Pricing & Your Realm’s Population Part 4

This is part 4 of a 5 part series of articles concerning; Pricing Theories, Criteria for Pricing, Methods of Pricing, Customer Influences on Pricing, and Pricing Walls. When you have finished reading this series of articles you should have an excellent understanding of the many tactics used in the auction houses on every realm regardless of faction. You should also come away with an understanding of the basics for how to manipulate markets, and a grasp how much of an influence your servers population has on the “value” of items placed on the auction house.

Customer Influences on Pricing

This part of the series details how the customers, the server population that is not bankers, will affect how you price your items on the auction house. Some bankers will claim that this information is unimportant. I claim that if you fail to pay attention to your customers, then they will go elsewhere and you will lose gold. These are some of the ways that the customers affect how much you can expect to sell your good for. 

The Perception of Worth

From time to time folks will quote a price in trade for an item… there will inevitably be somebody that claims the item is not “worth” that amount. The thing to remember is this; Worth is in the opinion of the customer. Just because one person in trade disagrees with your price doesn’t mean it is incorrect or over priced. However if you have been trying to sell the item for what you may view to be an inordinately long time, it is possible you value it too highly. Just because an item is classified as “Epic” due to its being purple, doesn’t mean you can expect to always get an “epic” price for it.

Actual Value to the Customer

All customers value items differently. You want to sell to the customer that values your items the most. Gear in the form of Armor, Weapons, ex., is fine for a one time sale to a customer, but you need to make certain that you have repeat sales. Gear is a one time sale and they move on. Provide your customers with consumable items that need to be replenished. These they will value above gear and will happily pay comparatively more per item when the amount of time is factored in.

An example would be the Darkmoon Firewater. Fairly easy to acquire and yet the demand is constant throughout the month. In the time it takes to clear a low end dungeon, sift the garbage, disenchant the rest of the garbage and vendor the grey, you can have several stacks of the Darkmoon Firewater. Now the gear you might list and receive your asking price, or you might not. You might have to relist it several times until the right customer comes along. With the Darkmoon Firewater though, you can list in stacks of 1, 5 or 10 and sell them faster. Taking less time and selling to more people, you have increased the demand for your consumable, in this way you make more profit than if you wait for a particular piece of gear to finally sell on the auction house.    

Willing to buy versus Have to buy

Customers come is really only two types, those that are willing to buy and those that feel that they have to buy.

The Willing to buy are the best customers ever. These folks are ready and willing to throw their hard earned gold in your direction just because they can. These are the folks that make offers on items, they help support their guilds, and they are generally nice folks. These folk recognize that what you do adds value to the in game economy and are happy that you are there so that they don’t have to do something they don’t find enjoyable. That being farming mobs, vendors, weeds, ore… you name it, if they don’t want to do it they will pay for the privilege not to have to do it.

The other group is the Have to buy. Not as useful as the Willing but still can provide an excellent income resource. These people will attempt to haggle you down and renegotiate a price and attempt to “accidentally” short change you. With these folks it is best to just list your items on the auction house. That way they Have to buy the item before someone who values it more finds it and buys it.

For example: Recently I had a fellow ask me about some star rubies. Feeling cavalier and generous I quoted him 5 gold each, for that is what it would take for me to replace them if I bought the ore off the house and then prospected it. His response was the equivalent of “go F##k your self I don’t pay over 1 gold ever for vanilla materials”. That was fine; I listed 20 on the auction house at 10 gold each and then bought all of the ore in question. His situation was a Have to buy, and he did about 30 minutes later. He got what he needed, I made a nice hefty profit. 

 

Bottle Necking

Bottle Neck Items are those crafting supplies that players grinding professions must have in quantity. Let me use Wool as the obvious example. Wool is used in various crafting professions and First Aid. Several stacks of wool must be acquired for any player to grind up their First Aid, or their Tailoring, less is needed for Leatherworking and Engineering. No progression can be achieved without wool at one point. This is a bottle neck and it is a money making opportunity. Few folks want to farm up the wool needed and even fewer of them want to sell their wool to others.

