Monday, July 9, 2012

Keep Your Friends Close, and your Enemies Closer!

Hey everyone,

Short post today but I was talking to a guildmate of mine who has major competition on our server, and I recently found out that he doesn't have his competition on his friends list.  Although I'm sure a lot of the more advanced gold makers who read this have already done this, it can be of great benefit to you to know when your competition logs out (especially if it's a level 1 toon he does his posting on)

What to do?
So let's say you're in the glyph market.  You realize one day that all of your auctions have been undercut since the last time you were on by a toon named Glyphman.  Friend him!  Now you'll know his logging patterns.  Don't worry when he logs on, it's not your job to undercut him the second he posts, but once he logs OUT, then it's go time.  This isn't to say don't post because he's playing, but if you know he'll undercut you within 5 minutes, why bother?

Go the Extra Mile
Check him out on your server's page on The Undermine Journal.  Just go to your server/faction, then type in his name.  From there you can see a posting heatmap.  The hours in white are the one's he doesn't ever post in, a great time for you to undercut!



I find that a lot of level 1 posting toons only log on to post their wares, then log other toons.  This is a great thing for you, even if you use a posting toon yourself.  Just friend them on your main and when their posting toon logs, switch over to yours.  If you're already doing this, how many competitors do you have on your friends list?


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

12 comments:

  1. Yes - it's the sign of a gold maker when their friendslist is just the opposite!

    Once your friendslist starts to fill up it quickly becomes apparent who your competitors are and who are the alts - and therefore how many operators there actually are in your market. On my server there are 3 core players operating over several alts.

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    1. Yeah I've actually had to empty some people off my friends list because they've gone inactive, only to see them come back recently. By now though I recognize their names when I see them and quickly add them back!

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  2. i like to find out which AH they post at then move my toon there : )

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    Replies
    1. I usually just hang out at the Tauren AH in Org, everything is so close together in that area :-P

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    2. I did that for about a month but the announcement yells for the zeppelins got on my nerves. If I went afk my chat was spammed with them. You don't hear them at the valley of strength auction house.

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  3. Started adding competition toons to FL quite some time ago, and i have atm 2 glyph competitors, 1 gem competitor, 1 mogging competitor and 2 guys that simply post everything with a profit (just like me)

    The glyph and gem guys are the "worst/best" competition, since they tend to update their auctions 2-3 times a day, where the general merchants (as i call them) mostly post every 48 hours... that gives me an advantage since i post everything with 12hour intervals.

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    Replies
    1. The only thing I'm more than willing to post at 48 hour intervals is transmog gear. I have so much of it on the AH at any time, I don't really care if a few are undercut, plus it's hard to track if you're undercut in another suffix or whatever you would call "of the Whale" or "of Agility" etc.

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    2. Indeed i used to post mogging gear at 48 hours as well, but im getting out of that business. I wasnt seeing enough income for me to keep it up unfortunately.

      And if you use TSM to post your mogging gear, suffixes isnt an issue since it does post/cancel/reset searches based on itemID which doesnt change no matter what suffix an item has :)

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    3. I don't think posting checks itemID, it posts based on name which is why you have to add each of the different suffixes to your list individually. Searches definitely do, but I'm pretty sure that posting can't for some technical reason I have little or no understanding of :-P

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  4. How do u deal with ppl who are on 24 hrs? Or only rest bc blizzard is doing maintenance? There is this guy named rhomanizor on arthas who undercuts every few mins or instantly. It's really frustrating. If i use your tip that means almost never post bc he is always on =/

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    Replies
    1. Hey, I checked out his posting heat map. It seems as though there is a (albeit small) window where he doesn't post at all during the week. Tough guy to beat, but keep trying, guys like that eventually burn out.

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  5. We had a once upon a time doing that same thing with a guy posting both glyphs and gems. What i did was take contact to a few of my fellow goblins and we agreed that it was about time to end his reign in those markets. We devided the week into shifts and posted a serious wall of underpriced items, to make sure that he wouldnt make a single copper until we decided he could. I became the spokesperson for our little alliance, and wrote this guy a nice letter telling him about our plan to push him out on a sidetrack. It took us a few days short of 2 weeks to run him out, and he hasnt come back ever since.

    So basically all it takes is enough capital to run a period of time with a loss :) instead of it just being me that lost a lot of gold, i reached out to the rest of the moneymaking community on my realm, so we devided our loss between us.

    As for prices - taking all my glyph sales over a month, deviding by the income i get an average sell price of just above 50g each, and with bf inks beeing about 10g each we agreed that selling every glyph for no more than 20g each (some lower) we would make sure he lost money no matter what. Same thing goes for gems. See what ur average income is per type of gem and then pick a number where you know your competition will loose a lot of gold by posting. Make his stockpile burn a hole in his pocket :) example: we lowered brilliant and delicate inferno rubies from around 200g to 95g.

    Hope it helps :)

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