First of all, I’d like to say I’m very grateful for all the sudden participation this blog has received. I’m reading all your comments attentively and I’m excited about the bright future of all this 
Now, down to business. I’m posting this based on my past observations of seller behavior in Trade Chat and the Auction House. It can be a mistake to categorize anything and everything one comes across but it can also be immensely useful to refining our understanding of how things work. All World of Warcraft toons have a real person behind them (most of the time) that will act in a certain way when it comes to the marketplace.
This is a rather long post, so get comfy.
1. The impatient one:
Note that I am not trying to pass judgment on this type of person. Everyone has their different selling style and this one just aims for the fastest transaction possible.
Desrciption:
This is the guy/girl that sits down at his computer for 2-3 hours and farms 2 stacks of Primal Water. They then hearth back to Ironforge or Orgrimmar and type “/2 WTS [Primal Water]x40 720g” when the current selling price in the AH is 22g per. Now 720g for 40 means hes selling at 18g a pop, 4g under the AH, because they want to sell them all and sell them fast.
Reaction:
Now here’s what you do: “/w impatientone i’m interested.” Invite them to join your party, meet up and then you say “/p hey i’ll take them all off your hands if you give me a bulk discount, lets say 700g and call it a deal.” He will most likely accept because this way, he doesn’t have to bum around in trade chat, selling them off one by one. If you’re really ballsy, you can ask for an even deeper discount, maybe 680 or 675. Don’t get too greedy though because this person just spend 3 hours farming and doesn’t want to feel like hes being cheated.
Well, you can probably guess the next step. You turn them right around to the AH for slightly less than the current price, but don’t put them all up at once or the price will crash and you’ll end up losing gold in deposits as 36 primals get sent back to your mailbox. The key here is to be patient, turning your seller’s weakness into a strength. Yes, the price will fluctuate and it might be a few days before you see the entire fruits of your labor (assuming an average sell price of 22g): [(22gx40)x0.95]-700g= 136g. Hey, patience pays off!
2. The one who will make you feel like you failed middle school arithmetic:
Description:
Watch out here, because you could fall into a tarp. This is the one trying to sell a Dawnstone for 46g when its going for around 47g in the AH (or even worse, for more than the current AH price). Hold on a second. There are two things we must always keep in mind. What’s 47g minus a 5% cut? 44.65g. And what additional cost are we incurring by listing on the AH? Risk. Deposit risk and market fluctuation risk. On the other hand, if you need that item for something else, it would actually be a good idea to buy it.
Reaction:
Ignore this guy (not as in add him to your ignore list, cmon I’m not that ruthless, I swear!). This one isn’t going to make you any money and he’s not worth your time. The offers in trade chat have to be even better deals than the AH ones, because of those two risks I mentioned above.
3. The AH n00b:
Description:
I really love this one, he makes me a good chunk of change every once in a while. You’ll be doing your daily AH browsing and come across this: Mote of Fire x5 4g75s. Yes, really. You will come across it every so often. Or maybe it’ll be Large Prismatic Shard x3 32g50s. It might even be Primal Mooncloth x2 50g. Whether the seller here was intoxicated when he put those up, plain clueless or just very generous is irrelevant. What matters here is how fast you can press BUYOUT.
Reaction:
Smile. Even if you don’t have another 5 Motes of Fire to make the Primal, don’t worry. Even if you have to use those shards to enchant a new piece of gear you just got, that’s okay. You just got value for your gold. And because of that, you come out ahead.
4. The tradeskill donator:
Description:
You’re watching the trade channel, as usual, for the deal of the day, trying to see clearly through all the tradeskill spamming. And suddenly, you see a Tailor, or a Jewelcrafter, etc start to offer their high level services for free. You don’t really understand why they would do this but why not take advantage of it? Well that’s exactly what you do. And without getting angry that they’re ruining your business (if you share a tradeskill with them)- they’ll either leave eventually or realize how much gold they’re forgoing and change their Samaritan ways.
Reaction:
Whisper them with what you want done. This could be a jewel cut (Living Ruby to Runed Living Ruby), a void shatter (Void Crystal to 2x Large Prismatic Shard), maybe a Shadowcloth transmute. Whatever it is, go buy the mats in the AH asap and get the free service before this person decides to start charging. These opportunities are few and far between so don’t lose a single second!
Before I start this post, I just want to say hello readers. I’m Kevin, the new guy here. I’ve been hiding in a dark corner working hard on getting WoW Economist to it’s own domain and website, so I haven’t been able to contribute much until now. Will and I have some great plans for the upcoming weeks, so keep your eyes peeled and make sure you subscribe!
/cast Feedback (rank 10)
Friday, April 4th, 2008We thought it might be a good idea to answer a selection of comments on the front page, in a regular post. This way everyone can follow up on the reactions and suggestions left by our readers.
We encourage you to continue participating by leaving comments; we want to know what you think so that we can always be improving this blog. Criticism is also welcome; we realize we are not infallible and many things can always be made better.
Now, onto the feedback:
Wilson said…very very interesting blog
Put this on my RSS Feeder and hope to get a few tips for my Epic flying mount 
;)
Cheers and keep up the great work!
Thank you for the praise, Wilson. Every time our readers compliment us on the blog, we get a warm fuzzy feeling in our tummies- similar to being buffed with Power Infusion (before Blizz nerfed it ><): needless to say, its pretty awesome. Readers, please follow Wilson and add this to your RSS Feeder so you can stay tuned for our updates. We will try to update this blog at the very least, weekly. Enrique said…I am really digging this blog. If it’s alright by you I would like to feature you guys on my website.