Periodically though the population will decry the price of wool and a few of them will attempt to drive the price down. Think of these folks as doing your farming work for you. Buy the cheap wool and store it for a day or so, these people rarely have the stamina to keep listing when they realize that their “sales” are not having the effect they want. Do not list any of your own, this will give them the false sense that they are “making a dent” in the wool market. When they have given up, as they always do, you have a back stock that is ready and willing to be sold to a population that has been starving for wool. I do not suggest this if you have limited funds, bank space or any other limitation that would prevent you from enacting this action.

The previous example is only one of many bottle necks in the game, your job is to locate them and exploit them to your best advantage. I good way to locate them is by watching the trade channel, for “WTB Item Name”, this is generally the first sign that a bottle neck has been hit. Go do some research and then if the opportunity is right, make some profit.

Realm Reputation and its Influence on Pricing

I cannot tell you the number of times I have read that people do not care about whom you are, they just want the lowest price. To an extent this is true, if all you are doing is listing on the auction house. If however you also play the Trade Channel, or in the case of my server the Trade and Market Channels, opportunity can be had rapidly and easily without ever having to go the to auction house. Developing a reputation for having an item or a series of items is as effective as having them on the auction house. Many is the time I have sold items directly out of my bank just because someone asked me for them and did not bother with the Auction house, or if they did, they thought that I might have a better deal than the house. Reputation is key if you are a social banker. Keeping your word, and calling others on it in public when they don’t, builds a loyal customer base. These are the people that you play with and sell to, you want then to like you and not be angry at you when prices creep up.  

So I hope the idea that your realm’s population is an integral part of your pricing scheme has been conveyed in an informative and entertaining manner. Play your customer base as though it were a finely tuned instrument, and profit will dance to your music. Part five will cover Pricing walls, the good, the bad, and the profitable.

Until then, remember, Time is Money, and if you spent time reading, then this article was worth the money.

Pricing & Your Realm’s Population Part 3

This is part 3 of a 5 part series of articles concerning; Pricing Theories, Criteria for Pricing, Methods of Pricing, Customer Influences on Pricing, and Pricing Walls. When you have finished reading this series of articles you should have an excellent understanding of the many tactics used in the auction houses on every realm regardless of faction. You should also come away with an understanding of the basics for how to manipulate markets, and a grasp how much of an influence your servers population has on the “value” of items placed on the auction house.

Methods of Pricing

      Part 1 dealt with the theories that are employed when developing a price. In Part 2 we discussed the Criteria to consider when pricing. Here we discus the actual process for determining of pricing. In short, what to do to turn that hard earned loot in to digital gold. It sounds simple, put a price in the price slot on the auction house and then post it. And it is that easy. What that price is though is not so easy. I present you with five methods of pricing that have a return consistent with the amount of time taken to perform them.

Online Research

 I can not stress enough how important it is to understand what you are selling. Knowing what you are selling will help you price your items in an appropriate manner. If, for example, it is a rare item you may not know it just because the text is white and it is of a low level. The Roasted Moongraze Tenderloin recipe fits that criteria and yet sells for thousands on some servers. I recommend www.wowhead.com when determining a baseline for your prices, and then a trip over to www.theunderminejournal.com to gauge if your chosen price is consistent with what is available on your realm.

Using an Addon to set your pricing

There is an old phrase, “you get what you pay for”, this is true with addons for the auction house. Yes they can be wonderful tools and help you post thousands of items at prices you like. They can also be used incorrectly and cost you thousands in gold for simple errors. Time is what you pay when using an addon. Be familiar with the addon, before you allow it to “peanut butter spread” your pricing. I know of one banker in particular, (points in the mirror), that understands the auction house addons and intentionally forces errors in the data gleaned by these programs.

When in doubt fix price your high ticket items when using an addon. Of course if you are posting in doubt then you are not paying attention, and truly deserve what you will get.

Using Server History to set your pricing

Server Histories are an interesting method to use. It works on the idea that what was, will continue. It is not the best method to use when pricing, as many items have changed over the history of the game. Some items that were “rare” are now common, for example, the Deviate Delight recipe. Once it was ludicrously hard to acquire and demanded hundreds of gold on the auction house. Now it drops like flies in the barrens and sells for silver on my realm’s horde side, and single digit gold on the Alliance side.

