Thread: Market control

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  1. #21
    Blademaster adidas's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by risbonden View Post
    A tip is to start with only one flask and when u get more experinced and feel like u controll that flask move to the next one.
    That is funny! Sorry had to say.

  2. #22
    i buy an average of 200 lotus daily always between 50-65 gold from botters every day! I use them on flask and gems... And this is a low pop server

    good luck controlling that market and putting flasks above 200 gold... don't think you can...

  3. #23
    The Insane Aquamonkey's Avatar
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    Back in Vanilla, I had a strangle hold on the Rough Stone market. I had the price up to 1g ea. They sold too.

  4. #24
    The Patient Starsinn's Avatar
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    Some really good posts here. Thanks everyone.

    So far it feels like ive put a dent in the lotus supply. Lotuse prices have gone up a noticeable average. However the average price of a flask hasnt changed a lot . I think that may be due to others still trying to sell off the flasks they already had and the increase in lotus cost hasnt filtered down yet. Ill continue my mission for a while longer and see what happens. If nothing interesting happens i may just start relisting the lotus in limited supply. *shrug*
    Being constructive feels good. You should try it.

  5. #25
    The Lightbringer fengosa's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by elderamy View Post
    i buy an average of 200 lotus daily always between 50-65 gold from botters every day! I use them on flask and gems... And this is a low pop server

    good luck controlling that market and putting flasks above 200 gold... don't think you can...
    This. Whenever there was an abundance of cheap ore in cata I bought it and smelt hardened elementium. Sold it for over 2x the amount of mats needed to create.

  6. #26
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by adidas View Post
    That is funny! Sorry had to say.
    Why do u think its funny?^.- Bad English? I got experince in this and its alot easier to begin with just one kind of flask.

  7. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Aquamonkey View Post
    Back in Vanilla, I had a strangle hold on the Rough Stone market. I had the price up to 1g ea. They sold too.
    Probably because the alternative (copper, tin, bronze) cost even more.

    Quote Originally Posted by Starsinn View Post
    So far it feels like ive put a dent in the lotus supply. Lotuse prices have gone up a noticeable average. However the average price of a flask hasnt changed a lot . I think that may be due to others still trying to sell off the flasks they already had and the increase in lotus cost hasnt filtered down yet. Ill continue my mission for a while longer and see what happens. If nothing interesting happens i may just start relisting the lotus in limited supply. *shrug*
    I doubt you'll be able to make a dent unless you're spending a large amount of capital. Even then, its very risky.

    Back in Cata with the JC/BS/Ench flip, I could easily stockpile about 100-200Ks worth of precursor per faction whenever bots unloaded hundreds of stacks on the AH. Ontop of that, I usually had stock of 50-150Ks worth of product waiting to be sold. So when the price was driven up for whatever reason, be it a 'market controller' or demand (more likely), I would always have product to sell. On top of that, I was one of several flippers. All of us had fairly large stocks.

    Since the flask market is much smaller than the enchanting market (in terms of total revenue), heavy hitting players can easily accumulate weeks of stock (most likely speculating on a new patch). Moreover, there are some wealthy players with their own 'personal stash' of flasks that they purchased cheaply in bulk for personal use. When you try to control prices, these players will just dump their stocks, heavily negating your earnings and probably putting you in the red.

    Plus, players (hand farmers in particular) would become more willing to farm herbs when you start to drive up prices.

    So at the end of the day, you spend a large amount of money investing and time buying/controlling the market but still probably end with a loss. Everyone else profits but you.
    Last edited by yurano; 2013-01-09 at 06:20 PM.

  8. #28
    Deleted
    I think it's very hard to control a market theses days. Many things to take into consideration. How much stock other players have and can you compete with bots set up to constantly log in and out undercutting?

    I'm on a very busy server. The prices on that server are constantly fluctuating. The best I can manage is to have the luck to be checking Ah when there is someone comes along and undercuts by such a silly amount. Even then It has to be quick and spot on timing or people will have started undercutting the new price and 30 auctions can be up at silly price in 2 mins :P I just go with the flow as it changes so fast and stop selling when prices get too laughable and wait a few hours til the prices go up as the always seem to do.

