Simple things are enjoyable.
Simple things like taking lazy and gullible peoples golden pixels from their account to mine.
So much so that if I was to play this game more regularly, and gold making more important than all the other amusing things I do, I would almost certainly change my raid schedule. I would raid on the weekends, just because the gold potential on Tues, Wednesday and Thursday is crazy. Like 280K in sales on one Tues evening. Granted it is a large pop server, and I had to babysit the AH to undercut all the other under cutters to make those kinds of sales, but what would it have been if I had not gone into a raid zone for a couple hours, and been able to keep undercutting and reposting... I did goof too, since I forgot to post more than TSM is set to post, and I sold out of some stuff in the AH. OOPS sales missed there. The crazy thing, I am only really selling... about 7 things (and miscellaneous stuff explained below). OVER AND OVER AND OVER and controlling and influencing markets, and buying things out to reset the markets and such, I think it’s great fun.
It paid for all of the new panther mounts... red and blue and green and yellow and ONYX... and 96K for a brawlers guild pass...
So, in the beginning I said simple. Yep, 7 things. I have watched and controlled markets for the last week to set myself up for monster AH games on Tues night... I suppose of the 280K, I would have to admit that bored between other activities, I probably sold a bit over 5K in gems... no market mass involvement, just taking some gems from prospecting, and cutting 2 of the most profitable cut(s) and posting those only.
I was using the same technique I just taught someone else to use and they have been so happy to actually make gold. She wants more pets. There is a simple way to make decent little bits of gold with low risk and little time. You just have to know how to use auctionator.
1. Open auctionator
2. Click "buy" tab
3. "Shift" Click uncut gem from JC book or bags
4. Compare cut prices against uncut prices and cut and post (shift click the cut gems from your bag) the profitable ones, I go for 2 each usually of the most profitable cuts.
***This does require some cancel reposting though. Good for in between LFR, LFD, pet battles, daily hubs etc.***
5. 15-30 minutes after posting return to AH, and click "more" tab on auctionator click "check for undercuts"
6. Cancel all undercut auctions
7. Repost, rescan and watch for goblins that are undercutting by 20, 30, or 50 gold. In my experience you can just repost the gems, and cash out quick even if some are not a big profit. You still recover most of you cost and the other sales you profit off of will make up for it since you are only posting the most profitable cuts.
8. Rinse and repeat
Simple 5 minutes or so at a time, and always profitable on my server.
PHASE II of this plan and PHASE III of becoming a real gold goblin. Though they are not really approachable in the first couple weeks. Above is simple foundation that IMO is REQUIRED by manually affecting your auctions you learn the nature of your server, if you pay attention, through the AH. You may find lots of PVP cuts and sales, or very few. Or almost exclusively PVE cuts of gems are profitable. It will let you find the bad ones too. As well as learning the volume of sales your server will support and finnally the activity and nature of competition.
PHASE II, This would mainly be to use an add-on or a spreadsheet to track sales. Know what cuts are higher volume and higher profit sales, and adjust your posting accordingly. Instead of just 2 maybe some cuts get 3-5 each time you post.
PHASE III, You are entering the higher speed, higher volume, higher initial time investment, higher profit world of TSM. Set up TSM with crafting ques? posting ques? (Definately the most valuable IMO) or other things I am sure it will do. All I have done with TSM is use the posting groups. For me it simply replaced Zero Auctions.
Anyway, I have cut back on my blanket approach to gold making that made me my first million and gone for a small niche market that is fun and amusing, as well as highly profitable. Though if you don’t know or realize the 280K one night sales... yeah that means I have around 200-300K in capital investment and risk. By risk I suggest that if my market was flasks and I had massive investments in golden lotus and such... I would likely lose around 50% of my investment if I could not detect the change early and unload within a couple days. Watch, the new farm growing rates of herbs that proc golden lotus, I fully suspect with in 1-2 weeks flask prices will be 30-50% of their previous (pre 5.1) values.
Every time someone buys one of my auctions, I enjoy the game at their expense. Does that make me a bad person or a good goblin? Or something totally different