Absolutely Enrique. Since we’re relatively new, we need all the advertisement we can get. You are most welcome to feature us on your website or tell your WoWing friends about us:)
Mark said…
Look I know you guys are just looking to help people… but in all honesty your sort of sabotaging your own interests. There are very few sources because wide spread attention twoords these methods hurts buisness, and in some cases can destroy the opportunity all together.
And in my ownexperience, the people who really need this kind of info are patheticially poor and show little or no effort to improve upon there situation.
and
Tom replied…Mark, I disagree. There’s 10 million players in this game. I doubt even 1% of them read these kind of blogs and even more doubtful that 1% of them can take these words of wisdom to heart. Spread out among all the hundreds of servers out there and you’re talking about very little real competition. Most people in my experience just load up an Auctioneer type mod and think that’s all they need to be successful.
Thank you to both of you for bringing this up. The question here is “by making this investment information public and free, will my profit margins take a hit because of all the new people suddenly following it?” We believe this is unlikely- with 11 million players and counting, spread out over hundreds of realms, how much competition can a single blog really introduce?
Also, we believe that our readerbase is NOT representative of the WoW population as a whole- which could generally be characterized as dimwitted and immature (let’s face it, our game is unfortunately mostly populated by idiots). In fact, we think readers of this blog are people who are already motivated to make money and who are intelligent enough to do so on their own. Lazy players will probably come here and think “oh, too complicated,” or “this isn’t worth my time,” then go back to begging for mount money in trade chat and browsing eBay for another epicced-out 70 to buy.
Glenn said…First off, great idea for a blog, I like what you’ve done so far. I’ve been playing the AH game for years, and while I may not have a nice fancy degree I’d like to think I know a thing or two about making money in WoW.
Glenn, we were just talking ourselves up- neither of us is an academic genius or business tycoon in the making :). Glenn follows up his comment with some sound advice breaking down how to make a profit off Leatherworking mats. I shall consider shamelessly stealing his ingenious idea and making it into a post on this blog XD. Is that alright with you Glenn?
Nuff said…
I also disagree with “Always undercut by 1c. Period.”
Flat out when I look at auctions and see two items listed and one person obviously undercut by 1c that person is being an ass. I buy the more expensive one and I know many others who do as well. Undercut by even just 15s and you don’t look like an ass and yours will sell better.
I understand where you are coming from about how a 1c undercut would make you look like an ass so a buyer would choose the more expensive auction, and I’ll admit, I also used to think this way. However, this just isn’t how the majority of buyers will act. Even if they do buy the more expensive auction at first, we believe they will eventually just go with the cheapest one and not pay much attention to the copper and even silver values.
Any competitive market in this world is a cutthroat one, and if you act like a sheep, well, the wolves are going to eat you. An important issue here is that as a seller, we want the market price of a given item to be within a relatively tight range. This is so that if the auction runs out, it can be relisted at a similar price which would yield a similar profit. If everyone starts undercutting each other by 15s, there is a risk of a market crash, and I’ve seen it happen. The problem is exacerbated when people start undercutting each other by very large amounts of gold which will cause the market to remain very low for several days, maybe even a week or more. This is an awful situation to be in when you have several stacks of and item you bought at “equilibrium price” and we’re hoping to sell off quickly during a demand spike.
However, it must be said that market crashes can be profitable; this is when I would advise someone to buy, but in this case, we are considering a seller’s perspective.
Now if you think undercutting by 1c really hurts your chances of a sale, undercut by 1s or 5s. But don’t exaggerate; things can go downhill faster than you think. Remember, trying to do “the right thing” or act benevolent in a competitive setting will never benefit you. There will always be someone out there more ruthless and more greedy and he’ll end up ahead if you don’t mimic his aggressive actions. For better or for worse, that’s just the way markets function.
Naim said…
Nice site, I’ll be checking in. As a question (or a suggestion for a potential post) what addons (if any) do you use for trending, or just general economic information? Thanks!
Naim, as of right now, I don’t use any addons (this is Will). Before 2.4, every one in a while, I had to open up calculator.exe to find out the price per unit for stacks in the AH but now I can just hover my cursor over the item icon and it’ll tell me that information (ty Blizz!). I’m aware that many people use Auctioneer or some derivative of it and I will give it another shot in the future (I tried it a while back), but there are several issues that hurt what is a very clever idea. A few of these issues were discussed in comments; like the fact that an absurdly priced item can throw off the analysis it does. Another gripe I have is that for it to be really precise, several scans would have to be done every day as the AH market is a rapidly fluctuating one and difficult to get a grasp of with a series of single daily “snapshots”.
Dale Mox said…
1. I hate falling into tarps
(typo: “Watch out here, because you could fall into a tarp.”)
1. That wasn’t a typo
It’s a tarp!
isothermal said…
Interesting blog, guys. Keep it up.
As a newer player, though, I’d welcome your thoughts on some of the lower level AH work. I’m a 48 who doesn’t have a bankroll to support a random purchase of 100g to make 10g. (In fact, I’m just starting to get back to 100g after my mount purchase a while back). How about some tips for the up-and-coming trader?
Isothermal, thank you for bringing this up. This blog is mainly designed for level 70s who have sufficient capital to support large investments and weather unfavorable market conditions, but you reminded me that there are others out there who would also like to participate. Therefore, I promise that two future posts to this blog will be:
1. How to make gold as a low-level
2. How to amass (starting) capital at level 70
Stay tuned.
sid67 said…You missed another type of seller –
5. The Professional – This type watches the AH and trade channel and knows the market really well on a handful of items. They can and do work to control market prices for those items.
sid67, this is us, man! Or what we all strive to be, at least
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