August 24, 2009

Big Spender

Filed under: Crafting,wowbanker — Kevmar @ 11:51 am

I broke down and made my first big purchase. People that know me, know that I don’t do anything small. So when I say big purchase what I’m talking about is a shocking purchase. First let me show you what I got.

[Royal Moonshroud Robe]
[Royal Moonshroud Bracers]

I think its a server fist to have 2 pieces of that crafted gear. The people that crafted my gear told me that I was the first person they crafted it for. But someone else could have those patterns.

What makes that purchase so shocking is the mats required to make them. 32 moonshroud is nothing to sneeze at. I picked up half a stack several weeks ago from someone selling it too cheap. A good deal is hard to pass up. The rest was on the AH. I may have over paid a little bit, but when looking at the other mats a few hundreds gold here and there isn’t much.

It is the Crusader Orb purchase that shocks people. We don’t see many on the AH yet and the ones we do see are fairly high. This weekend I did see a few listed and decided I could get one item crafted. The AH listed them 4.7-5.5K gold each. So I started out in trade offering 4.5K gold each to save on AH cut. People started lining up to give them to me. A few canceled auctions to sell direct. At the end of the evening I cleared the AH and was siting on 11 Crusader orbs.

In my hunt for that last orb the next morning, the person that had it also had the pattern for my robe. I gave him 450G for making the robe. Later that night I got the bracers crafted too. Full epic gems and enchanted.

When it was all said and done, I bet I spent close to 60k gold on 2 items. I had the gold to spend and didn’t have any thing better to spend it on. I feel good knowing its probably a server first and it does let me show off my gold just a little bit. While my robe wasn’t all that bad but my bracers were in dire need of an upgrade. Now if I could only buy a weapon.

Teach a man to fish

Filed under: Uncategorized,wowbanker — Kevmar @ 9:24 am

Now that word has gotten out in my guild about how much gold I have, I am getting a lot of questions. They either ask for a chopper mount, how I do it, or mention that they need to find a way to make gold. So far I have not had any serious requests for a gold loan. For the people that need gold, I try to give them tips.

One guild member was mining and something else. So I told him to look at converting ore to bars. Just check the AH for ore that’s selling for less then then the bars of the same type. If there is a profit, buy it and bar it. I also told him to sell single bars for a little more then the stacks and to consider the different stack sizes as different markets. If a market is flooded in singles or full stacks, offer them as 5 or 10 bars.

At the end of the weekend, he told me he made 200G from doing that.

I had another conversation this weekend that put a smile on my face.

Someone yells someone please give me 4 gold.
Someone yells someone please give me 4 gold.
Someone level 18 Undead Warrior
*Achievements say 7g is the most he ever had.
to [Someone] what are your professions?
[Someone] mining and blacksmith
to [Someone] How much gold are you making on selling your ore
[Someone] none
to [Someone] What are you selling it for?
[Someone] I don’t sell it, I use it to skill up blacksmithing
to [Someone] that’s your problem
[Someone] lol
[Someone] All I can mine is copper and tin
to [Someone] Go check the price of copper ore on the AH
[Someone] OMG I see some selling for 12G a stack
to [Someone] you see where I am going with this
[Someone] Yeh, I’m off to go mine

Save for a rainy day

Filed under: Thoughts,wowbanker — Kevmar @ 5:43 am

I have decided to start stashing some of my gold in case something happened to my account. I have contaced a few real life friends and aranged for them to hold a little bit on a low level alt they have. Not much, but enought that if I need quick access to some gold that they will have it.

I also have a 2nd account that is not active at the moment. My next idea is to send a little gold evey day to a char on that account. It will sit in his mailbox and get returned in 30 days. If I break it up and send 1k gold every day, after 30 days it will hit that point where I will be receiving 1k gold every day back in the mail.

I have never been hacked but there is a first time for everything. I have more visibility online and hand out on more and more gold making websites/forums. If someone was going to target a group to hack, it would be those groups. And it costs me nothing to save away for a rainy day.

August 23, 2009

How much time do you have?

Filed under: Inscription,wowbanker — Tags: — Kevmar @ 6:11 am

Inscription has been a great market for me but it also takes more time than any other market I have worked with. I use ink of the sea usage as my metric of how much I am selling. I just know how much ink I use in a day so it is easy to track. On average it is 850 ink of the sea.

