22 Steps to Using Auctioneer Correctly

There’s a lot of information to sort through when bidding, buying, or posting items on the auction house. In fact it’s too much for any one person to realistically accomplish on his/her own. How can you possibly keep track of literally thousands of item prices as well as predict their values at any given time? Well thankfully there’s a little piece of freeware called auctioneer.

Go to google.com and search for auctioneer, then download the safest working version (not beta). Install the addon and place it in your World of warcraft/Interface/AddOns folder.

Now make sure to exit wow if you have it running so that it will read the new addon into its addon options at start up. Enter your information and select the character who will use auctioneer. At the bottom of the screen is the addons button, click it and make sure that Auctioneer is set up for at least this toon. Enter the world and head to your nearest auction house. I recommend thunder bluff because you can remain mounted from mail box to auction house and they are insanely close. Also the guild bank is in the open if your character has one for easy storage.

1. Open the auction house tab.
2. Type /aadv getall.
3. When the scan completes, mouse over the hidden set of icons just under your mini-map.
4. Select the second option from the right which looks like a magnifying glass. It’s the
Appraiser tab.
5. Select Vendor from search options
6. Put 50 silver as your minimum profit.
7. Using the purchase option, spam it until every item disappears from the list. These items will always net you money, regardless of whether you vendor or resell them.
8. Accept purchase for each and when you are done confirm them.
9. Select the Resale from searches options
10. Put 50 silver as your minimum profit.
11. Sort by quality of items so that white items show up first and select purchase for each item that looks like a good deal. Compare the bid/buyout price with what you think the item will sell for. Be mindful of ridiculously priced items which can trick auctioneer. You can look below the list of items to compare your currently selected item with all others currently on the auction house.
12. If you wish you can do the other quality items as well.
13. Select done.
14. Go to your mail box.
15. DO NOT PASS GO. DO NOT COLLECT 200 GOLD. Just kidding :)-
15. Empty the mail box into your bags.
16. Go to the auction house. Open the auction house tab.
17. Select Appraiser at the far bottom right of your normal auction house tab.
18. For each item, use the first horizontal bar to select the size of each stack to sell. If the item is not that susceptible to flooding you can leave the total number to sell at ALL. If the item is susceptible to flooding, such as rare twink items, then reduce the number you wish to sell at any one time.
19. Select the enable batch post check box.
20. Select the enable market pricing check box.
21. When you have finished every item, shift+control+alt click on the Batch Post button.
22. When all the auctions are finished posting you can close all tabs and you’re done!
Next time you log in simply empty your mailbox and then head over to the auction house to repeat the process. As you do this you will most likely gather far more items than you sell, so making money may take a few days but the gold will come in exponentially as your total number of auctions increases. You should aim to make half your money back the first day. By the second day you should have most if not all of it back and by the third day you should be easily making money. As you build up and get to the point where you are posting a thousand or more auctions a day you will be handling as much as five thousand gold per day on the auction house.

It doesn’t get easier and now you have the step by step guide to become rich in wow. Combine auctioneer with my farming strategies and you've found the best way to make gold in wow.

If you need further assistance with updated walkthroughs for auctioneer in cataclysm then consider looking into purchasing the 20k Leveling gold guide. It's written for players of all skill levels and one of the best parts is a thorough walkthrough for all aspects of the auctioneer addon in cataclysm.
Let me know in the comments section if any part of this guide is confusing or requires more explanation!

76 comments: on "22 Steps to Using Auctioneer Correctly"

  1. Do you know a mailbox addon that lets you take everything out at once? That way I don't have to click manually for all 100 items.

  2. There are tons of mods like this out currently. Just make sure that they are WOTLK compatible. Go to cursegaming.com and search for mailbox addon.

  3. Your auctioneer guide is a little out of date. I'd suggest you update to the latest version as the UI has changed quite a bit.

  4. What would you recommend/expect a minimum amount of gold would be to get started to have this still be worth while?

  5. FalseMyrmidon: I am running the most up-to-date version of auctioneer. Could you be more specific as to what made you think that?

    Anonymous: My level 17 on a server by himself started with 5 gold and made 100 gold in two days, so any amount is good enough.

  6. Auctioneer updated about 1-2 weeks ago and added a search tab to the actual auction page, perhaps that's it. No need to open the magnifying glass window anymore.

