Thursday, May 5, 2011

WHERE TO START? (A post for entry level AH PVPers)

 Where to start? is the title of Stokpiles post today.  When I commented Kammler and Faid had already chimed in, and reading it provoked enought thoughts to briefly derail my money/gold post I was thinking about.

What do C.S. Lewis and Stephen King have in common? 

They are authors, and they have an audience.. but their material is hugely different, and in many cases so are their readers...

And thats the point, their readers.. they go find the books, and READ THEM... IMO the Non AH players or beginners are not reading on our blogs..

They are not reading ANYTHING about the game unless its happens to catch their eye in guild chat.  Not sure who the post was, but I Know I commented somewhere about "Our" collective Audience...  We, the gold bloggers write about what we do.. by doin that we all have our audience...

BUT SOMETIMES... a new reader will stop buy and be looking for some help that we can and would like to give, but we miss the target due to our content being posted about our day to day events and not how we got started...

To that reader, the NEW GUY, the guy that wants to have mountains and piles and hordes and banks and bags full of gold, or even just enought to not worry about repairs, gems, chants etc... ever...  KEEP READINGOHHH, and my bloggin skills go up one point... I found the "Insert jump break" button
I derail my own conversations with myself, and answer my own questions... and I dont need your help... :-) but would like to see if you can do better... :-)

The begining process and steps to success...