Using Price Check to set your pricing

The theory is a bad by itself. Actually using this method to price your items is… well let me say it’s like winning an argument on the internet. If you trust the population enough to post your items at their prices you WILL lose out. It is not in your best interest to price to the lowest common denominator. Never, let me repeat that, Never price according to the Price Check method.

Using consistent pricing

Consistent pricing is simple and can be very productive. If you find that you sell an item regularly at a particular price and there is little to no competition you are already practicing consistent pricing. It requires that you have done the research on the items you sell, the research on the realm you occupy, and you understand your auction house addons. This is truly a case of; do all the front work and then relax while the gold rolls in. It may not be massive amounts of gold, but it will be regular and consistent. Once the front work is done fine tuning on a single item by item basis is all that needs to be addressed.

This type of pricing easily allows for hundreds different items to be posted, and depending on the addons used, adjusted quickly and easily. The only time consistent pricing can hurt you is if the price you have chosen is inordinately high. This means you will list the items over and over and lose gold on the listing fees.        

I hope that this article has given you some ideas on how to price your items for sale. It makes references to auction house addons and I suggest that you go and do some research on them. www.curse.com/addons/wow/category/auction-economy is a good place to start that research. Next time we will look at the Customer’s Influences on pricing.  

Until then, remember, Time is Money, and if you spent time reading, then this article was worth the money.

Pricing & Your Realm’s Population Part 2

This is part 2 of a 5 part series of articles concerning; Pricing Theories, Criteria for Pricing, Methods of Pricing, Customer Influences on Pricing, and Pricing Walls. When you have finished reading this series of articles you should have an excellent understanding of the many tactics used in the auction houses in every realm regardless of faction. You should also come away with an understanding of the basics for how to manipulate markets, and a grasp how much of an influence your servers population has on the “value” of items placed on the auction house.

Criteria to Consider when Pricing

How often have you come across an item for the first time and had no idea what price you should place on it? Lots of folks use lots of different methods to determine how much to charge. In this article I will cover the most prevalent methods, discuss the ramifications of those methods, and in the end discus my preference. As you read through them consider that every criteria is weighed differently by all customers, RP’ers will value things that PvP’ers do not, and PvE players will value things differently still. There are collectors of; discontinued items, pets, mounts, gear, and the list of player types goes on and on. Hopefully this article will help you determine your criteria and reach your preferred customer base.

How difficult is the Item to Acquire?

This is the most misleading criteria. Difficulty is often considered in tandem with perceived value. The simple fact is that the difficulty of acquisition rarely has any direct effect on the price of an item. Many consistent selling items are fairly easy to come by, they can be bought from vendors, farmed from NPCs out in the world, or created by players. Many of these items can be priced several hundred percent more than their original price and still sell. Items that require the farming of thousands of NPCs will inevitably be valued less than items that are dropped in an high-end instance. So difficulty of acquisition is not necessarily a good measure to use when pricing an item.

How often is it on the Auction House?

Some items only show up on the auction house once in a very great while. The infrequency of availability of an item on the auction house is a good indicator of exactly two opposite occurrences, either the item is so rare that it is snapped up whenever it appears, or it is so useless that nobody wants it. Items like the Pattern: Star Belt, which is a low level pattern but demands hundreds on many realms because it is so infrequently available. When you look on the auction house and do not see your item do not just list it for what you think it might sell for according to its level. Look back at the first article in this series and use some of the ideas presented in it to help you determine the right price to sell it at.

How frequently is the item used?

Ideally you want to sell things that are used often by the population and that need to be repurchased regularly. Crafting materials, cut gems, enchantment scrolls, and potions all fall into this category. Finding out if an item is used frequently will help you determine a price that is high enough for you to make a good profit and yet still sell the item on the first or second listing. Becoming fluent in the requirements of the crafting professions is a must for turning a profit.

How rapidly has it sold in the past?

