Big Number Syndrome

Do you love seeing lots of gold in your mail box!?!?

Do you squeal like a little girl when you sell an epic gem for 250g when you bought it for 245?

Do you not care how much time and gold you invest so long as you sell something?

If so, you may have a business threatening case of Big Number Syndrome, or BNS.

I'm being told that with my gem business I'm "doin' it wrong." Epic gems are where the money is at and I'm wasting my time with rare gems. The problem is that people really don't want to expand their bank account, they merely enjoy seeing big numbers pop up. Sure the big money may be with epic gems, but that's also what almost every single other jeweler is doing and has much smaller profit margins than rare gems. Sure I sell epic gems when I can get a good deal. And I get the most income from my epic gem sales. But what these people fail to realize is that income and profit are entirely different things.

Income is just that, the money that "comes in." Profit is the money that comes in AFTER you take into account the price you paid (time or gold) to get said income. When I collect my mail from my banker from epic gem sales, I'll pull in a few thousand at a time. However I didn't make 3k gold just then. I most likely made anywhere from 800-1200. Also don't forget that if you're not wasting your time camping the AH you're going to get undercut and lose several gold on EACH deposit for an unsold epic gem, this will add up extremely fast. Also on top of this, you're not going to be selling a hundred epic gems a night to get these big numbers you crave so much.

Rare gems on the other hand, there is little competition. The raw gem prices are also very, very cheap. What this means is that you will sell a whole lot of them with very little time/input cost on your part. And just because "epics = cool" does not mean that there is no market for the "not so cool" people buying rare gems. After all, would you really stick 2,000 gold worth of gems into an alt you only play every now and then? My alts minus one have all rare gems and I still have just as much fun playing them.

Lucky for you, there is a cure for BNS! It's called "awareness." If you're aware of the price you pay for a gem and how much it sells for, you will immediately waste a lot less time and begin to make a much more acceptable profit for your time.



Thanks for stopping by!