Gear Flipping Advice (Transmog & Leveling)

One of the things I constantly see, especially after posting my transmog lists, is people saying "it just doesn't work" on their server, or that they bought 80+ items, and not one sold in their last posting, and they are about to give up.  The following is some advice/theories to pay attention to, to make sure your gear flipping is successful.

Law of Large Numbers
As a math major in college, this one is easy for me to see, but not necessarily easy for everyone else.  The Law of Large Numbers loosely says that the more times you repeat an experiment, the more likely you are to get to the actual average.  Let's look at an example.  Say on a specific server, about 5% of active level 90s are involved in hardcore raiding.  If you pick 5 level 90s at random, odds are none of them are hardcore raiders, say our average is 0%.  Now lets say we interviewed 20 total, 2 turned out to be raiders, 10%.  Later we have interviewed 100 players total, now having 6%, eventually if we interviewed the entire population of 90s on the server, we'd get that 5%, with each interview, getting relatively closer to the population average.

That's great Phat, but how does this apply to gear flipping?  Simple.  Say on any given day 1.5% of all transmog gear sells.  If you have only 47 pieces, odds are you're not going to sell one on any given day.  Now if you keep reposting you may, but one of the largest parts of selling transmog or leveling gear on a regular basis is increasing your stock.  It's simple, the more of the field you control, when someone actually decides to make a purchase in that market, the more likely it will be from your stock of goods rather than your competitors.  I have over 900 pieces of transmog and leveling gear in my inventory, and there are times I don't sell a thing, and other times when I log on to 20k+ in my mailbox (coincidentally, I just pulled in 24.5k  worth of transmog/leveing gear sales while writing this post, an all time high for me!).  It's a very variable market, and the only way to hedge against this is by increasing your stock.

General Strategy
The following is my general strategy, I go AFK a lot during transmog/leveling gear reposting, and do other things to not waste my time.  I'm sure it's not perfect but it works for me (use windowed fullscreen mode if you want to tab out).  This will work for reposting in general as well.

1. Collect mail (to repost) while afk (TSM_Mailing), until character starts yelling at me.
2. Walk to auctioneer, click TSM Post button, AFK
3. Wait for readycheck sound telling me I'm ready to post ( /tsm -> Auctioning Groups/Options -> Options -> Enable Sounds)
4. Tab into WoW and use scroll-wheel to post (set this up under /tsm -> Auctioning Groups/Options -> Options -> Macro Help)
5. Once I'm done scrolling, start running back to mailbox, click mailbox, click Open All button, then AFK (Auctions will still post while you're in the mailbox window, and mail will start opening once all auctions have been posted)
6. Repeat until done.

Hopefully nothing new there, but if you're new to the flipping game, hopefully it has shed some insight on the best way flip gear, while not staring at your character standing in one spot for minutes on end.  Also, if you're not using TSM to flip gear, you're wasting so much time, and are putting yourself at a disadvantage.  Learn it.  

Relevant Past Posts:

TSM Transmog Lists

Transmog Selling Part 1 - Purchasing

Transmog Selling Part 2 - Selling

80-84 Leveling Gear Market
Twink Gear Flipping Guide

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Improving Gold Making Efficiency

If you're like me, you have your gold making machine up and running, and you're churning out lots of items, using TSM as well as you ever will, but your whole operation is getting a bit disorganized.  Every once in a while it's good to take a step back from your operation and checking to see where you can fine tune things.  I of course took the realm maintenance to draft my ideas, and I figured I'd share my battle plans

Bank Alt
I've been putting off dealing with this problem for a while, but I have so many items posted from my bank alt every 2 days that I'm going to have to deal with it.  I'm looking for the most efficient ways to do so, and here's what I've come up with for the time being.  As a note I post items by Item ID, aka ignoring suffixes.

Twink Gear

• Have TSM post (at most) 3 of each item (down from 6)
• After posting, go through extras (by hand and with comparing to suffixes posted) and send off worst stats to Enchanter for DEing
• Keep all extra blues in Guild Bank

Twink gear has some of the highest posting costs from my toon (especially in comparison to the low level transmog gear), so I want to eliminate as many superfluous auctions as possible.

Transmog Gear

• Have TSM post (at most) 2 of each item (down from 4), except high tiers.
• After posting send off all extras to Enchanter for DEing (easier than with twink gear because stats dont matter)

This should (roughly) eliminate about 40-50% of my stock, and save me ~15-20 minutes per posting (every 2 days).  Hopefully it will both save me time and help organize my auctions.  What do you do every so often to increase your efficiency in gold making?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Reader Request Phaturday: Twink Gear Flipping Guide

Welcome to this week's Reader Request Phriday post (a day late)!  If you're interested in submitting a topic for next Friday's post, click here!

