Gold in knee-deep amounts can be made at the Auction Houses in World of Warcraft if you know what you are doing. I've traded a lof of various stuff, and have managed to make many thousand gold, on just one of my characters. What I've discovered is that few players really maximize their auction house methods. I've observed a number of common mistakes wow players make at the auction house, here are some of them.

Keep in mind this is a basic guide. If you are serious about maximizing your profits, please read this entire article, and then proceed to have a look at Secret Gold Guide by Hayden Hawke.

1. Selling too cheaply. Underpricing may not be the most common mistake, but it’s a devastating one nonetheless. For example, some people might sell mageweave cloth for 2 g per stack when prices are temporarily depressed. Such price extremes are corrected back to the normal price range after a while.

   If you don't know the value of an item, look it up on wow.allakhazam.com. Allakhazam is a great place to look things up, especially for rarely-seen items like som recipes, books, formulas, plans, and blues and purples that you are not used to seeing auctioned. 

2. Selling too expensively. Everybody wants a maximum profit on the items they are listing, right? The absolute majority certainly want to. The problem is that the deposit is usually quite high for armor and weapons, but also for other items such as runecloth.

   Rapid selling of blue and purple items can be achieved by listing them at "bargain" prices. Rather than selling items expensively I want to sell them quickly, otherwise I have to pay deposit fees while potential buyers fret about and wait for lower prices. Let's say an item has a regular price of 65 g, I'd probably sell it for only 50 g, just to get it sold.

   If the item has a high deposit, get it sold quickly or you'll lose money on the deposit.

3. Not using the 80/20 rule. The 80/20 principle is extremely useful, perhaps you've read about it? It states that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your efforts, and it holds true across a number of areas, even World of Warcraft.

I began selling almost all items (white quality or better) I found after I discovered just how profitable the auction houses of World of Warcraft can be. Some would do well, while others just ended up in my inbox. I found myself spending a lot of precious time relisting items that wouldn't sell.So I made the decision to optimize my trading, i.e. focus on the 20% of my effort that brought in 80% of the gold:

- Items which had little value at the auction house above the vendor sell price, I started selling to vendors. Items that have a low real price difference between the AH and vendors, for instance common recipes and formulas worth 1 g 50 s at the AH and only 30 s at a vendor. Also a lot of green items.
- At the cheap end of the scale sales were quicker, so I lowered my starting bids and buyouts accordingly.
- I created an alt and began using it for the sole purpose of selling and trading the AH. Doing so saves a lot of time.

Doing so gave me more time to grind, quest and raid, which can also be profitable and above all, fun. Ignore the 80% of actions that account for only 20% of your results, focus on the 20% that bring you 80% of your profits, thus you will have a better (and wading-in-gold) World of Warcraft-experience.

For additional auction house tips, I recommend Hayden's Gold Guide, which has a separate guide to make money on the AH.

Tags

Computer Games & Software