In business there is a concept called “turns”. Put simply it is how fast you make more money with the same money. Knowing how fast an item sells at a particular price point will help you “turn” your product into cash, and your cash in to more product to turn in to more cash…..Some items sell fast because of a patch release, others sell slow for the same reason. When considering how fast you want to sell an item price it appropriately. Lower prices sell rapidly, generally to other bankers, where higher prices take longer but provide a larger profit. If you have never listed a particular item historically, then do some research. Know what you are selling, and get an idea of how fast it may sell.

      

Is it an altruistic posting?

Altruism may sound like an anti-banker trait but you would be very wrong to think so. Many bankers, some that have played the game for years, price low end items at extremely low end prices. Their thought is that it provides for the market of new players and new characters. I used applaud this thinking. Now I take advantage of it. World of Warcraft is seven years old, new characters are easily provided with enough gear, bags, money, and materials. They do not need the auction house. Twink characters and Alt characters are the low end users of the auction house. These folks have gold and are willing to spend it to avoid having to do the quests for the gear, bags, and materials.

Is there competition for the sale of the item?

Competition is good, unless they have a lot of product and you have a little. If you are the one with a little then you might consider under pricing your item. It will do several things:

1)      it will sell your item first (generally)

2)      it will deny the person with more product a sale (always good)

3)      it will provide you will a faster return of invested time / money

If you are the one with a lot of the product to move you must consider the possibility of taking a loss or holding on to the product until the cheaper product sells. A third option is the buying out of your adversary’s item. I do not buy out a lot of my adversaries items if for no other reason than I do not know what they may have stockpiled in their banks.

Do you have a Regular Customer Base?

I know that there is a theory out there that says customers do not care about who the seller is, I claim differently. Many of my buyers have purchased from me for years, not because I am the cheapest but because I am consistent. I rotate my stocks of gear, I keep the cloth levels on my auction house at a profitable yet reasonable price and I deal with people fairly and openly in trade or in whisper. Reputation as a baker is important because if people like you, like what you do, and like how you do it, they will buy from you consistently.

I hope that this article has given you some ideas on how to look at your inventory and consider your criteria when pricing. Part three will cover Methods of Pricing.

Until then, remember, Time is Money, and if you spent time reading, then this article was worth the money.

Pricing & Your Realm’s Population Part 1

This is part one of a five part series of articles concerning; Pricing Theories, Criteria for Pricing, Methods of Pricing, Customer Influences on Pricing, and Pricing Walls. When you have finished reading this series of articles you should have an excellent understanding of the many tactics used in the auction houses in every realm regardless of faction. You should also come away with an understanding of the basics for how to manipulate markets, and a grasp how much of an influence your servers population has on the “value” of items placed on the auction house.

Pricing Theories

Pricing Theories are the most common methods for people to follow when listing items on the auction house. There are several theories used when listing items, they are as follows; The Lowest Price, 300% Rule, Trade Price Check, Supply & Demand, What the Market Will Bear and The Lazy. As you read through them consider that every choice is a valid pricing scheme. Not ever theory works to turn profits every day, and not every theory is designed to be helpful to the realms population. Many of them do not work consistently over time and have to be adjusted for.  

Lowest Price

As the name suggests the Lowest Price theory states that, “I list my items for less than the lowest available items on the auction house, I should therefore sell mine first.” To some extent this is true and several of the addon developers have built this functionality in to their products. There is a fallacy in this thinking though; automated pricing to below the lowest available price can interfere with your making a profit. Often individuals that use this price theory end up selling their items for less than they would receive if they had just sold it to a vendor. This leads to a loss of profit and a potential bonus for another banker who buys it and then re-lists it for a high price.

300%

The idea behind the 300% theory is “I list my items at 3 times the amount if the listing fee or 3 times the amount of the vendor’s price.” This theory will provide a relatively low price on most items when compared to their item level (more on that in the criteria article). As with the Lowest Price theory the potential loss of profit can be relatively high. An Hyacinth Macaw sells to vendors for 10 silver, if you only marked it up 300% then your price would be so low that it would be snapped up the minute you put it up on the auction house. Leading, as with the Lowest Price theory, to a loss of profit.

