My raiding activity had its toll on my budget. 5K/week is 75K since may 8, and I also spent 40K on the blue ulduar, so I ended up with 110K G last week. This is not something that should stay.So I fired up my glyph business again 10 days ago. OK, my absence elevated the prices a bit, so maybe the next weeks won't be so shiny, but still, 20K G income is not too bad.
I craft so many glphs that I needed a third alt. I'm still heavily undercutting any possible competitors and post only once in every 2 days, no AH camping for me. I'm crafting every glyphs I can sell for more than 6G and 1 ink costs somewhere around 2G.
I'm sometimes lucky and can buy ink from the AH, when not, I have to mill herbs. Luckily herbs are cheap. I use the snowfall ink byproducts to craft offhand items, they sell with 100-150G profit.
So, despite all "inscription is dead" QQ, I can still make very decent profit with little playtime. (I mean active, it also needs 1-2 hours of AFK time for retrieving unsold and listing new glyphs)
I'm sometimes lucky and can buy ink from the AH, when not, I have to mill herbs. Luckily herbs are cheap. I use the snowfall ink byproducts to craft offhand items, they sell with 100-150G profit.
So, despite all "inscription is dead" QQ, I can still make very decent profit with little playtime. (I mean active, it also needs 1-2 hours of AFK time for retrieving unsold and listing new glyphs)
49 comments:
Do you have every glyph in the game? Currently I have a very competitive market on my server and I am hoping when I finally get all of the glyphs I will break the 1k number for auctions.
that's useful to know.
Gevlon, what addons do you use to list so many glyph auctions and to collect your mail? I have been trying to replicate some of what you do and I am finding that I spend most of my time performing those two tasks. Thanks!
For listing glyphs use auctioneer to batch post them and go afk while they do.
Actually I find the most annoying is to collect unsold glyphs from the mail because it takes so long to load but I don't think there is any way to make it faster.
Postal is amazing for collecting your auction winnings from the mail in 1 click.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/postal.aspx
Also Auctioneer is pretty standard for mass auction posting.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/auctioneer.aspx
By now JC is a moneymaker. Buying epic gems for ~140 and sell them cut for ~200. An Alchemist can transmute for ~80g profit per gem (too bad I have had only a tripple proc with Eye of Zul with my last 30 transmutes *sigh*).
You make me try the inscription market. But a few weeks ago there was a heavy war in this field with some guy cancel and post every three hours. Crashed the prizes but he won and soon they went up again.
He most likely uses QA2 (quick auctions 2) for his glyph posting, it allows you to set your fallback (the price you will post at if there's no competition), threshold (the lowest price you want to post them for) and the undercut value.
It will then automatically post all of your glyphs (if you have set it to include glyphs) that are above your threshold. There are a few more advanced options but these are the basics.
You can also cancel all undercut auctions with a single mouse-click.
For retrieving mail postal works very good.
The problem with Postal is that when you got 500-1000 auctions up, you have to empty your mailbox and wait for about 20 secs, 10-20 times.
Doesn't matter which mail addon you use, you'll always have to wait about 20 - 30 seconds for the game to refresh your mailbox... :<
Using "Better inbox" myself. Same button as Postal but you can specify items / gold and selected items / gold
Sadly, the herbs on my server have skyrocketed, presumably due to people reading your site. Inks other than Ink of the Sea have always been essentially impossible to buy - 8g each for Ethereal Ink and the like.
Nevertheless, I rake in my chunk of change every couple of days, when I remember. It's enough to keep me rolling. I'd like to rev it up to true goblin standards, though. A project for the weekend, perhaps. I love me some Sunday profits.
Do postal work for you? In my case it gets mails in batchs of 50 and then takes a long while to get the next 50..
and for nick, the dalaran ink trader is your friend.
@Nick S
There is a chick in Dalaran who swaps Ink of the Sea for any other white ink of your choice. So I only ever buy Ink of the Sea.
If it's taking too long inbetween mail screens loading, you can also use: /reloadui
Gevlon:
I don't agree with your calling "retrieving unsold" as "AFK time". You can only get 50 items at once and then you have to interact with the game again. (Plus the wait in between mail cycles.) Scanning the AH and batch posting are the only things you can walk away from (as Auctioneer will run for minutes with a single key press).
