Though I made sure every glyph was available over time my prices have gained me some notoriety on the realm.  I like to talk to my competitors when I see steep undercuts to understand why they “hate gold.”  I’ll write in future posts about the hilarity and sincere conversations that can ensue because of that communication.  Recently I’ve discovered the “Hero.”  This is a guy that’s going to save the realm from big bad meh.

For now, here’s a screenie:

I work hard for a living.  You can start humming the tune if it’s now in your head.

Have you leveled Inscription?  Have you done the 79 (or thereabouts) days of Northrend and minor Glyph research to learn every glyph you can that way?  Have you purchased or farmed the 57 Books of Glyph Mastery?  Have you trained all 143 trainer glyphs and purchased the few you buy as a technique?  I have.  Those books, when you can find them are expensive.  Farming them is worse than the cost you might pay at the auction house.  I’ve endured a bit of metaphorical pain to know every glyph that’s out there.

Do you scan the auction house on a daily basis and compare herb prices looking for deals?  Then purchase monsterous amount to mill?  Did you know that milling herbs is not automated.  Even using an add-on you’re clicking a button 4 times to mill just 1 stack of herbs.  That doesn’t make ink, that makes pigments.  Pigments make inks.  Then it’s 3 inks plus a particular parchment for your glyph.  It gets mailed to my glyph toon and posted with every glyph so it’s sitting there waiting for you whenever you happen to decide you need it.  For close to 350 glyphs it’s there.  In order to get sales I’ll often have to spend a good amount of time AH PVP’ing competitors to be there just at the right time for a sale.  I deal with undercutters that’ll bring the market right down to less than the cost to make a glyph.

You buy that glyph for the life of that toon.  You will never buy that glyph again.  If you have several 85′s you have the money to pay for that glyph.  Just because you don’t value the learning process for glyphs and the time put in to bring them to you doesn’t mean I don’t value my own time.  I spend less time doing dungeons than perhaps I’d like.  Sure I make a bunch of gold.  That’s the cost of my time.

I don’t advertise it much but if you approach me with a request to lower my prices I don’t say no.  I ask why.  If I see that you’re a level 37 toon just new to the game and you convince me it’s not just your 10th alt on the server; I won’t let you pay for a glyph.  If you tell me you normally would pay the cost but you just changed your spec and you need all of them at once you won’t pay full cost.  If you just power-leveled alchemy to cash in on transmuting volatiles I won’t let you pay (but an IOU might be in order).  If you tell me you have limited time and can only get on to raid and do enough dailies to mend your equipment you’re not paying.  To date, as far as I know, no one has abused this system.  I consider this paying it forward.

There’s a small cost built in for dealing with the following as well:

Idiot:  Fuck you

Me:  Is there a point you’d like to make or should I just fast forward to adding you to my ignore list?

Idiot:  You price things too high so I though a big fuck you is in order.

Me:  Is there a reason you’re unable to pay that cost?  I’d be happy to work something out.

Idiot:  Fuck you

Me: Right, ignore it is… enjoy your shopping experience.

Idiot2:  I hope you die a horrible death

etc. etc etc

Oh and for the guy that just spent 23k or 12k on VP boots that will be replaced with tier 13 gear on a drop… and will spend 500-1200 for a chant on both sets.  Just STFU

Have a great day

Ever-so-briefly:

I’m going to get goldcap selling primarily glyphs.  I’ll dabble a bit in herbs and inks since I’ll be up to my knees in them anyway.  I’ve previously posted that I’ll never hit the goldcap because I like to buy a bit too much.  I’ve changed my mind for a few reasons:

1)  I feel as though I have a valuable strategy or system for steady gold-making with my glyph efforts and I’d like to share it with those who feel it’s hard to make gold

2)  Street cred.  It seems that despite any other major accomplishments in the game this is the standard by which gold-makers and gold-bloggers are measured.  I’m not real fond of aspects of the gold blogging community but it is what it is and I can certainly play the game to a degree.

3)  I’m bored in the game and need a goal to keep me logging in.  The glyph selling and dealing with competition is what keeps me fired up and what is feeding the blog for the time being.