    For number 10, what do you find sells well? There's so many whites listed and half of them are pretty much useless or bought once every blue moon.

  7. This comment has been removed by the author.
  8. I suppose your version isn't necessarily out of date but you're going about things a little bit more difficult than necessary:

    /aadv getall is no longer necessary as there's a button for it on the AH interface now.

    The different Searches also have a tab present on the AH interface at the bottom now (so going through that thing on the right side of the screen is unnecessary). Only reason you would need to use those pop out icons on the right side is if you want to use some of those features away from the auction house (for example if you're waiting for a raid to start you can open up the searcher and tag things to buy when you get back to AH, only problem is you're going off old information then and it's quite likely you'll get some errors about already being outbid when you try to go put them in).

  9. I'm not sure what might be out of date without looking at my interface, but I know one thing added recently is the "fast forward" button that does the /aadv getall command from the UI.

  10. Thank you all for your helpful comments, I will have to update this guide when I have time.

    Thanks again!

  11. Markco, you might like to take a look at this gold guide. I have a copy and I think its one of the best, it has quite a few unique things other gold guides do not address.

    http://www.valkorsgoldmakingguide.com/

  12. Sure thing, I have some real exciting stuff going on with the website but I will put it on the to-do-list. If you'd like, you could email me.

  13. when you are looking for a good deal what kind of items would you be looking for? at this time i have only been buying herbs, ore, meet, cloth, enchanting mats, leather, eternal. i have not been buying armor or patterns because i am afraid it will not sell. after looking for all the good deals i can find i usually only have 100-200 bids on times and 150-250 up for sail i am making 200-500g a day in profit? am i doing something wrong should i be buying all good deals i see event if they will not sell for a long time?

  14. I buy blue armor/weapons that I know are best for that X9 chategory for twinking, or items that I know certain classes will want for leveling. For instance, rogues love one-handers with procs so even if the item is only level 44 and not the best in the 49 bracket I know that it will still sell. It is however becoming increasingly more difficult to sell weapons and shoulders for leveling characters because of the wintersgrasp items. Epics are your best bet for weapons/shoulders and blues for all other slots. You should also look into buying bolts of cloth, perfect gems, uncut blue gems to cut and resell, artic furs, pearls, ore->bars, decks, leg enchants, belt buckles, and vanity pets to name a few good sellers. These are items you can buy and resell even if just for 5-10 gold because of how fast they sell. Hope that helps!

  15. I just looked up my mailbox and took out a total amount of 1000 gold just over one night.
    I spent about 200 gold for reselling and vendoring.

    Thanks to you and your great guides!

  16. Thanks for this guide! I've had auctioneer for quite a while but there are so many tabs and stuff that I never bothered to learn how to really use it. I recently bought my alt epic flying so I only had about 300 gold to start with. I made about 50 gold the first night, and that was with people outbidding me on most of the items. I'm hoping to take in about 300g from the auctions I've posted today, not counting the ones I bid on. I've always heard that playing the auction house is a great way to make money but I never really knew how to do it, and this was a good way to get me started.

  17. I'm definately going to make another version of this, because my auctioneer is outdated as of two weeks ago apparently. Thanks for all the responses, very helpful.

  18. Thanx for contributing to f*cking up the already messed up WoW economies. For new players, it's now insanely difficult to get anything (lvl 30 greens for 30g+???) and the only way for them now to be able to get some stuff is also follow these guides (and thus become a part of the problem).

    Thnx a lot dude...

  19. Ooooo A comedian is in town.

    *Grabs Popcorn*

    This should be fun! He's pretty good :)

  20. I studied this post for a few hours now to figure out what im doing and what not.. it's been 2-3 days since i read it and i seem to have lost more money then i sarted with.... i started with 1,100g and now im down to 977g... i've been doing all the right things but there seems to be no profit coming in... want to help me figure out what im oing wrong?

  21. It can take time, also if you are getting money but constantly reinvesting it (a good thing) it will take a few days before the money starts to come in full swing.

  22. So, tried to follow your directions on my server (Low Population), but it seems to me that I'm missing out something.

    Maybe I've just got to be patient and push forward.

