Auctioneer/Beginner's Guide
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Beginner's Guide & Personal Experiences with Auctioneer
Getting started
In the following I will assume that you have the full Auctioneer pack installed, and that you have read and (at least more or less) understood what the Auctioneer tool-tip window displays. There are some nifty and cool plug-ins packaged, which will really improve your life with the money side of WoW. I will also assume you are using the default settings - firstly, because they are not bad at all, and secondly, well, because it's headlined Beginner's Guide. ;-)
When you start using Auctioneer you should first do nothing except regularly scanning your local AH. At least once a day, and at least for a full week. It's most convenient to create a special character you will solely use for your AH and Auctioneer work, so you won't lose precious playing time to fly or hearthstone your main character to the next AH. Logging off and changing char is just so much more convenient, and all money / item exchange can be done easily by in-game mail. Just make sure your AH-camping-twink is same faction (Horde or Alliance) and on the same server as your main character!
Tip: use a female character name. Yes, may sound silly, but experience has shown female char names are better for price negotiations. Use an unobtrusive name (please don't call her "Mybanklady", as I just saw a character on my server...). Don't bother about leveling her, take her straight to the next AH, where she will be happily living for the rest of her level 1, but hopefully quite wealthy WoW-life. And, important, keep her secret. The less people know about who they are dealing with, the better. Note, if you plan on buying weapons and armor for disenchanting purposes, make a death knight and level it up enough to get to a major city with an auction house. That way you'll start at level 55 and later you can easily level up your enchanting skill for disenchanting high end items.
Once you have gathered enough Auctioneer data, supply your little AH-camper with money. The more the better, but as money will be sparse, you will probably have to start pretty low. I'd say sensible Auctioneering would need a starting capital of at least 5g, or, at the very least, 3g. Just send all money you can spare to your little AH-girl. As mentioned here already, if you are really permanently broke, like most starting WoW players, create another character with just gathering professions. Choose two of herbalism, mining, or skinning, send everything to your AH-camper, give her the necessary cash for deposits, and start selling the goods once you've gathered enough Auctioneer data.
This gets us directly into business:
Buying and selling
As already mentioned in the other articles, there are two big enemies to a happy Auctioneering life: deposit and the deduction Blizzard takes from a successful sale. Both form the "AH-taxes", as I like to call them. That's why Auctioneer comes with standard settings that take this into account, to some extent. But, because not all of that can be calculated with a one-fits-all formula, unfortunately it needs some experience to tell whether some specific item is really a buy or not. As a general rule of thumb, deposits increase along the manufacturing chain. This means basic items (herbs, skins, ores or metal bars) have lower deposits, crafted items like armor and especially weapons have high deposits. You won't get deposits back when your auctions find no buyer, so you will always have to take into account that you might have to put your items on auction more than once before they find a buyer, especially those (green or blue) high-priced and at the end of the production chain. The latest Auctioneer has settings to account for these deposit costs before buying, so be sure to set them accordingly.
Generally herbs have the lowest deposits (lower than skins and metal bars), so for a start you should stick to those, although this will drastically limit your money-making possibilities for quite a while. However, there is one class of items that has zero deposit: reagents for enchanting! More on this later, because at this moment those items will most probably be too expensive for you, although generally these can be the most profitable Auctioneer items of all.
Because you are most probably generally low on money, you will at this stage most likely also be limited to just bidding, and only be able to directly buy out items when they are a real bargain at a ridiculously low buyout price.
Buying
So, assuming you are stocked with a little starting money, and have gathered enough Auctioneer data, you can now start venturing. An "Auctioneer run" always starts with a scan of the AH. After the scan has finished, you should search the auctions for bargains under the proper Auctioneer tab on the bottom side of your auction window. At first we will always search the bid section. Auctioneer will list potentially profitable auctions that are about to end. As said above, at the beginning stick to herbs, or other stuff you know that has low or zero deposit. For each auction, Auctioneer will give you the stats in the tooltip window for each item.
"Buyout median", and especially "Suggested price" are the values you should compare to the bid you will have to give. If the profit seems reasonable (deducting deposit and an estimate of, say, about 10% AH-tax) and you can afford the bid, then bid. You can do this in principle for as many auctions as you have money for the bids, but in practice it is a good idea to only pick the most profitable, and NEVER go all-in. This means, never spend all your money at once. Always keep some money safe. This is for several reasons - first, you may encounter a better offer in a later run and want to bite your ass that you have no money left. Secondly, it is never a good idea to risk all your money.
So, some immediate important points of caution:
- When starting with Auctioneer, scan at least a week before using the data.
- Never be "all-in" - always save some money.
