Creating Your Own Market In WoW | No Items Found

No Items Found

There are times when you will do a search on the World of Warcraft auction house to gauge your competition and you will see the wonderful notice "No Items Found".  Having no other items on the auction house to compete with your items is a wonderful thing.  No competition.  No undercutters.  No wall of glyphs.  No stupidly low prices. No crashing market.  Nothing.  For an unpredictable amount of time, you will have complete control of the entire market pricing for that one item.  You never know when the next person will come along to undercut you. You may not have much time to capitalize on this wonderful opportunity, so strike hard and fast.

Buy Low, Sell Normal?

Some bloggers or players will tell you to "Buy Low, Sell Normal".  This is never my philosophy.  Why would you want to limit yourself to selling at the market value all the time, especially when you have no competition?  Having no items found is your opportunity to profit from your own pricing structure.  This is your chance to reset the current market value, regardless of whether you are flipping an item, or selling a crafted good.  If you choose to sell at a price around the normal market value, then you are doing more harm than you might think.

Pricing In Excess Of Market Value

When there are no items found on the WoW auction house for my chosen item, I like to reset the current market value, or asking price, to a minimum of at least 120%.  Depending on the demand on the item, I can raise the price to 200-300% of normal market value and still have the item sell.

Pricing Over Market Value:

1. Raises the price at which eventual undercutting will begin.
2. Increases your profit per sale.
3. Gets you more gold for the same amount of work.
4. Can lead to an increase in actual market value over time.
5. Starts to inch the auctioneer scans of other players up over time, which can be used to fool auction scanning programs into a higher perceived value.
6. May lead competitors to also raise their pricing structure.

Example Markets

Rich Purple Silk Shirts

These are all great benefits that should be considered when choosing to elevate the price or not.  The best items to elevate are the items that are in high demand and are constantly being purchased.  Better yet, if you have an item that has less competition to begin with, like my Rich Purple Silk Shirts market.  I haven't seen a competitor EVER, so I set my prices based on the threshold at which they will still sell at a decent volume.  For my server that seems to be 35 gold per shirt.  

Solid Sky Sapphires

In a market with competition I can still get away with the price gouging.  Eventually over time some markets learn the new pricing system that I am helping to create by posting higher priced items.  A good example from my WoW gold making is the Solid Sky Sapphire.  The market value according to the auctioneer tooltip shows the Solid Sky Sapphire priced at 35 gold.  Some days I have competition and they sell from between 25 to 40 gold for each Solid Sky Sapphire.  On days with no competition, I keep the price constant at 75 gold per gem, as you can see in the Undermine Journal image below.  They still sell because of their high demand.  If I chose to sell at the normal market value, I would be pissing away extra gold that could have been made.

Solid Sky Sapphire Jewelcrafting Sales
(Click to Enlarge)

Parting Thoughts

So don't sell yourself short.  Learn and understand your market and the items that you craft within that market.  Don't settle for just "Selling Normal".  When you get the wonderful "No Items Found" notice, experiment with how high you can jack the price up and still get away with making sales.  Maybe others will follow suit and you will all have to work easier for the same gold.  Remember in a market with heavy undercutting like Mysterious Fortune Cards or Glyphs, if there are no other items posted on the auction house, the price that you decide to set the new market price to is also the same value that undercutting will begin.  With smart competitors, you will see them undercut just below your new higher prices.  In theory, if the beginning of the chain starts at a higher price, then the end of the chain will end at a higher price.

...And we goblins love higher prices.

Enjoy The Posts Here at Cold's Gold Factory? Check Out Cold's Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery Gold Making Guide To Get You Started Or Check Out My New Favorite All Around WoW Gold Making Guide. 

When Auctioneer Lies... I Turn A Profit

Auctioneer Market Value Isn't Always Correct

Regardless of what auctioneering add-on you are using, your displayed market value is only as good as the average of your scans.  If you are not scanning the auction house, then obviously your market value data is going to be incorrect.  If you are constantly scanning the auction house multiple times per day, then you are going to have more accurate auctioneer data to base your decisions on what to sell on the auction house in World of Warcraft.  The more scans you perform over time, the closer your data will be to becoming accurate.  A website like theunderminejournal that is based off of hourly scans is going to have a more detailed and accurate breakdown of what is closer to the true market value over time.  Scanning hourly is much more accurate than scanning twice per day.