Today's question is from one of my readers, Bones.  Bones is 6 months into gold making, and making around 120k a month, playing on a mid-pop EU Server.  Bones' question is about Cata & MoP twink greens.  Being fresh into the market, they want to know how to best optimize and invest into this market, and how much supply one needs to start making some serious profits.  I've actually been wanting to go in depth into this for a while, I'm going to write a Mini-Guide to Twink Gear Flipping.

I. Objective
The object of the twink markets is to purchase low priced "twink" gear and resell it to levelers at a premium .  The gear in the brackets that we focus on gives the users a high amount of stats for their level bracket, and makes them OP.  Because of this, they are really great sellers, and can make you quite a bit of profit.

II. Purchasing
Purchasing this gear is relatively easy.  I use the addon TSM to do my searches, but other addons can do the trick.  TSM gives you the option to not have to do seperate armor and weapon searches as in Auctionator.
There are only 2 searches I do daily and they're as follows:
77/79/i272
80/84/i364

**General Purchasing Tips**

• Avoid the following item suffixes:
• of the Whale, of the Beast, of the Tiger, of the Invoker.  They do not have any desirable stats.  I read about this on Power Word: Gold a while ago, and for the longest time I didn't take the advice.  About 2 months ago I started doing it, and it's working fantastically.  You do not have to undercut these suffixes to make sales, people will want the ones you sell that have the more desirable stat distributions.
• Know the crafted gear and don't buy it!  (or just do a 77/77/i272 search)
• Use TSM's Alt+Click feature to buyout faster! 

Search 1:
The first search is for the 77-79 bracket, OP Cataclysm gear.  The supply of this gear is dwindling as more players are heading to Pandaria.  I personally sell the greens in this level at 500g, and the blues at 1,000g (The Alpheus Legguards could go for more).  I buy at up to half this price, simple as that.  I prefer much lower though.  Some days I don't post just so people won't know the price point to undercut to, and list things in the 20-50g range.

Search 2:
This search is for the 80-84 bracket, introduced in MoP.  This gear is from the Pandaria content, so there's a lot of it available, and on some high pop servers this may be hard to get a good business going.  I'm on low pop so I have a little more freedom with my pricing, so take that into account when choosing yours.  I price the greens at 500g again (also note by 500g I mean 499g99s99c), and the blues in this bracket at 2,500g!  The blue trinkets and weapons can go for even more, use your best judgement, but keep in mind that trinkets  this powerful are hard to come by in this bracket.

III. Selling
I gave you all my price points above, but I throw them all into 3 groups with 499g99s99c, 999g99s99c, and 2499g99s99c fallbacks, with a few trinkets and weapons in their own groups for extra gold.  I post everything on 48 hour auctions, and most of the time when people do undercut you they undercut you by a ton, because they think your auctions are so overpriced.  So, if you're undercut you'll have some things to buy for next round!  My inventory probably consists of 150-300 twink items, can't really put a solid number on it because my twink posting toon is also my transmog posting toon.

I hope I've covered any and all questions you can have about this market, but if you have more, feel free to ask them in the comment section below.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

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!!

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!!

MoP in 2 Months!

So it's officially official that MoP will be released in 2 MONTHS.

I must say I am VERY surprised it is coming out so soon, but for gold making, there couldn't be better news!  When news of Mists coming out so very soon hits the public, people will be flocking back to the game to level alts and prepare their characters for the new expansion, so look forward to increased population on all servers in the upcoming 2 months leading up to MoP.  I'm going to go over some things I'll be looking out for in the coming month.

Cata Twink Gear
The 77-80 market is not going to be replaced by anything in MoP.  There will most likely be a substantial decrease in the amount of this gear available to buy and resell, but I wouldn't worry about dumping it all the moment you log on today.  It's still a viable market come MoP, levelers will always want to buy gear, no matter how much the gold making community and advice givers in general advise against it.

Now on the other hand, if you have been dipping into the 83-84 Cata gear market, there should be a RED FLAG coming up.  SELL, SELL, SELL!!  Cut your prices in this market, still sell at profit, but you want to dump all this stuff as fast as possible.  In the same way Cataclysm created the 77-80 Twink market, Mists of Pandaria is creating an 83-84 Twink Market.  Here is a list of all the items that are 83-84 BoE added in MoP and (some are) worlds better than whats available as an epic at level 85 right now.  Keep this gear in mind when you start leveling your 85s on September 25th!

