Thinking Like a Gold Maker Part 2 - Flipping Mentality

In this multiple part series, I'm going to go over my thought processes and how I think about concepts in gold making in World of Warcraft, and why I do things the way I do. Today I'm going to spotlight flipping. In the previous post I covered shopping for mats, if you'd like to start from the beginning that post can be found here.

Buy Low, Sell High
This is the phrase you'll see regurgitated again and again throughout the WoW goldmaking universe, and I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of this concept. Yes buying something for cheap and selling it at a high price is a great way to make gold, but how do you define what's cheap? How do you identify if there's a market for it? How do you tell what's a good purchase to flip and what's not?

To me, this can easily vary from person to person, and server to server, which complicates things further. Again, like shopping for mats, when I purchase items to flip, I look for the profit in the purchase. This requires that you know your markets a bit, or have tools to help you. For example, Sterling's Sniper Guide can set you up some really great groups of amazing items to flip, and give you suggested prices to sell at. Or you could use my transmog method and see what I'd suggest you sell things for. The problem with both these methods is that they are good in their own right, but they are not directly catered to your server. You're going to have to do some leg work!

Experimentation
Flipping isn't just one of those markets you can master overnight, read a guide on, or spreadsheet your way through. You really need to learn the markets that you're selling to, and do some research as to what an item will sell for on your server. This involves a great deal of experimentation on your part as well.

Let's look at a Copper Rod. Used by all Enchanters, required to create any enchants whatsoever, obtainable from a vendor for 1s24c. The market value on it's tooltip may suggest it'll sell for 20g normally, but you notice that you are the only one posting the item right now. Why not try it at 50g? Even if you get half the sales at this price, you'll still make 25% more gold! For flipping you want to test out markets to find where these points are, and once you find them, you'll be set.

Where to Start Off
Jumping into a new flipping market as I have done recently with cloth on Earthen Ring, I looked at a few things. What is the market for this? I'm going to use the example of Frostweave Cloth. The market for these comes primarily from 2 sources, leveling Tailors and Frostweave Bags. Knowing your markets is key. For example it takes (according to wow-professions) ~1,200 Frostweave Cloth to level Tailoring, and 60 cloth for each Bag. That's a lot of damn cloth, so even if the demand is spread out, it's over 60 stacks of cloth which may or may not be your entire AH depending on the size of your server.

Profession choke points are great markets to get involved in, but with something like patterns, what's nice is that with TSM we have access to global data prices. Now are these prices necessarily indicative of what you can get on your server? Not exactly. Are they great gauges for pricing? Absolutely. Now depending on the size of your server you may be able to get more (or less) of these global prices. And of course, they aren't the end all be all of pricing, but they do a really good job of estimating demand.

Research
A quick practical example. Last week I was using my transmog list to do a search, and I came across an item that was under my purchasing threshold, but was selling for 3,000g. Now to me that is a LOT to sink into one transmog item, even buying and selling as much volume as I do. Based on in game tooltips I knew the market price was 13,000g - 16,000g, but I wanted to be sure this item was not some weird anomaly and I would not see one on the AH any time soon. The item was Vanguard Breastplate, it has a very low drop rate, and is one of the few BoE platekini's in game. Armed with knowledge, I easily made the decision to purchase this piece to flip. The more you know.

Larger Markets
Now for larger markets like transmog, leveling greens, or uber blues, you're going to want to attack them as a whole. Just as an example I've found 2,500g to be an excellent threshold for the 80-84 leveling blues on my server, and post them all at this threshold. On a server that has over twice the population as my main, I know that this price is unrealistic due to competition, and that my returns will be smaller, but on my main server, that 2,500g is almost guaranteed (over time). In this way I prefer to override some sort of pricing setup for a static "I know it'll sell for x" setup. For transmog you could try different percentages of Region Market Value, or try pricing by hand.

What you need to know though that these larger markets primarily rely on selling a small portion of your inventory for gains, while reposting large amounts of items at a time. Your inventory as a whole is what you're selling. A single item within your many may cost you more to repost than you end up making by the time you sell it, but as long as your inventory as a whole is making you profits, there's no need to focus in on one item in particular.

