Greedy Goblin

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Weekly report

As you can see, my wealth increased by 22K G since last week.

It could be great. Except it's not. Out of this 22, 23 came from selling the items I've transferred from my old server. So without selling the silver spoons, I'd have -1K/week balance.

I also made 8K from selling glyphs. That's much less than I'm used to. Maybe it's a bad week, maybe it's a declining trend. We'll see.

I made another 1K by selling mongoose enchant scrolls. So I had income. I just spent more than I've earned. 5K to the guildbank, and another 5K to buy herbs and inks for my glyphs and enchanting materials for the mongooses. Granted, I've increased the amount of glyphs sold, I list 1300 now, and two inscription bags are full of inks (60x20x3 = 3.6K G) and also my enchanting bag. I don't remember how full they were last week, but even if they were empty, it would only partially explain what happened.

The big problem is the 8K instead of 11-12K glyph income. If it remains constant, I may have to seek new opportunities. This is extra work for me, but extra material for you. Lot of readers "demanded" direct business tricks. I did not bothered to research them as I already make hoards. But if my balance is falling, I'll have to. After all a goblin who loses money is a goblin having nightmares about terrible things like beggary or a honest day's work.

So if the glyph market don't change, you'll see new tricks here. I already have some ideas.

Update: I've checked the glyph market and now I have 1543 glyphs listed while all other competitors have 2738. So I already have 1/3 of the market. It will be higher soon, even if I have to give up some profit.

18 comments:

Dan said...

Wild guess here for a business you're looking into: Jewelcrafting. I would recommend it if you aren't looking into it (also I would suggest having it on a 70+ alt).

Lam said...

i think sticking to glyph is not a bad idea. With dual spec everyone is forced to have a 2nd spec as the old reason "On i have no money to respec" is no longer valid. This forces people to buy new glyph for triple spec dudes (e.g. Pally, druids and shamans). Furthermore, with every patch there will bound to be people who respec and with this a need to buy new glyphs.

Oh well i guess may be saying all of this because i'm in the same boat as you.

Cheers,
Your Fan from Singapore

Molinu said...

"After all a goblin who loses money is a goblin having nightmares about terrible things like beggary or a honest day's work."

Nicely said, this made me laugh.

Just wanted to say - thanks to you, I haven't done an 'honest' day's work since I started reading this blog.

Instead, I'm what you called a small business owner. I buy metals and eternals off the auction house, and sell belt buckles and ammo boxes right back for a tidy profit.

Everybody wins. I get money for minimal effort, miners get paid for their ore, eternal-grinders get paid for their work, and my server has a ready supply of belt buckles and top-end ammo.

Anonymous said...

Don't know what your second profession is, but I'd also recommend JC. I make about 3k a week on it and I'm extremely casual about it. I loot the mailbox, buy ore to prospect, and refill gems / jewelry once a day. Takes 5-10 minutes.

It's not as much profit as inscription can be. But there is a lot more traffic, so undercutting is less of an issue (especially with greens). I barely have any blue recipes yet, I expect my profit to increase quite a bit as I get more of the choice ones.

BTW, I really appreciate your blog. Only found it about a week ago, but I love all of it.

Booty Bay Merchant said...

I personally don't like the idea of relying on a profession. Blizzard is known to change things underneath you. I prefer to be in control of my income source. This doesn't mean I don't rely on professions, but I always diversify into other areas.

Booty Bay Merchant

Yaseen titi said...

I could see this coming, the competition is fierce, if you notice you were getting undercut less than 1 hour after you list your glyphs, and people are willing to go down to 2g per glyph rather than give up the market.

JormaT said...

How do you manage to list so many glyphs? I list around 500-600 and i just run out of bag space and using bank or alts seems to slow me down alot.

Len said...

I recently moved server. I wanted to see if all these blogs paid off. I've been reading a few now for about 4 months. I love all of them as they all give a different view on the auction house. I joined a new server and while leveling my char (level 15 now) I make money (I havent made a bank alt) So far at level 15 I have 300g with skinning and Mining (both under 75) and about 12 hours played.

My secret is recipe selling. Its is astonishing the sheer number of lazy/uninformed people that wont fly for a few minutes to get a recipe. I buy one for 40c and sell it for 13g twice a day! I get one for 5g and sell for 30g once a day. It is so simple and these are patterns from noob zones or major cities! Simples.

Love the blog.

Archangel said...

My income from selling recipes is between 150-300g per day.

Erulorawe said...

On my server, at least, the price of glyphs went up sharply right after the dual-spec feature came out. But before too long the glyph market took a nosedive. With dual-specs, people don't need to re-spec as often, so they don't need new glyphs.

Anonymous said...

You're my hero!

I will be reading much more as I love playing the market.

hary wilke said...

why do you have so many glyphs up at the same time? aren't you being constantly undercut by people posting 1 or 2 glyphs a few copper below your price? are you constantly undercutting the undercutters?

i'm new to the glyph market, but i can see that posting 1-2 glyphs at a time and checking often to see if they sold has been better for me than posting 10 glyphs at once and being undercut and loosing sales

Anonymous said...

