Cataclysm Preparation - "Lessons Learned"

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

You have one month to brush up on your Auction House skills in preparation for the cataclysm expansion, so I thought that a carnival about learning from past mistakes would be beneficial to you and help you prepare. Let's see how the following collection of 18 blog writers answered the question for November's carnival: "What lessons have you learned from while playing the auction house?"

I would like to remind you that all comments written on the blogs of those who submitted articles for today are greatly appreciated by both myself and the authors themselves. Articles are listed in the order that they were submitted. Have fun!

Two Gold, One Auction House

"You see all I was doing was scanning the AH and buying what Auctioneer said I could make a profit off of for resale. If it said all those green armor and weapons could be flipped for a profit, who was I to argue? I bought them and relisted them for whatever it told me to list them at. I wasn’t using the real power behind Auctioneer and I was trusting that Auctioneer knew all and would bring me piles of gold."

Cold's Gold Factory

"Auction house gold making can quickly be derailed by incorrect pricing. It only takes a couple of times posting items for the wrong price to learn a quick lesson."

Srs Business

"Back in March I made what should have been the deal of a lifetime, I bought out a TON of items for cheap. Literally stacks of gems, eternals, ores, multiple Argent Tournament pets, etc and all for a pittance. And the result? A 3 day Suspension…"

Follow the Gold Road

"I’ve been a serious AH Raider since February this year, although I’ve dabbled here and there throughout my life in Azeroth.  If I knew when I started what I do now, I’d surely be a WoW millionaire."

Miss Mediocre

"The first mistake I made in regards to the Auction House, was avoiding it! It’s unfortunate to think about the amount of gold I missed out on during my first few years of playing WoW by vendoring everything I didn’t need. I’m not sure what exactly kept me from giving the Auction House a try, it seemed like something that was beyond me (I was a casual and very noobie player then), and it seemed like it just took too much time."

European Games Radar

"'I don't have any of the recipes/designs/plans' - This put me off going into Jewel crafting for a while. I figured that I wouldn't be able to compete with the guys who had all the cuts and that they would instantly try to take me out."

Evangelism

"The biggest blunder was to simply craft a batch of goods from the materials that I had and to flood the auction house by listing them all at once. We're not talking small batches of 2-5 here, I'm talking Wal-mart sized batches of anything upto 50, seriously looking back I feel a complete nubcake."

Acadia's Gold

"What we truly want is for you to keep the gold you have, to prevent you from making the mistakes that we have, and to help you work through the ones that you will make yourselves. We all learn from these mistakes, and these mistakes define us and make us better for it."

High Latency Life

"What Mistakes Have You Learned From While Playing the AH!

• Trying to buy a market.
• Not knowing the market.
• Trying to go for the big score, instead of a bunch of little scores.
• Trying to sell Epic Crafted Items let’s say like Bracers close to an Expansion.
• Not using Auctioneer to its full potential.
• Not looking forward to the future."

*on a side note, threerivs missed the last carnival due to a hospital visit so please comment on his blog and wish him well. He's a great guy.

Zug Gaming

"In my early days of AH farming I had always eye the big money items. Back in classic when a big epic item investment was 1 – 1.5K gold. There were big profit margins and I wanted in. So, after watching the market for what felt like a long time (in reality only a couple of weeks) I decided to make a go on a few different epic items. I spent nearly 2,000 gold on 2 weapons, which I thought were undervalued by around 50% for each item."

Three Silver Tips

"People commonly mistake gold making tips for secrets."

Quaaid

"Cheesy Sinatra reference aside, I'm less concerned with providing a few anecdotes regarding my tactical mistakes than with trying to convey the larger philosophical errors that befall me (and likely many others).  So with that in mind I've compiled my top five pitfalls that every auctioneer has likely experienced at some point."


Necka Unrivaled


"The biggest mistake I ever made was believing that the lowest price is always the best. No No No. It is not. Just like people who say, “buy low sell high”. That works in the real world, it doesn’t work in World of Warcarft. In fact this is where the line is drawn."

Gnomish Coin

"Oh boy.. what mistakes...? A whole bunch of mistakes... from learning how to control markets, to learning how to NOT spend too much and have little to no income come back.... I've learned so much, and to be honest, I haven't made too many mistakes, but the ones I have made have cost me quite a bit."

Capped By Cata

"The biggest problem with artificially raising a price, without a rise in demand is it's nearly impossible to choke off the supply."

Warcraft Rebirth

"Two days after 4.0.1 hit I'd only made 20k in sales and was still in the red. The day-one reports of 50k, 150k, 300k profits by some of my fellow peers was like adding salt to the wound. What had I done wrong?"

Fat Jack Gold

"Probably my biggest mistake to date when playing the Auction House in World of Warcraft has been following the advice I had found on several gold making blogs, and meandering over to the vendor in Dalaran to buy the BOE "Tome of Polymorph - Black Cat". This sounded like a great idea because..."

Gold Reaping Business

I missed a link to Vayaz's blog, here it is and I apologize for not having this included in the post originally.

Badspler
 
Another that slipped through my fingers and it's a good story to boot.

Thanks for Reading, But There's More...

Be sure to also check out all the other great carnivals we've had here at JMTC when you're finished reading these awesome submissions! You can also suggest in the comments here what you'd like the next carnival topic to be. Keep in mind that Dec 2nd will be five days before cataclysm is released. How's your cataclysm preparation going?