- Look for diversity - never have all your money in only one kind of item, say, only Wildvine.
- Especially as starter, always have a look at the "Bids" line of the Auctioneer tooltip. Refrain from buying items that have never had bids, or that have a very low percentage of bids. Ideally the bid price in the tooltip is higher than the bid you will have to make.
- When in doubt, go away. At the start, this will be the standard case rather than the exception, so be patient. Learn about items and about the market first, this will benefit you more in the long run.
Probably, someone will outbid you on the items you have made bids for. But eventually you will win bids for items. Just be patient and learn. Bids most of the time are successful when the time an auction is still online is 'Medium' (max 2 hours) or 'Short' (max 30 minutes). For 'Very Long' (24 hours) or 'Long' (8 hours) bid times there is a big chance that there will be somebody bidding over you.
As has also been said, successful "bidding runs" are much more likely during off-peak hours. So, the more you can work off-peak, the better.
Buying out items works similarly to bidding, but here the prices will generally be (much) higher than with bidding, and the bargain rate will be lower. Same rules apply here - check the Auctioneer tool-tip, look for "Suggested Price", check if there were bids, and check your money.
Selling
Selling is pretty straightforward. Auctioneer will fill in the suggested prices, and, unless you know exactly what you are doing, you should accept the price. Auctioneer will tell you whether it will do "5% less" (okay), "Competition above Market" (even better) or "Monopoly" (yeah!). If Auctioneer says "Cannot match lowest price" you should just keep the corresponding item(s) and try to sell them in a later Auctioneer run. And you should check this competition, maybe you can buy those out with profit!
Proper Stack Sizes for your Sales
In general, for most items, smaller stacks are better. It depends on how the particular items stack - in stacks of 5,10,20 or more? You will find the maximum stack size of a particular item in the tooltip pop-up. Small stacks are convenient for buyers, because demand may be varying. An enchanter may miss just 1 or 2 shards. What does he do if your 10 stack for 20g is the only source currently available? Maybe he buys, but chances are he goes away, cursing at you and the AH. That's the one thing you don't need. Yes, maybe he will bite the dust and still buy, some people reason this way, but it is wrong. It will hurt you in the long run, you will sell less.
Keep stacks at convenient sizes - convenient for the buyer. Auctioneer helps you splitting stacks for auction. The only exception are those typical mass items on the beginning of the production chain - metal bars, skins, partly herbs. You can sell most of these in the maximum stock size. For items that stack over 20, most times it is best to sell in maximum stack sizes. For instances, items like 'Dark Iron Residue', which stacks in 100, is usually a good item for profit, but you would make people absolutely mad if you would sell them in stacks of 1 each!
With selling in small stacks you can also try selling slightly higher than your (full stacked) competition. Take the shard example from above - the enchanter might need just one shard, and the competition is 1 stack of 10 sold for 20g, and your stack of 1 for 3g. You are selling more expensive, but a potential customer needing just 1 shard will most probably buy out your offer.
If the tool-tip shows you are selling quest items, it might be useful to check the quantity which is needed for the corresponding quest(s). WoWHead is your friend here, search from: WoWHead Fill in the item name in the search field and check the quests. It might make some sense to make a "full service" offer - offering a stack with all that is needed for the quest - some people (Auctioneer users for example, I know what I'm talking about...) will sometimes be tempted to complete quests "in the AH" instead of long and tedious grinding. But your usual quest item customer will also find it handy if you sell in small stacks. The much more usual way is that a player starts a quest, finds out the drop rate sucks, and looks for relieve in the AH. In this case he might already have been grinding a certain percentage of the items, so it will be convenient to him if your offer is flexible.
Basic Tips and Tricks
It will probably take you some time to accumulate enough money to trade items of higher value. At the start you will probably also lose money because you are making mistakes. Yes, that's tragic, but this adds to your experience. You learn what doesn't work.
Important is: You can buy bargains any time, but you should sell during peak time. Peak time is usually weekends something like 6-9pm or until midnight. You should place your auctions such that they end at peak time. An auction that ends at 4 am is often wasted deposit.
Once you have some money you should definitely watch out for bargains in enchanting reagents. Enchanting might be alien to you, because it is maybe the most expensive profession. But because it is alien to almost all non-enchanters real bargains can be made quite often. As in every market, knowledge is a clear plus. And as said before, enchanting reagents are nifty for Auctioneers because they can be auctioned without deposit! Shards, dusts, essences of all kind, they can give lots of profit!
