Professions: Start with your class
Professions are overwhelming. Most players have a main with 2 maxed professions. Lots of players have 1-2 alts with maxed professions. Some players have one of every profession. It can be a challenge to decide which market(s) to get into and on which professions. Instead of getting overwhelmed with all the options - take a step back and think about what you already know. If that's too abstract for you - then think about what you already buy.
- Enchanting: What are you always digging up mats for or buying scrolls of on the AH when you get new gear?
- Inscription: What glyphs do you currently have for your primary/off spec?
- Alchemy: What flasks are you using every raid night?
- Jewelcrafting: What gems are in your PVE and PVP gear sets currently?
- Blacksmithing/Leatherworking/Tailoring: What piece of gear couldn't you ever get a drop for? Did you ever fill the gaps with crafted blues or epics?
If you can answer these questions, you can get a good starting point in your professions. If you've bought it in the past, there's a very good chance someone else wants to buy it right now - all you have to do is supply it for the lowest price.
There are plenty of recent examples for knowing your own class(es) that you play well, and using this to your advantage. The biggest one is probably the change to gems/colors in 4.0. If you played a fury warrior, your armor pen gems turned to crit. If you were like me, you were looking at replacing 10-15 gems with something more attractive - say, strength for example.
If one well educated player needs 15 new gems after patch day, then how many gems do the thousands of educated and unprepared players need after patch day? Tons. Stocking up on epic cut and uncut gems and then unloading them at a premium is just one example of cashing in on specific class knowledge. Recent changes to glyphs and dual spec becoming available earlier and cheaper meant for anyone that played a "hybrid" (warrior, priest, druid, shaman, paladin, deathknight) there were significant opportunities to stock offspec tanking/healing glyphs for your 2nd set.
Go through your "BiS" lists. Take a look at how many crafted items come out 2nd, 3rd, or if you're really lucky, top tier for a particular slot. For many classes and specs, not only do crafted epics come out ahead in a particular tier of content, but there is very little to no competition in alternate sources. How many expansions have we seen crafted two-handers go for a premium at the start of first tier content? What can you do to ensure you cash in on some early blacksmithing returns come cataclysm?
Niche items: Start with what you collect
Pet collector? Completionist who needs ever last cooking recipe? Do all of your bank alts just have to have the full tuxedo set? To some extent - all of us engage in some very interesting collection habits. Some of us more than others - but there's not a one of us who can't say that they've made a purchase or series of purchases "just because".
At a general level, it's very hard to speculate with these items. You might value a Razzashi Hatchling at 2500g, or you might think it's ridiculous that anyone would pay more than a gold for something so trivial. The value really is up to the user. This is where drawing on your own experiences can provide you some useful insight. I remember back in vanilla WoW the thing to have for the longest time was a Mechanical Squirrel. On a bad day this probably set you back a gold in materials. But everyone had to have one. I remember finally snagging the recipe one day and crafting as many as I could. Guildies were happy. I was excited. Squirrels were everywhere! Entirely unexplainable - but at the same time difficult not to notice. I remember a year ago when I started out my bank alt - my first investment was in a 6 tab guild bank. After that I thought, "Why not?" and dropped an extra 50g on bank alt clothes. Diamond Tipped Cane, you know the drill.
This gets back to the same core idea with profession based goods - if you've bought it or wanted to buy it before, someone else probably wants to buy it now. Start small. Maybe you haven't used your tailor in months. Throw 40 or so gold into some mageweave - post the tuxedo set on the AH and see what comes of it. Maybe you make your money back over the week, or maybe you sell your goods out within an hour. It all depends on supply and demand - but if you're at a loss with what to try, always step back and draw on your own experiences to guide you.
This works with everything from pink mageweave shirts to argent tournament pets to anything in between.
Continue with what your friends know
Once you have a comfortable handle on your own class, your own expenses, take the next logical step. Maybe you're a PVE driven tank in a raiding guild, and you've used your knowledge to sell bundles of PVE gems and blacksmithing gear, great.
Spend some time talking with, or at the very least observing what's going on around you with your friends and guildmates. Most of us spend 10-20 hours or more a week with the same people, so you should certainly be aware of their habits, both as players and collectors. I'm not saying you should turn your guild into your own private pawn shop - and how you want to handle "discounting" or "exploiting" your guild members is up to you. Rather than worry about selling to them, think about how to sell to what they represent. Your guild is made up of PVE and PVPers. Tanks, healers, DPS. Casual players and hardcore players. Take note of some of them - any of them. Figure out what they're consistently buying and market to it.
At the end of the day whatever you're selling comes down to an educated guess. The more information you have to make that decision, and the less time it takes to make that decision, the better. You could spend time researching market data, analyzing trends, and getting into statistical analysis - or you can go for something a little less quantifiable and enter into markets based on what you know about yourself and the people around you.
No comments:
Post a Comment