Trade Price Check

This theory states that “People are honest and will answer my question honestly when I ask what I should charge for an item in Trade Chat”. To paraphrase a great statement; there are lies, statistics, and replies in Trade Chat, none are to be trusted implicitly. Consider that when asking in trade chat, a large portion of the responses will be useless and scrolling through them will be time consuming. Of all the theories of pricing this is the worst option. If by some chance a price is determined, it is most likely not going to be very profitable for the seller.

Supply & Demand

The theory of Supply& Demand states that “Prices vary as a result of a balance between product availability and demand for the product.” The issue here is that in a digital environment this situation is turned topsy-turvy. In the game there is nothing that cannot be acquired by every player that wishes to spend the time doing it. With very few exceptions, there is no effective limit to the amount, or type of items that can be acquired. Demand is often easily satiated at the high end, for equipment and materials in a relatively short period of time. After all a character can only use one copy of an item at a time and materials build up. Over time until there is a huge supply and no demand. This has happened with every expansion and patch, it will continue to happen unless Blizzard fundamentally changes the game’s drop system.

What the Market Will Bear

Unfortunately Blizzard has made this a very viable method of pricing. The theory states “I price my stuff at a highest possible price because people can pay it.” This is tied directly to the over abundance of in game gold. It is not unreasonable to expect to make a thousand gold in a single day. This has lead to the preponderance of extremely high prices for basic crafting supplies and low end gear. The negative impact of this is as follows; new players easily become dissatisfied with the prices on the auction house and leave the realm. This may be fine for one person but it is happening all over in every realm and Blizzard is directly to blame for it by making the in game currency so easily available at high levels but not equally available at low levels.  

The Lazy

The theory of The Lazy is my single favorite and the one I use the most when pricing. The theory states, “People that do not wish to perform the content of the game will pay extra gold to not have too.” Or as I prefer to sate it in my chats with others, “The Lazy and their gold are soon parted.”   This theory presupposes that the market is flexible enough to allow some over pricing of items, but not at the level of What the Market Will Bear. Individuals that do not wish to do the content will buy the items in question so that they may continue along with their game playing, and other bankers will not buy the items because the price is such that they will make a minimal profit. This theory is the most research intensive of all the other options.

I hope that this article has given you some ideas on how to look at your inventory and consider your pricing theory. All have their good points… except Trade Price Check, and all have their drawbacks. Part two will cover Criteria to Consider when Pricing.

Until then, remember, Time is Money, and if you spent time reading, then this article was worth the money.

Trade Chat: What it is, What it Was and What it Could be

            Trade Chat; what an awesome idea. A single channel that spans all of the major cities of a faction, designated specifically to facilitate trade and spur the growth of the in-game economy. This week I look at the much maligned Trade Chat channel and attempt to put into words What it Is, What it was, and What it Could Be. How this ties in with being a banker is elaborated on in the later section of this post.

What it Is: Ugly (you may want to skip this part)

            Trade Chat is used to harass other players. This abuse is often in the form of an intolerant and bigoted rant or series of comments directed out into the world without having a single target. Sexual / Religious / Political / Philosophical / Racial epithets, derogatory statements, polarizing and inflammatory comments are that most common of all Trade Chat entries. This is the same type of stuff that the “Looking for Group” channel suffered from before the Looking For Group interface was developed.

            Trade Chat is used to play games like the “Murloc” game and the “Link Anal” game. If you are not familiar with them, I applaud your server’s ability to prevent them.

            Trade Chat is used as ground zero for flame wars between multiple boisterous and prolific individuals intent on disrupting the channel as a whole. They claim it is “funny”.

            Lastly Trade Chat is used as a platform for players that are unhappy with the game. They will spend countless hours whining and sniveling about Gear, PVP, Lack of Roleplay, you name it they will complain about it in Trade Chat.

            This is not a rant, this is an observation of multiple realms and their Trade Chat.   

            Most players turn off Trade chat just to avoid this behavior. By turning of Trade Chat these players have eliminated the best method of you, a banker, getting your pitch to them. The other frequently used option is for an individual to /Ignore the offending poster. This once again eliminates a banker’s ability to target their customer base.   