4)  Getting goldcap doesn’t seem that hard to me right now.  I reserve the right to change this opinion at any time, but having just cruised by the 200k mark, and looking at my visit to the mailbox totals on a daily basis it seems like any other grind in the game.  So I’m doing the gold blogging reputaion grind (complete with dailies)

I’m not sure I’ll post updates here or maybe just drop a line on twitter but I felt it was worth a quick mention… cheers!

The mere suggestion that one might communicate with those on your “frenemies” list is often met with ????   Well I’ve done it several times successfully in that most cut-throat of markets – glyphs.  My success in the glyph market has been expanded to any market in which I dabble, but for this post I’ll use glyphs to illustrate the possibilities.

In the glyph market, cooperative competition might mean a group of competitors undercut each other (using the Trade Skill Master <TSM> add-on) by a copper or a silver and generally try to keep prices high for as long as possible.  Even better; I’ve recently begun a “whitelist circle” where the aforementioned competition use the TSM whitelist function to match the pricing of the product rather than undercutting by 1 copper!  Thresholds and fall-backs (again TSM) are similar and if you’re really lucky the buyout of low hanging glyphs, or market reset, rotates between players and doesn’t consistently fall on one player.  The major benefit is that there is less canceling and re-posting.  The concern tends to be that while you’re matching the price you are only appearing to be the “best price” if you are the last one to post.  I’ll talk more about this in a future post.

This isn’t a situation that most players encounter when entering or conquering the glyph market.  A more typical scenario is that you’ll have a “sorta group” that “sorta follows” the above guidelines and then one or two rogues that may undercut by 25 or even 100g.  This means when a steep undercutter comes along the market for that glyph may drop from an “elite seller” (hovering near your fallback price) to a tanked market (one that hovers at or below your threshold).  You’re going to need to talk to these people if you want to change the way they do business.  You need to be able to show them that they can make awesome gold and that you’re willing to help them do it.  Getting prepared after the jump…

First: add them to your frenemies list.  Pay attention to when they pop on.  Are they a level 1 where they only use the AH?  Level 47 and therefore just getting into the market?  Level 85?  A level 85 could be a designated glyph-selling toon if the player has used all 10 slots or it could be a multi-purpose toon that creates glyphs, raid & who knows what else.  Inscription could be maxed or anywhere in between.  A level 85 raider that handles herbs and inks and is in an active guild (you checked right?) is going to have bag space issues – which might be a conversation point-of-entry.  Do they post glyphs every time they log in?

Next: further research your competitors.  The more you know the better prepared you are to have a conversation.  Look them up on The Undermine Journal and determine what time(s) they post.  What is their price range?

Do a general search in your Auctioneer “Search” tab on their name.  How many of the glyphs are they posting?  Are they doing the lesser and Northrend inscription research?  Have they bought or farmed many Book of Glyph Mastery books and posting those glyphs?  Are they posting more than just glyphs?  They may sell inks, herbs, Decks, Mysterious Fortune Cards etc. or dabble in gems or other markets.

Take notes on all of this so they’ll know you’re on top of the game when you start a conversation.

You want to know how serious this player is about competing in YOUR glyph market.  The people I contact tend to fall into two groups referenced above the jump:

The serious contender:  the player that is pretty much posting every glyph.  This person has endured the pain of doing all the research and learning the BoGM glyphs.  More than likely they are using TSM and are frequently the one that has undercut me since my last post.  They are market savvy and may or may not have much to learn from me.  I may have a bunch to learn from them.  If they’ve been around for a long time they know the competition and have already formed opinions about them.  I mostly love these players.  Sometimes they forget the pain they’ve endured learning every glyph and price a bit low.  They often have different “theories” (another post) about the glyph market, selling and profits.  They tend to watch me to see if I’m serious the same way I watch them.  They are the ones undercutting by a copper or a silver – maybe 1g.

The serious undercutter: you know this player.  This is the toon that comes in when the glyph market is nice and high and undercuts you by 100g and sends the market plummeting below your threshold.  You hate this guy.  This is the guy you want to kill.

