15 June 2017
Gold on hand before distribution: 18,343 Items on the Auction House: 0 I did not achieve much in the way of auction house work over the last couple of weeks as I have once again been losing interest in playing WoW…again. This seems to be a re-occurring cycle, which is really not all that surprising as I have, for most of my life, found an interest in something and put a lot of focus on it and spent a lot of time with it and then after a while I start to lose interest in it. Maybe I have extremely slow onset attention deficient disorder or something, lol. Over time my interest in these things returns and I pick them back up again. With that said, this will be my last distribution of profits made in this Auction House endeavor as I will be taking another break from the game for a while. The total distribution of profits from the initial 500 gold investment in the AH was nearing half a million gold. Not bad.
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31 May 2017
Gold on hand before distribution: 65,608 Items on the Auction House: 242 I did not make the predicted 70,000 gold but I came close. Good profit for not much effort on my part again these last two weeks. I haven't spent much time working the AH and when I did there wasn't many good deals to pick up. It seems that there are more people working the AH like I do because I'm being undercut a lot more by a number of new people I haven't seen on the AH before. And as I mentioned I'm not seeing as many good deals as I'm used to seeing. My average quantity for sale on the AH for the last two weeks has been between 225 and 250 items but I only sold 33. Fortunately a good number of those items that did sell were high profit stuff like a rare schematic for over 7,000 gold and a number of rare drop items that sold for between 1,000 and 6,000 gold. I am hesitant to make a prediction for mid month June's profits due to the decline in good deals on the AH, an increase in competition and my low sales numbers, but I will guess around 60,000 gold. On a side note I am finding myself logging into WoW less often than I have been in the past, which is an indication that I am starting to lose my motivation to play again. I've been here before and it usually ends up with me taking a break from the game for awhile. We'll see how I feel over the next few weeks. 15 May 2017
Gold on hand before distribution: 74,640 Items on the Auction House: 252 Sorry, no long blog post today…I usually work on my blog for a few days while I’m at work when it gets slow but unfortunately I didn’t work at my desk on Monday last week, and for two of the other three days I was working the “Big Desk”. There is no slow or idle time when working that desk, which also means I did little to no AH buying and was unable to maintain a 300 items for sale average for the last two weeks. None the less it was still a profitable two weeks and so I will increase my estimate for next two weeks profits to 70,000 Gold. I have four night shifts coming up at the end of the week so I will be buying again to build up to the 300 items for sale on the AH average. 30 April 2017 Gold on hand before distribution: 80,957 Items on the Auction House: 296 It was another profitable two weeks with almost all gold coming from sales of items carried forward from the prior months. I only made a couple purchases the last 14 days because I haven’t been at work since the 12th of April and that’s where I make most of my buys. You can see the effect of this by looking at the drop in the number of items for sale on the AH, which fell from 366 to 296. These past few months have provided some interesting data to look at in terms of sales over time and inventory levels. With this data we can make a few predictions about the future. Disclaimer: As with most investments “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” Before we can take a realistic look at past sales and inventory levels we need to consider some of the “outliers” or items that are outside the normal range of all the other data. These outliers would be those few items that I was lucky to buy on the AH for a few gold and even luckier to sell for many thousands of gold in profits. I don’t want to include this data because it’s unrealistic to believe this will happen again on a regular basis so I will eliminate the profits from the “Gold Fish” and “The 1 Ring” in my calculations. Warning, here comes the math. Let’s look at all the data: Just kidding, I won’t bore you will all that. I’ll summarize my findings instead. As my inventory of items on the AH has increased each two weeks, so has my profits because I am, in turn, selling more items. Over the last two months my average inventory of items for sale on the AH has been around 250 items and the average profit per item of inventory has been about 230 gold, or about 57,500 gold every two weeks. This being the case, I am going to try to maintain average of at least 300 items for sale on the AH for the next 14 days. If all holds true we should expected to see a profit of somewhere close to 69,000 gold for mid-month May. I will include future profit predictions from now on, in this bi-monthly blog, based on sales and inventory level from prior periods, just for fun. 14 April 2017