Zorlak: The standard mail refresh is a matter of seconds. However, not every character works properly. My bank alt started taking several MINUTES to get the next 50 mails a while back. I contacted Blizzard and was told it was working as intended.
The way around it is to use "/console reloadui". This refreshes your mailbox. If you have a decently fast computer, the reload will be faster than waiting even 20 seconds for your mailbox to refresh.
It is interesting that you sell offhand items. i made a killing this week selling Nobles and Undeath cards -- the chaos and Prisms market is dead on my server, but even if they go unsold, I still average a good profit selling the higher demand cards.
I wonder if they would sell best as cards, decks, or trinkets. It probably depends on how long until the next Darkmoon Festival.
I'll make a few of the offhands this weekend and see how they do. I'm starting to buy Adder's Tongue and Icethorn instead of Tiger Lily and Deadnettle since my card profits were so strong.
@SiderisAnon: retrieving is AFK since you don't have to press one key and there is no consequence of not pressing the next in time (besides the process takes longer). So you can Alt-tab read news, reply mail, clean your room, sort out the laundry, fill the dishwasher and return to WoW now-and-then for the next 50.
Gevlon, you should really try QA2 because it posts and cancels the auctions much faster then Auctioneer. the posting speed is incredible. It will save you alot of time.
I usually prefer buying herbs and milling them instead of hoarding directly the inks. Snowfalls still sell well on my server, between 15-20g: that's as much as a stack of adder's tongue, so I almost don't spend anything for the mats.
Gevlon, I envy your server.
Unfortunately on my server (Kargath EU) are between half a dozen and a dozen "goblins".
About a third of all the glyphs have an average price betwenn 50s and 1g50, another tird is about 3g. There are sometimes 3-5 glyphs that are not in the ah, so you can try to sell some of them. But because of 6-12 people logging in regularly, you have 30 minutes at best until 90% of your stock is undercut again.
Demand is quite week, too. Under the same market conditions I made about 1k a day (with posting twice a day), now Im down to about 200-300g.
Heavy undercutting isnt really possible with 3g as an average (ink costs are about 2g). And I get the feeling that for every glyph-goblin that quits the business, two other take over...
@latest anonymous
Exactly. This advice is only going to produce the results if you don't have many other goblins competing with you.
When I post all my auctions from my banker alt I search the item, it is is selling for > lets say 65% or so I will undercut w/e it is selling for, if not I move on. This takes a while but, gevlon, are you just making all glyphs valued at more then 6g plus the cost of mats then posting for 6g across the board? Like does batch post have some memory where you can create a string of items that will all post for 6g?
Or do you do what I do and just check the price, if its decent, undercut.
(I use auctioneer to undercut btw, the little "Post" tab that is down at the bottom of the AH screen. Now the regular post one, the auctioneer one.)
I have been enjoying some changes in the bag market on my server. Against rational expectation, and sound economic theory, my new strategy is to post 20-30 bags 30% OVER the market. The competition over the summer had gotten so fierce, or the players so myopic, that most only post 10-15 bags at a time. So while they post at 8-10 gold, I post at 12-13 and sell through my entire inventory every day because I have become the market's seller of last resort. the end result is that I make a lot more moeny while spending less time in the AH.
The biggest challenge is maintaining my stock of netherweave cloth.
If only I could make as much money as JC/Inscribers...
+1 to recommend QA2
(lets you create groups of items, and select the posting settings)
example iv got groups called
"1 ink glyphs"
"2 inkglyphs"
it automaticly posts them all, as long as theyr in bag
to the Offhand guy:
making a gkyph costs me from 1g66s81c to 2g11s
im posting glyphs for 3g-5g or 6g-10g depending on the ammount of inks...
so in the worst case scenario im earning over 50% mats price- do you get that from offhands ?
PS: yes over 75% of my 891 glyphs require posting only once, on low pop server on outnumbered side
I actually have a question with regards to glyph selling.