Lets do the math to see how much time inscription takes up. To get 850 ink, I have to mill 142 stacks of herbs. At 4 mills a stack at 3.8 sec a mill, that puts me at 35 min of milling. After I mill it, I then have to ink it. If each ink takes 2 sec to make, i’m at 29 minutes to ink 850 ink of the sea. I also have to ink the snowfalls for another 5 min. Lets just say its a hour of work a day to get the mats needed to craft what I need. 7 hours a week.

If I use 850 ink of the sea, I would have to guess that I make 500 glyphs. At 3 sec each that’s 25 min of crafting. That feels very low from personal experience but I can work with that. At 25 min a day that’s another 3 hours a week for crafting.

I have 1400 auctions listed at any one time. They either sell or expire and end up in my mailbox. I can only open 50 messages every 60 sec. So 1400 auctions is 28 pages of mailbox auctions. That is 29 minutes of mailbox time. I use the /reload trick to refill it quicker and I expect that cuts my time in half. So 15 min a night is 1 hour 45 min a week just opening mail.

I post auctions 5 times a day. If that only takes 10 minutes each time that’s 50 min a day and 5.8 hours a week.

If I add all that up, I am sitting at 17.5 hours a week that I put into inscription. That is almost a part time job. I started small and just kept going and building and before I knew it I had a ton of time wrapped up into it. I would guess that I spend more time then that. These numbers were the optimal times based off the math of my ink of the sea usage.

With that said, some things I can start and walk away from. Like inking for example. Fill my bags with pigment and start the queue. When I return I have a bag full of ink.

August 22, 2009

Diversity

Filed under: Thoughts,wowbanker — Kevmar @ 5:46 am

Glyphs are my go to maket at the moment. It makes more gold for me than anything else I do. But I don’t count on that as my only way to make gold. If something happens to one market, I am not left high and dry. You never know when another market will explode.

I have several alts and several professions. Each profession has 1 or 2 good things that make gold. They also have several side markets that could be profitable at the right time. If I see the right mats at to low of a price, I go back to my professions to see where to take advantage it.

Skilling up a profession is a great way to find new gold markets. Everyone skilling up has to look at the same mats your are looking at. If you can find a way to produce those mats cheaper someone will buy them.

When I was skilling up JC, I discovered that I could prospect for a lot of the mats I needed cheaper then buying them raw. Thorium Ore is a new market I just started working. I can buy it, prospect it, and resell the mats at a fairly good profit. Thats one of those things that will differ from server to server and is also the type of tip that you don’t see posted everywhere. It is those types of exclusive discoveries of a market that lets you dominate it.

While eveyone has access to all the websites that talk about how to make gold and offer tips, not everyone reads them. So don’t overlook a method becuase you saw it on a high trafic website, but be prepared that you will not be the only one to figure it out. You may find your self in control of a market for a long time, but once it gets enough visibility it could be all over as lots of people flock to it.

August 21, 2009

The Armageddon that never was

Filed under: Inscription,Thoughts,wowbanker — Tags: — Kevmar @ 12:24 pm

I set out with huge plans to drive my competition away. The market was going to crash and burn with me in control. The first day of my plan my main competition worked the AH the entire day. So I was able to drive the prices down fairly quickly. I normaly let him hang out under my threshold but I lowered it to keep him on his feet for the entire market.

Once I saw he was working it that hard and I already drove the low prices even lower, I actualy kind of steped back and let him do his thing. He realy was not my target here. It was everyone else. I knew this guy would be key in doing that. Going head to head with him, puts everyone else out in the cold. I expect they all moved a lot of glyphs over the weekend at dirt cheap prices.

Over that same window, I was able to hold the herb prices up. I almost gave up on this a few times. The flood of herbs onto the AH made me rethink it a few times but I kept it up. The result I was looking for was to dry up the supply as they sold whatever stock they had at low prices.

I wroked the hardest the first half of the first day. I just kind of moniroted the market the next few. When I saw my main competitor ease off, I went back to normal to hold prices. Then my main competition all but backed out. I think he either left town, is watchig the market, or ran out of ink. If he was watching the market, he would have have already started to move back in as the prices move back up.