 What it Was: The good old days

Long ago during the expansion-less time known as “Vanilla WoW”, each city had its own auction house they were not interlinked as they are today. Trade Chat was used most often to inform players in other cities of what had been posted for sale. When a nuisance poster, (one that posted any of the previous heading’s contents) would begin spewing their vitriol, many of the users of Trade Chat would instruct the user to leave Trade and take it to General Chat. This was surprisingly effective. Many of the individuals that used trade were relatively friendly as a group, but would harass an offending player off the channel. Trade Chat denizens helped keep the peace on the channel.  

What it Could Be: A pipe Dream

           Trade Chat has the potential to be much more than the sewer it has become. If Blizzard would install a cross cities general, they have the old Looking for Group channel to work with, then Trade Chat could once again become a useful part of the in-game economy. By allowing the Trade Chat population to police the channel by instructing disruptive individuals to go to an appropriate channel, such as a cross cities General Chat, Trade Chat would become once again a center of commerce for the realm rather than the catch all sewer it is currently.

Trade Chat Etiquette: The language of Business

If you have read this far then you may be interested knowing what you as a banker can do to help the situation on your server.

 

 Uses for Trade

           Link Items for sale. Do this consistently while you are actually banking. It is amazing how often you will get someone that is interested in what you are selling at the time you are selling it.

           Answer questions in reference to the market. When a player wants to know the price of an item fell free to comment. Give them a price. Or if you feel like it discuss the pos and cons of similar items from an economic perspective.

           Advertise your goods and services. If you have a manufacturing skill develop a witty or clever ad that you can macro and announce it every 10 minutes or so, more frequent than that will irritate people and drive off your customer base.

           Transact business deals in the channel. I recently bought 2 Vials of the Sands in Trade Chat. This went over very well and the individual that sold them to me developed more business because of it. A Win - Win situation.

                       

Respectable Trade Behaviors

           Flippant comments are never really appreciated by anybody but the speaker and the cruel hearted. It can rankle a banker to keep their tongue when dealing with a disruptive individual in Trade. Just remember that by handling a negative situation with finesse shows potential customers that you are a level headed and reasonable person.    

           Avoid participating in the The Murloc “Game” or any game for that matter that is not part of the economy. Try to interrupt said games with advertisements, attempts to initiate trade discussions, and requests to the player to take it else where.

           Obnoxious individuals require attention. When they begin filling your Trade Chat with garbage, ask them to leave. If they do not the /Ignore Command is your best choice. Never “attack” such a person in trade, it only empowers them more to be irritating because they know that they are irritating and it makes the happy to know that. When other folks attack them in trade suggest that they also use the /ignore command. Do it in trade so that everyone on the channel realizes that they do not “have” to deal with the disruption. Overtime it will become second nature and the disruptive people will learn that they are not welcome in your Trade Chat.

Advertising in Trade Chat

             Make your advertisement standout through humor or shock. A clever advertisement will be commented on every time if it is not used too much. These comments are free advertisement for you and can easily generate sales.

            Keep your advertisements short. By this I mean use the full complement of a single macro window, 255 characters. That sounds like a lot but trust me is it not. An advertisement for a service with clickable links eats up that limit quickly.

            Be clear about what you are selling / buying / trading. Miscommunications can lead to unhappy people and unhappy people lead to a tarnished reputation as they speak poorly of you to their friends and acquaintances.

            Be respectful and polite to perspective customers, which in Trade Chat is everybody. Individuals that can not be reasoned with are best /ignored. They will not buy from you in person and you do not need to be exposed constantly to their hassles.

When is too much advertising actually spamming

            Advertising once every minute is too much. You will alienate your customer base and lose out on sales.

            Every 5 minutes is also too much. Consider that it takes almost 3 minutes to run through any single city in the game. A few take quite a bit longer than that. People that have trade turned on will have already read your advertisement and are either not interested in it or not interested in it right now.    