    Just one question: when I use the search tab (Resale), Auctioneer gives me the choice between different "price evaluation options"....ex. "Appraiser", "Market", "Simple"...which one should I choose? I always use "Market" but don't know if this is the right choice.

    Any suggestion?

  23. I personally use market.

  24. "8. Accept purchase for each and when you are done confirm them."

    Is the buyout and bid boxes checked? If so, then most of the items you are going to be bidding on. So, basically most of your deals are coming in from bids? Is this correct? I have done that and out of about 50-100 items, I win only 10-20.

  25. @Goblin vs Gnome
    You must have a lot of competition. I get the same thing. Lately I've switched to filtering my Resale searches for 12 hours. And my first scan of the night sometimes is for only 2 hours, since I'll be doing a scan at the end of the night for 12 hours.

    You get less stuff, but win more often.

  26. I must be doing something wrong because I started out with 400 gold and I've lost about half my gold in about a week.

  27. When using the search filter. I put in 50 silver profit and it shows me a handful of items. The problem is most of these items would not net me 50 silver profit. I would probably loose money on them. I know this because an item that was selling for 45 gold is already inflated.

    Also, you state that you can either sell to a vendor or relist the items. If I were to vendor the items I would loose money. Thankfully I checked the items first. Example would be the item selling for 45 gold. The vendor price was only a few silver.

  28. The search for vendor and search for resale are two entirely different things. That's good that you are double checking your numbers though, that will save you from getting scanned.

    Are you sure you're using the guide correctly? Maybe read through it slowly and see if there was an error somewhere.

  29. Hey Marcko, great guide; really helped as a baseline for setting up auctioneer for me. My only concern is I have ran the vendor function multiple times and have come up with 0 results multiple times. I'm curious towards if this is a trend I should expect to see or if I my chance of snagging a 'vendor' item is once in a blue moon? The way you state it in the post, makes it seem as if I should be expected multiple items listed every time. I'm searching with the basic settings that Auctioneer starts with, as well as putting the min profit at 50s as well as at 25s and both to no avail. If i'm doing something wrong let me know! Thanks again for such a fantastic guide.

  30. Its possible that everyone on your server is smart not to put things up that low or someone else is doing the same thing.

  31. The main problem is that you're not the only one using Auctioneer and the vendor function. My server is a high populated one and I've yet to buy any vendor items from AH in my last 4 weeks of regular scanning.

  32. 17. Select Appraiser at the far bottom right of your normal auction house tab.
    18. For each item, use the first horizontal bar to select the size of each stack to sell. If the item is not that susceptible to flooding you can leave the total number to sell at ALL. If the item is susceptible to flooding, such as rare twink items, then reduce the number you wish to sell at any one time.
    19. Select the enable batch post check box.
    20. Select the enable market pricing check box.
    21. When you have finished every item, shift+control+alt click on the Batch Post button.
    22. When all the auctions are finished posting you can close all tabs and you’re done!


    This part I don't quite understand mate.

    I've bee using Aucionneer and AH for some weeks now, but this really seems nice.

    I got the latest version nd this part I don't understand.

    I don't have to explain much further, I don't understand any steps.
    Probably someting got removed / Changed? (Batch Post button)
    Please help me out ;)
    Thanks

  33. These 22 steps are slightly outdated and I have only updated them in my gold guide.

    If I'm remembering correctly the batch post button is at the bottom left of the auctioneer addon while under the appraiser tab. It will post every item you've specified as being a batch post item (via check box).

  34. While searching for vendor resell profit is very easy to do, working the AH for resale is NOT as easy as your list makes it sound. The fluxuation in prices from day to day make many of these items very competitive to sell. For instance, even searching resale for a 50s profit, Auctioneer is only basing the data on what it sees. It's very difficult to sift through items that 30 other people are selling at the same time. Even for a 50 silver profit, your item may not sell because its too competitive. From what I can see there is no way to set Auctioneer to tell you to filter auctions for resale that only a few other people are selling. Correct me if I'm wrong. Any time I search for resale, I end up with items at anywhere from 50-40% below market, which many other people are also selling 50-40% below market, which does not guarantee my item will sell at all. Sometimes I feel as though working Auctioneeer for resale is not worth the time invested.

