"I've been reading your site for awhile now and very much enjoy your work. I'm taking the slow route to riches and using Inscription to gold cap. I'm about halfway there now but I'm not in any real hurry. I want to share a simple technique I use and I'm sure some of my competitors use to discourage constant undercutting. I keep one of my well known posting alts logged in as much as possible with the AH NPC targetted. My competition have all friended that character I'm sure so when they log in they can see my alt apparantly posting auctions. They then might wait for me to log or they might just log out and try again later - thereby keeping my auctions as the first up on the AH. This doesn't work all the time of course but if it prevents me from having to re-post once or twice a day then I consider it worth it!"
-Mike
Awesome tip Mike! I cannot tell you how many times I've 'sniped' the auctions of my competition by posting at the exact minute after they finish posting and log off. It's so easy to add competition to your friends list and just wait until they all log or leave a major city. Since the vast majority of glyph sales are made until the next major competitor posts, it makes sense to jump in just as someone else finishes.
Awesome tip Mike! I cannot tell you how many times I've 'sniped' the auctions of my competition by posting at the exact minute after they finish posting and log off. It's so easy to add competition to your friends list and just wait until they all log or leave a major city. Since the vast majority of glyph sales are made until the next major competitor posts, it makes sense to jump in just as someone else finishes.
5 comments: on "Posting Glyphs with Competition"
Victor said... July 8, 2010 at 8:53 AM
Hi Marcko, I just stumbled upon your blog link at Wow profession forums, and gave it a quick look...
First of all, I have to say, i have been using the same techniques for Inscription you do. Gevlon's thesis is flat-out wrong. Auctioneer analyses long-term trends in trying to establish a glyph 'value', but glyphs have virtually no reasonable market value -- they have very low cost, but they extremely inelastic; i.e. some other glyph is not "nearly as good" as the glyph you really want.
Glyphs are not fungible, so the only constraints on glyph pricing are the materials costs (very low) and the "it's too expensive, I will look for a scribe on Trade channel" pricing level (in my experience, about 40-50g). This means that the market value can fluctuate wildly between the two abovementioned price constraints, so trying to sell them as "market price" is, frankly, stupid. between those two price levels (5g-50g), glyphs will sell no matter which price you post them at.
I also wanted to share a tip to use with certain botters. On my realm's Horde side, one character started botting glyphs in AH -- simply standing there all day long in the Silvermoon western AH, posting glyphs periodically, never moving a step. Of course I reported her, but what I found worked well was to take some low-sales period of time -- late morning in my case -- and do a few rapid cancel/report cycles. This bot wasn't picking up mail, just posting from stock, so the rapid cancel/repost cycles quickly drained her stash of glyphs, and by the time the sales bonanza came during late afternoon and evening, she had no glyphs left to post, though she was still standing in the same exact spot, never going AFK, never moving a step.
That being said, it seems that she has received some harsh words from a GM -- she has vanished for a few days, and then came back but stopped botting all day long. She still bots, but now only during the raid time.
Victor said... July 8, 2010 at 8:54 AM
I also wanted to share a tip to use with certain botters. On my realm, one character started botting glyphs in AH -- simply standing there all day long in the Silvermoon western AH, posting glyphs periodically, never moving a step. Of course I reported her, but what I found worked well was to take some low-sales period of time -- late morning in my case -- and do a few rapid cancel/report cycles. This bot wasn't picking up mail, just posting from stock, so the rapid cancel/repost cycles quickly drained her stash of glyphs, and by the time the sales bonanza came during late afternoon and evening, she had no glyphs left to post, though she was still standing in the same exact spot, never going AFK, never moving a step.
That being said, it seems that she has received some harsh words from a GM -- she has vanished for a few days, and then came back but stopped botting all day long. She still bots, but now only during the raid time.
Eaten by a Grue said... July 8, 2010 at 11:27 AM
I have to say, reading what you guys write about inscription makes it sound truly depressing. If whether your glyph sells or not depends on how long after you the next seller posts his stock, well, that is a sign of very weak demand.
And Victor, you do not address Gevlon's main argument, where he posits that with his 48 hour post cycle, he minimizes his own labor, and through deep undercutting he can force others to work harder for less gold, hopefully driving them out of the market. I do not know how successful this effort might be on any server, but that's the main idea.
Markco said... July 8, 2010 at 2:15 PM
Grue the problem is that players will simply undercut the 5 gold glyphs if they are not popular and if they are in the range of 30-60 gold then they will just buy the single glyph out and repost. Sure you get 5 gold for very little effort but you can make far more with less invested time/gold using qa3. If you post on 48 hour increments then you aren't capable of really competing in the glyph market, you're letting others decide the fate of your sales. Posting every 12 hours is at least going to make it worth your while depending on the timing.
Demand for glyphs is VERY depressing for those players who are used to the rest of the markets in this game (where demand is steadier and more predictable). If at 3:00 AM you need a new glyph of mortal strike then you are going to pay 60 gold for it and you won't need another for possibly months or ever.
Gevlon has already stated that his 5 gold strategy is not his actual strategy, just a way that he has theory crafted to take out qa3 users. The point of my post on sunday was to show it is nothing but a theory and not comparable to posting with qa3 profit/gold per hour wise.
Victor said... July 8, 2010 at 7:09 PM
As a way to take out QA users, that tactic is truly phail.
Consider the simple question. is his posting price below or above the QA user's threshold? if above, then the QA user will simply not waste his time crafting glyphs he doesn't post -- until Gevlon's glyphs sell out (and on popular glyphs, you can easily sell a dozen a day); and then the QA user owns the rest of the 48-hour window. if, on the other hand, Gevlon's price is above the threshold, then the QA user will still post, and still make his profit. Now mind you, it won't be big profit -- but it will be about the same as what Gevlon makes.
So in effect Gevlon's strategy ensures that his competitors will make either more money than him, or as little money as him. Gevlon's best-case outcome is comparable competitors' worst-case outcome. Way to sabotage yourself just to make a point...
It might work to drive away someone who is just dipping his toes into the market; against anyone who's been in this game for a while, artificial price deflation is an old and impotent trick. I have been through much worse price wars than what Gevlon proposes, and I am still here, making 5k/day from Inscription (my solution BTW has been to form a cartel with other scribes, but that's not the way of The Greedy Goblin I imagine).
His tactic can certainly frustrate the QA user, but it will accompish that by foisting upon Gevlon as big an inconvenience as the QA user will endure, or an even bigger one.
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