Glyphs and Transmog, My Submission for the August 2012 Blogging Carnival!

To begin, this post is for "Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival". The topic this time is,

As WoW gold makers, we must be flexible and adapt our posting, pricing, and relisting strategies based on the individual markets.  Every server is different, yet within the same server, each market can be completely different as well.  For the August Gold Blogging Carnival Topic, let's illustrate some of the ways we post differently based on the different profession markets.  
Compare & Contrast 2 Different AH Markets and How Your Gold Making Strategy Varies In Each Market

My post will be about how I handle glyph selling, and transmog. Now, to be honest, I have taken a bit of time off of glyph selling, since I have been engrossed with the beta lately, but I still find time to sell some transmog items. So, this post will mostly be reflecting on how I was selling things a couple months ago.

First off, how I sold glyphs can be summarized pretty simply:

• I took the shotgun approach. Just posted 2 of EVERY glyph that was even marginally profitable(as in, at least 5 gold above crafting price, and due to the super low cost of Whiptail, the crafting cost was super low, about 15g a glyph max).
• I posted for 24 hours
• I checked in with them every couple hours, or after a major competitor logged on. I had all of them(if they post more than 5 glyphs) on my friend list on every toon I play. I also know the posting cycles of the major ones, through the amazing TUJ.
• I aggressively undercut and try to shut out certain people, namely my chief competitors. I used to be kinda nice to them, but they weren't to me, so it's WAR. Got one to leave the market for like a week, then I left for a couple days to see if he was watching, and lo and behold, he was, and came back immediately. So, I came back too, and demoralized him further, made sure to log on IMMEDIATELY after he logged off, no matter what I was doing(except raiding, of course!). Got my bank toon to be on my other account, and literally camped the AH all day some days, just to demoralize him further. It worked, and he stopped competing, or did so not as aggressively. 
• I did minimal flipping, although I did reset some markets which were prices very low but had very little stock, especially if they were Northrend glyphs.

How I sold transmog is way different:

• I carefully examined and priced all of the pieces I was selling, or buying to flip
• I posted for 48 hours
• I never checked in. Frankly, I had no competition, and I don't price based on it anyway. Fixed prices all the way
• I did an auctionator search almost every day for items to flip, plus farmed for them in Blasted Lands all the time

As you can see, the way I approached the two markets were very different. With glyphs, I was very competitive, paid a lot of attention to my competition, but I was not very particular about the, um, particulars. With transmog, I was very careful about the pricing, but cared little about competition. 

I would say that for the effort spent, transmog did give me more gold, but glyphs gave me more gold overall. In other words, I spent little effort or stress in selling/flipping transmog items, but didn't make a lot either, and couldn't really push it too hard to make more. I had to just be patient. But with glyphs I could and did push things hard, and it paid off almost immediately. So, they both had their benefits I suppose. 

Overall, which did I like more? Probably glyphs. Between the highly competitive atmosphere, and high payout, it was exciting and fun. The downsides, of course, were added stress and attention, but that's all part of the game of glyph selling. If you prefer a more relaxed, patient approach, then transmog would be the way to go most likely, or another similar market, like the 77-80 green market.

I hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think in the comments below!