Some of my Favorite Tactics are these:
Copper Rods, Not high gold but i keep a couple up easy run to get them and people dont seem to know where to get them
Recipes,
Kodo Stew (im horde) Ghost walker post usually about 30g
Horde pets go figure, Parrie Dog Whistles Thunder Bluff
Dragon hawks, Fairbreze Village
Cock Rocaches Undercity
Snakes Near Mage trainer in org Usually get 2-3 gold for these

Enchanting Rods, I work with a black smith and ive bought all the mats off the AH, i figure the most expensive rod ive had crafted cost about 15g (new thing im doing)
sell for higher end ones
Archinite (having an Alch to transmute the arc thats also transmute speced helped) 75g sold one for 100, i also sell the formula limited buy from Night haven
Unneeded since the trainer trains it but i still sell it for 25g
Eternium Rod lower city madam rosa? Over by lower city QM, 25g for that recipie Rod sells for 50-75
Adaminitie rod, 50-75 gold recipie for 25g Stone something, in Terokar just drew a blank.. Horde FP any ways


Crispy Bat wings, Horde FP in Ghostlands, from the cook Sell well, also one of the horde only recipies can sell on netural i guess

My bigest profits todate have come from Smuggling, just got to pay for my wifes account so i can smugle some more :)

Kendor Kabonka in the Pig and Whistle in Storm wind is best supplier of Ally only Recipes, he sells about 12 of them

Redridge Goulosh
Westfall stew
Crocklisk gumbo
Cant remeber rest right now, onlyh the Curriously Tasty omlet that he sells is avalible to horde vendor. that one sells well too
Ill sell those to my wife on the Neutral AH and pawn them off for 5-30 gold why do these sell you ask?
For the same reason i got into this, The Chef De Cusine Achivement, learn 160 recipes, before the last patch there were 161 in the game, one of them being Dirges Crispy chimmerok from the AQ Secpter quest, the only one i dont have.

now there is like 164 or something still you need some of these alliance ones.
3 are quest rewards, Moongraze Tenderloin, low level quest in Azure Watch, Recipe of the Kaldori, Lvl 1 can do this quest, in Dolanar
And Tasty Lion Steak eek, lvl 30 quest in South shore, For a bit of time probally more then its worth to most goblins ive decided you can easily make a lagre chunk of change by rolling an Ally Deathnight, Doing those 3 quests and selling those recipies for about 300 gold a pop, i tried to charge a bit more for the lion steak since its mote of a pain in the butt.

Loch Frenzy Delight, vendor near lake in Loch modan, i have very limited competition selling this recipe
And Clam Chowder, vendor in Darkshore quite a bit south of Auberdine, in the middle of no where along the shore, this one i have yet to see any one else sell.

Cats, Crazy Cat Lady Between Goldshire and Storm wind, usually about 10g a pop
Moths, Sixx in Exrodar, 10g each
Owls as you leave Darnassas the vendor is to the right if i remeber, usually 10g not as much luck selling but they do sell.

If you luck into white kitten he sells for ungodly amounts, i think i sold mine to low at 300, not sure if he sells at 1500 but ive seen him posted for that, i woundt bother to camp for him though, you could make that much gold in the time you waste waiting for him

Anonymous said...

I Have all of my Horde alts in my own guild and use the guild bank to store and transfer all this stuff, my wifes alts are in this as well so when i buy the recpies with her alt in BB i pick them up from the mailbox right there and plop them into the guild vault, i keep the illustion of rarity by usually poping 3 on at a time rather then flooding the market with them even though i have about 30 clam chowder recipies in my guild vault, im just hoping i dont run out of over achivers soon(my main being one of them i guess lol)

Anonymous said...

Why does it matter how many glyphs you have listed? I could list thousands of glyphs and sell none if there is just one other seller consistently covering the market and undercutting me.

Your preferred posting method that you have outlined the glyph industry post might not work as well on your new server. If there are other sellers you check the AH more often and undercut you, you might sell a couple after the initial batch post and then hardly any once the competition reacts. That makes 1,000g a day sound about right. You can test if this is the case by posting fewer of each glyph on your next cycle (meaning post 3 glyphs of life tap instead of 6). If my hypothesis is accurate, your income should hardly change.

On my server most glyph sellers will now undercut frequently up to about 5g. Many more sellers are active, list for short times, cancel their auctions frequently etc. I think the word is out that the glyph business can be easy money for little time invested. The amount of smart competition has increased.

Fail said...

Is there an addon available to display whether your auctions are the current low buyout price? The undercutting on my server is getting maddening and it's time consuming to constantly check items.

MyName said...

@Anonymous

I think the reason he posts so many glyphs is more of a timesaver than a money saver. It takes more time to make new glyphs every day than it does to make a week's worth of glyphs at a time and then just repost the ones that sell (even if the first way is more cost effective).

Also, there's always the chance that one of your competitors will take a day off and you'll sell more than usual. But you're right that having an excess of supply isn't worth much if the demand isn't there.

Unknown said...

The demand for glyphs is somewhat there but has really gone down significantly due to duel-spec. All non-hybrid classes only really need 2 specs so therefore glyph demand will be lower. I still make most of my profits from glyphs still...

I also play the JC market and I have to say the market is quite good, however with the recent flood of JC'ers on my server the prices have significantly dropped. Most of my gem sells come from green quality, ex. Runed Bloodstone