something. Doesn’t concern me much of course, I just list whatever I was going to at a slight undercut (or a massive undercut if the listed price is ridiculous). If it’s one of those rare instances in which I was going to actually buy something and there’s nothing but overpriced junk left, I just wait. Or occassionally I’ll hit trade chat with an offer for a reasonable price. Either way, I never buy the overpriced crap.
I know I know, it’s not there to be sold, just to stabilise price points so continuous undercutting doesn’t drag the price down to nothing, etc. I was just saying why it didn’t affect me much. So, yeah, surprised that this wasn’t a known tactic and already in your AH guide. I suppose you learn something old every day, eh?
love the advise, but this is scary as about a few weeks ago i was planing on trying something like this and was unsure about it but since reading it seems its something that works. i know what i have sell so what have i got to lose
While I can see what you mean about it maybe being weird to have an AH in the game there is one thing you might have overlooked. Economies will always develop no matter where people gather. Don’t know if you played D2 or not, but even without an AH there was an enormous economy. So much so that items were being sold in the real world at a pace that made the selling of gold in WoW look small in comparison (though not on the same scale if you follow me).
The problem with NOT having an AH is that the market was pegged not by gold or the item itself, but the monetary system was based on the value of a certain item – the Stone of Jordan. If you had SoJ’s, you had purchasing power; if you had no SoJ’s you didn’t. And it was much harder to consolidate wealth that way. As a result it became and even bigger case of the haves and have nots.
If you don’t like the accumulation of wealth as an interesting part time function of the game that’s fine. And although we harp on it it’s not more than 10% of what I do in the game. I spend far more time leveling toons, but only because it’s my job to help develop and test the Alliance leveling guide (and horde previously). As a result, in a few months I will have 11 level 80’s, and that’s if I choose to leave 3 toons at level 70. Past that I have three of those toons in Ulduar ready gear, and my main is quite an accomplished raid healer. Left to my own devices I would probably ignore the pursuit of gold making more since I am happy with my intake – but again, it’s the number one question people ask and part of my job is figuring out ways to make it simpler for them.
My point is that I understand your position, but don’t give me too hard a time for mine. I really don’t spend an inordinate amount of time working the AH and I don’t want anyone else to do so either. Past that I find it a much more efficient use of time to use the AH to make gold instead of the grind of farming more than a little bit each week. Our tips are really designed to give the average player who wants a little (or a lot – to each their own) more gold the very best ways to make it in the least amount of time so that they can spend the vast majority of their time doing what DOES interest them. Plus, having a little walking around money never hurt anyone.
I noticed something like this the other day when i was running scans of the AH. I was selling copper ore and I noticed this one person selling 3 stacks of copper ore at like 100 to 110 gold a stack and i was thinking wow those’ll never sell and then placing my auctions in they sold within the hour and now that i read this, it makes me go wow and now i just wanna go thx buddy for making my job easier.
So I dunno if this has happened on other servers or not, but it was an amusing side-effect of this article on Feathermoon – Alliance Side. After you posted this article we had someone read it and post 40 of each cloth 1 at a time for 999 gold. Not only did they completely miss the point of the post people will likely now sell less cloth to this person who is always spamming the trade channel trying to buy it at half the market price.
So thanks for the article because it was good and thanks for the amusing side effect of having this guy be a complete retard, which should result in me being able to get more cloth as less people will sell it to him now
Personally I quite enjoy making money on the Auction House. I’ve been using your guide for some time now so I don’t spend a lot of time there as it isn’t really necessary but what time I do spend at Auction I do enjoy. It helps that I now have enough gold to just buy everything I want for all my characters too
this guide is useless, more people on my server dont use an auction house addon and therefore makes this tatic useless and a big waste of time.
just because you throw a few items on there that are overpriced will not cause the entire market to change by yourself.
Whatever you say Noobie. I’m sure you’re right.
should we horde frost orbs and artic fur for the new 3.2 patch thats what i have been told to do ? i have 40 frost orbs and 23 artic fur so far, some thing about ppl will wont a lot of gear with them in it so the price should jump a lot. but i sit on 1k gold then i see something i like and get it lol
oh side note i borta crafted titansteel spiked helm for my DK for 400g then relized that i had no gear with gemslots lol so i posted it back on AH for 600g it sold in 2 hrs and now the AH base prise is 599-650g lol 200g mark up on all titansteel helms with in the day lucky i have mining and my mate makes them now and we split the profit so just upping the price on one level 80 platemail item upped the price on the hole group from what i can see just have to be the first to do it after a restart an then u can set ur price i think .