Part of this was the fact that the guild disintegrated when military duties called me out of town for several months, and some how I found a reason to server transfer several toons, then sort of had a drama thing bring those relationships to an end, and server transfered multiple toons again. This time I found a great group of people with a lot of nice things to say, but I was as you always are the new guy, and did not really have a place in what was quite admitedly marginal and average raiding. Too much tollerance for average in progression. And that led to wipes. Too many people that are too nice and will not put the rubber down on the road when the engines are reving and the light turns green... "I was making a samich.... what?" or "Oh, okay I get it this time... "(you have heard that before, like the last 4 wipes)... nice people, fun game, bad raiding structure.
The systems were primed, the events were about to begin. Durring my military deployments, I had few oportunities to play, but I did have internet and was able to do a lot of reading. Following links, I was orriginally turned on to Gevlon, back when he used to do the funny posts of reader submited idiots in chat and such. Some how got connected to Stokpile, and it just got busy from there. Old buddies from the orriginal guild mentioned were on a new server and had a good track record. I also was never broke, since I had 6 max level toons, and every profession but tailoring. I did a lot of farming, and often spent my gold on mounts and things too. My buddies still hung out and used my vent regularly, so we still stayed in touch that way as we were scattered on servers. So I was all about a serious raiding group, but not all about failed wanna bes in a good group people. I can tollerate mistakes, but not being able to self identify and asses your own problems and fix em... So this is where it started... A HARD RESET... changing everything from the very first character selection screen.
Now... a new chapter begins and birth of the gold enterprises. I was not ready to transfer all the toons again, I made a choice to roll fresh. They (my buddies from the past) wanted a disco priest, so a level one toon was born, with plans already in place to go, herbalism inscription and later drop inscription. Early on the only addons I used were Lil Sparky's Workshop, Auctioneer, and Arkinventory. (those were the gold making ones anyway) that was all I needed to make the manual decisions on herbs... sell them? mill them? what glyphs to craft? and then spend weeks selling off the piles of glyphs and things I made when leveling. I would sell the highest value herbs raw to presumably alchemists leveling, and mill the low value ones to keep leveling inscription. Auctioneer and LSW was all the info I needed to manualy do these things. The plan was never to go into the glyph business, making gold, or minimizing losses while leveling inscription was always the plan. I had it in my head at the time that inscription was the ONLY profession that could resonably make gold at low levels. I have since proven my own theory's on that wrong, but, the idea was that at low level, I would be able to make glyphes that high level toons were going to want and were going to buy. Part of that is true, about the high level characters buying your glyphs... Anyway it worked. The long term plan was to get into the DMC business...
I did very well with that till I made a huge and bad bet on the market. about 4 months after creating the toon I had over 400K then... ... ... I went from 400K to 100K trying to wait out the market. I got a new addon in this process too. Open office and spreadsheets... I had everything on that sheet, cost, value milled, value of cards, value of trinkets, value of decks, and my inventory. The plan was to wait 2 weeks to sell of the 40 DMC trinkets I had. I figured if I waited out the market, the supply would dry up and I would step in and make the killing... I watched 300K worth of DMCs and trinkets drop in valuen by about 50% and more from my cost to make them. And I was not alone in the market... and the other seller never ran out of material to post... The guild I was going to raid with also fell apart and I got jaded with raiding and tried at PVP for a couple months, but in the end, I spent a lot of time playing at the AH game. and leveling some alts...
I made bank alts and continued to read and learn from the blogger community, I had a pile of mats (herbs) and droped herbing to pick up alchemy. transmute spec. I used a bank alt to buy and sell, and was posting and making piles of gold on vendor pet flips, and primal might. And still playing at the DMC game. About this point I ventured into the land of Zero Auctions. I was also leveling another bank alt, my current gold capped toon, and he was an enchanter LW. As I leveled I did the rep grind for old chants and for a long time was selling them at decent profits. So, 3 toons posting, the enchanter w/ twink chants, the scribe and DMCs, decks and trinkets... and then the bank alt with vendor pets and a multitude of small things and leg armor. Zero Acutions made it pretty simple and very fast for the higher volume of items I was posting.
Then another big shift, 100K was good enough and the DMC game was kinda over, at least in the way I wanted to play it. Boredom and looking to go raiding again. Chased down and old contact and got in decent guild and got back to it... more trials and roller coaster rides in the raid groups... there were 3 raiding groups, then there was ONE... and I was not a part of it. frustration and back at the casual game of fail raiding... I started my own group... and have gone through the ropes getting the consistent roster with the right players... and I made the next big gold making step...
I had played around at the enchants markets and had about 400K again from enchants and getting what I could out of the DMCs I had. This is the point when 4.3 started to LOOM.. and the guesses were when is it comming out?? most guesses were 2-3 months... I then decided I had the experience, I had the gold, and I had the systems to get back into the AH game for 4.3. Initially the plan started out to just buy about 400K in mats and sit on them till the patch... I set some rough goal w/ no quantified evidence really of what I wanted... Just gut feeling and experience. I also focused on ONLY Cata level enchants and leg armors (with a little tinkering in gems and miscelaneous), just because inventory management for all the others is a pain in the rear, and VOLUME.. volume of sales on patch days for twink gear... bad idea IMO. 400K was not enough... Since it was not enough, I had to make more gold to make bigger stockpiles.. This was the grind, stage, and I watched many piles and piles of mats grow in my 2 guild banks and in my own toon banks and bags... I was also watching sales volume to make sure I was posting appropriate volume for my posting paterns. That data was alos good for determining the amount of precrafted scrolls to make. I made a new enchanting spread sheet... and abused addons and for the best level of data analysis to prepare for 4.3... (refer back to old posts) then 4.3 and then 10 more days.. and it all came together... ding.. 1M...
Lessons from this you may take away:
- Data: gotta have it, knowledge is power, if its addons or spreadsheets, does not matter, you need lots of it..
- Data Analysis: You have to be able to look at the data and make educated decisions, you will make some bad calls and mistakes... if you cant learn from them get out or change something big...
- Patch info: There are tidbits of info that can help influence your decisions...
- Selling consumables/enhancements: always in demand, always great markets to play with. IMO, enchanting is a much harder market to run and manage than gems. So, I imagine there is a little less competition, and the profit margins per sale are potentially greater... Profit per transaction... and the old post I made about GPH is a lie.
- If you want to get rich quick: forget it.. its lots of time and work. the best you can hope for is a plan comming together to make a lot more in a much shorter period of time based on previous plans, habits and the ability to PAY IT FORWARD... 3 months of stock, an estimated 700K, lead to my 1,000,000 gold haul in 10 days.. I had 10K the monday before 4.3 dropped... but piles of mats and scrolls and armor and leather and volatiles and STUFF...
- My mistakes:
- thinking truegold would go up in value.. the demand did not go up really so neither did the value, if anything it continues to drop and I have few hopes of recovering the investment
- thinking volatiles would go up.. still hopefull on this one, but not holding my breath
- thinking I could flip 140 tankards of terror sooner than I have been able to for a lot higher profits than what I have realized so far (maelstrom crystal values continue to rise... :-) I can shard em all... )
Merry Christmas, and Happy hollidays
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