You're Providing a Service
This is the part that I think the people who may whisper you or send you angry mails do not understand. You're providing a service to them. For example I'll use the Bloodscale set, a very popular xmog set. That's something I flip for hundreds of gold per piece, and I probably bought most of it for under 75g. How is this providing a service? If it were in the cheaper prices, levelers would buy it for leveling, vendor it in 4-5 levels, and it would not be available on the AH to moggers when they came along looking for a piece to complete their set. By raising the prices I'm ensuring that the gear (most likely) is not purchased by levelers, and instead those who have more gold (xmoggers). It ensures the gear is more likely to be on the AH when they search for it. Same goes for the leveling greens, I'm keeping it up on the AH for those willing and able to pay. Others don't necessarily see it this way, but it's exactly what you're doing and why you can sell this stuff for a markup.

That about wraps up what I have to say about flipping. If you have any questions feel free to post them in the comments section below, and if you have anything you'd like to see me discuss in future installments of this series, let me know there as well!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Competition Update: Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 1/18

Before I get to the actual post I want to mention that I will be recording episode # 7 of the Drunken Musings Podcast, tonight, January 18th at 9PM EST. We will have a special guest Kyran from The Azeroth Perspective Podcast. You can find us live at that time at this link. If you have any questions you'd like to ask us for our user question segment, you can either leave them as a comment to this post, tweet them to me @PhatLewtsGold, or email them to PhatLewtsGold@gmail.com. 

Continuing the Chronicles of Noobia
Same as last week, I will be focusing this week's weekly review on my competition server that I'm currently participating on with Selltacular. We rerolled on a new server with only lvl 1's and BoAs and are in a 2 week race to make the most gold. Check out the full details of the competition here!

Selling Yourself Short
I'm noticing a lot on this server, maybe just because I'm more actively participating in flipping whereas on my main server I tend to stick to (mostly) just the crafting aspect, but I've seen a LOT of underpriced goods on this server, to a ridiculous extent. I was able to purchase 11 Etched Imp Amethyst for rougly 19g/piece and sold 3 of them for about 80g/piece:

As you may have noticed I bought 11 gems and sold 3, and have already turned a profit. Madness. People on this server are really selling themselves short, a valid strategy for crafters would be to sell 30% at 4 times what they listed, and vendor the rest for ~70 extra gold. Silly stuff.

Flipping Items in WoW

This is for Day 16 of Nev's 20 Days of Goldmaking.  Interested in reading other's views on the topics?  Nev made a post with all the participants here.  Check it out, there's some really great posts!  Todays topic:

Flipping! Do you flip stuff regularly or sometimes? Big ticket items or smaller high volume stuff?

Transmog & Twinks
Many of my regular readers will know I love flipping in two main markets: Transmog gear and twink gear.  These two have been staples for me since Cataclysm, and I can't even imagine when they weren't in my arsenal.  This is a concept that many newer gold makers don't get though, buy enough cheap gear, and list it all, a few pieces are bound to sell, and if you're selling at proper margins, profits ensue!

My favorite market is the transmog gear though.  In actuality, with the twink gear, both the 77-79 and the 80-84 both make me more gold, but I find the transmog market more interesting.  With twink gear the buyers know their market a bit better, and know why the gear is overpriced.  With transmog, you're taking gear that normally people would otherwise have bought to supplement dungeon gear while leveling and marking it up to ridiculous prices for greens.

Why I find Transmog so fun
Transmog gear is easy to obtain.  There are plenty of lists, including my own, to use to purchase or otherwise search for this gear.  The fun part of it is pricing it.  I only seperate my gear into 3 tiers (you can do more, I just like a simplified model).  I find it fun assessing what someone would theoretically pay for an item, and that's the fun in transmog.  I really enjoy having that level 1 infamous transmog seller on a server too, and speaking up in trade every time you log on.  As they say, "Any publicity is good publicity".

