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| Earthen Ring, US. Lvl 10 Hunter. |
This week, I am going to try and talk about the general strategy I have been using in the Copper Market (more in depth anyway), but really I would like to see about what more I can do with this little market.
Markets
Ok, so first off, let me start by saying that I have been really lax on Ohnekase in the last several weeks. I try to write some posts ahead of time so the reader doesn't notice the large gaps as much, but I haven't been keeping up on the character. As such, we may see some less growth than over last week.
Lets check and see what his bags and gold look like.
Not bad. 850 gold is certainly more than he had last time. The small eggs did sell and I did end up making some profit on those, as did the Leather.
Lets take a look at Mysales in the last little while.
OK, so mostly things we know about: Copper, Pet Snakes. There was one or two things I wanted to mention specifically.
1) Cocoa Beans: So, if you remember a previous post on these, I mentioned that you can get these from the cooking dailies. I did one daily and got 55 Cocoa beans, which sold for about 45 silver each. Nothing spectacular, but I only spent 10 minutes maybe doing it, so I will totally take it.
2) Tree Frog Box: These are purchased from Flik from the Darkmoon Faire. I saw something from the Gold Queen about it on Twitter and totally jumped on it. Again, 1 gold buy, 7+ gold profit. Look for the other frog boxes too.
And then of course, there is Copper, which is what I wanted to talk about. The Copper market for me shows us a great skill for us gold makers: Taking advantage of volatility (aka as Buy low, sell high or buy low, sell medium or whatnot).
Market Volatility.
The great and terrible thing about the Auction House in World of Warcraft is that it is completely fluid. Theoritically, you could find an item one day for 1 copper, then find the same item another day for 1000 gold. Mats that you sell one day may only be worth 10 silver each, but be worth 1 gold each the next day. It is that wide open. And it is that piece that many goblins look into and time and plan.
So, first things first, what causes this volatility. Lets take a look at a few reasons.
1) Suppliers: Not everyone is farming the exact same item throughout their careers. If I am leveling a miner, it is entirely possible that I will sell Copper for 10 levels, then Tin for 10 levels, and so on. And, while I am trying to sell my copper/tin/whatever, the price, theoritically, will fluctuate just based on the supply I have and am putting. So, there are times where your supply of a good is just based on who has the item and the time to put it up.
2) Demand: How many people are deciding that they need more of a material at the time. If no one is leveling Jewelcrafting, it is possible for the gem market items to not be very sought after. After all, if no one needs malachites for making lvl 14 necklaces, what happens to all the malachites on the AH. The same character leveling mining could also be leveling blacksmithing and instead find that he needs more Copper/Tin/whatever than he is farming, so all of a sudden he demands it.
3) Time: This is largely related to both supply and demand, but it does make a difference. As such, it should be mentioned on its own. The basics on this are as follows: First, more people play on the weekends. As such, there are both more materials on the AH and more people wanting to put them up. Both fluctuate their price. For those high end crafters, Raiding typically takes place on Tuesday Nights and Wednesday Nights. As such, before raiding, people want stuff they are going to use during the raid (potions, flasks, food, etc). After, they will want to be able to make the new pieces of gear they got better (gems, enchants, etc.) Finally, the WoW pataches completely change material dynamics. One item may not be nearly as good after a patch, so its prices changes. As such, these can completely change the dynamic for the items you are looking to post.
4) Knowledge: This isn't quite a reason for volatility, but it does affect prices, both for good and bad. If someone gets a rare pet to drop and there are not any on the Auction House, what is that pets value to them? If they know what to do, they can check theunderminejournal or wowhead or even AHSpy. But many people don't know and won't check. So what is its value? Well, all of a sudden, for those of us that know, we can decide if it is a good value and take advantage of it.
So, volatility is a natural part of the game, and not always a bad thing (depending on who you talk to). In fact, here is some good advice for buyers. If you know situations will come up where you need to buy something, take a look at it several times throughout the week. If you know you are a raider and will need new gems and enchants, buy them before a new patch when they are traditionally lower than after the patch. Then, when you get new gear, you don't have to worry about paying 3x more than you would have for the same item.