Inscription
There's been a lot of rumors floating around about inscription recently.   Going back to the Cata pre-expansion patch, we saw that you were no longer able to trade inks until the release of Cata.  Been stockpiling Blackfallow?  Start trading them in!  If you haven't been stockpiling now is the time to start, it is almost too late to ensure a great distribution, but you don't want to miss out on (what could possibly be) Glyphmas 2.0.  Make sure you keep up to date on all the OFFICIAL changes that will be made (what glyphs will be changing over, which ones are being left in the dust, what inks you'll need etc.).  If you're hardcore into inscription and you want to keep up to date on all the official changes and nuances, I'm not your man.  Make sure you follow Croda's blog marketsforgold, his main focus is glyphs, and glyphs are my least favorite market.

Stockpiling
Again, getting late on this but there are still ways to start stockpiling now.

Pets are a great way to stockpile, especially the Elementium Geode as I had suggested in previous stockpiling posts.  I plan on coming out with a post based entirely on stocking up on pets for Mists, so I'm not going to delve into it too much, but for more of a read check out Cold's post Get Out While You Still Can!

Cataclysm mats are another great thing to stockpile.  With the influx of players, raw mats on the AH should at least increase in volume, if not decrease in price as well.  For selling a few months into Mists, raw mats are a great thing to stockpile long term, especially Hypnotic Dust, as it will be needed to level Enchanting more than Cata Essences.  


WANDS!
The wand slot will be removed in 5.0.4, and wands will be made a "main hand" caster weapon, with stats to match.  I wrote a post that you can find here about the best BoE wands to stockpile for this.  Again with the influx of players for Mists, you may start to find more of these wands on the AH, and should add them to your overall mogging searches.

This is just a small slice of the pie, but hopefully some big topics that you can start (or already are) hitting on.
What is your biggest goal to get done before the MoP release in 2 months?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

My Favorite Cataclysmic Market

This post is for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival which will go live on May 11th, but I know I'll forget until the 12th if I don't come out with it now so here goes :-P.  I'll try to keep reminders up on my site so you can read all the other great posts when they come out.

This month's carnival asks: "What Was A Niche Market That You Were Suprised To Find Or That You Did Better Than Expected In During Cataclysm?"

Two markets that I really loved that were introduced in Cataclysm were Transmogrification and Mysterious Fortune Cards.  They are very interesting markets and fun to play with.  By far though, my favorite new market was the "Cataclysm Twink Market" brought on by overly powerful  level 77+ gear being introduced to low level cataclysm zones (80-81).

Why it's a Great Market
The reason why it's a great market to focus on is two-fold.  First and foremost, everyone wants the best gear for their character.  If you've done PvP in 75-79 bracket you'll know that without it, you're going to have a bad time.  The stats are more than double that available on even the best LK gear in the area, and gives a big boost to any character using it (even in PvE).


Second, the gear is not obtainable AT level 77.  Period.  You can't quest in Hyjal until 80, and you can't ENTER Cata dungeons until 78, and even at 78 you'd need to be carried because you cannot queue for randoms yet.  At 77 characters have no way of getting these greens other than randomly grinding mobs on an alt and hoping that their armor and stat type drop.  Not very fun or productive.  That's where I step in.

Methodology
Many people like the broader spectrum of this level range of gear, mostly 77-80 or 77-81.  I prefer 77 and 78.  My reasoning is again twofold.  People will want the twinked out gear as soon as they can get it, ie at level 77.  Second, even a level 78 or 79 can benefit from the 77 greens, if there is not the armor type/stats they want on the AH.  On the other hand a 77 can't use a piece of 79 gear because there's not what they need on the AH.  Also, at level 78 you can attain some blue pieces of gear, only 5 that are BoE, but they're deadly.  Agility daggers, an agility staff, and strength pants are my best sellers.

I use Auctionator to do searches, mainly:
Armor/77/77/i272
Weapon/77/77/i272
Weapon/78/78/i308
Armor/78/78/i308

From there I buy any armor or weapons that would be remotely useful to players.  One thing to avoid like the plague is agility plate.  For a full list of things to avoid check out PW:G's post, about items to avoid when flipping twink gear.  In general for the 77 gear I'll buy anything 250g or under, and I sell for 499g99s99c.  For the 78 rare gear I buy anything under 500g and sell for 999g99s99c.  Over the long run I've had the same return as Jewelcrafting, as seen in my 1,000,000 gold post.

There is already on the beta sets for a similar market being added (83-84) and I hope it does just as well come Mists of Pandaria.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Expanding on the Cataclysm Twink Market

For more gold making tips, follow me on twitter @PhatLewtsGold!