Big or Small Flips?
Comparing it to the purchase cost, all of my flips could be considered big flips, but most of my gear is priced in the 500-1,250 g price range.  I do have two special tiers though, 5k and 18k, that whenever they sell, I have a touchdown celebration ready.  I love the big flips, but as a realist, I know they're few and far between, whereas the smaller flips are more frequent and net me more profit overall.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 1/8

So it's Tuesday, which means it's time for Phat's Weekly Lewt Review!

Updated Gold Total Tab!
If you click the 'Gold Total' tab above, you will see I've added a graph as well as a table on my current gold total, and it's growth over the past.  I decided that I wanted to see a graph of my gold growth over time, and since I made it I figured I'd share it with those of you who are interested.  The table below it includes changes between updates (some are longer than others), as well as a neat little graph to see my gold growth.  I'm going to update this one weekly from now on, so hopefully the graph becomes more informative over time.  If you look, you'll notice I made 48.6k this week, or about 7k per day.  Check it out it's pretty interesting!

Transmog Sales

What you see here is a snapshot of all my transmog sales for the week.  Since my transmog sellr also sells Hypnotic Dust, Frostweave, and Valentine's mounts, you'll also see some of that!  (I'm too lazy to edit them out).  Basically 10 pieces sold this week with an average sell price of around 1k, so it was a good week for transmog for me.  The Soulkeeper I usually keep in a group that's at 5k, but I lowered to 2.5k this week to experiment, and I was almost disappointed when it sold for that, so I bumped it back up.  Still made a great profit, but I like getting the huge chunk of change from those who really want the item!

83-84 Gear
The 83-84 gear bracket has been amazing for me recently.  I sold over 20 items this week alone!  I price them at 500g, and buy at 100g or under, so conservatively I made at least 8k in profits from this method alone.  The key is reposting and keeping your downtime to a minimum.  Your items need to be on the Auction House when that one character makes that impulse purchase, and then you'll be raking in the gold!

77-78 gear is doing really well for me too, but it's a LOT slower than the 83-84 market, and less available to purchase to flip.  Still well worth it though!

Darkmoon
Of course with the DMF beginning this past Sunday, I was investing a copious amount of gold in cards/herbs/etc.  I've assembled  6 decks this Faire (aiming for 7) and what's left of my superfluous cards I'm selling as individuals now.  I've been working on leveling alts, but I keep forgetting to get the 10% buff from the Faire ride, even though I'm more than aware that it is in town this week.

Back Into Glyphs
In the middle of the past week I got back into glyphs!  I had been using one alt to post glyphs, but withdrawing glyphs from my guild bank in bulk was slow, so I split them between my Scribe as well as a level 50 hunter.  So far it's not going too bad, making anywhere from 500-2500g/day depending on how much I repost.  I had made all the glyphs before the supposed "Glyphmas 2.0" and I literally still have at least 10 of each.  Yikes.  Instead of having em sit in my bank rotting I decided to start posting again.  I actually now have quite a few recipes I've never crafted because of research, and I'm considering crafting them, but definitely not until the Faire is over.  We'll see if my affinity for glyphs lasts long this time around, I usually get sick of the constant reposting cycle quite quickly, although a lot of the competition I originally have seem to have disappeared from the market.

Other than that I've just been making the basics, crafted PvP gear, Rare JC rings/necks, cut gems, Living Steel, Flasks, etc.  Also I'm starting to work on some profession guides.  If all works out well they should be out by the end of the month, just in time for 5.2 to render them obsolete!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Milestone: Alliance Alt Hits 100k

So today I hit 2 very important milestones on my Alliance alt, level 70, and 100k gold!

Background
I've written about this alt before, but a quick summary for those who did not see those posts (they're few and far between).  On my main server I have 10 Horde characters and 1 Alliance character.  I originally made my Alliance Priest to see how I could do with the resale market on the Alliance side of my server.  For some quick (albeit expensive) start up capitol I bought an heirloom cape on the Horde side, and vendored it on the Alliance side (before cagable pets).  If you did the math I started with 300g, and now have 100k at level 70.  For a part time alt, it's not half bad!  I figure that sharing some info with you as to how I did it might help you with your repertoire, so here goes!