I’ve been talking to these players from both groups for a while now and have largely been successful in developing relationships.  You may not be very interested in developing relationships with your competitors but the outcome has been fantastic in terms of having the competition come over to the dark side (bright side really) of high profits and cooperative competition!

In future posts I be explaining how I’ve approached people and I’ll outline strategies for communicating with people whose theories differ from yours.  I’ll address responses like:  “I’m just getting into the market and wanted to make some quick gold”  “I’ve never been able to sell a low level glyph for over 300g” “411g is just plain greedy man” and several others.

You’ve done your research on these guys and know what there is to know by the WAY they post.  Next we’ll start talking to them to figure out the WHY part of how they post.  Everyone has a theory.

Stay tooned!

This month’s JMTC sponsored Blogging Carnival starts out with me being stumped.

To actually hit the gold cap, and then spend the gold, I’d have to stop doing half of what I love most… spending gold.  The other half is making gold.  Spending gold at that level presents an actual challenge if you’ve been buying up the gold sink items all along the way.  I and my friends have the choppers and the Tundra Mammoth and every other (normal) gold sink there is.

I’m American.  I grew up with MTV and drive-thru McDonald’s; which means I can’t delay gratification and have a short attention span.  Right?

next topic (just kidding) after the jump

I don’t ever plan on getting to the gold cap.  When I’ve made runs at it in the past it meant that when I saw an awesome deal on the AH or trade chat I’d have to just let it go.  I couldn’t resist buying the Primordial Saronite or whatever it was.  I also like taking risks.  Which means I occasionally have an epic fail… my epic fail in my gold-making teenage years was a strong-armed attempt to raise up the whole Abyss Crystal market.  It was very successful for about two days and then Blizzard instituted the DE option in dungeons (shakes fist @ Blizzard) Epic Fail.

Want Legendary fail?  4 words: Recipe: Savory Deviate Delight.  How about buying those babies every time they hit the market for up to 2.5k and re-posting at 5k.  I gambled that these would be even more rare when Cata hit and I’d be about the only seller with stock.  People would be begging for me to sell them one at 10k.  You all know what happened next (shakes whole body @ Blizzard).  I know you’re laughing and one day I will too.

Epic or Legendary fails is hereby my recommendation for a future blog carnival.  I deserve a laugh at your expense too.  Share yours in comments if you like.

If I make gold cap it will be to the credit of the gold-making communities to which I belong, including all the blogs I’m reading.  It will mean that the sheer magnitude of the inbox flow will exceed my spending habits.  Should this happen I’ll do what most would.  I’d hunt down that TCG disco ball and throw a party in Dalaran.  Free South Island Tea for all comers and fireworks for hours.  Waking up the next day I’d wake slowly and get to work on my next challenge.  What would come next?  I feel like I need that far off goal to keep me motivated.  I might be lost without it.

Finally;  no achievement?!!???  We have the Insane title and the Salty title and Blizzard doesn’t even give an achievement?  No bells and whistles?  Nothing I can foolishly link to chat and make myself even more of an instant hacker target?  Gold cap?  No way, not for this guy.  That disco ball will have to wait.

I’ve mentioned in a previous post that gold making in Wow was originally for me a solitary event. I discovered that I had some skill in making gold, but the guild I was in didn’t really notice much. They were busy with progressive raids and the infighting and squabbling that many guilds do. No-one would notice if I frequently dropped 1,000 gold in the guild bank or resupplied the raid buff materials when the supplies became low.

There were a couple of people that were aware that gold-making had become my number one form of enjoyment in the game (when they received choppers) but most I think looked at me a bit askance and wondered why getting geared or running progressive raids was not a higher priority. I wasn’t feeling the love.

