Archives for April 2009

Over Jon’s Shoulder #2: Alternatives

Auction House Meltdown? Find Gold Making Alternatives

 

Auction house regulars are nearly all seeing the same thing, on all servers: since Patch 3.1, inexperienced players with no clue what they’re doing in the auction house have flooded some of the best gold-making niches. They’ve ruined the market for previously steady profit-makers like metals, glyphs and faction-exclusive cooking recipes.

Worst of all, they come armed with fresh installs of the Auctioneer plug-in… and the dangerous belief that they can make auction house gold by letting Auctioneer run the show with mindless undercutting.

You can scream in frustration at the temporary loss of gold flow from your established profit pipelines (and it is temporary). Or… you can shift ground, move on to different gold-making items, seek out new profit pipelines where the auctioneer-kiddies aren’t looking.

Watch over my shoulder in the auction house, and I’ll show you a few possibilities I’m working on, hopefully give your some ideas you can use.

For example:

  • Limited Supply – if your “regulars” have gone bad, look at other similar items that may have been overlooked
  • Market Niches – if your favorite category of trade goods has been killed by over-supply, check out other niches that were cold a couple of months ago… and may be heating up now – such as Dream Shards, Runecloth etc.

Over Jon’s Shoulder #1: Glyph Frenzy

Patch 3.1 Brings Explosion of Demand for Glyphs

 

First of a new series of video, raw and unedited 🙂 Watch over my shoulder as I play the auction house, and explain what I’m doing… and why.

Today, the action is in glyphs, thanks to the explosion of demand for glyphs caused by:

  1. new glyphs introduced in patch 3.1
  2. dual specialization, so serious players need twice as many glyphs as before
  3. changes that buff quite a few pre-3.1 glyphs

So that all adds up to high prices, right?

Well… not exactly. While there are way more glyphs moving through the auction house this week, and demand is stronger than it has ever been before, the buzz about glyphs has also brought a lot of Scribes (Inscriptors?) into the auction house. And it seems like many of them haven’t go a clue what they’re doing.

And the result is: prices all over the map, and a lot of hair-pulling amongst those of us who are regulars in the auction house, and steady traders in glyphs.

Look over my shoulder to see how I’m handling this weirdness, and I’m sure you’ll find a few ideas you can use yourself for profit and gold.

Some of the key things to keep in mind…

  • You can’t afford to let inexperienced sellers kill the market with their drastic under-cutting: fight back!