  35. Also, how do you ensure your newly acquired resale items that you just bought, are going to sell for more than you just bought them for when you use the "Appraisal" tab? Do you set the sale to "Market Price"? Isn't there a chance, when dealing with hundreds of items at once, that you might turn around and resell that item for just a few more silver than you just bought it for?

  36. You can set your minimum profit to whatever you would like. By choosing items that are seen very frequently you avoid much of the risks involved with believing auctioneer's market values.

  37. Ok here is what I am seeing on my server Drak'Tharon. I scan, then go to Searches in Auctioneer. Choose the Vendor searcher. Min. profit set to 50 silver.

    Get a handful of results, nothing great. So for example some green comes up called Prized Handscythe of strength. Profit says 2 gold 51 silver and 88 copper. Buyout is 15 gold even. Where is the profit here? It sells to the vendor for 8 gold 81 silver and 88 copper.

    So looking closely it looks like it is not the buyout that nets you the profit but the current bid? The current bid is 6 gold 30 silver and 00 copper. So if I bid 8 gold 82 silver and 0 copper, and win that would net me the 50 silver profit.

    Where is the profit gained from the profit column that says profit 2 gold 51 silver and 88 copper for this particular item example?

  38. If you were to choose purchase, then you'd bid instead of buying.

  39. Hello. It's been weeks since the last comment, but I'll ask anyway.

    Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? I've set the minimum profit to 50S and buy some items that would net me that amount of profit, but when I get them from the mail and resell them, Auctioneer is telling me to sell them at a slightly lower amount that the amount at which I bought them ("Undercut Competition" checked).

    For example, I bought a Malachite at 1 gold. When I resell it, (at the post tab) Auctioneer tells me to sell it at around 90 silver. I have to check every time Bean Counter to make sure I'm not losing money.

  40. When you purchased the item it was for below average market value. When you selected 'undercut competition' whatever was on the auction house at that moment determined your price.

  41. Oh, I see. Thanks.

  42. there's a dude who owns a youtube account called Wowauction. Look him up he has a video about him starting a new character, getting him to level 5 (so he has at least 3 silver) and then runs the character (on an entirely random new server he chose) to stormwind and sold all his gear to get an extra silver. He used auctioneer and got that character 1k gold from 5 silver in 10 days!!! Thats a HUGE jump!

  43. To those who said that money making is only for the very rich or for ppl like us who contribute to the ridiculous prices. This is kind of wrong. I knew how to make tons of money before. In vanilla wow. I stopped for a while, and rerolled on a new server with a new toon with no money. Same as you. I levelled normally and ended up with so much money. My brother did the same and is like 300g at lv 25 or something. And he didnt even play the AH.

    The trick is. If you have no capital and is levelling a new character. Get at least 1 gathering skill. Or best, 2. Skinning + herbing or mining.

    2. Sell everything. Get big bags to carry your stuff. Not overpriced ones. 12 or 14 slotters depending on prices. Vendor greys and AH every single other item which has value. White weapons and gear are worthless. While meat, gems, scrolls, ores, herbs, cloth are worth a ton of money becos of rich guys trying to powerlevel their crafting professions.

    Just try to AH everything. After a while, you will easily know which item sells and which doesnt.

    Create a lv 1 bank/AH alt so you just mail every damn thing to him/her. You are low level and you have no bag space. But.. the mailbox has unlimited space and stores stuff for 30 days for a minimum fee, or none if you use COD.

    Use that alt to AH stuff and scan your AH so your prices are up-to-date.

    Actually there are very profitable niches for low level chars that I only discovered while levelling my 2nd guy to 80. It is almost as blatant as buying A from the vendor and selling it at 300 - 400% of the price I paid in the AH and it gets snapped up within hrs.

  44. I just tried this method.. but how do I avoid auctioneer posting my items at around 100%, when there are items on the AH at 15%.. my 100% items will never sell.

  45. i dont get it how do you do it? please can u help contact me via email or msn?

    sylvanna_wow@hotmail.com

  46. Grant - You shouldn't hope to compete against people selling at 15%. Simply save the items until the market has gone back to normal.

    Either that or your auctioneer data is not correct, and is massively over valuing an item either from outliers or too few scans.