For sellers, this is great advice that I have to teach, and advice for what I have been doing for Ohnekase. The Copper market on Earthen Ring has been fluctuating. Here, check out Theunderminejournal graph to show you the past little while.
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| Date Pulled: 01/06/20112 |
The blue colored graph gives us the Market Price for the Copper Bars. Look at it. Look at how much the Graph goes up and down. In my view, this is a very volatile market. The graph itself has highs of 88 silver each and lows of 9 silver each. That is a swing of 79 Silver, on an item that someone at level 5 can get. And that is just the graph shown. I have seen Ohnekase sell them at 1 gold 50 silver each bar. And these are some that I bought for 20 silver each. 1 gold 30 silver ea Bar is huge.
Great, whatever, so how do you do it?
Ok, so I thought I would split this up cause I was getting a little longwinded.
So, you want to try this. I would say there are at least four good steps to this.
1) Research your Market
Ok, before you buy your first item, find a market to buy in. Make sure you know about what goes in and out of that market. For copper, look at what professions use it and how much they use of it. If you know what a market is capable of and what can happen, then you can better control it. You can try to buy a little bit of an item that looks low and try and sell it, to see how it sells. But make sure you are careful. Don't lose all your money before you can do anything with it.
2) Time your Sales
So, you think you know, now pick a time and test it out. If you notice in your research that no one posts from 10 pm - 6 am, but there are some still being bought, try posting then. If you notice that they don't sell well on Tuesdays, don't post then. If you notice that there is a competitor that always posts every weekend from sunup to sundown, wait til the week to post, so you don't run into him.
It is really your decision how you want to time your sales, but that is what your research is for. There is no hard, fast rule that all your stuff has to sell, and much of it wont.
By that same token, time your buying at the times when you know you can get it at a deal. All of those times I posted different things, those both work for buying and selling. If there are times when price is low, buy then. If you find an item for 7 silver when the price is normally 1 gold, buy it.
3) Don't post everything at once
This one is easy for some and tough for others. Remember how I said Supply affects things? Well, it does. If you sell 10 stacks of an item for the same cost as you sell 5 stacks over a longer period, that is going to affect your profit. So don't worry about putting 30 stacks of 20 copper bars if you only think 10 are going to sell, or 5. You can also figure out a magic number of stuff to put up. If you post 2 stacks of something the first day and sell immediately, try posting 3. If that sells, then 4. If you don't sell all 4, that might be a magic number. Patience is a rough tool, but one of the strongest tools you can have as an AH Goblin.
4) Don't get discouraged if something goes wrong
Ok, so it will happen. Just ask anyone who tries to do the glyph market with other strong competitors in it. If you can't sell anything, or you just think that you are putting in so much work and not making much profit, don't be discouraged. It may just be a bad time. Or, more likely, maybe your calculations are a little off. It doesn't hurt to reevaluate your stuff, even if you are doing well. Maybe you can do better.
Another option could be that the market is either not good, or maybe it just needs to be adjusting. Rather than taking advantage of volatility in the 1 market, maybe you could do a little shuffling and change it up. For example, maybe copper is taken over by some dumb gold blogger, but the market for Blacksmithing Armors for low level isn't being touched. Try jumping over to that a bit. Again, do research and follow the steps, but you can always find markets.
Back to Ohnekase himself.
So, lets look at Copper Bar/Ore specifically right now.
So, this was actually a little later then when I first logged on. When I first logged on, Copper Bars were 10 silver, and Copper ore was 15 Silver each.
Now lets look at the mean for the server on TUJ.
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| Again, taking same day. |
Even better, lets look at Standard Deviation. For those who are not familiar with Statistics, Standard Deviation basically is a range at which roughly 70% of the items fall. Looking at the Copper Bars, if you take the mean (34s70c) and add or subtract the Standard deviation (26s69c), you get the range at which 70%ish of the Copper is priced.
