User:Nanobit/draft auction house tips

Tips for selling at good price
What makes the auction hall hard, is to get a good price for your items, so: selling not too cheap. A lot of players sell there items undervalued, either because they need money fast, or don't want to be bothered with trading, or simply because they don't have a good (or undervalued) indication of the real value.

It also seems there are rougly 2 types of players: grinders and traders. You are probably one, or both, depending on your mood, on same character or on different alts. Grinders generally don't want to be bothered with AH trading, they have most fun in the outside world, killing a few mobs, maybe ganking a bit, and grinding a bit. Traders on the other hand can be in auction hall all day, only to get out to run to a mailbox. Grinders often undervalue their items, thereby allowing other players to have either bargains or more profits. Traders have a keen eye on prices, and know how to make profit by, on one hand, crafting with one or more profession skills, and the other hand trading.

Over- and undervaluation.
The goal, for both buyer and seller, is to have a -more or less stable, fair, market price. The problem is the stability. Another problem is the overpricing of articles. However, as overpricing somewhat self-corrective, undervaluation is not. Sellers will often compete with other sellers by lowering their prices even more, so called undercutting. An experienced trader that wants to sell will see when prices are dropping too low, and either: hold back the transaction, keeping your items stocked, or put the items at a higher price than the competition, risking not selling, or even buy out all low priced offerings.

In an effort to regulate, Blizzard introduced two mechanisms. First: deposit (not to confuse with transaction costs). Not selling an item means you loose your deposit. For some items, the deposit feels relative high, especially in relation to the sale price. Examples are mana potions and uncommon (green) gear items. The psychological effect of this is that people want to have high chance to sell, in effort to not loose deposit cost. The effect of this is that players often offer articles undervalued, only to compete with a competitor, that maybe already is daing the same. Second: the limited auction house duration of 48 hours.

The fix for this is two-fold. First, you can play with bid- and buyout prices. For example a uncommon armor item. You might think it is valuable for some leveling player, asking, say, 15gold buyout for it. Knowing that there is only a small chance a player actually needs just that item. However, to be sure to sell, you can set the bid price lower than the disenchant value, typically a few gold. This way you may offer a product for 4g bid/15g buyout. This is a fair system, since also the player that needs that item, not to disenchant, but that is low on money, can bid on it. If he bids higher than the disenchant value, he/she will have his gear. Bit offtopic here, but: enchanters often scan the auction hall for low-bid gear, just for the purpose of disenchating. Likely several enchanters will do this, and even compete with eachother, so the lower bid will almost always be comparable to the value of the enchanting materials.

The second fix is: just ignore deposit cost, do not notice the number, just watch your competition. Take into account that on a number of sales you loose deposit costs. If you can sell an item for 10g more, you can afford loosing 10 times 1 gold deposit costs.

Undercutting snowball effect
If there is less demand than offerings, prices will drop, this is a 'golden rule'. However, sometimes prices keep dropping even if demand and offer is in relative equilibrum. This is due to players that keep undercutting any competition, therefore forcing the price to drop over time. Fix: sometimes start at a (too) high price, your competition might undercut you again, but the netto effect is that the overal price is rising. Some player(s) have to initiate this process, and it does cost gold, as they will probably not sell the items put at the highest price. Again, especially on older realms, you see experienced traders that know how to influence auction hall prices. Note please that this is not scam, or anything related. It is a self-correction mechanism. As mentioned before, an overpriced situation on an article at auction hall will always correct itself, simply because people will not buy it. This process may take a few days though.

Crafting
''This article assumes a level-80 character, since it advises crafting professions. For lower levels, a gathering profession is often much more profitable. Howewer, a few golden rules for AH apply to both grinders and crafters.''

Generally, the best - and most fair - way to earn gold on auction hall is with some crafting profession. This can almost be any profession. This can be combined with a gathering skill, but is absolutely not necessary. A lot of traders actually see grinding as a waste of time, because it is more profitable to buy raw materials, from AH or other channels, craft something, and sell, than to grind all this materials self. The trade-off here is risk. You will have to know what items people typically want. As general rule: crafts that people get skillpoints on, are less valued, often under raw material price. Crafts that need a certain reputation, or max skill, and consumables, are often high in demand.

The skill here is to find items that people really want, on regular base, and preferably has low competition. I'll list a few
 * Jewelcrafting: gems (obvious)
 * Leatherworking: armor kits (TBC armor kits needed repution, especially the epic ones who needed exalted, allowing higher prices due to less competion)
 * Tailoring: bags
 * Inscription: Glyphs

The most AH-oriented professions are, in my opinion, jewelcrafting and inscription. Other professions, like blacksmithing, leatherworking, and enchanting, are, although very valuable, much more oriented to direct player-to-player contact.

As example the jewelcrafter, or inscriptor, have tens, if not hundreds, items to craft. The use of auctioneer addon is highly recommended. Rule #1: do not try to sell-all. Having a large amount of your gems or glyphs returned in your mailbox after 48 hour is perfectly normal. #2. Only craft gems that are: high priced by competion, low quantity on offerings (only 1-2 from competitors) or high in demand. Compare selling to: shoot with 100 bullets, and hope 10 will hit. Do not ever sell underpriced (unless you want to get rid of surplus stack). You will see that even it you put your price higher than competion, overnight AH stock might drop and you have sold that gem. Undercutting the safest way to sell, but this is no strict rule. It will take some experience and some risk. Don't get demotivated if at first you don't succeed in gaining good profits using your jewelcrafting or inscription skill. Experienced traders often make 1000g on a day with ease (<1 hour time spend on AH) using jewelcrafting skill.