  47. Hi. Honestly, I'm a noob who never has any money. So I'm trying to change that. I made about 2k gold mining for a few days and decided to try this. I completely understand the vendor part but I find the resell part confusing. After buying as many whites from the list as I can afford, I put them up for auction and they are frequently being sold for less then i buy them for. Maybe I'm too slow? Am i doing something wrong? Any advise would be appreciated.

  48. Nice ongoing thread. I have been doing this for years. Couple of tips.. Do you know someone who plays your server? do they run the AH? get there LUA files because they will have long running records of prices. Whenever I go to a new server I run a scan at least twice a day for a week before I start buying and selling, Remember on the weekend the market gets screwed up either flooded or selling like crazy. If you work/school, log on before you leave and hit scan, let your character disconnect by themselves after the scan if you dont have time to watch. then when you get home, log on at least just top scan even if your not going to play. everyime you walk by the AH you can use the /getall scan to update. Key to this is having ACCURATE market data. You cant scan once and expect to see a trend. Also check your minimum discount modifiers for vendor it should be set to 0%.

  49. Just t add, pay attention to how many pages of auctions there are at a given time and it is a good indicator of GENERAL market condition, my server runs around 190-210 pages right now its at 312 pages so there is a ton of people fighting and undercutting, im about to start buying probably making a 4x minimum profit on stuff this weekend. Juast remember if your buying it super cheap right now you cant repost it 5 minutes later and expect to undercut for a profit..

  50. Those "hidden icons" under the mini-map must really be hidden, because they're not there. Is there another way to get to the Appraiser tab that you're referring to? Because the Appraiser tab that shows up when I talk to the auction house dude doesn't have "Search Option" there at all.

  51. Nevermind, I found it. It's not the Appraiser tab, it's the Search tab.

  52. data entry india through an office everyday, it can be time consuming and tiring to take care of all the form processing. Instead of relying on human help, you can quickly accomplish your task with forms processing automation. Pages and pages of written or computerized data and are converted into an electronic form that is convenient for use with forms processing.

  53. hey Markco, Im trying to use these tips but first of all there isnt even an appraiser tab on the hidden icons below the minimap! All your tips doesnt seem to be right now, maybe due new versions of auctioneer? Please update your tips because I fear the tips are outdated, thanks again for great guides and blogs

  54. wow this has been very helpful for me a raider with barely any money all the time thanks alot.

  55. I'm having issues overall with my server in that the economy is complete shit and people like to randomly unload their inventory into the AH at a 5% price rather then the expected ~100%. This wouldn't be so much of a problem except that I'm just starting out, so I don't have a lot of money.

    I did your 22 steps and there was absolutely nothing from the vendor search (though this was one time, there might be at other times) and the resale section was difficult to judge since a lot of the items that it suggested weren't gauranteed to sell at all. Anytime I post anything, there are ALWAYS at least 3 people that mass post undercuts and make it impossible for my auctions to sell. What do I do?

  56. I'm in a similar boat with Daniel, the last post. My particular problem lies with this step:

    "11. Sort by quality of items so that white items show up first and select purchase for each item that looks like a good deal. Compare the bid/buyout price with what you think the item will sell for. "

    when i do this scan, even at 50s min profit i get tons and tons of items. i sorted by white quality, and then... there's just tons of lots of different items. the "profit" column doesn't make much sense, since it seems to just be picking a higher market price. should we be bidding? or select the option to just buyout? how do we know which items will resell and for what price? if you could help me with that step i'd appreciate it. the rest of the guide makes sense.

  57. Vince - if you're using auctioneer correctly in the resale search it should have a suggestion in the column of which to do, bid or buy. If you want I can send you a screenshot illustrating such. The hardest part for me is determining whether or not the item will sell or if it is listed very cheap just because people want to get rid of it. Then, if I buy it, I'll be stuck with it for a long time...

  58. Hey! Great tips and all, but it doesnt seem to work, started 3 days ago with 800g. I only sell a few items and is on 100-200'ish, just enough to repost. It doesn't seem to work for me. Do you have any tips, or any idea what I am doing wrong, and how I should correct it if I am ?

  59. Seems to be working for me. Started a week ago with 350g. Am now 7 days in and have over 1000 auctions up worth approx over 4,000g (if they sell). Looking forward now to reaping the rewards...cash is already starting to roll in...
    Thanks!

  60. I use postal get all my mail out at once. Now how do I determine what stuff is in my bags to vendor and what to re-post on the AH?