I had purchased a few rehashed pdf gold-making guides and had always been disappointed when the information didn’t get me to the next level in making gold. All of this changed when I stumbled upon a video that started with a pleasant (goblinish?) voice saying “Jonathan Kenins here and today I’m going to show you how…” I joined MGB and the game hasn’t been the same since. I was instantly a member of a community. A community with shared interests. I watched (actually devoured) what at the time was probably 70 hours of instructional videos that turned me from a lucky guy that was able to make some gold to a guy who was working a very, very successful system. I discovered that the site has a forum and that the site owner is actually active. More about MGB and communities after the jump

I’m a hard core member of that community now and always will be. I paid once and I’m a lifetime member. There was never an update cost to continue receiving the benefits of the community. Even with no recurring influx of money the site is constantly updated with new videos and services have actually expanded. A Teamspeak server was added so participants in the MGB Gold Speed Run (GSR) could communicate, cooperate and compete in real time. I’ll describe this awesome competition in another post but the Teamspeak server has developed a life of it’s own.

The dedicated Teamspeak server is up 24/7 and when the pre-Cata patch hit people logged in to share tips and troubleshooting tactics (we worked around the Auctioneer-Auctionator disaster). It was an exciting time and core members of this community began spending more time discussing the game and sharing gold-making tips. Sure it’s quiet at times but it’s fantastic to be dozing next to the computer and here someone say “you guys need to check Essence of Air on your servers right now.” It’s also great when you’re attempting to cross-faction items to get your gold back to the “cheaper side” and you have 8 people researching their servers for opportunities for you to try rather than figure something out on your own. It’s even better when the computer programmer, add-on developer, math guy chimes in with, “take the 15% hit, the discrepancy you’re describing and the gold-making potential means you are slowing down the sheer velocity of making gold by looking for transferable items. Take the hit and smile at those prices, I’ve done the math.” I’m paraphrasing there but I’m not off by much.

The forum covers topics that support the videos (over 120 now) and go well beyond the “method.” Whether you’re a level 1 with 3 weeks experience or a hard core beta Vanilla veterans there are answers to your questions in that active forum.
When Cata hit we we’re online cheering each other on and hearing 6 of us get realm firsts in herbing and mining etc. We had been mapping put strategies for a couple weeks. If I sound like many of those testimonial – type ads that are trying to sell you something I admit up front I’m guilty in that regard. I’m trying to sell you on joining a community. The more services they offer the better. If there’s a membership fee make sure you get your moneys worth because there are awesome communities out there. JMTC has a blog, forums (open and member-only) and host a weekly Teamspeak forum where the gold bloggers answer any and all of your questions! Cold from Cold’s Gold Factory has a blog, a podcast and arranges a monthly blogging carnival where bloggers weigh in on a hot topic of the moment. Several bloggers have joined together to put out Addicted to Azeroth (A2A) – the latest podcast to hit the market. There are new bloggers joining the ranks every month with a new take. There are several of us on Twitter putting out “just in time tweets” so an even larger community can run to their computers or remote auction house to look and see if they are one of the lucky ones with a stock of Mage Armor Glyphs because the game was buggy and you can make a mint!

It’s great to be a part of this larger community as well as my home in MGB. I’m biased of course… it’s where I spend my time and I’ve made excellent friends. I’ve never been able to tell people on my server(s) about the MGB because I didn’t want someone else knowing what I know and competing against me. So I’m happy and proud to put a Massive Gold Blueprint link here so more people can experience what I have and Jonathan can make a small living. If you don’t join MGB but feel you could be learning or doing more… check out the blogs on my blogroll and find a home at one of the other amazing communities.

One more thing. Now that I’ve gone public with this…. if you do join MGB; stay OFF MY SERVER!

Cheers

This is a detailed post to cover the basics of evaluating the glyph market.  I have been successful with my methods to date and I’m convinced you can too if you’re serious, stick with it and utilize what I share after the jump.

In order to evaluate your market fully you need to know a few things:

1. How much competition you have in each of the glyph categories (more below)
2. What is the price range in each of the categories
3. Mat prices (herbs) have very little to do with the price of glyphs

First the categories:

• Trainer Learned
• Vendor Sold
• Minor Inscription Research (daily cooldown – 63 learnable items)
• Northrend Inscription Research (daily cooldown – 76 learnable items)<you’ll need to add Frost Armor manually>
• Book of Glyph Mastery learned glyphs (54 learnable items) i believe the total is 57 now but this is fine for our purposes

I went to Wowhead and created Buy Lists for the last 3 categories.  See my post for a trick to get more than 50 items in one shopping list.  The searches generated allow me to look at how much competition I’m likely to have in each of these sub-sections of the glyph market.