Even better for us, the closer the Standard Devation is to the mean, the more volatile the price itself is. What it means is that the range between an majority of sales for copper fall between 10 silver and 60 silver. So with a little patience, I can make some money on it. Hence the 800 gold that Ohnekase has.
However, notice one other thing. I also have a lot of stock. I have several hundred. Maybe that can be better served.
Which is where the next part of my post comes in.
Changes
Ok, so I got my Copper working great and I spend an aweful lot of time in town. As such, I am starting to feel that Skinning may not fit into this characters moneymaking curve as well. As much as I have been skinning, I am noticing that I have not left town much, therefore I haven't really skinned much either. It did help me when I was gathering Small Eggs, but I feel that something like this could be better served by a different character who is a skinner.
So, now, the question is where do I go from here? And here is where I am kinda stumped. The things I do know.
1) As nice as the Copper Market is, sometimes it runs a really, really low streak. There are times where I log on and see it for <20 Silver Ea. I certainly buy up the low costed stock, but I still am not as happy with a 10 silver profit, when I know I can be patient and get a lot more.
2) Did you see how much Copper Ore and Copper Bars I have? I have several hundred of each. I can certainly use that in the Copper Market, there isn't anything wrong with that. However, I am thinking that I might be better served to pick up a low level profession and try and make some cash off of crafting. After all, if I make 50 silver off of 2 bars, or 50 silver off of something made from 2 bars, that is still 50 silver. Plus it diversifies the market.
3) While this is definintely not a hard fast rule, I think I want to pick up a second profession that takes advantage of my Mining Profession. Even if I didn't need to go out and mine them, I like being able to look at 2 places (ore and bars) for materials, rather than just the single market. Diversification can always pay pretty well.
So, based on those factors, I am really torn on where to go. However, based on the 3 criteria (mostly number 3), I am left with the following:
1) Blacksmithing: Low level Weapons and armors. These can give me greens to DE on another character, or even try and sell. I am not sure what the market looks like on Earthen Ring, but it could work. Finally, I also wonder if I could sneak in some low level transmogriphication pieces that people would be interested in.
2) Engineering: This profession I find is usually somewhat difficult to find niche markets to buy and sell from. That is, of course, not to say they don't exist. Pets are always good marketing and I have seen several people toy with this. I could also try some low level guns, though I don't know what their margins would be. Finally, there is a the explosives that you can make, but I have never seen anything on these and whether they could even sell. Honestly, I am leaning away from this, but I would love people's input.
3) Jewelcrafting: Ah, Jewelcrafting. The Profession introduced in Burning Crusade does have me interesting in trying this one out and testing low level stuff. Low level rings and low level amulets are not easy to come by. I have had character missing a ring or amulet well into their level 30s, so it could be an underserved market. In addition, Cold's Gold Factory points out that the Malachite Pendant is a great twinking amulet, for those who are inclined for BG twinking. Plus, I believe that you can also make Fused Wiring with Copper, which Engineers use for pets as well. Again, I am strongly considering, but yeah. <Colds post on Malachite Pendants can be found here: http://coldsgoldfactory.blogspot.com/2011/12/low-level-jewelcrafting-malachite.html >
So, for those experienced gold bloggers, I would love your input if you would like to comment or Twitter me. As for others, if you have thoughts, I would love to hear it. Actually, that is a big piece of this blog: What do you think I should move onto? I would love your comments.
Conclusion
So, not much for Ohnekase, and not something that is incredibly prolific. But it is definintely something that you can use. In fact, at this point with Ohnekase's cash flow, I would bet I could pick any trade goods market and play with the ups and down. It doesn't matter that I am only level 10. Maybe I could keep an eye on the Cata Volatile Market and buy them when they are lower and sell them when they are higher.
In fact, this idea of buying items when they are at a low profit is one of the features that both Auctioneer and Tradeskillmaster work. So always keep an eye out for it. You never know where your next gold will come from.
This next week, I want to try something different and interesting. Flux at Power Word: Gold has been looking into and doing really well into the Transmogriphication market. Even on a little test on my main server, I have sold some stuff. So, I am going to try this plan for the next week. I will let you know where I am sitting next week.
See ya next time...
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