There are times when the market value given on your tooltip is accurate from a historical data collection standpoint, yet is completely off for the actual value of an item.  Remember prior to Cataclysm, when I told you to stock up on the low level Vanilla WoW greens that were turning blue in Cataclysm?  Well, those items had been scanned as green junk low value items for years.  When they were changed to blue items and gained upgraded stats, we made a killing selling those now blue leveling items.

If you think back to the beginning of Cataclysm when they were selling to all of the fresh characters leveling in the new WoW Cataclsym content, these items were still showing up on the tooltip with the low market value that had been scanned multiple times prior to the change.  We had to manually jack the prices up on these fresh high demand blue gear pieces.  Many of the items I had bought while green (prior to the Cata change) for less than 2 or 3 gold. I was then able to unload them( once they turned into their blue equivalents) for 60-125 gold each.  Even after the change into blue items, anyone who just used the drag and drop auto-price fill posting method, would have been mistakenly posting those items at the old market value.  Even after the change, I was able to snatch up a few underpriced pieces of the blue gear.

Enchant Shield Vitality

Here is an example of another item that currently can be seen posted on the auction house listed at far below the actual value.  Because of the same scanned market value of the old version of the scroll, many leveling Enchanters will craft 5-10 Enchant Shield: Vitality scrolls while leveling their Enchanting Profession.  They just toss them onto the auction house at whatever Auctioneer tells them it is worth, but that market value is way off from the true value of the Enchant.

Enchant Shield: Vitality is now Best-in-Slot for any shield carrying twink as it now gives +10 Stamina and +10 Spirit.  Many times these enchants can be found for well below the cost to craft, since Auctioneer and other add-ons still base their market value off of the old value when no one bought them.  I recently found 40 of the Enchant Shield: Vitality scrolls on the auction house all for under 1 gold each.  I bought every last one of them and reposted a few on the auction house, which sold for 75 gold each.  These do require some expensive Enchanting materials to craft after all (4 Illusion Dust and a Greater Eternal Essense).  I continually toss a handful of them up on the auction house and the sales continue to come in.  I also keep an eye out for any more that show up at stupid low prices so I can buy them up and sweep them out of the hands of potential competitors.

Buying Poorly Priced Scrolls (Click to Enlarge)

Selling Scrolls For Correct Price (Click to Enlarge)

I paid 45 gold for 42 scrolls.
2 Scrolls sold for 75 gold each.
That leaves me with plenty profit already and 40 more scrolls to sell.

Check into this on your server, especially if you have a nice twink population.  Remember to always use the most important add-on of all above all other WoW add-ons.

Enjoy The Posts Here at Cold's Gold Factory? Check Out Cold's Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery Gold Making Guide To Get You Started. Also Check Out The Teenager's Gold Guide To Get Started With Learning The Auction House As A Younger Player Or Check Out My New Favorite All Around WoW Gold Making Guide.

Tips To Avoid Losing Gold As An Auctioneer

Warcraft Auction Market Fluctuations

Many of the markets within the World of Warcraft auction house are volatile markets.  The value of an item may be high one day and low the next.  Sometimes the value recovers and other times it remains at the new low price.  There are many things that can contribute to an item's drop in value and are not limited to:

• Patch Changes
• Class Changes and Nerfs
• Spec Changes and Nerfs
• New Content Additions
• Introduction Of A New Best-In-Slot
• Increased Competition
• Flooding of Supplies
• Botting and Exploits

As a general rule crafted items are going to lose value over time.  The value of any crafted item is always the highest once the recipe first becomes available.  The longer you hold onto a crafted item, the more chance you risk of the value of that item dropping.  This is only true for crafted items because all gear eventually becomes less desirable as new content introduces new better gear. 

Tips To Avoid Losing Gold As Your Item Value Declines

• Learn newly introduced recipes as early as possible.
• Craft those items as soon as possible, to recover your recipe costs before others learn the recipes.
• Don't mass craft items ahead of time, unless you are sure they will sell.
• Only craft items as you are going to sell them.
• Never craft multiple of high priced items that require soulbound materials (like Chaos Orbs).
• Keep your materials broken down into components that you can sell should the market tank on your end product.
• If a market is looking like a crash with no bounce back to the expected price, get out as soon as you can.  Your cost to craft is already sunk into that item. 
• Selling for a loss is better than selling for even more of a loss later.
• Learn from any previous item value crashes.  What could you have done to lessen the risk or prevent the loss?
• Not all end products sell for more than the parts.
• Don't flood your market with too many goods.
• Sell off materials that you don't need or will never use.
• Don't be a pack rat.  Keep your bank and guild bank pruned, so items don't decay in your banks.