A while back I posted a few twinking searches for level 77 twinks.  The idea here is that at level 77 you can get your hands on some ridiculously OP Cataclysm BoEs and melt faces in BGs till you ding 80 and move up to the 80-84 bracket.  Since many mains will have hit the point in the expansion where they "can't get better", we may see an influx of alts coming in that will buy this stuff up like candy.

Today I'm going to expand on my original list, and suggest some pricing points which I believe will work on almost any server.  I have done this across 3 servers ranging from Low-High Population, so this has a lot of potential for any server.  That being said, this method is really dependent on the prices that this gear is already going for on your server.  So here is the Auctionator list that I use for looking for Cata Twink Gear:

***Cata Twink Gear
Armor/77/77/i272/
Weapon/77/77/i272/
Armor/78/78/i300
Weapon/78/78/i300

What do these searches do?

• Armor/77/77/i272/ and Weapon/77/77/i272/
• These searches look for items usable by only level 77's of minimum ilevel 272
• This is your bread and butter of this market.  These weapons provide the longest term usage over the 77-79 range where cataclysm armor is available to newbies.  
• This is the fastest of the turnover rates.  
• NEVER buy anything called Dreadmaul _________ of the Tiger.  This is plate gear with agility and hit as stats DON'T DO IT!
• Pricing - I price these at 499g99s99c across the board, I only buy at 250g or less.

• Armor/78/78/i300 and Armor/78/78/i300 
• These 2 searches will look for a select few items.  These items are of rare quality and are usable by level 78s and up.  These are the only Cata level 77-79 Rare BoE items.
• Depending on your server there may be an overabundance of these, or none at all.
• The best selling item in this group for me across 3 servers hands down is Alpheus Legguards.
• Pricing - I price these at 999g99s99c across the board.  I tend to buy at prices up to 750g when there is only one on the AH (but in general I would suggest no more than 300-400g). 

This isn't a get rich quick scheme.  If you have gold laying around that you don't have invested in anything, this is a great investment!  I have used it to make tens of thousands of gold on servers I rarely play on, and see this as a GREAT way to build your capital through high returns!  If you're interested in seeing a breakdown of my personal returns from this method check out my recent post.  I find this method to have very little time invested for the great return you get, and it's an amazing asset to add to one's gold arsenal.  

Cheers, 

Phat Lewts

Flipping Twink Gear

Hey guys, today I decided to write about one of my favorite methods of making WoW gold.  It requires minimal work, no grinding professions, and maybe about 1,000-2,000 gold to start.  The method is flipping twink gear, and I'm going to tell you about how I do it and the addons/methods I use.

For those of you who haven't leveled an alt in the 75-79 PvP bracket recently probably don't know that in Cataclysm a whole new level of twink was invented.  At level 77 Cataclysm greens become available to players.  Cata Greens allow players to have roughly 2-3 times the stats they would otherwise have with items from Wrath.  This is the gear that I specifically target.  This gear is random world drops so you're not going to go out and farm it, you're going to Auction House farm it, and that's the beauty of this method.  Most people get a hold of this gear, and throw it on the auction house for a few gold thinking it's worthless, but a good goblin will see the value in it!

My Method
To do this I personally use Auctionator to search for the gear, and TSM to post it.  This makes it effortless, and requires minimal thinking.  I set up a shopping list on auctionator, and have two basic searches (for reference the gear we're targeting is item level 272), you can type the following into your Auctionator search bar:

Armor/77/77/i272/i272
Weapon/77/77/i272/i272

***NOTE: There are 272 plate pieces with Agility on them.  DO NOT BUY THESE!!***

All this effectively does is search for armor then weapons usable by level 77's, of item level 272. There is other Cata twink gear, but this is by far the most valuable, as it's the first pieces levelers can get their hands on!

How to Buy
I price my Cata Twink gear at 324g 99s 99c.  This is a number I picked after selling at 300g for a while and thinking people would buy it for more.  I may up it again in the future but for now I'm liking the results.  Based on this price I will buy any piece at 200g or below, the exception being plate with Agility on it.  In general you should be able to find pieces around 50g if you do this search regularly enough, the lowest I've found is 6 gold!  Below is a snapshot of TSM_Accounting's resale feature, just some of the 272 items I've sold in the past.



As you can see this method can prove to be quite profitable, but you need to have a bit of patience, it's not all going to sell overnight.  Using this as an ongoing gold making method can make you tons of gold in the long run!  Also you'll notice this table has the profit after the 5% auction house cut was taken out too.  Good luck hunting for cheap Cata twink gear on the AH!

Phat Lewts