            Once every 10 minutes is good, if you are selling a high demand item. This gives enough time for a few new people to wander into the cities and for people that were in the city to have left.  

            Once every 30 minutes I find to be the best. 30 minutes provides enough time for the population in the cities to change by a large percent and some of the new individuals in the cities will comment on your advertisement, garnering extra attention with out having to constantly spam.

Good rules of thumb

            Be polite to the prospective customers, this would be everybody in Trade Chat 

            Avoid using l33t speak, excessive use of abbreviations, and vulgarity as much as possible. This provides you with an air of stability and perceived strength.

            Avoid instigating or participating in arguments with obnoxious individuals.

            Sarcastic “funny” is best reserved for General Chat because it fails to translate well in the text of trade chat.

Vendor Supplied Items

Let us address the Vendor Supplied Items. These items are generally useful to purchase from a vendor and re-sell on the auction house. When we consider the vendors in game maintain items that are for sale, it provides an additional source of products to list on the auction house.

What to buy

What items would be good to purchase from a vendor to place on the auction house? Here is a list of 10 types to start with.

1) Limited Vendor Supplied Items

2) Herbs

3) Ores

4) Pets

5) Cloth

6) Scrolls

7) Patterns

8) Schematics

9) Recipes

10) Leather

See the reoccurring theme here? Practically all the items on that list are required for crafting professions, and each one is most likely going to be available in a limited quantity. As each of the professions needs raw materials to grind up, all of these items are good for that, with one exception, pets. More on pets in a later post.

What not to buy

Now you are wondering. “Well what should I not buy off a vendor to sell on the auction house?” Conveniently enough here is a list of 10 items to not buy.

a) Unlimited Vendor Supplied Items

b) Reagents

c) Engineering Ink

d) Vellum

e) Wood

f) Thread

g) Vials

h) Common Spices

i) Armor

j) Weapons

I hear you now “But if the Armor and Weapons are a limited item shouldn’t I buy them?” The answer is, “No”. The listing fee, plus your purchase fee, will be far greater than you can actually expect to receive when auctioning the items. With the exception of Armor and Weapons the items in the list are unlimited in quantity and have very limited uses. Not to mention that all of them are available in every city and most towns in the world.

Gauging Salability  

Four criteria are to be considered when listing these items in the auction house.

a) Availability

Is the item already up on the auction house for less than you want to charge for it? If the answer is yes, don’t list the item.

b) Base Cost of the item

Is the price to purchase and list the item more than you expect to make in profit? If the answer is yes, don’t list the item better yet don’t buy that item.

c) Level to use the item

Is level of the item consistent with the amount you expect to charge?

If the answer is no, reduce the price or do not list the item.

d) Frequency

How often will the item you are selling appear on the auction house?

If your answer is, “it’s there everyday” don’t list the item.

So at this point you have determined that you have items that are going to sell. What should you charge for them? How will you know you are making the most of your investment? Simple, if you make 100% of the cost of the item pulse the listing fee you have made a profit. So if the item costs you 25 silver and you sell it for 50 silver you make a profit of 25 silver. It is conceivable that you can charge more for an item, for price suggestions there are several sites with dedicated data bases for the game. I recommend wowhead.com .

Ramifications of Selling Vendor supplied Items

A segment of the gaming population disagrees with the selling of vendor items. There is nothing you can do about that. You are servicing the people that are not interested in making the trip out to the vendors you farm. They are the ones that are going to buy your products. The funny part is that these are some of the same people that will give you grief for selling the vendor items.

Here are some good results that come from selling the vendor items. More availability of the items in a larger section of the population leads to more demand for resources. Better distribution of the items in the general population. And of course you will make your profit and that’s why you play a banker.

Several unpleasant behaviors develop from this practice as well. Vendors with items that are in relatively high demand are camped, sometimes by bots. This makes it hard for non-bankers to get the same products. These bots can snatch the items you are trying to buy while you are trying to buy them, it has happened to me on more than one occasion.

Then of course there is the dumping of vendor items on the auction house in an effort to destroy the market. Some times this has a side effect of making the items cheaper to buy off the auction house than from the original vendor... Yes there are stupid bankers.