Anyone else have any tips for preventing losing gold as a WoW auctioneer?

Enjoy The Posts Here at Cold's Gold Factory? Check Out Cold's Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery Gold Making Guide To Get You Started. This Guide Can Be Applied To Multiple Markets Not Just Barking MFCs.

Disenchanting For Profit | Illusion Dust and GEEs

Illusion Dust and Greater Eternal Essences

As I have written about previously, on many servers there is a shortage of Greater Eternal Essences and Illusion Dust.  Both of these Enchanting materials sell very well and for high amounts of gold on my server.  Previously I have done guides on crafting and disenchanting Enchanted Thorium Blades as well as shuffling surplus Runecloth to create Greater Eternal Essences and Illusion Dust.  Today I guide you into another option for turning a golden profit selling these high demand Enchanting materials. 

Disenchanting For Profit

A great option for Enchanters to make gold is through the use of their Disenchanting ability.  I've guided you through crafting Runecloth Headbands and Enchanted Thorium Blades for the sole purpose of disenchanting to get the materials to sell on the auction house.  However, you can also look no further than your local auction house for items to also disenchant.  Here's an easy way to make some gold as an Enchanter.  When you mouse over items not only can you see the market value of items, but you should also be able to see what that item can disenchant into and the chances of each of the possible results.  All you need to do to find items worth disenchanting is to mouse over the various items in the level range that can produce what you are looking for and if the price is right, buy them out.

Step By Step Guide
1. Open the auction house interface using any of the common core add-ons like Auctioneer.
2. In the auction house search categories choose the armor tab.
3. Set the character level range to 51 - 60.  (The item level is 56-65, but the character level is 51-60 for item that disenchant into GEEs and Illusion Dust.)
4. Hit search.
5. Mouse over the items along the left side of the results until you find something that will disenchant into what you are looking for.
6. Look at the price and determine if it is low enough to be profitable.
7. If so, buy it out and continue looking for more.
8. Once finished, collect the items from the mailbox.
9. Disenchant the items and post the resulting materials onto the auction house for a nice gold profit.

NOTE:  It is important to choose the correct items because there are Outlands dropped items that are at the higher end of the level range that will only disenchant into Outlands Enchanting material.  Be sure to check that you are buying items from Azeroth drops.

You Can Haz Golds Too

This tactic can work for any enchanting material that you are looking for on the auction house.  Often times you can buy the items and disenchant for the materials you need at a a fraction of the price of buying the materials straight from the auction house.  I paid 6 gold for the item in the picture above.  GEES are going for 35-45 gold each and Illusion Dust is 9-15 gold each.  Even if disenchanting produced a Large Brilliant Shard, those sell for over 6g each.  So of course I bought the item pictured and sold the resulted enchanting materials for a nice profit of gold.

This is an easy market to enter.  As long as you have a high enough level enchanting skill to disenchant the items, you can pick and choose what you buy to maximize your chances at turning a nice profit too.

Bidding With Auctioneer : Reader Submission

Reader Submission:  Auctioneer Question

Ok gang.  I got a reader submitted question, that I don't have a definate answer for.  I am putting it out as today's post in an attempt to find a more suitable answer among the great and highly participatory readers of Cold's Gold Factory.

Hey Cold, here is my quandry, whenever i do a getall scan with auctioneer and do a vendor search, there always happens to be a ton load, like at least 100 gems (current ones) that all have their bid at 1c, i bid on all of them a couple of times but when i got 100 mail back with one copper each a couple of times i got sick of that. So what i was wondering was, is there a way automate a bid on on these items at 49 silver under vendor price (because i assume most people have their vendor search at 50 silver minimum profit) so that i only have to do 1 click and probably not have to worry about 100 mail with 1 copper in them!  -Robbie Clark

Well Robbie, I myself don't have a specific answer about this.  I am inclined to say that it isn't possible, especially after the changes to the auction house system.  Blizzard wants you to have to make at least a single click for each item as to not allowed semi-botting programs.

The only tip I can give you when it comes to bidding on the auction house is this.  Don't even bothering bidding unless there is 12 hours or less before the item's auction ends.  Better yet, try to only bid on items within their last 2 hours or 30 minutes to increase your odds of winning that item.  Bidding too early means you are almost guaranteed to be undercut, which leads to more mail collection and possible a lost item.

Ok gang.  Anyone have a work around for Robbie?