Gold on hand before distribution: 77,786 Items on the Auction House: 361 Shortly after my last blog entry someone decided they wanted “The 1 Ring” for their collection, resulting in profit of 15,688 gold. A pleasant surprise indeed. On another interesting note, I managed to sell two “Fiery Beholder Eyes” over the last two weeks for a profit of 26,585 gold. I got them for 10 gold each from the same seller at the same time. My thought is that he or she must have been trying to sell them, unsuccessfully, for a long time and finally gave up. I’m glad they gave up because I was able to turn 20 gold into over 26,500 gold during this period. The decision about whether or not to buy those items and try to flip them was an easy one. Just as with “The 1 Ring”, they were very low cost with high profit potential (if they sell). Unfortunately, this happens few and far between so the majority of the time spent deciding what to buy, and what to avoid, depends on a number of considerations. The primary goal of these considerations of course is to make as much gold as possible with the least amount of gold invested. I follow a specific set of “rules” when deciding what to buy and although there may be better ways to go about this, what I have been doing has proven to be profitable. This project was started with an investment of only 500 gold and to date has produced over 140,000 gold in profit, and an inventory of over 360 items currently on the AH. The websites and add-ons I have mentioned before provide lists of items for sale on the AH and I primarily only buy items that are posted at 5% or below of their current market value. There are a number situations in which I won’t buy something even though it’s 5% or less. I usually don’t buy something if there are more than 3 of that item already for sale on the AH. I seldom buy wrists, head, shoulder, and back gear items, and I never purchase player crafted items or vendor items. Those are some of my basic “rules” and I’ll provide some more details and examples in the weeks to come. Flipping items on the AH is a hit and miss way to make gold. Unlike selling trade goods, mats and crafted items, which sell in large quantities every day, transmog gear, recipes, and other unique items likes these are notoriously slow to sell, if they sell at all. For example “The 1 Ring” is a level 15 item that adds +1 to all stats. This would normally not be a valuable item, but because of its name, which is a reference to J. R. R. Tolkien’s Book “Lord of the Rings”, it sells on average for over 16,000 Gold. “Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, Nine for the Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.” I was lucky to find one on the AH for 49 Gold; the individual who put it up for sale didn’t know its true worth and I snatched it up. Collector’s items like these including rare recipes, plans, and items no longer available in game, have high values but terrible sales rates. My decision for buying items like this is based solely on this consideration: I may never be able to re-sell (flip) this item for what it’s worth; I might not even be able to re-sell it for what I bought it for. I’m I willing lose all the gold I am about to spend to purchase this item because I may never be able to re-sell it? In this instance I don’t mind losing 49 gold for the chance to make close to 16,000 gold. If, however, this ring would have been listed for 2,000 gold, I would not have bought it. I can do a lot on the AH with 2,000 gold and would hate to throw that much gold away buying something I may never sell. As I expected, I have been re-posting “The 1 Ring” on the AH every two days for over a month and no bites. I am not missing the 49 gold I paid for it, but I would have definitely been missing the profits that 2,000 gold would have made on the AH, if I would have spent that much for the ring. 31 March 2017 Gold on hand before distribution: 94, 549 Current Items on the Auction House: 274 It was another outstanding two weeks on the AH. Even without counting the “Gold fish” sale, profits increased over 9,000 gold this period and inventory for sale on the AH almost doubled. I’ll be very surprised if this 40,000 gold profit average every two weeks continues. I’m still convinced that a more realistic average would be closer to between 15,000 -20,000 gold every two weeks, but I’m not complaining. I’ll take all the gold the market wants to send my way! In a prior post I mentioned that the AH flipping game has its difficulties as a source of making gold, however I still feel it is the quickest, easiest, and most entertaining way to make a profit, as long as you have the right tools. The alternatives are mat gathering and item crafting, which are dull and time consuming, and can only be done when logged into WoW. The biggest advantage of flipping for me is that with the use of the mobile armory app and a couple AH tracking websites I can flip anytime, anywhere (when both are working properly, that is). If fact, without these tools of the trade (AH websites, the mobile armory app, and the TradeSkillMaster add-on installed in game) it would be impossible for me to successfully flip items on the Auction House. In order to flip something for a profit I need to know what items are actually worth. By worth I’m talking about what an item should sell for. With this information I can identify and buy items selling far below what they are worth, and then re-post them for sale at their true market value and make a profit. In addition to providing AH market data, the TradeSkillMaster (TSM) add-on allows me to automate the entire auction posting process based on specific rules I set for groups of items I create. With TSM I can post hundreds of individual items on the AH, based on my preferences, in a matter of minutes, and these are just some of its many features. TSM is truly an amazing add-on for gold making, but even with all its advantages, it does not guarantee success, it only provides the means to be successful. What makes flipping difficult, even with the help of all these tools, is that there’s no guarantee that what you buy will sell for its fair market value, or any other amount for that matter. There are a number of factors to consider when deciding what to buy and what not to buy when playing the flipping game, but I’ll save that for next time. Every