Green weapons, or any weapon below about 20g makes very poor auctioneer material. For most of them you will have to pay insane deposits of 2g or more. So stay away from them, unless you know exactly that there is a market for them, and that there is a market at this time! High-end weapons can be very profitable sometimes, but you shouldn't touch them unless your accumulated gold is well in 3-figure numbers. Armor is quite similar, although the deposits are not that insanely high. Green drops of weapons or armor below level 50 are almost always better vendored, but be aware of the following:
Be curious. If you have no clue about an item, look it up on WoWHead or, even better, on Allakhazam. Allakhazam has an extremely nifty feature, it shows you the median AH price for each item! (Median over all servers). So whenever you spot something you find intuitively interesting look up the price there!
Sometimes you just need guts, a long breath, and no fear of taking a loss. If you have bought a blue weapon at 20g, with a suggested buyout of 30g, and can't sell it in, say, 4 Auctioneer runs, don't panic. Somehow you are committed. You will most probably take a loss, but the weapon will probably sell to a vendor at 2g or 3g, so you must try to minimize the loss. That's the point where you should try shouting it in the trade channel for 20g or even lower, maybe for 2 days. And maybe then give it another try in the AH. Only if you are completely sure it's a leftover, you should vendor it - and accept that you've learned a lesson.
Don't trust Auctioneer blindly. Yes, that's right. For instance, recently my 40-ish RP-rogue had a drop of Plans:Steel Weapon Chain . Auctioneer (with probably half a year of accumulated data) had it seen only once, at a buyout of 9g 90s. I didn't know about the item, it's Blacksmithing at 190 skill, so probably nothing special? Well, I got suspicious and had a look at Allakhazam - bang, there it was listed at a median buyout of 300g! After trying for a couple of days selling it at 500g and then 400g this was exactly the price it sold then. I'd only wished I had known about this and looked for it on the day Auctioneer got that 9g 90s buyout scan...
If you want to base your game from the beginning on Auctioneer and money-making, go Alliance. There are more players, and this means more people who don't know what their stuff is worth. Or other reasons... Fact is: you make Auctioneer money much faster on Alliance than on Horde side. If you prefer Horde and have a friend there who can be trusted, you can still make money on Alliance side and transfer it to Horde via the neutral AH. You need a trusted friend or a (temporary command of) a second account, because your Alliance twink can't buy stuff from your Horde character, only a different account can.
Buy recipes and cooking / first aid books and sell them in the AH. They just sell tremendously, especially on peak-time!
Some personal experiences
I never tried to influence the market via monopoly-building-strategies or other things, it would need much more time for this than I'd be willing to invest as a more or less casual player. But I have seen how great a single person's influence on the market can be, albeit in a niche area: As an Engineer you can craft the plans for Inlaid Mithril Cylinder, a blacksmithing item used by engineers, from parchment and ink (cost a couple of silver). They sell well in the AH, about 1g 50s, no problem to sell roughly one each day. Having found this out, well, I just sold one every day. Having done so for about 2 weeks, median price for Inlaid Mithril Cylinders dropped from about 3g to 2g and less. After I had quit for about 2 months I saw the cylinders at 3g again. That makes one think...
Server crashes are a godsend for Auctioneers! Best time for a crash is possibly peak or an hour or two after. I experienced such a crash only once, but it was immediately clear to me that this is THE action an Auctioneer user is waiting for. The server downtime lasted about one hour, during which I consistently tried to log in. When it worked I scanned, and just bid like hell. Won almost all auctions at ridiculous prices. Reason is that most players just let it be after such a crash, completely fed up for the day. I was almost alone on the server afterwards, so there was no competition at all. As a conservative estimate I'd say this server crash netted me at least 100g.
Personally I hate instances. Silly me, you might say, but well, sorry, that's how it is. That's also the point why WoW loses all attraction for me as soon as a char reaches level 60 (70 if you have the expansion), while others say it just starts then. Anyway, I confess that my favorite game genre is business sims, and that I hit WoW only accidentally. Well, liking economy games is where Auctioneer definitely could fill a gap for me playing a MMORPG. ;-) Because I don't do instances and generally prefer the solo game, I have no chance getting good BoP gear. However, Auctioneer financed for me the best gear money can buy (except epics, this would only be possible by almost fulltime-Auctioneering, I guess), an epic mount, mounts and gear for my girlfriend's various characters, and all that cool gnomish engineering stuff for me as soon as level allowed it. Plus best available gear for all my (few and small) twinks of course. If you believe what is heard about the daily targets of Chinese gold grinders, you can possibly make much more with simple grinding, but Auctioneering with a logoff-logon AH-Campers is just a little less annoying than silly, stupid grinding. ;-) Also, with Auctioneer I have learned a lot more about items of different classes and professions than I'd have without it.