I would like to think he ran out of ink or re did the math on what it was costing him. I saw him try to unload snowfall a few days ago. I played some games with it. He wold post a few stacks, so I would undercut 1-2G and post a few. We walked the price down to 9-10g. The whole market followed us. When nothing was listed over 13G and more to that 9-10g price, I purchased it all before my buyer logged in. I sent it all to him for 12G each as a bulk discount.

I do expect him to return before long. If he is anything like me, there is no way he can just leave the market. Carpet bombing in general is down to mostly me. People that are still with it are working it like any other market. Crafting what sells and passing on the rest. Those are the high movers because I prabably rob them of any sales on the other glyphs.

I could have taken the market very low for a long time if I wanted to. I still sell a good deal of glyphs. That would prabably hurt me more then help me. I know I cannot control the market forever. It is too big of a market and the process is too simple. I just want to delay the next big player from taking my spot at the top.

How does inscription work

Filed under: Inscription,wowbanker — Tags: — Kevmar @ 6:05 am

Glyphs can be mass produced with high markup and low costs. The cost to list them in the AH is nothing. When you mill a stack of herbs you get 2 different types of ink from it. One ink (Ink of the Sea) goes into the glyphs or can be converted 10 at a time into that other ink (Snowfall Ink). The other ink is used to make darkmoon decks.

Lets get some numbers to work with:
20x[Adder's Tongue] => 1x[Snowfall Ink] + 6x[Ink of the Sea]
10x[Ink of the Sea] => 1x[Snowfall Ink]

Here is the math behind [Snowfall Ink]. If the cost of your snowfall is too close to your adder’s cost then you can alreay make a profit by milling. I am going to scale up the example to make the math simpler.

200x[Adder's Tongue] =>10x[Snowfall Ink] + 60x[Ink of the Sea]

We can convert that 60 ink of the sea into 6 more snowfall ink. If 10 stacks of adders costs less then 16 snowfall ink, you could make a fair amount of gold just buying/milling/inking. That’s one way JC makes gold. Buying/prospecting/crafting/DEing everything for a profit.

Lest move on to glyphs. Ink of the Sea can be exchanged for any ink needed to make a glyph. The most your glyph will ever cost is 2x[Ink of the Sea] + .50 silver parchment.

(20x[Adder's Tongue] – 1x[Snowfall Ink] ) / 6 = cost of 1x[Ink of the Sea]

You can see that Ink of the sea can be produced for dirt cheap. Most of the cost is the time spent milling it. If you move to a large scale, make sure you have the market for that much snowfall. The larger numbers I produced, the harder it was for me to unload snowfall and the price keeps falling.

Someone making 100 glyphs a day only has to sell one stack of snowfall a day. Someone making 300-400 a day has to sell 3-4 stacks a day.

That brings us to Darkmoon Cards.

I don’t like to deal with them but here is what I know. When making darkmoon cards you have a random chance to make one of 4 types of cards that can be numbred from ace to eight. I did say random. The math says that on average for every 32 cards you make, you should have enough cards to make 4 decks. You will have lots of duplicates but should have enough of the cards of the type you need for a deck, but you may have to do some trading.

6x[Snowfall Ink] + 3x[Eternal Life] + 3x[Ink of the Sea] => 1x[Random Darkmoon Card]
192x[Snowfall Ink] + 96x[Eternal Life] + 96x[Ink of the Sea] => 32x[Random Darkmoon Card] => 4x[Different Darkmoon Decks]

You may do the math and figure out that making cards with the extra snowfall is better then selling it. If you have no market for snowfalls, this is your only option to unload them

Cards and Glyphs work well together. They use different parts of the same plant. If you don’t want to get into the other market, try to team up with someone that does work it.

August 20, 2009

Armageddon

Filed under: Inscription,wowbanker — Tags: — Kevmar @ 11:02 am

I was getting a little too comfortable with what I was doing and have a good deal of competition moving in. For the most part, most of them have focused on a small area but are now growing in to other glyphs. I see so many names that I don’t know now joining the market. One guy that just joined is using QA correctly and looks like he has a very flexible schedule.

