Mastering the AH

[Divine Storm]

So I've recently finished maxing out my JC combined with mining and turn about 7-8k profit a day (playing 3-4 hours a day). I've seen people do a hell of a lot better than I am, but Im wondering how. Undercutters really limit the potential of listing 10-15 cut red gems without having to repost them every few minutes, driving down the price. Any tips?

[wynterlyn]

Well JC isn't that much of a profitable profession compared to what it was during WTLK. Everyone and anyone seems to have a JC or an Alchemist today. There are just soooooooooooo many JCers it isn't even funny any more.

I wouldn't bother "mastering the AH" if you have no plan to basically sit in front of the AH 24/7 to list and re-list auctions. I found what works the best is to chose 4-5 decent and profitable cuts and list those only on the AH.

As you yourself mentioned the problem with undercutters there really is no other option that crashing the entire market, buying all the low level gems and re-listing them for 10 times the price. However, you are taking a big risk.

If you had enchanting, you could make a decent profit but not any more. The carnelians are too expensive and you would be better off selling the carnelians.

Yeah so I suggest you scan the AH over a week and see the most expensive cut that has a steady price and keep playing around with the price.

From what I've gathered and seen the people that pull those kind of profits are those that are basically playing the AH game and sit in the AH waiting.

[Bjorn9486]

What I did was find a niche that no one is covering on your server. For me, its cooking raid level food and leatherworking leg enchants.

[usiris]

I can sit here all day and write a post about all the things you can do...

My sig has 2 sites, The Consortium and The undermine Journal;
The Consortium is a community of gold makers, anything you want to know about how to make gold(within the TOS) can be found there
We even have an IRC channel if want to talk to us live.
The undermine Journal is by far the best tool you can ever hope to have for gold making, this is a basic intro to what it can do

[snodeath]

Go to the consortium. Download Sterling's shuffling spreadsheet. Start shuffling.

[Marema]

What I've been doing lately is just mass posting gems (usually reds since everything else is meh profit). And I also undercut big time on these. So if a red gem is going for 200, I'll post 5 reds at 100, 5 at 110, 5 at 120, etc until I get close to 200. Or go 200, 225, 250, etc, it really depends on how many reds I have. I also will post for 48 hours and then just leave them alone. I usually do pretty well with really no effort on the constant undercutting action. Reds sell pretty fast so if those people who undercut me will sell there gems at some point and since mine are up for 48 hours they'll get sold eventually. All of the non red gems I'll just blow out since all the profit comes from red gems really. I also turn all of the green gems into rings/necklaces and DE them. I make a ton of gold selling enchants and enchanting mats. Then I sell plate/leather/mail pvp gear for a nice profit. Leg enchants for a nice profit. Like I said, post everything for 48 hours, don't cancel since you'll lose your higher posting fee, and then just wait it out. I know most poeple will constantly cancel and undercut but meh, at the end of the day you lose more gold then its worth by not getting the posting fee back. I'm sure I could make more by sitting in front of the AH, but I'm happy with the 7-15k a day I make by not really doing much.

I used to drive prices low and then buy em out and repost, but meh, people are more geared now-a-days and I've seen the non red gems drop in price and in demand so I don't even bother with that anymore.

[Deleted]

what usiris , bjorn and marema said is pretty good advice. If you want the main markets which is where turnover is then you either have to compete, which requires effort or find a niche or do something unusual like marema.

Please bear in mind a lot depends on the state of your server, the population, level of competition and active players. The price trend is downwards as people become bored, gemmed and enchanting reach a plateau or people leave the game. On the good side is some of your competition will quit as well.
My own suggestion is simply to cover more markets where you can turn a profit. More profitable sales = more profit.
Think carefully how much time you want to waste on gold you will never spend.

[Profish13]

It really comes down to the time youre willing to commit to making gold. Right now Im only making about 10k a day, but Im also only posting at most 5x a day. I was making 25k a day and up to 70k on Tuesday and Wednesday, but that was with me camping the AH. After I made enough, I lost a lot of motivation so my gold income reflects that.

