Define Your Niche and Know Your Market To Guarantee Long-term Profits

Posted by The Lost Meeple at 8:00 AM

Guest Post By Aliciana from Adventures in Warcraft

Image Credit: Nerf Faids

In any business professional marketers and economists will tell you that the best way to guarantee continuous long term profits is by defining both your niche (area of specialty)  and your target market (who you want to sell to), and then dominating that particular market.  As a person who has owned multiple businesses over the last two decades and who has also applied this principle to making gold in World of Warcraft, I can vouch for the fact that defining your niche, and continually operating within that niche,  is the absolute best way to make steady recurring profit. 

The easiest way to begin to define your niche is to start with whatever professions you are leveling. What materials do you gather or what items do you craft that are consistently in high demand?  Are there any other uses for a particular crafted item? You may also want to look at items that drop consistently while you are questing? Once you have the above figured out, then you can begin to build up your base inventory which consists of staple items that sell consistently at a guaranteed price point over the long term.

A great example of staple items are bags. Every single person in the game needs bags to carry their materials and inventory and each crafting profession has several bags that they can learn to craft. However, some bags sell better than others so as a seller you may have to monitor the Auction House for a short time and go through a little bit of trial and error to figure out which ones sell the best on your server. 

Once you have your base inventory of staple items established, then you can add additional items to further increase profits. Just remember that while specialty or trending items may sell for a lot more gold, their sales and price points are typically sporadic. That is why it is imperative to have this base of consistently selling items.   

The next step is to determine your target market. Figure out who is going to buy these items and why? It is also beneficial to know when your target market is most likely to purchase the items. For example, if you decide to focus on your Alchemy profession your niche and target market might look something like this:

• What = flasks and potion
• Who = players who are running instances and raiding.
• Why = the flasks provide useful buffs that increase their stats.
• When = what nights are the most popular raid nights on your server?

By focusing on a specific niche making gold becomes much easier because the seller becomes an expert who:

1. Knows the market value of materials and when to stock up on underpriced materials. 
2. Is familiar with all the items in their chosen niche(s) and are able to immediately recognize, snatch up, and relist items that are listed for way under market value. 
3. Knows  the best times and prices to purchase needed materials and to list items
4. Knows the best price points at which to list their items for a quick sale
5. Knows any alternate use of every item within their niche market (ie: required to craft other items, needed to complete quests and achievements, etc.) 
6. Anticipates the current and future needs of their target market by monitoring any related patch changes such as drop rates, new recipes, new items, stat changes, etc.
7. Knows how to recognize fads and trends and when to move on to another market

Expert sellers simply take this concept and multiply it over multiple niches.  This allows the seller to increase their base inventory, and add additional items to their inventory, thus increasing their profits. 

So what niches could you master?

Bio: Aliciana (better known as Ali by her friends) plays World of Warcraft on the Malfurion, Kael’thas, and Cenarius servers (US) and is a member of the guild NoRestFortheWicked. She is also a blogger who enjoys writing about her Adventures in Warcraft and sharing tips, tricks, and discoveries that feed her WOW addiction.