once in a while you will find a difficult to acquire and very valuable item on the AH that someone sells for a only a few gold either out of ignorance as to its true value or because they’ve tried to sell it for what it’s worth so many times, without success, that they just get rid of it. That’s something I consider when deciding if I should buy an item like that or not. If I’m successful in flipping it, I’ll make a lot of gold. If however it doesn’t sell after a couple of weeks I’ll have wasted time and gold re-posting it over and over again and end up dumping it on the AH for a loss. Most of the time I will take the chance and try to flip it. I don’t like to pass up opportunities to make a huge profit, even though it might cost me 100 gold and two weeks of re-posting it over and over again, just for the chance. Most of the stuff I flip is worth between 300 and 500 gold. Occasionally I’ll successfully flip gear worth between 1,000 and 3,000 gold. Anything above that is pretty rare. Up until this week, the biggest flip I ever did was Ceremonial Leather Loincloth for a profit of over 16,000 gold. That was fantastic! I didn’t think I would ever top that until I came across something with a buy out of 45 gold and a market value of 51,000 gold! Much to my surprise it wasn’t some super rare epic gear, weapon or a long lost pattern or recipe no longer available in the game, it was a fish. The Rockhide Strongfish is the rarest fish in the game as it is only catchable once a week for two hours on Sundays during the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza. According to Wowhead’s count you might catch one for about every 7,000 times you cast your line. It is also one of the few fish that can be used as a weapon which adds to its appeal. When I bought it I didn’t think anyone would ever spend 51,000 gold for a fish and I was convinced that I’d be re-posting this thing every two days for months. Unbelievably, however, it sold the same day I posted it and I cleared 48,444 gold in profit! It turns out the Rockhide Strongfish is really a “Gold Fish”! 15 March 17
Gold on hand before distribution: 40,693 Items posted on the Auction House: 147 It was a very profitable two weeks. I made more gold in the last 14 days than I expected to make, on average, over a two month period. How did it happen? I’d call it getting lucky, but before I talk about luck I want to talk about the AH flipping game. The goal of course is to find an under-priced item on the AH, buy it, re-list it for what it’s worth, and sell it for a profit. For an example: buying something for 10 gold and selling it for 300 gold, for a net profit of 275 gold (300 gold – 15 gold (5% AH cut) – 10 gold purchase price). The object then becomes reinvesting the 275 gold profit to buy 20 more items and resell them for a profit of 5,500 gold, and then re-invest that amount to buy 550 more items and resell them for a profit of 151,250 gold….etc. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as this. Flipping has its difficulties as a gold making source for a number of reason which I’ll explain in a future blog entry. Realistically, at this point, I am expecting to make an average of somewhere around 8,000 gold every two weeks based on my experience. As my market share of the Auction House increases over time, my profits should also increase, all things being equal. But instead of making 8,000 gold over the last two weeks, I made over 40,000 gold, which was the result of being lucky a few times within a short period. There are two kinds of lucky while flipping stuff on the AH. The first kind of lucky is when you come across a very valuable item on the AH, posted for a few gold by someone who has no idea what its really worth, and you happen to be the first person to see it there and scoop it up. The second kind of lucky is when one of the very valuable items you have re-posted on the AH actually sells making you many thousands of gold in profit. I got lucky a few times the last two weeks. I'm hoping my luck continues. I finally completed my MBA in finance after two and a half years and found myself with more time on my hands then I knew what to do with. As before, I started playing other games both on gaming consoles and computer but as I have stated before nothing compares to WoW. I started playing again shortly after my house flooded in August of last year and I was stuck in a hotel room with my laptop, which still had Warcraft installed on it. This was also around the time the current expansion was close to coming out, so I thought, why not.
Six months later and I’m still here. I wasn’t planning on starting my Blog back up, but I wanted a place to share my experiences as I venture to make another 1 Million Gold on the Auction House for my favorite mage Verbena. After successfully talking her into sending me an investment of 500 Gold, I started this project around the middle of last month. The plan was to invest the 500 Gold by purchasing undervalued items on the AH and then re-posting and selling them for fair market value, commonly known as flipping. The gold generated in this way will be used to repeat this process on a regular basis, and every two weeks I will send V all profits above her 500 gold “seed money” which will be used for re-investment and AH fees. If recollection serves me correctly I purchased about 30 items with the 500 Gold and after the first two weeks was able to send V around 7,000 Gold and had over 60 Items posted on the AH for resale. I will make sure to note the exact profits and number of items for re-sale on the AH on the 15th when I make my next distribution to V. Stay tuned. Zen |
AuthorRetired Army NCO, Logistics Manager, and Habitual World of Warcraft Player. Archives
April 2017
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