[Deleted]

Use an addon such as tsm that'll speed up your posting and cancelling. Get other chars with other professions to compliment jc - transmute master alchemist and enchanting are ideal. Post 1-5 of each gem instead of lots - 12 hour listings. Focus more on purple/orange/red gems. Yellows seem to be selling quite nicely for tanks atm too. blue/green are slow sellers, don;t have too much stock of these.

Green quality gems = transmute (red/orange/purple) if herbs are not too expensive. green/yellow turn into necks/rings - disenchant these and either sell the mats, or turn them into enchants and sell for even more proffit. blue's just vendor or cut and vendor if you have the time.

Don't bother camping unless you really have the time. Chose a select few times during the day that you'll get best sales from and post at those times instead.

As mentionned above - the websites in the signature will go into alot more detail about how you can maximise proffit with time spent.

[Profish13]

Don't bother camping unless you really have the time. Chose a select few times during the day that you'll get best sales from and post at those times instead.

This might work on lower population realms, but on any server with a decent amount of competition, there is no great time. Ive been playing the AH for long enough to realize that there will always be one or two people who log on to undercut you on my server, whether its 2pm, 2am, or anytime in between.

[Marxman]

Yea, JC is really not the place to be for making large sums of gold these days. The market is saturated and materials are scarce, at least from my experience.

It's certainly possible to make a large profit, but it's one of the higher-effort professions these days due to the low profit margins and large prep time for gems.

[Profish13]

Yea, JC is really not the place to be for making large sums of gold these days. The market is saturated and materials are scarce, at least from my experience.

It's certainly possible to make a large profit, but it's one of the higher-effort professions these days due to the low profit margins and large prep time for gems.

JC has had a lot of competition for a long time already, but now 4.3 has been out for months so the demand has fallen off substantially. Even against ten to fifteen other competitors, I still made over 1M in about 6 weeks because the demand was through the roof. I would go through 400-600 red gems a week, now I can barely sell 100. Maybe its just my server that had that dramatic of a fall off, but I doubt it.

[Deleted]

Shotgun and list everything that makes you gold, repost every hour or so, works fine.

[Constantino]

need to figure out what the gold is for...7k a day, in real profit, not e-bragging, youd be gold capped in under 5 months. even if you bought every single rare mount in the game, youd be set for life in maybe 6-7 months.

Begs the question, whats the end game for you? just accumulating gold for funsies? thats fine, if youre having fun. If what your doing now is making you 7k a day, I might say you have already mastered the AH...

[vian]

I make about 20k a night, during raidnights with my alchemy, JC - not so much.

[Palisis]

I make about 20k a night, during raidnights with my alchemy, JC - not so much.

During 'raidnights'?

[Thecookiekillers]

Yea could you please explain your method? I'm really looking up to it..

[Solorian750]

on 90% of servers the 40 str 40 agi and 40 int gems are selling for over 400g each and have stayed that way since 4.3 dropped, so id suggest only undercutting by a copper or two on those and they will sell

[Deleted]

on 90% of servers the 40 str 40 agi and 40 int gems are selling for over 400g each and have stayed that way since 4.3 dropped, so id suggest only undercutting by a copper or two on those and they will sell

Complete rubbish@90% of servers.
prices for infernos have dropped considerably although they are still by far the most popular gem. You can always sell them but competition means you will need to ensure they are still the cheapest, so it may require a lot of reposting otherwise cut 40-50g off them and sell in trade if you have bulk.

[wynterlyn]

I honestly made more gold this expansion selling BoEs than I did from all my professions. With the gold I made I even powerlevelled a couple professions. You want to make gold get in the BoE business. Less work and more rewards. However, it is pretty risky. I nearly paid big time for it. I invested 16K and 14K on to BoE crossbows during Firelands. I panicked when people kept undercutting me over the weekend. I decided to cut my losses and sold them for the same price I picked it up for. However, I should have waited a week or so the price for the bow doubled to 32K and hovered around the 25K mark for a while.