Anyone and everyone doing Inscription will be able to create the trainer learned and vendor sold glyphs.  These are the only categories where mat prices matter at all.  These glyphs are made while the profession is leveled and dumped under-priced on the market.  This is the reason you see extremely low (and flooded) prices if you were to do a “glyph of” search in your Auctionator buy tab.  Many people make the mistake of thinking all glyphs are created equal and that they should all be priced in this range.  Shockingly, many glyph sellers themselves fail to make this distinction and therefor get involved in the “rush to the bottom” with undercutting that is typical of this group.

The remaining categories begin to separate those serious about glyph making and selling from those who are just learning the profession to supply their alts and friends.  Assuming you’ve created the new buy lists mentioned above, you should begin to notice some differences for the Minor Inscription Research and Northrend Inscription Research.  The price ranges may be higher and you find fewer people competing for market share.  Fewer people will have lasted the 76 days it takes to learn all of the glyphs in these two categories (the cool-downs are not shared so you can learn both once daily).  Prices here become less dependent upon the cost of herbs and more dependent upon the amount of “pain” the person has undergone to complete the training in these areas.  While it’s occasionally true that some that have maxed this profession long ago have forgotten what it took to get there, and on more mature servers this number can be high, more often than not you’ll see decreasing competition and increasing prices.  This is why we evaluate the market!

Finally, the category where the real domination can occur.  The list you create for glyphs created with the Book of Glyph Mastery (BoGM) should now show you even fewer competitors and even higher prices.  These are the glyphs that inspire comments like, “why in the hell are you charging 345g for a glyph?  You’re crazy.”  The general population, and again unfortunately some glyph sellers do not understand the pain involved with learning to make these glyphs.  To buy these books on the Auction House you’re looking at somewhere between 500 – 750g on most servers.  On my server you can expect to pay between 5-10k if I decide to allow any on the market.  I’ll sometimes let under-cutters get down to 1k, but it’s a mistake on my part if you find one available for less.  If you decide there’s no way you’re paying between 1 and 10k for a single BoGM your choice is to not learn them or to farm them.  How many of you have come across 54 BoGM in the entire time you’ve played the game?  How many have you have ever farmed even 5?  Whether it’s a high price or farming, there is significant pain involved in completing this group.  Combine that pain with the fact that buyers are paying for this glyph only once for the life of their character and you begin to think my 211g fallback price is actually reasonable.  Particularly when some crazy guy is asking 345g!

This should give you an idea of how to understand and evaluate the glyph market on your servers.  My focus obviously is on the Book of Glyph Mastery Category.  You should be very familiar with the price of these books on your server and have them on your snatch search and your Undermine Journal notifications list.

Don’t be discouraged if the prices are high on your server.  People make tons of gold even just playing in the lowest category by buying very cheap Cataclysm herbs and selling glyphs in bulk for slight profits.  Jump in and get your feet wet and learn your competitors.  Some of them will be your friends down the line (future post topic).  As you learn your cooldown glyphs expect more when you post and adjust your TSM threshold and fallback prices (future post topic).  In part 2 of this series I’ll delve deeper into the domination aspect of the market, but you should already have a sense of how it’s done.

Cheers!

First things first… are you using the search all bar?  The red arrow below shows where the bar is while the yellow arrow shows you how we’re going to truncate our list:

Search All (in red)

You can basically add the truncated list {list name} created when you use the Search For All Items bar into a new list.  So a 50 item list can be truncated into just a single item.  I use this for my glyph searches which I have divided up in a number of different ways to help me analyze the market in different ways (covered in an upcoming post).

Step by step:

• Create a new shopping list named anything you like.  I actually use “anything” because it’s then easy to find at the top of the alphabetical list.
• Begin adding your items and constructing your list right up to the max of 50
• When you have maxed the list do the search that the red arrow above points to
• Now create a new shopping list with the desired name (ex. Rare Items)
• Click the menu box arrow and return to Recent Searches
• Click the {anything} search
• Drop down menu to switch to your properly named list (rare items)
• Click the Add Item bar
• Now you continue to add items until your list is complete
• Drop down menu and switch to your initial “anything” list
• You may now delete this list using the button just below the red arrow in the picture

If this needs a better description or further clarification please add a comment and I’ll update to make the process as easy and clear as possible.

