Writing up this entry today to generate some discussion over the weekend as the title suggests. I felt the blog could use a bit more of discussion oriented content so this is my attempt to remedy that. The subject is your biggest personal short coming when you play on the AH. The goal here is to talk about what our weak points are and how we can go about improving upon them.
I ask that all readers chime in with their own faults (no matter how big or small) and ideas on how to help those that are mentioned. I'll be keeping an eye on the comments over the weekend and add in my thoughts. As per usual with the comments, please keep it constructive, serious, and informative. And also this is not a blogging carnival or anything of the sorts. Think of more as a thread on an AH forum so there's no need for 5 page long responses.
I'll start things off with my own.
My biggest short coming on the AH is my absolute reliance on addOns. If ZA and other similar ones broke tomorrow, I'd be out of the game the day after. The biggest issue that comes with this for me is what I wrote about a long time ago in an entry called Manually automatic. The abridged version of that entry is that when you do things by hand you can get a much better feel for what's going on in a given market.
You'll know when certain competitors are gone or when it's time to raise/lower your selling prices and thresholds. This is something that I've gotten out of touch with a lot lately and am not sure how to go about getting back into it without entirely dropping my addons and doing it all manually. Hell I don't even know how the new(ish) auction house functions work. Any suggestions?
Please drop a comment or two with your thoughts on how to help me or others that have commented along with what part of your AH game could be improved.
TSM recently added a "Show Auctions" button to the auctioning plugin. Pressing it gives a list of current seller names prices and quantities. This gas helped tremendously in keeping tabs on markets a sellers.
ReplyDeleteAuctioneers "Appraiser" tab also shows seller names. This is my workhorse for certain markets (raw uncommon cata gems) and one-offs/smaller markets.
As for my biggest AH weakness? Not making full use of all the info gathered and available via Auctioneer. Been using it for years but still feel like I only use about 10% of the features. I've barely touched Search and don't even know what a Snatch List is or how to set one up.
My weakness is risk aversion, I truly hate eating high AH listing fees if the auction doesn't sell, and I avoid selling items with high vendor value. I like glyphs, but I don't often AH the rare inks. Ah well, I've still broken the one million cap.
ReplyDeleteHey Stockpile!
ReplyDeleteWhenever I loose track of my various little niche markets I use a feature of my most important addon Auctaionator. I set up several profession-based buying-lists and scan each and every item of these lists especialy watching the history tab. This way I can see how the price of that particular item has developed over the last week and can tell when my competition is posting.
The names of the competitors don't realy matter much to me. This way I don't get sucked into undercut and buyout wars that are not worth my time.
My biggest shortcoming is probably that I still haven't gotten around to setting up Zero Auctions. Starting in the leatherworking market I didn't really have the need for automation. Now that I'm slowly entering the Jewelcrafting-market I find myself manually canceling and reposting a lot of auctions. Having Zero Auctions correctly set up would probably help. (And yeah, I know about the guide on the blog)
ReplyDeleteMy biggest weakness is my work. I am offshore quite a bit, and this means for the majority no wow access.
ReplyDeleteThis means stockpiling massive amounts is very risky, as I can come back and find prices have bombed on things I had.
Thankfully my server doesn't appear to have many, if any, serious goblins, so I never feel I am forcing my way back into a market once I return, I can just ease back in once I get my mats back.
Like you need our advice...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Keep you addons and when the time comes... and you "have to" shift... then you will make a goblin boom and show your metal...
Until then I think we will all be goblins. lazy at making our mountains of gold.. and the thought of doing it without addons is a prospect far out of our minds... I for one am far mor interested in trying to maximize my addon use and improve using them and making more.. rather than trying to figure out how to make it with out them..
/shrug....
@ E
ReplyDeleteMy best advice to you is probably to do what you're already doing, sell what is profitable today. I always recommend stokpiling because it's the best route to go in the long term, but as you said is a large risk in your situation.
Though that's not to say that you shouldn't have some extra mats hanging around of course, certain things will always sell. And barring certain huge patch changes will hang about the same general price.
@ Lars
ZA will take all of 15 minutes to set it up for gems and, as one would expect, 15 minutes or less can save you loads on time and deposit fees!
