Guest Post: Bloodshrike

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

Please give a warm welcome to Bloodshrike who sent in the following guest post to Just My Two Copper!

If anyone else has a blog (or not) and would like to guest post as well please email me and I'll be more than happy to publish it.

Here's Bloodshrike who hosts the blog: "A Boy and His Death Rays"

“Carrot and Stick"– by Bloodshrike

Greetings all! This is my first guest post ever, prompted by Markco kindly offering to post my Auction House psychology theory.

Are you tired of seeing people undercut your Auction House postings into the ground? Tired of having your crafted items sell for LESS than the mats required to make them? Well, take heart, I have a few tips for you (well, one main one, really).

I noticed people's tendencies to undercut each other to the poverty level when I first started playing WOW over 2 years ago, and it hasn't really changed. These casual posters are just looking to make a few gold or silver, and the only way they know how to do that is to beat your price. That's it, they don't think of anything beyond that.

You, on the other hand, have tired of farming for stuff to sell on the AH, don't have time to do dailies, or only have a few minutes each day to devote to making gold to save up for your epic whatever.

Here's the secret. --- POST HIGH!

Whatever you're selling, send a few to an alt, and have them post the item for 48 hours at a very, very high price. Not a ridiculous price (like 10,000 gold) but definitely stretching it. For example, a blacksmith can make Arcanite Rods, which they tend to sell for ....... right around the price of 3 Arcanite bars, or even less. Where's the profit in that? I usually have my blacksmith make 2 extra rods for an alt to post for 48 hours at 160-180 gold, with my BS posting his at 125-130 gold for 24 hours. I come back the next day, and my BS usually has 300+ gold in his mailbox.

The same applies to glyphs and enchants. Minor Glyphs cost next to nothing to post, and enchants that you've put on scrolls don't have any posting cost whatsoever. 2 of my 3 enchanters are capped at 300 enchanting (they're both level 40), so Crusader/Lifestealing/Fiery/Icey are their bread and butter. If you make 5 Crusader enchants (I usually buy the Righteous Orbs, since I'm not high enough to do Strat) and have the alt post them for 200-230 gold, my enchanter will post theirs for 160-170 gold, and make a good profit, even though I'm buying all the mats off the AH.

I could go on, but each server is different, so you just have to get a sense for it. Trial and error, folks. I will say that with Inscription, it helps to have some knowledge of other classes abilities. For example, Minor Glyphs of Charge/Bloodlust/Battle sell well to Warriors (and my Warriors love them), but the Glyph of Thunder Clap (increases range by 2 yards) doesn’t do much for me, and didn’t do well on the AH.

Here’s why this works. By you keeping your high priced alt’s items in the AH, even when your low priced stuff gets sold out, those items will still be in there as a placeholder. Otherwise, when all your stuff gets sold, the first person to come along sets the price that other people undercut. So when other people come along to post their items, they’ll be undercutting a very high price, leaving you free to post a few more under them. I’ve been self-regulating the minor Glyph market on Demon Soul, Darrowmere, and Daggerspine using this strategy. When a glyph that’s extremely useful starts getting sold for only 5-6 gold, I start posting at 30-35 gold, and voila! the price starts trickling down from the 30 gold range. Like Markco said in his AH Psychology post, don’t flood the market. Post a few high, post a few normal, and check back in a few hours to collect your gold and repost.

Hope this was useful to you.
Bloodshrike