World Of Warcraft, WoW Hand Armor

Monday, February 13, 2012

Selling Transmog Items- How to Price For Your Server



There has been quite a bit of discussion on Transmog since it's release in 4.3. I am covering how I am still making profits despite competition, despite overpricing and underpricing, and how I decide what price to sell what item at.

Sure, there are many other bloggers that have said their piece, many folks on twitter chatting about this issue or that issue, so I figured it's about time I cover my AH PvP technique.






Currently, I have just over 1K items on my transmog banker. Sure, that might seem like alot, but you must take this into the equation: I don't pay more than 20g for any specific piece unless it's a "top tier" like Hyperion, Glorious, Lofty, Vanguard, and Jade to name a few.


I post in 48hr increments. Sure, it's double the AH listing fee, but that saves me time, which is more important than an undercut here or there.

I check the AH when I log in using my shopping list from a previous post: Alto's Transmog List using Auctionator. If anything shows up under 20g, I snatch it up. 2 minutes to do. Like I mentioned above, I will slide from that rule, but for the most part, that is my position.

Some recent AH sales over the last few weeks. 


During the week, I price lower than weekends. 90% of my transmog prices are 500g or less (other than the Breast or Chestplates, which once again 90% revolve around the 1500g) I also group the prices somewhat by "packages", i.e. Bloodfist set is 500g each, Sundered is 425g, etc. This allows the midlevel transmog folks the opportunity to get a nice set of mog for under 3K, which I see as a fair price....

"Fair price? What the hell are you thinking? You are an AH'er Alto, get with the program! Milk these items for as much as you can!"

Nah. If it was RL cash, of course I would have a different mindset. But this is a game. Look at The Mogfather for example. He said he has made over 1.5 mil off transmog items, and gave it all away. Sell to the rich, then give back to the rich through giveaways for the best transmog sets. So in other words, the folks that are paying thousands of gold have a chance to get thousands back. Although we are doing basically the same AH game, transmog, we do it in two complete opposite directions. Keel sets his prices to what he wants out of them, I set my prices to adjust with the market and to get consistent sales, in other words, I set mine to the majority of the buyers.

I sold quite a few of the more rare or top tiers at the release of 4.3. Since then, I see the same auctions posted by the same sellers that I did a week into the patch still trying to get their 10K on the Glorious Chestplate, or the same cat trying to sell his Lofty Set for 5-7.5k each piece. What do I do?

More of my AH sales on a Low/Mid Pop Server. =)


Continue snatching up the pieces at 20ish gold and mark them at my 1k or 1500g pricepoint......and guess who buys them? The folks that don't want to pay the 5k for his. Here you might ask why I don't list for 4.5k and barely undercut him. Sales, my good watson, sales. This is why Wal-Mart is so huge and is destroying their competion in sales and causing others to file bankruptcy. More sales at better prices= better bottom line. When you take sales from other AH'ers, they don't want to deal with you, and give up. You win.



While he is posting the same items for months, with maybe a sale a week, I am raking in around 8K per day on weekdays and 12ish thousand on weekends. Who is smarter? The people trying to get top dollar or the ones that have more sales? There are plenty of folks better than me at AH'ing, but I think my sales show I walk the walk and talk the talk.



I have hit 1.1mil (600K+ on transmog alone) since patch 4.3 (I have stopped counting, but here's a mysales since the patch). You can see that I have multiple tier pricing, some as low as 150g.

If you learn anything from this post learn this:

Servers vary widely on Transmog markets. Adjust your prices accordingly to your sales reports.

Weekends will always be the "better" sales times, as there are more potential buyers. When setting prices, don't assume that if someone sold "x" item on twitter for 3K that it will net that on your server.

Unless you see proof, you can't always believe what you hear. Be wary of what advice you take from who. You can feel fairly secure in listening to me, as my methods are tried and true. I know methods that work. I tell you my methods. Use them or someone else will.

Profits are profits. Anytime you flip something for 5g for 100g, you are profiting. 5g to 500g? Yeah. Alot more. 5g for 1K? You will never see a profit like that again, don't think that it will always happen.

Transmog items are very niche. Your buyer for "x" item at 3K might only log on once a week. The buyer(s) for "x" at 1K might be on daily. The old addage "Price it higher and it will sell" is true, but the lesser price brings more buyers. Most "average" folks are aware of the top transmogs now by name, so being the most expensive on the AH isn't what it was a month ago. Think about it.

4 comments:

GrayzBDF said... Reply To This Comment

Agree! Good post. But I won't do your strategy just yet. The lottery feels is just too addictive. I'm not doing it as often as before so my main focus is weekends to give a false feel of "nothing's available at all".

I'm doing this on my alt realm so i'd have another strategy if I had my gold backed up by my Gold Cow on BDF, but that's cheating hehe.

Gold only matters to a certain amount for me.

Anonymous said... Reply To This Comment

I am still trying to figure out the xmog market for my server, Burning Legion. I keep checking for some of the items I read about on blogs, but never seem to see any. It just seems like xmogging is dying/dead on my server. Hopefully your list you linked will help a bit. Question: do you rigidly stick to you 20g limit? (aside from the few exceptions that is)

DK

Anonymous said... Reply To This Comment

Good post dude. I'm doing the same thing although I think my prices may be a little too low. But yes most days even during the week I have several sales.

Anonymous said... Reply To This Comment

The only problem with selling mid to higher tier pieces at a lower price point to attract more buyers is that certain sets or pieces of a set are extremely hard to come by. You can sell something faster if you price it lower, sure, but don't think that you're making more gold in the long-term.
Walmart runs out of something and they just go and buy more stock. You can't just go out and buy another Exalted set to sell right away.

It all boils down to, how fast can you sell that item before someone else posts another copy of it? Price according to rarity.

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