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.
0 Comments
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
Categories |