New Milestone 150k Gold Reached

Finally, I hit the 150,000 gold mark on my main server!  Yay me!  I would have hit it long ago, but I enjoy playing the game so I spend the gold happily when I find new gear or pets or other goodies that I want. The addon I use to tell me how much gold I have between all my characters is the Warehouse version of Carbonite.  Carbonite can be downloaded by going to carboniteaddon.com if you are interested.  The addon comes with all sorts of amazing features. 

Most of this gold has been made by "playing" the auction house, but I also make decent gold with inscription, enchanting and jewelcrafting.

What is your next gold making goal?  What will you do to reach that goal?

16 Reasons to Learn Your Server's Economy

So, you might ask yourself, "Why should I go to all the trouble of downloading addons, performing scans and paying attention to the Auction House?"  I sat down and came up with a list of why it's worth it to me.  You will have to decide for yourself.

1.  Have more gold than you know how to spend (this reason alone is good enough for me).
2.  All your characters can have epic flying.
3.  New shiny gear.
4.  Chopper!
5.  Save time instead of farming mats.
6.  Easily max out professions.
7.  Have fun learning a new aspect of the game.
8.  Impress your friends.
9.  Be able to help your guild mates.
10.  Randomly give gifts or gold to low level players....but not if they beg!
11.  Get achievements for pets and mounts.  You will know where to buy pets that from vendors and you will be able to afford pets that are listed on the auction house.
12.  Experience the joy of finding bargains, relisting and seeing quick sales.
13.  Be able to giggle at the gold sellers because you don't need them.
14.  Gem all your gear with the best possible gems.
15.  Enchant all your gear with the best enchants - even when you know you will replace the gear in a few levels.
16.  Buy silly things like Haunted Memento and Orb of Deception and not care that they cost so much.

What are your reasons for figuring out your server's economy?  Leave a comment and share your ideas with us!

Auctioneer Scanning....Now What?

     OK, so you've been scanning the AH...what do you do with the information.  First of all, don't stop scanning twice daily.  The WoW economy changes constantly and you want to stay up to date.  The next step is to choose two or three items to start tracking.  Your best bet for items to start with are in the trade goods category.  High level characters who have gold to burn will frequently buy the materials for levelling a profession rather than farming them.  That is where you come in.  Don't forget about items needed for levelling cooking and first aid as well.
     In another post I will discuss another addon that works well with Auctioneer where you can keep shopping lists for the items you would like to track.  It makes searching for bargains SO much easier.  But since you are just starting out, keep track of the items on paper or on a spreadsheet.  After you do your scans each day, write down the prices for the items you want to track.  Ignore very low prices and ridiculously high prices.  After awhile you will start to see patterns of highs and lows.  You can also compare your information with date from the Undermine Journal (yet another topic for a future post).  Here is an example of one of my best sellers.  On one of my servers wool cloth sells frequently for 60s or less.  I buy at this price and keep it until there is low supply.  Then I relist it at 1g55s each.  More than double the profit and no farming.  Each server's prices are different so you will need to follow your server's prices.  When posting items don't put a crazy amount of them up for sale at one time.  You want to create the illusion of scarcity.  For most trade goods I usually only post 5 or 6 stacks of items at a time.  Sometimes less depending on the item.

     You will notice in this screenshot that my items are not the lowest priced.  Undercutting is not always the best option.  I frequently sell wool cloth for this price, so I would be silly to price it any lower when there are only 13 auctions of wool cloth for sale.  Try it after studying the prices on your server!

Auctioneer - Scanning

I talked in the previous post about scanning with Auctioneer.  This is how you will gather historical data for your server to help you set buying and selling prices.  There are 2 types of scans.  If you have a slow computer or a slow internet connection you will need to do the slower page by page scan.  This will take several minutes. The button for this is found near the bottom of the AH interface.  See the screenshots below for the slow scan button.

