Failing to Control a Market - Why Players Fail at the Wow Auction House

Knowledge is power. The difference between a player that understands a market as well as its sub markets compared to a player who only focuses on the 'surface market' is like night and day. A lack of knowledge regarding the web of interacting markets on the wow auction house is what leads to a noob auctioneer focusing all their attention on the surface market.

What is a surface market? Why do 99% of players that try to control a market fail? Let's use some examples.

Let's just make up a name here, um how about Gevy. Little Gevy the goblin is not happy that her netherweave bags are being undercut by two people. They are posting three bags each for 1 gold less than Gevy and she's pissed. An auction house noob like Gevy will look at this situation and think that she has to undercut her competition in order to control 'her' market. What Gevy doesn't realize is that she still doesn't control the market even after undercutting her competition. In order to truly control the 'surface market' of netherweave bags then little Gevy needs to look at the markets that support it. Netherweave bags only have one supporting market and that's netherweave cloth. With a little research Gevy would realize that simply buying up all netherweave cloth below X gold would allow her to force out her bag market competition because they would no longer be able to make bags cheaper than Gevy.

This little bit of knowledge... the understanding of a sub market controling the lowest possible price of a surface market is what makes or breaks auctioneers in world of warcraft. If you understand and apply this concept then you become way more likely to succeed on the wow auction house.

Now expand on this concept and think about something complicated like snowfall inks. Just think for a moment how you would control this item. First off, you need an understanding of not just what creates a snowfall ink but what it's used for. Just because you control it does not mean people will buy it in droves. You need to force the price to your liking but also have it reasonably affordable for the buyer.

Let's see... you would need to regulate the price of every wotlk herb (by regulate I mean constantly buy it out below price X). You then would need to buy the inks themselves below your new threshold for snowfall inks. The price you pick will need to be affordable for someone buying the inks to make nobles or other items.

Ok you ready for a real mental challenge? How would you regulate infinite dust. Just think for a moment about that, really think about every single market that exists which you can create infinite dust from and then the items used to create those items and so on. For an item like infinite dust which has multiple paths to getting to the same goal, ie disenchant a dust, the answer is actually a lot simpler than you would think... find the cheapest way and regulate that.

Regulating is NOT the same as undercutting everyone with the cheapest goods possible. Regulating a submarket to effect a surface market is about taking away items from your competition which they need to craft/modify and compete with your surface market. Stop allowing your competition to set your prices and instead set the competition's! You don't want to end up like Gevy and participate in undercutting wars for minimal profits.

What does PCT mean in Auctioneer? How do you use PCT to make wow gold?

PCT means percentage or percentage market value for an item. After you have scanned with auctioneer enough you will have an accurate PCT for the average price of any one item. PCT is the most important weapon of an auctioneer when looking for great deals and it's the number one thing I love about the auctioneer addon for making easy wow gold.

So how do you use PCT? First off, look up your favorite item or run a typical resale scan with auctioneer. For help on these topics, please visit the JMTC Wow Gold Forum or my Gold Guide. If you are having trouble correctly running scans with auctioneer perhaps my post on 22 Steps to Using Auctioneer will provide you with a rough outline for using the addon.

After doing your search you will notice at the far right column that it says 'PCT' with different colored numbers next to your search results. These values are color coded as red meaning way above normal value, green meaning a great deal, yellow meaning normal value, and blue meaning WOW BUY THIS ITEM OUT NOW WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR. If you see an item below 50% PCT then that means it is also 50% below the average market value for that item. By buying the item out and relisting it you have a very good chance of making a sale, just make sure that you understand the item's market and when/why/how you should resell it.

There is one key problem with PCT however and that's with searching multiple pages. When you sort a page by PCT auctioneer will only sort that particular page of 50 items. If there are multiple pages then you must cycle through each page selecting to sort by PCT in order to see the best deals. There could be a stack of the item for half price but expensive enough that it doesn't appear on the first page. Be wary of this issue when using PCT to sort with auctioneer search results.

Try out using PCT as a sorting method for making easy wow gold.

10 Ways to Boost the Efficiency of Your Wow Account

Do you feel that your current class/spec/profession setup for your wow account is not good enough for making lots of wow gold efficiently? Here are 10 ways to boost the efficiency of your wow account:

1. Make 10 level 80's.

2. Max out each profession on your characters, except only get one character to max fishing/cooking.

3. Get first aid on all your characters.

4. Get atleast entry level epics. Either purchasable via the auction house or honor/badge gear.

5. Have all professions covered between your characters.

6. Your farming characters should be paladins or deathknights for the speed aura. Getting gladiator on top of that is really fun (or any other 310% speed mount).

7. You should have a paladin or mage for aoe killing.

8. Have at least one pure dps class that can farm forever, ie dps prot warrior (shameless plug for markco), dps prot pally, bm hunter, affliction warlock, rogue, shadow priest, etc.

9. Have multiple guild banks for storing your business crap.

10. Have all boa chests and shoulders for maxing out your leveling speed for all your characters.

For the comments section what is your ideal setup of 10 characters for making easy wow gold? Include transmutes/dailies/etc.

How Population Imbalances Affect Eternal Fire

Cross faction auctions remains one of my favorite ways to make easy wow gold in world of warcraft. Especially on an imbalanced server where one side has far more players than the other (even after the paid faction change), it is easy to find items which sell for 30% more on one faction or the other.

On my server, eternal fires sell for 20 gold more on the alliance side than on the horde side. BAM! I just shot myself in the foot revealing this tip but oh well there's always my left foot for walking and kicking noobs in the rear. Why is this item so much more expensive on one side?

It comes down to three things:

#1. Wintergrasp is the most popular place to farm fire but there's only one spot and it is camped by the larger faction (in this case horde) making farming unreliable for the alliance side.

#2. The dailies at hodir is the second most popular place to farm fire and it's just as camped by horde players.

#3. The cave next to the Scions of Storm in storm peaks is not well known but would be the perfect place for an alliance farmer to setup shop killing those little yellowy floating fire balls. I guess not enough people are farming there to keep up with the insane number of eternal fires hitting the horde auction house.

Thanks to population imbalance eternal fires are an amazingly easy way to make wow gold. Excuse me while I dump all mine on the auction house in preparation for the mad rush of players who will try this method on my own imbalanced server.

Farming Elemental Invasions - Winterspring, Azshara, Silithus, and Un'goro Crater

Elemental invasions occur every 24-48 hours after the leader of each invasion has been killed. If you want to farm easy wow gold from these invasions then I highly suggest that you simply kill the mobs around the lead boss elemental and then when you want to leave kill the boss and clean up the elementals that are remaining. As long as the leader stays alive then all the other elementals will keep respawning. Think of it as milking the cow versus having the steak. As long as no one comes along to ruin your farming then this is a great way to make easy wow gold.

Here are the four locations:

Tempestria leads the water elementals in Winterspring all around lake Kel'Theril.

Avalanchion leads the earth elementals in Azshara around where the elite giants also spawn.

Baron Charr leads the fire elementals in Un'goro Crater around the volcano in the middle of the map.

The Windreaver leads the air elementals in northwestern Silithus.

The drops from these elementals can be sold for incredible prices on the auction house... 13 gold for a breath of wind, 10 gold for a elemental earth, etc. Since you now know the value of these items on the auction house be sure to snatch them off the hands of lesser minded auctioneers that try to sell these for a handful of gold or even less than that. Flipping a breath of wind from 1 gold to 13 gold is definately an easy wow gold making strategy.