  1. First step, want more gold. simple nothing to add
  2. Understand why others dont make gold: TIME!  Basically its psychology.. making gold is not "playing" the game to most.  Time "playing" is not "supposed" to be farming and making gold, its "supposed" to be killing and slaying and fighting and questing.....  Also, the fact is it takes some math skills and understanding, as well as record keeping and organization... WHOAHHH, sounds like a job.. so they dont make piles of gold To me, playing is BOTH... everything is about making gold or having fun and making gold... everything has value... or cost, in the "gold bucket" and the "fun bucket"... empty the gold bucket to fill the fun bucket... yeah... People ask me what I am doing in game and my answere is often.. "taking other peoples gold" to me that is fun and part of the game.
  3. Idea - you have to formulate the ideas to make gold. This is where you think about the opportunitis you have... and you evalute the professions and such that you have...
  4. Plan - This is simple to say, hard to do consisitently.. BUY LOW SELL HIGH!!!
  5. Action - market entry this is where you probably are now... and, where you made the most mistakes in the past.  we all make mistakes, the successful ones recover and move on, then there are some that are not able to recover their emotions over the loss and refocus on the goal... whahh, whahhhh, whahhhhhhh... sounds like sheep, be a goblin... I recently lost nearly 50K in value of stocks... I had over 100 Maelstrom cyrstals raw and on scrolls when 4.1 hit...  1-1.2K each before patch, 400 and under now... but I made nearly 100k the following week... :-/  More on the successful actions and habits below
  6. Pace yourself - Dont jump into the deepend and try to "take over the glyph market" just look for 5-10 to start with and and anothe 2-5 tomorrow or the next day...  you will get a feel for time to maintain your business, crafting and stockpiling, as well as how much inventory space you need to manage and such for your business...  slowly increase your stockpiles of mats as you are doing this too... to keep up with the markets and be ready for a spike in mats prices that last a couple days...
  7. Addons - This is huge, following the 4.1 chant mat price storm it took me 2 hours of maintenance on ZeroAuctions to reset them all to ensure profits...  costs on some mats are double and triple, and others down to 30% and 70% of previous costs....  Picking your addons, knowing how they work with some proficiency and setting them up to run takes time, in most cases a few moments per item you want to sell.. this is a pay it forward time investment... to carefully set up one auction in Zero Auctions probably takes about a minute, but having all the info to set it up right and such, can take several more... so if your trying to enter with 100 items and try to sit down and set up ZA for that all at once, you will hate the game all together I guess... also the knowing how they work is important.  settign them up and using them to your advantage, and not blindly trusting what you see. 
    Auctioneer, Auctionator, TradeSkillMaster, ZeroAuctions, Arkinvientory, Altoholic, LilSparkysWorkshop, AdvancedTradeSkillWindow, are some to look up and check out... but dont forget spreadsheets and pencil/paper.  if you dont have excell, you can still use Open office and googgle docs (i think)
    A BRAIN... I know poor shot at being funny, but in somecases i think it is an addon and not standard issue.  Dont expect anything to work completely right in every market and in every situation, everytime..  Expect it to be broke, require set up and need configuration and input from you to do anything... the less the better, I think we would agree, but you will need to work with the addons to make the most of them that will require your brain...
  8. Continuing education: read and read and read and talk in guild party and vent/mumble/voice to others, and get more ideas and ways to flip, flop, make gold and use addons.  Follow blogs and read them regularly.  If you like them go to the ones that the author follow, maybe you find another worth following... reading MMO-champion.com and patch notes are big ones too...  Rather you make daily or weekly reading habits.. its really necessary to keep up, and not fall behind.. MAYBE even become a blogger...
  9. Persistence: Keep on trying, and trying and trying... in a market, on one item, untill you "evaluate" that for good a reason, it is really not worth your time to continue, keep on... example: glyphs that always seem to be selling below cost.. then you realize it is the best glyph to level with, AND it is not a fovored glyph by PVPers or RAIDers... only collectors... hmmm.. yeah, prolly not worth it now or EVER... quit listing it and just vendor the stocks you have.  Many gems and enchants could be like this too... evaluate and be confident that just because you cant sell today... does not mean you can not sell tommorrow or next week when all the FOTM players leave the market... Flip side is pets... sometimes you will sell pets at little or no profits for days... but when there is no money being made... NOW... there will be money made next week or next month... keep listing them  and the market will come back.  There are players that think they can make a quick flip... buy and sell.. then the word is out, 10 players are undercutting each other.... prices drop, no one make anything really, there is no money and all the FOTM players leave you to make gold again... thats a market that is easy, set up ZA, and when prices drop, just dont list...
  10. Adaptation - if all you can do is whine, and you struggle to addapt to changes and flavors and shifts you will struggle...  Example... new Areana season...  you have been selling the crafted PVP gear... well, thats all junk now, stop whining about how all the prices have fallen and you cant make gold doin that anymore... DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.., time to stop that and look for what the new PVP players want.. gems... enchants... leg threads/armors  belt buckles...
  11. Be a Goblin, not a sheep - A goblin always sees oportunity to make gold.. even if the details are not worked out..   A goblind does not have a crystal ball, more like cloudy kaleidescope, the ability to not be distracted by the mezmerizing changing images.. but to focus on a clear picture that is there when you look for it and ALSO to posistioned to exit the market when the picture changes...
  12. Read the Where to start? post by Stokpile and look for other similar posts... follow the links on our pages to the guys we read, just go to our home page and surf around the links, some we follow for gold advice, some... not so much...  Read read read, blogs, websites, comunity pages, raider forums and pages, PVP pages and forums... all of it has potentional to educate you on the market and changes that are current or about to come... You will have the education to prepare for a market EXIT, or ENTRY... increase stockpiles, or reduce...
  13. The time factor ... time is money ... it takes money to make money ... it takes time to make money...  what is the time factor...
    Time to do your reading
    Time to do your research
    Time to buy on the AH (reduced with addons)
    Time to post on the AH (reduced with addons)
    Time to craft (reduced with addons)
    Time to process, Mill/Prospect/Smelt/DE (reduceded/simplified with addons Panda comes to mind)
    Time to check mail
    Time to Set up addons for intial markets
    Time to Maintain addons for market changes/shifts
    Time to run full AH scans
    Time to wait days/weeks/more for markets to come back (this is the patience factor)
Put it all together, and decide your entry point...
Then start slow and grow slow...
Be realatively consistent
Be very persistent...

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