  61. I hate to be a debbie downe here, but I am very dubious and to be honest scared to use this method. I have tried it before, going off of what auctioneer says are good deals, only to lose THOUSANDS of gold.

    For instance, I do a getall scan, go to resale, and buy/bid of the items it says to.

    First of all, half the time, I'll see glyphs selling for 1g, the rest are selling for like 20g. Seems like a profitable investment. Only to find out, auctioneer is wrong, and the people who have 30+ glyphs up for 20g just have them there to get you to buyout all the lower priced ones, which you can't resell. Half the glyphs, I feel like, are garbage anyways, IE druid Glyph of Claw.

    Apart from that, half the time I buy something auctioneer says to buy, and then Appraiser tells me to relist it for less than a I bought it for? That's terrible.

    Sorry if this is negative, but I tried this method before and lost probably well over 2.5k gold because I put my faith in a stupid addon that didn't work.

    If I'm wrong, I'd love to be corrected, but as for now I feel like all these "guides" are just here to screw over people and make the people who know how to trick the addon more money.

  62. Brandt read some more up on it, you seem to not be able to see the numerous people stating how great the addon is. After doing that, try to figure out what it is you are doing wrong.

  63. David, you can tell by mousing over and looking at the brown text towards the bottom of the popup.

  64. In step 11 you say, "You can look below the list of items to compare your currently selected item with all others currently on the auction house." By that do you mean there's a way to compare the price of the item you've selected with other listings of the same item that are currently up? And if so, where do you look? I couldn't find it "below the list of items," so I've just resorted to manually checking every item before I buy it to see what other prices are listed. But if there's an easier way to do it that would be much appreciated.

  65. I often go to Auction coz I hate reposting unsold items and memorizing the 22 steps in using Auctioneer. However, when I do try it, I always excited every morning on how much collection I have.

  66. I personnally found this guide very useful, I'm still leraning the ropes on auctioneer. so this guide helped point out useful tips. i have just bought about 4k worth of stuff plus bidded on a load of cheap items i know will sell. we'll see tomorrow if its going to make a difference to my G per day.

  67. hi i was wondering if you could update this guide for the most recent version of Auctioneer? otherwise love your work

  68. The cataclysm gold guide I am writing as updates to 20kleveling has the newest version of auctioneer as well as a revised 22steps with much more detail and graphics. Check it out at 20kleveling.com

  69. If you press ctrl+alt+shift the 'Purchase' button turns into 'Purchase All' so you don't have to spam it

  70. Looks like they updated auctioneer. There is a tab for the Appraiser on the bottom of the auctioneer tab and none of the min profit stuff is in the new configure. I'm sure you already know, but just making sure.

  71. Two things to help the people having problems. First, make sure you have multiple scans of your ah before doing this. At least a week's worth, as posted above. Second, if you switch Auctioneer to have it use the Standard Deviation, stdDev, pricing method. This is a more conservative method that eliminates wild fluctuations in price. I generally use market price, but have switched to this if I find I'm getting burned during the current cycles. Another good tip, if you hold the shift key down while mousing over an item in the ah listing, Auctioneer will give you all of the pricing models it has. You can use this to keep your bidding conservative (use the pricing from the model with the lowest price to know what the item will really sell for.)

  72. I dont think this work in Cata. I tryed it yesterday and almost non of the things sold... Can it be because of our server or???

  73. Thanks for posting the 22 steps to using Auctioneer correctly.I really appreciate this.I might follow the following step sooner.Keep it up!

  74. @Anonymous the add-on is called "postal"

  75. first of all tyvm Markco for this great blog+forum :")

    second, i'm trying to understand the "resale" function and how does work but no luck :s

    if you can explain it like explain something to 8 yo kid that'll be awesome :") ty again :")

  76. Great guide. I doubled my gold in the first few hours with 100+ auctions still up. I started with just 50g.

Post a Comment

Insider Gold Strategies

Enter Your Name & Email Below to Receive My 7 Theories On Making Gold... Guaranteed to Put You Ahead of 99% of Players Out There

 

 

Recent Comments

Subscribe to recent comments

Labels

Blog Archive

Featured On:

Just My Two Copper - WoW Gold GuideJust My Two Copper - WoW Gold Guide