@ Torgal
Does auctionator interfere with any other AH addons at all? That's my main stopping point when looking at new addons because I have my daily routine down and don't want to spend a month figuring it all out again. And yes it will probably take me that long. If not I think I'll finally cave in and check it out.
Any other words of advice or neat things about it?
@ Indy
At the level you're at, deposits shouldn't even be a concern of yours. When I sell high ticket items the only thing I worry about is the damned AH cut. Go sell a motorcycle for 20k and see how much they take, it hurts! =(
@ Flux
TBH I don't think many goblins at all use most of the features in auctioneer. Personally I use it for the sort and one-click buy out functions and the appraiser tab for the "one of" sales that you mentioned. In all reality, 90% of it's features are basically replaced by the undermine journal.
The whole snatch list thing would be great to figure out how to set up (I'm sure there's an idiot proof guide out there somewhere) but I like buying by hand because of my weakness on the AH of keeping track of things.
@ Achieve
ReplyDeleteIt's not that I want to work without them, I just want to have easier access to information such as market trends and a heads up on any serious competition. But with as much gold as I have I probably would drop the AH game if I couldn't use any of them.
@ Stockpile:
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know it does not interfere with other auctioning addons, it only opens up more tabs in your auctioning window.
I did not test this myself as the use of auctionator made me uninstall auctioneer because it's way more simple to use and still has all the features I need (scanning, autocanceliing, to-buy-lists, quick listing by hotkey and auto undercutting)
I promise if you give it a try just for 10 minutes you'll love that addon.
Forgot to mention my biggest weakness:
I'm catching myself doing the daily routine without engaging my mind and thinking about new ways to make gold.
I'm trying to implement some of the cool niche markets mentioned in the bloggosphere, but after a while I simply forget about them even if they made descent profit^^
autionator works with other AH addons,
ReplyDeletei run it with TSM and auctioneer doesn't seem to have any compalints,
auctionator for buying mats and goods
TSM for posting glyphs
auctioneer for vendor scan, snatch list and i like the appesior (selling) tab
as for my weekness umm spending my gold on needless items tunder mount, hog, pets, never spend any of it on gear just junk really!
Biggest weakness is not spending enough gold when I know it is a real deal. I have always watched how I spend. I feel my greatest strength is my buying skills but it is also my weakness as I stop myself from buying too much. I think a big part of that is being on a low pop server and it just takes a long time to get rid of some stock at time.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you buying manually does help you know your prices but I will also use addons to help. If you see a deal on 200 stacks of ore....it is alot faster to use the auctioneer snatch function to buy it up quickly. Most of my purchases are made through the remote AH.
I think I have three inter-related weaknesses: Tunnel Vision, Laziness, and Risk Aversion.
ReplyDeleteI do a lot of shuffling. It is an easy, low-risk, brainless activity. The problem is that it is time consuming. There are times that I will tunnel vision on the shuffle and "forget" about a market or two for several days. According to the Undermine Journal, 77% of my income comes from Gem sales.I keep telling myself that I am going to branch out but the lure of "easy money" keeps me in Jewelcrafting.
Because Jewelcrafting is so easy, I don't push other markets as hard as I should. I made a lot of gold off of Enchanting at the end of WotLK but it would take a lot of effort to push my way back into the market now. While I probably have a enough capital to get a foothold in the market, I am just too lazy to do it. Right now, I just have a stack of Enchants sitting on my banker and post them when the price is attractive.
I have had a long standing problem with Risk Aversion. I get nervous when I am spending 10k-15k on raw materials. When I first started, I would get nervous with 1k then 2k....as my bank roll grew that threshold kept growing. I struggle with it but, because I know it is a problem, I can control it. I just kind of close my eyes really tight and spam the "buy" button...
Weak points - worrying about stokpiling mats when they are a good deal (this could bite me in the a$$, if/when the vendor price of gems drops). I had approximately 1,000 stacks of Cata ore stokpiled until last week, that I bought knowing I could vendor the cut gems for 9g. I prospected 50% of that over the last week, vendoring some, transmuting some. I had the same fear with herbs. I set up a snatch list and then don't buy everything that shows up because I don't want to have too many on hand.
ReplyDelete