Flipping Out
This project has been a long time in the making, I started it in Cataclysm, and was working on it on and off.  Basically if I ever finished my gold making rotation Horde side, I'd play this toon.  If I were starting today, I would have just sold a caged pet for starting capitol if I were to do it today, and if you ever start on a new server with no high level alts, I'd suggest you do the same.  The first thing I did was join a level 25 guild.  Trying to do this without guild perks is just silly.  Looking back on my sales, some of the first flips that I made gold off of were in the 77-78 Twink market, which I still sell in now.  In the beginning I had a sale once every 2-3 days, then more often as my inventory increased.  Once I had a decent pile of gold I got into the transmog market, and that's when things really took off.  Below are 2 screenshots of some of my top sales.

Top Resales (Click to Enlarge)

Top Sales (Click to Enlarge)

Business is Booming!
As Cataclysm started coming to an end, I started leveling this toon.  As I leveled, I leveled the traditional Tailoring/Enchanting for my clothie.  Once I had high enough Tailoring, I got a friend to transfer the Icy Cloak pattern to me from the Horde side.  If you are a tailor and you haven't checked out this recipe yet, you should.  Read about it here.  For the TL;DR it's a horde only recipe, and a sweet transmog cloak.  I was able to sell two of these within the first week that I had the pattern for 5k each!!

I noticed something though on my alli priest transmog seller that I did not get on my level 1 transmog banker.  Lots of players whispering things like "why is all your @#$^ing gear so expensive on the AH!?".  Now I'm not going to accuse the scum of the Alliance of being less scrupulous of their Horde counterparts, but I had my fair share of "polite conversations" with some Allies during this experiment.  I chalk it up to actually being on the character for more than a few minutes every 2 days.  As an aside, generally if someone whispers me and doesn't use their first whisper to insult/attack me or my mother, I will be more than willing to cut them a deal.

Mountain of Gear
At this point I have something like 300 pieces of transmog and twink gear (my server is small!) that I cycle every 2 days.  On top of that I'm crafting Netherweave Bags as I just got through BC, and realized that there was about a 3-4x markup on the bags, and up to a 10x markup if I can get cloth cheap enough!  My next goal will be 80 and some maxed MoP professions.  As of now though, my priest only gets maybe 30 minutes of leveling on any given week, so that is going to be in the distant future.

I'm also playing around on another server, and making some decent progress just buying and reselling twink/transmog gear.  That character I only log maybe once or twice a week, but I've accrued about 75k, which I'm slowly investing in lvl 25 pets to move to my main server.  Kinda fun, no thinking involved.  So how about you?  Have you conducted any gold making experiments?  If so how did they turn out?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

The New 77-80 Market: 80-84 MoP Gear

As predicted, there is a new era of twink gear out that is equivalent to Cataclysm's 77-80 market (which is still alive and kicking).  Keep in mind that now is not a great time to sell, it's a great time to buy.  Lots of this will be on AH's for relatively cheap, but now is not necessarily the best time to post these, except leather (for monks).  Keep in mind that if you start posting at high prices will result in people undercutting you, ruining the potentially endless flow of great deals for the greens(and blues) on the AH.

Search Terms!
If you're using TSM, there is only one search that you need to do:

80/84/i364

These searches look for all items available to those in the range 80-84 with ilvl 364 and higher.  This will include all weapons and armor that came out in MoP available to this bracket.  There are 80-82 blues that are super OP, so keep an eye out for those, they're ilvl 409-425!

If you're using Auctionator you have to do 2 searches

***MoP Twinks
Armor/80/84/i364
Weapon/80/84/i364

And that's it!  You may want to go through this gear and hand pick the ones with the best stats, but at the current prices I'm seeing, if it doesn't sell, you can DE it for a profit!  Now is a great time to stock up on this to sell it throughout the expansion.  Even with a little gold you can make a decent investment, and expect high returns once a majority of the characters are at max level and not questing in the 85-86 zones that drop these!  Welcome to the new era of twink gear!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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