In general, I agree with your theory of selling low to beat out competition. However, I've found that this doesn't work for my glyph business. This is because my main competitor is a hardcore AH camper that also uses Quick Auctions to undercut.
Since I don't have a ton of time to camp the AH, I have tried two methods to compete. One is where I simply undercut him by a small margin. The other is to post all glyphs at a bare minimum price. In both scenarios, I get undercut the moment he logs on. I'm sure I could try to turn this into a hardcore AH war, but I'm sure he has more resources to beat me on this. My overall result is that by using small undercuts, I get a greater profit since my sells do not increase as I cut my price.
In this case, is it really any better to post the glyphs at a low price or is there some other option I'm missing here?
@Gevlon
How are you setting the price on your glyphs? Using the auctioneer undercut to just undercut by a set amount? What amount? Or do you just set a specific price?
I've just started up on my server however I know there are a bunch of people actively working on inscription businesses, not sure if they're goblins yet ;) Ink however costs more, about the cheapest I can go reliably (not counting on their being enough lower herbs that aren't marked up) would be 2.5g though average is more about 3.8g per ink.
There hasn't been one herb farmer on my server in a month, there is never more than 3 stacks of adder's, icehtorn, or lichbloom on the ah in a long time. At the beginning of the summer there were farmers left and right in trade and I could buy 300 stacks every few days if I wanted. Now sicne there are so little herbs they are up in the mid 30g range instead of the 17-24g range. It's so annoying.
You can also download quick auctions, you add your glyphs too it and set how much to undercut, the fallback price if none are listed, and the minimum. Then it posts them all and you can come back later and click Cancel to cancel all the undercut ones.
^^Because all the farmers are wasting their time with titanium and making a such small profit/hour ratio.
About bloody time! :P
On my Alliance server, it's easier to sell pigments than inks, oddly enough. Vellums are great, too. I met my Moon Guard gold goal a lot faster than I thought I would.
It's interesting that you were able to get back in so quickly. Very fortunate. ... And I am totally going to check out these mail mods. Thanks for posting those, guys!
Inscription is hit or miss right now.
On US Gilneas, a low pop server, we have two goblins fighting a price war. Glyphs are dropping into the 2-3 gold range, ink of the sea is selling for 2-3, snowfall for 16.
Herbs are going upwards for 24g a stack. At some point I'm sure one of them will be forced out, probably whoever manages the herb/ink supply better will win out.
On US Sister's of Elune on the other hand, I'm still seeing glyphs in the 8-10 gold range.
I just downloaded QA2.
Does it automatically check AH prices and undercut based on that or does it do something like Auctioneer and base it off the data from your most recent scan?
Glyph market on my server is very competitive, so I use new tactic. Everyday - in the morning and in the evening, I enlist 1 glyph of every kind. So it takes about 20 minutes to receive unsold ones, scan AH and
enlist new ones. With this tactic I have tripled my income to 12k per week. I work from home, so this style is an option for me.
Pertaining to my last post, I just got attacked by a guy who is mad at me because i post 20 bags 30% above the market and then undercut people who come in under me. He thinks that it makes no sense to both post high and also undercut other posters, and (wait for it) thinks that I am 'losing money' by selling bags for 10 gold when I could sell them for 12(even though he undercuts me). He thinks that if I sell 40 bags for 10 gold instead of selling them for 12 gold I am losing 2 gold per bag. He also thinks he is the best AH bag seller on the server, even though I never heard of him before and I have been selling for months..
I love this "dead market" attitude. Currently me and a partner are hitting our glyph market for 27k a week. It took a bit of fine tuning to make it happen but now it runs like a fine oiled machine. All I can say is "Thanks Gelvon!"
to above - time to shaft your partener. that would be the goblin way.
in general - dont forget M&S customers are out there too. i am often suprised when i sell a 32g glyph (my max) while i'm listing. i look at the market to find 10 or more competitors glyphs often in the 5g-7g range. even 1g glyphs. the customer just bought my glyph cos it was the first one he saw.
my pricing done with auctioneer is...max 32g, min 8g, undercut 2%. 24hour auctions. i list usually once or twice a day (but i have two accounts so i can be doing it while i do something else) always after a glyph market scan (takes only 2-3 minutes if you dont do a full AH scan).
milling annoys me a little as it is very anti-afk.
i use lil-sparky's workshop to manage my crafting. i even wrote some addon alterations so i know how many of each glyph i currently own while in the crafting window.
i tend to buy herbs all month but only craft once a month. anything i'm out of stock of i make a large number of.
i have a 68 DK (for xmute mastery) with 450 alch / Scribe. every glyph known. i have 2 (about to be 3) sales alts with a dedicated bank vault tab.