     The faster scan is called a get all scan.  See the screenshot below:

     The get all scan button is the two blue arrows above.  When you click it you will get a warning that you may be disconnected if your computer or internet service is too slow.  If this happens to you, just use the slower scan type instead.  

     When you first start using Auctioneer you need to do scans at least twice a day for several days before the data begins to be reliable.  An example of how prices can be skewed would be if someone listed netherweave cloth for 500g per stack.  If you only did one or two scans, Auctioneer would be telling you that netherweave cloth is a very expensive item when you know that is not accurate.  When you scan over a matter of days it begins to learn that most of the prices are more around 8g per stack (at least on my server).  Also, Auctioneer can only scan items that are currently offered on the AH.  Items that are not as common may not be seen for weeks.

     So what are you waiting for? Go....scan....now!

Introduction to Auctioneer

     I'm going to start off by covering the Auctioneer addon. Much of what I do is based on information I gather using Auctioneer. I will caution you though that the addon is just a tool. You can't use it as the only piece of information when you are making buying and selling decisions. To make buckets full of gold you must understand the WoW economy and learn your particular server's economy.

     Auctioneer can be downloaded at http://www.auctioneeraddon.com. The addon is a free program. The developers appreciate donations and anything you can give helps them to keep making updates as the game changes and to pay for things such as server costs. Downloading Auctioneer will change how your Auction House interface will look. Below is a screenshot:

     You can see from the photo that Auctioneer has added extra tabs to the AH interface. Auctioneer will also change how your tooltip looks when you hover over an item. You can see this in the photo below.

     The data here will change depending on how you configure Auctioneer.  My example tooltip also shows additional data that I get from another addon, but that's a subject for another day.  Auctioneer is showing us the market price for the copper ore that my curser is hovering over.  The market price is obtained by doing scans to collect data over time.  The first time you scan with Auctioneer you are only getting data from one particular scan.  That is why it is important to do scanning at regular intervals to get more accurate data to make good buying and selling decisions. 

 

     The tooltip is also showing us how many auctions of copper ore it has seen.  This will help us to make a decision on the reliability of the data.  If the market price is based on only seeing one or two of the items, the price is not as reliable as if it has seen auctions for hundreds of the item. 

 

     Another item that can be shown on the tooltip is called the Appraiser price.  This is a price that Auctioneer is suggesting you sell the item for.  This price is based on undercutting the market price and this is frequently NOT the best way to make large amounts of gold. 

 

     The tooltip can also be configured to display averages over a specified time period which can be helpful in making decisions.  For example you can look at averages over 3 days, 7 days or 14 days.

 

     New tabs are added to your AH interface when you install Auctioneer.  I will deal with each of these in different posts but I will introduce them here.  The Search tab is something I use on a daily basis.  I can configure many different types of searches to find items that will enable me to buy low and sell high  The Beancounter tab is where you can track the history of auctions you've posted.  You'll be able to look back and see how much gold you've made (or lost) selling a particular item.  It will also help you to evaluate the "sweet spot" for pricing that item and the stack size that sells best.  The Appraiser tab is an auction posting interface that is a wonderful timesaver when posting many auction.

 

     The very first step in using Auctioneer is to begin scanning so that you can amass data to make buying decisions.  This will be the topic of my next post.

 

 

Rule the Auction House

My plan for this blog is to share what is working for me on my journey to being gold capped. On my main server I currently have 110,000 gold. I am on my way! I would have more gold, but I also enjoy playing all my characters and enjoy spending gold gearing them and advancing their professions.

"Playing the auction house" is truly a game within itself. It can be addicting at times. Once you learn your server's patterns and prices it can be fun to discover a great find on the AH (auction house) and flip it for big gold.

I use some addons to help track server prices and do other tasks that make managing stock easier. I will start off with posting about those since it is integral to my process. There are ways of doing things without addons, but I happen to rely on them. After I cover the bases I will delve deeper into making gold buying and selling off the AH, professions, taking advantage of patch changes and more. I hope you will either follow my posts or check back for updates.

Lets go make gold!