Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Transmogrification Casting A Wide Net




   There are many people out there that are enjoying the advantages and profits that the transmogrification market is offering. Even though it has been commented by many different bloggers on how to get the most of the market, there are many, many people that simply don't want to deal with the hassle on how to import lists into Auctionator and decide that is not a good market for them.

   Well if you happen to be one of these people then you need to change your opinion and get into this market even this late. If you watched the video at the beginning of this post you got the idea on what i mean when i say using the wide net approach, but in case you didn't have the 7 or so minutes of your time that you want to spend watching that video i will break it down in text as well.

   The whole idea is that you WANT to get in on the market, but you don't want to go after a particular item.  So the only logical step would be to go after ALL the items on the auction house that are in the affordable zone. What i mean by this is that you want to manually go through the auction house and scan it for deals.

   Now when you think about this, the first thing that comes into your mind is that you are going to have to scrolls through pages and pages of auctions and then sort out what is worth buying, and what is crap that you don't want to have. Well you would be wrong again, as that couldn't be further away from the truth. All it takes is about 5 minutes of your time and a character that is near an auction house.

   Once there open up the weapons category and go into the groups like 1h Swords and make the items sort by price from lowest to highest. Once you have done this simply pick up the cheap ones ( usually under 50g ) and go to the next group. After you have scanned the weapons category, go down to the armor category and do the same with the different armor groups. If you have done this you probably ended up with a few or quite a few items depending on your auction house and the competition, so all you need to do is make a new group in TSM and configure it so it posts the items at a high price and a low undercut. In my case i have them reposted at 1950g and a 1c undercut and a lowest price at 600g, but you can define your prices any way you like.

   So the whole idea behind this is to simply acquire as many cheap items from the auction house and repost them back at a very high profit margin and simply wait for a potential buyer to take the bait. The image on the right is sales from that same character that i took in like 10 minutes before i made the video so you can see that those items that i bought out for 5-30g price range sold for 100x their worth and netted in some nice profit. If you want to get a better idea on which items to look out for check out one of the older posts about it but that will only give you a outline, if you want to get a much more detailed look at the matter you might want to check out Faid's Clockwork Riot blog, and Jim Younkin from Power Word: Gold as they have both covered the transmogrification market in a more detailed extent. If you are a Twitter user you might want to check out The Mogfather and Farli from The Overcut. If i have forgotten anyone else that is a major contributor to the Mogging scene put it in the comments and i will add him as well.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.


10 comments:

  1. While I find the transmog market interesting, I also find it fairly overwhelming. I'm not entirely sure where to begin (assuming I even did).

    My concerns are as follows:
    1) On average, how much time do you spend looking for items? Assuming you didn't have a premade list. (Time per day or week)
    2) What's the average turnover time on said inventory? To simply things, roughly how long did it take to resell the items you show above in your mobile AH screenshot?
    3) How much inventory do you have? Storage is always a concern of mine. I don't have a spare guild bank as I like to keep my alts under my raiding main's guild banner.
    4) What is your exit strategy for those items? Let's assume those items in your above screenshot are ugly as sin and just won't sell. What's the next plan?

    Personally, I like dabbling in things I somewhat understand and that I can turnover in a reasonable amount of time. (1 week tops, excluding DMF items.)

    Many people focus on the start up and how to side, but since this is such a new thing (possibly even fad), I'm more concerned on the other side of things.

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    1. See you are the exact kind of person that i made this post for, the kind of person that finds the transmogrification market overwhelming just so i can show you that you can't be further away from the truth, as the mogging market can be quite easy to grasp and profit from.

      1) On average i spend about 5 minutes browsing the different categories per scan, and if you take into account that i post my items on a 48h posting time that makes it less then 3 minutes per day average.

      2) You really can't know the turnover time as the market is always very specific and it really depends on how people want their character to look like at that given time. As a clarification, i've had days upon days of nothing sold just to have about 10 items sell in one day and rack in 8-20k. So all you can do is put your items up with the idea that they will sell ... eventually.

      3) As i am selling mogging items on 4 different servers i have anywhere from 70 - 200 items ( this is low amount by some ) but as i am posting them in a 48h posting time they are basically never taking up free space as they are all returned from the AH at the same time, and as soon as i get them back i repost them back.

      4) This exit strategy you are talking about is not really needed, the reason behind this is due to the fact that you can't define ugly. There are people that think that a given sword A is awesome looking for them while others will think it's total crap, so it's like that saying " One man's trash is another man's fortune ". but if something really doesn't move you can always vendor it, it's not like you paid a ton for it.

      So i hope i clarified any questions you might have had with this issue, but if you want any more info about this ask and i will do my best to answer.

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  2. Do you know of anyway to set up TSM to look at the base item when posting/cancelling instead of the extended item?

    Look for all Cabalist Chestpieces instead of just Cabalist Chestpiece of the Monkey.

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    1. Well i have wondered that myself to be honest, and there might be a way, i think that TSM takes the ID number of the item but i still haven't found a way on how to get TSM to recognize the items by id number.

      So my workaround this problem was to add every single item with all it's different names ( of the monkey, gorilla, eagle ect. ) into a group separately.

      But again your question is very valid and if there's anyone out there reading this if you know a way to get this effect do share your wisdom with the rest of us.

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    2. I figured it out just now, try this, Let's say Hessonite Band of whatever, go to the page of Hessonite Band on wowhead as a general search, which gives me this page, http://www.wowhead.com/item=52317 , Then take that item code 52317 and use it in TSM, it worked for me when I tried it. Let me know.

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  3. Actually I found it. I thought of the question hen I was reading your blog and asked here first, then I decided to go to the TSM forums and look. http://stormspire.net/official-tradeskillmaster-development-forum/5775-stripping-items-their-suffixes-eagle.html

    "Use the "Add Items by ItemID" feature in TSM's "Group Overrides" menu. It's near the top."

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    1. You sir deserve a cookie as well. Good job on the research done into the matter !

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  4. Soooo.... I should just keep reposing the cheap gear i bout/farmed? k I'll give it a few more weeks thanks much :)

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    1. Keep reposting those items even when it might seem that they aren't selling just remember one thing, when they eventually sell they will more then make up for all those times they didn't sell.

      If you are just starting out check out the post about farming the items. If you are on a medium-low pop you have a fairly good chance of hitting it big, if you are on a high pop server then you might get lucky .. eventually

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  5. They about covered it, only advice I would give is if you in a market that isn't really Transmogging yet (Yes they exist) start lower and build up. I made he mistake of going straight for the throat when the market wouldnt support it. It hurts your rep which does count and isn't nessesary as many items flip for well over 1000% of cost. Second suggestion for the more cost sensitive goblins, when browsing items for looks check the 48hour cost to post in the tooltip. I personally try to stay under 1g for 48hours, tend to soothe my soul even though my networth is around 500k atm.

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