With Auctioneer, the Appraiser tab is where you set your prices. You can use the market price or a fixed price, or even other price options that Auctioneer tracks (i.e. standard deviation). You have to go through each and every single glyph you ever create to set it up for batch posting. But once you do that, you are good to go.
I tried QA2, but could not find a setting for % or fixed prices. I came back to Gevlon’s blog to see how he did it. To answer your questions, all you guys have to do is search Gevlon’s blog. It’s all there somewhere.
1) QA two is the most efficient addon for the glyph market.
2) Make a /console reloadui macro and put it on your bar for refreshing the mail. Faster in many ways.
“1) QA two is the most efficient addon for the glyph market.”
It’s efficient all right, but not necessarily the best tool for goblins or highly competitive glyph markets.
I do have to toss a thanks out to Gelvon and Just my Two Copper for pointing me at the glyph market.
@Gelvon
I stand corrected. I did not think your method of posting once every 1-2 days would still generate good gold with the heavy use of QA that many scribes now use.
You can see from the other comments where that they swear by QA. I use it myself.
It is so hard to pull myself out of that camping the AH mindset. I pump glyphs onto the AH like mad. And I will follow the market way down if it goes there. profit is profit.
I make more gold in those 10 days, but your gold per hour puts mine to shame.
@Anonymouse on US Gilneas
If stacks of herbs sell for 24G and snowfall sells for 16G then the cost to make ink of the sea is 1.3G. If they can get them from a farmer at 22G, the cost drops to 1g each.
At 3G a glyph, the profit is 50 silver to 1.5G each.
If they keep the majority of the market at that price, the people without research glyphs will be driven away. I would guess they break even on those glyphs and the true market is the research ones.
Jesus, people, 3g per glyph?
I'm selling at an average (as of last week) of a bit over 18g per glyph on my server, and that's usually at a 5g+ undercut.
Guess I'll keep the server name to myself...
@Nick: Same here. I'd rather profit from one glyph for 20g than 10 glyphs for 4g. Just a matter of how you want to spend your time. :)
Well, if you can get the herbs cheap enough (around 15g) then 3g is a pretty good amount of gold. It wont give you any huge amounts of gold/hour but it will give you enough to survive.
I wouldn't stick to 3g glyphs for a long time though.
I don't mean 3g is unprofitable, just that average prices are way higher on my server. Some glyphs are going for 70g when I undercut them to 50.
I sell some 3g glyphs, too, but only when herbs are much cheaper than usual - typically, 5g is the dead minimum for any glyph to be profitable, and most herbs are too expensive to even approach that price point.
Last week I bet 1/2 my glyphs were listed under 4.5G. I saw 8-10 over the 10G mark.
A good chunk of those glyphs at that price don't sell. Even when 1/2 of the market is that low, most of my sells are in that 5-8G range.
I just make up for it in volume.
Depends on the server you are on. That is the case with all markets. Judge your market do what you have and make your profit.
@Anti -- how do you use auctioneer to just do a partial scan? Say, just glyphs, or just herbs?
Actually, QA2 is very useful for exhausting AH-camping tactics, but for the once-every-two-days technique I find Auctioneer alone vastly superior (even more if it's full of campers all using QA2).
How to do a partial scan:
- ctrl-click the category (in this case glyph)
- at the top left of the AH window there are the stop, play, pause, fast forward buttons. hit the play button to start a limited item scan.
if you dont select a category, or if you use the "scan" button at the bottom left of the AH window it does a full AH scan instead.
Thanks, Anti. That will save me quite a bit of time every day, since I only need to scan herb/glyph prices.
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