It it time for Armageddon. I can share the market with a few scribes, but we had 6,000 glyphs on the AH today. We don’t have room for everyone that is posting. So it is time to shake things up.

Here is my plan. I am going to walk every glyph down to the bottom. The market is already headed there, so I am going to push it over the edge when I am ready for it.

I set undercuts to 60 silver and I post with 48 hour auctions. I do not cancel auctions when I repost so prices can only go down. I normally post 5 times a day and can handle more over the weekend. This will drop the price of glyphs +3G a day. The key to this is everyone else is undercutting too and walking the market down with me. The market will saturate with glyphs at low prices making a reset impossible.

I am then going to pull my threshold back up and let them fight it out at the bottom. I will bounce in and out to keep that price where I want it.

I just crashed the snowfall market. I found the person that was buying it all and worked it out where I can send to them directly. That one person kept the market price high buy purchasing it all. I gave them a 2G discount and sent 6-9 stacks a day to them for the last several days. They are no longer buying off the AH and with me walking the AH price down too, they are down 30% from middle of last week. I see one competitor trying to unload, so I keep undercutting him with my stockpile.

Someone else was talking about taking over a market and I asked him several questions for him to track each week. So here I am asking myself the same questions.

What is the current condition of your server?

6000 glyphs posted and 2/3rds of the ones I have listed are under 6G each with about 1/3 of them closer to 4g. Demand is very high and prices have already crashed.

How many big players and small players do you have?

I think I have 4 big players. 3 of them focus on just a few high demand glyphs, the other coveres just about everything.I have so many small players now that I cannot keep track. So many new names in the last 2 weeks.

How many glyphs do you sell a day/week and how much are you currently making?

I have no idea how many glyphs I sell. I did have 32k in sales this last week but that included the patch sales.

How many glyphs do you post and how often?

I post 2 or 4 at a time and do it 5 times a day.

what is your cost per ink of the sea?
I pay under 20G for herbs and sell snowfall for 13G. That puts my cost at 2.67G each.


Nutral AH Update

Filed under: Inscription,wowbanker — Tags: — Kevmar @ 7:10 am

I decided it is too much work to maintain that other AH. The other side of our server is dead. I was posting 700 glyphs to sell 20ish. After the work of getting glyphs to someone over there, posting them, tracking them, and collecting them from themailbox. I decided it was too much.

I list around 722 glyphs last time. When those all expire, they fill my mailbox. If I did not use the /reload trick to refresh the mail box, it would take 17 minutes to collect it all. That is inventory that I could be moving on our AH.

Now that we can have chars on both sides, if they need a glyph that bad then they can run someone over to get it. I think this has more potential where the other side is more active.

August 19, 2009

What will you do with all that gold

Filed under: Thoughts,wowbanker — Kevmar @ 12:06 pm

I have way more gold then I plan on spending. I should have stoped at 20,000 gold. I think that’s all I really needed. I have about 115,000 gold at the time of writing this. My goal was 30,000 and I hit that way to quickly.

I have no desire to just burn it on a mount or pets or achievements. I do see some new craftable items I could blow it on, but I’m in a raiding guild and will get gear that’s close enough in due time. So that brings me back to what to do with it.

A close personal friend was rolling in the gold a year ago. By rolling, I mean he had 8-10k gold. For us, that’s more then we really ever had. I was working hard to get my epic flyer and when I was within 1,000 gold of getting it, he gave it to me. Not a loan, but a gift. To him he was making it faster then he needed it. Fast forward a year and now I am in that situation. I sent him 10,000 gold last night. I reminded him of when he gave that gold to me and I was just returning the favor. I didn’t give it to him because he gave me gold before. I did it for the same reason he did. To help out a friend.

I also sent 10,000 gold to another close friend. I think they will find more value in that 10,000 gold then I will in my remaining 95,000 gold. Now I am at the point where I ask myself, at what point do I stop. The gold cap is my soft goal. I think it would be cool to say I hit the gold cap in 4 months. But my feelings will not be hurt if I back out of that one.

One goal I am working on is to reduce the amount of game time I devote to making gold. In a way, I am cheating because I spend so much time doing it. Did I really make that much if I do hit the gold cap in 8 months but it took 2 weeks /played to do it?

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