Banker Race, Class & Professions... Why?

I have found that many players never consider the ramifications of their selection of Race, Class, and Professions when creating a Banker.Let’s spend a little time to familiarize ourselves with some of the benefits of the traits needed for a banker. Remember “Time is Money Friend” and speed is a consideration for any banker.

Race

Your race has a few influences on your banker. Your start location is only a factor as to how far you will have to run. The racial abilities are what are important here. The selections are as follows, Humans and Draenei for the alliance, Blood Elves, Tauren, and Goblins for horde. Yes I have completely excluded the rest of the races as they have no influence on a banker’s requirements.

Humans are the first choice for the alliance because of their bonus to faction ability. Their ability to grind up faction quickly reduces the fees that humans pay to the auction house.

Draenei receive a bonus to their jewelcrafting skill, and that is a very nice thing to have except it at the high end all jewelcraftes can end up making the same things.

Blood Elves’ racial ability of a bonus to enchanting is the single best racial for the horde, where a banker is concerned, although just as with the Draenei, it suffers at the high end. 

Tauren bankers have two advantages. One is that they have the bonus to herbalism, the second is that the Auction House and mail box are both outside and within eyesight of each other. This allows a mounted banker to travel rapidly between both locations.

Cataclysm introduced the Goblins, a race that has the advantages of faction pricing. This race gets the best prices from vendors. When selling vendor acquired commodities this is the race to be when you buy it. 

Class

The class of your banker opens you up to a world of possibilities... if you choose the right class. Four of the classes are to be considered for the role of banker; Mage, Shaman, Rogue, and Hunter. Each of these has a useful skill set that can benefit a banker. Can each of the other classes be a banker? Yes, but their effectiveness is hindered in that they do not have the advantages that support the role of a banker.

In my not so humble opinion the Mage is the single best class suited to being a banker. The reason for this is simple; as you play your banker in the game the mage class gains the Teleport and Portal abilities. What better way to get to your customers than by porting to them to take their money or being paid to send them somewhere else.

Shaman bankers are severely limited in their teleporting ability to their hearth city though this can be a slight advantage if that city is Shattrath or Dalaran. This is useful though more limited than the teleport used by the mage.

Rogues as bankers benefit from their lock-pick abilities. Vast sums of money can be acquired using your lock-picking. Now that there is no longer a need to raise it incrementally this has become a much better source of income. Because you are a banker you will spend a lot of your time in a major city, people always need somebody to open those boxes, for the right tip ofcourse.

The last class to be considered for a banker is the hunter. This is simply because the hunter has the ability to farm items and resources rapidly with the use of their pet. Hunters are the best farmers for resources like ore, herbs, and leather. Their pet can be off killing something while the hunter is skinning, digging, or picking weeds.

Profession

The concept of “it takes money to make money” is true for professions, though it takes comparatively little money to make large amounts of money in game. A banker in the mood to make money will have two of the following professions.

Enchanting / Disenchanting ---> Perhaps the single most useful skill set, as a banker with this skill set you can make money enchanting or breaking enchanted items. If you have items that you cannot sell on the auction house you can disenchant them and sell the dusts, essences and shards.

Jewel Crafting / Prospecting---> Prospect ore for gems to place on the auction house or to prospect ores supplied by customers and charge a fee. Create items and sell them of course. When paired with Enchanting this skill set makes a banker extremely versatile. Create items that can be sold, or by destroy those items and sell the results.

Mining / Smelting---> Mining is the most useful gatherer skill set. The ability to mine and smelt the ore provides some of the most used resources in the game and therefore the highest priced resources in the game. Gems are gathered while mining. Gems, ore, stone, and the bars from smelting all sell very well on the auction house.

Skinning & Herbalism ---> as gather professions these two are a guaranteed method of generating gold on the auction house.

All the rest of the professions in the game consume the resources generated by the previously mentioned professions. This makes the rest of the professions less viable to making a profit and therefore not good selections for a banker.

So when you decide to make your Banker take into account the Race, Class and Professions, just as you would when playing a Meat Shield, Glass Cannon or Healbot.