Cheers!

So being carried through to level 80 and being offered a legacy (charity) invite to a top level guild I’m all set right? Except I sucked at everything. I knew nothing about races, classes, group dynamics, roles, raiding and even how to respond to a /facepalm that I was often inspiring. I was getting geared by running with the alts group and even getting carried there.

Picture painted I think. I was always the worst and could never catch up. Ever. My attention wandered. This was a great guild with fantastic people and importantly; a good sense of humor. I wanted to belong and be able to contribute somehow. I had been coached about creating an Auction House alt. I began spending more time “playing” the auction house and learning the hard way. I made a few big sales and was hooked. As I got better and learned my way around I found a way to contribute to my guild in a positive way… Gold. As you might imagine I received quite a bunch of positive feedback.

Hooked was now addicted. I set a goal to buy my top tier friend a chopper, because at that level you’re naked without it. I tried several guides and found what everyone else found back then – they were recycled and outdated garbage pdfs that contained information that I had figured out through trial and error.  Finding community after the jump

I kept trying different guides etc. until mostly by accident I stumbled upon a community site / membership that I ended up calling home. There are now several communities that have forums and active members that tend to reinforce the drive to make gold and offer new ideas to up your game even more. Whether it’s the Just My Two Copper forums, the Consortium, the Massive Gold Blueprint (MGB – my home) or the rapidly growing WoW gold blogging community there is an amazing amount of information contained as well as the ability to make friends. I now see the communities that are a bit closed due to memberships looking at the bigger picture and sharing information with the larger community through blogs. This sharing is turning into awesome podcasts and twitter circles that are keeping more and more people on the cutting edge of gold-making.

This sense of community is what has kept me interested in the game even when the game has begun to bore me at times. I’ll share more about the MGB and some cool things we do like “Gold Speed Runs” an exclusive tool-tip add-on, and a 24/7 dedicated Teamspeak channel in a different post, but I wanted to point out how the evolving community is making us all better and better at gold-making as well as a sense of “belonging” that has been an unexpected benefit in my evolution of play.

A couple of great examples of the community sharing that is going on currently is Cold’s Gold Factory blogging Carnival and the Friday night gathering on teamspeak hosted by @Mageshadow from Just My Two Copper that features an open Q&A with the blog authors as a knowledgeable roundtable of experts to answer.

I ended up getting my friend (and two other) that chopper and eventually even one for myself.  I’m currently making most of my gold on glyphs and will be publishing a series of posts on how you can evaluate and perhaps dominate that cut-throat niche on your server as well.

Thanks for the read and check out the awesome blogroll off to the right!

Toltec

Check out Dumpster! This little beauty is a MAJOR time-saver. If you’re into glyphs or tend to be moving heaps of any inventory in and out of your bags, bank and guild bank you’ll find this is the best add-on since Trade Skill Master (TSM)!

I use it with glyphs to clear my bags into a guild tab and then to load the next batch from the guild tab to my bags. If you’ve ever single clicked the glyphs back and forth, or even if you were trading bags in and out of the bank, you’ll love this add-on.

There’s a bunch of modifiers that you can use to leave certain items in your bags or dump just a specified number etc, but I’m happy with just its most basic use. There is now even the ability to change outfits or gear sets in and out of your bank. By setting up very basic macros this process becomes just one click!

The description and modifiers are found in the link above. For those of you who like video, my buddy Amalgam has a YouTube up for your viewing pleasure. You can also click on the video on the right to get a quick look. Just a quick heads up, the video series he does was originally for the Massive Gold Blueprint membership during a gold speed run. I’ll cover those topics in a future post but there are actually several informative video tutorials you may find useful.

I hope you find this add-on as fantastic as I do. It’s made my “can’t live without list!”

Cheers!

Toltec