    I guess each server market is different, but I dont think I would like to invest the gold it would take to attempt to control golden lotus on mine. Not saying it isnt possible to influence the market on a quiet server, but you will never control supply and it could be a very expensive task to try and never succeed. Is the market you are trying to control dependant on AH golden lotus ? I personally dont think it is ,so you might not see the flask prices change alot .

  9. #29
    Well the thing is... you can not control a market, at least indefinitely. A lot a people make the mistake of buying out or at least trying to buyout all their competitions which is a huge mistake. That will only work on casual players that post whatever they find through questing and such. Serious AH player don't farm and have other ways to get their mats. And the only way to force out real competition is to undercut them till they can't take it anymore. In every expansion I always have a few players trying to buyout my stuff and always end up out of business...I will lower my price down to 1 copper profit if I need to
    but never beyond that. Once your competitions is out of the picture because they can't take it anymore... then you can post your stuff at whatever price you want.... till the price is high enough for them to get back into business... that is why it is next to impossible to control a market indefinitely.
    In your case, the best way to PARTIALLY control the lotus price would be to find many different things to do with them... making flasks of course, reselling them higher, turn them to gems.

    Be careful, less lotus on AH doesn't exactly mean less Lotus available... it might just mean that price is just too low and people just do as you do and stock or hold on to them till price is high enough.

  10. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by shyruss View Post
    Well the thing is... you can not control a market, at least indefinitely. A lot a people make the mistake of buying out or at least trying to buyout all their competitions which is a huge mistake. That will only work on casual players that post whatever they find through questing and such. Serious AH player don't farm and have other ways to get their mats. And the only way to force out real competition is to undercut them till they can't take it anymore. In every expansion I always have a few players trying to buyout my stuff and always end up out of business...I will lower my price down to 1 copper profit if I need to
    but never beyond that. Once your competitions is out of the picture because they can't take it anymore... then you can post your stuff at whatever price you want.... till the price is high enough for them to get back into business... that is why it is next to impossible to control a market indefinitely.
    In your case, the best way to PARTIALLY control the lotus price would be to find many different things to do with them... making flasks of course, reselling them higher, turn them to gems.

    Be careful, less lotus on AH doesn't exactly mean less Lotus available... it might just mean that price is just too low and people just do as you do and stock or hold on to them till price is high enough.
    I disagree about the 'serious AH player don't farm' thing. When I am qeueing up as DPS I go out and farm mats (all my dps chars have a gathering skill specifically for qeue times) because I'm going to be in the game anyways I may as well spend it being productive rather than just sitting in a capital city while alt tabbing.

    This way my mats don't cost me money, they cost me time. Time I was going to spend doing nothing else anyways. Unlike the guy who buys mats for 500 gold, I can go below 500 gold and still make a profit. I don't have to make a certain profit to stay in the black. Any money is a profit. If you buy your mats you have a ground level that you loose money, I don't. I can drive anyone who buys mats out of the market and still put gold in my pocket. I'm not doing anything else at the moment so why not? My tank characters have double non-gathering professions because I don't have a qeue on them. If you collect your own mats (Farming, or gathering) you have a lot more freedom to sell your wares without going into the red.

  11. #31
    Deleted
    Why do you want to control the flask market? Just for the sake of controlling it or to maximize your profits?

    I will post a longer reply once I get home from work.

  12. #32
    Deleted
    flasks on our server go for 30g till 50g sinds mote droprate went up you can get lotus from the vendor i would never give 300g on a flask

  13. #33
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    Server economy is based on supply and demand, if the price of flasks is artificially raised, a percentage of buyers will resort to farming and crafting their own, and the new artificial price will encourage more people to farm the mats and flasks to sell due to their increased value. This will result in an excess of materials and flasks, not enough buyers, and you will be left with a lot of flasks you can't sell (assuming you buy up all the newly crafted flasks). If you don't keep buying any new flasks that enter the AH then the price will naturally drop to account for the lack of buyers and abundance of sellers...

    Either way the economy either returns to it's previous state or you end up with the world's largest supply of flasks until you run out of gold.

    A better way to make gold out of flasks is to stockpile cheap flasks during the day or over the weekend and then re-post at 6/7/8 server on common raid nights when the number of active buyers soars, the extreme undercutting you are seeing is probably people trying to deter their competition for this method of making gold even if it results in a small loss to gain the market for themselves in the long run.

    The only items you can effectively manipulate the cost of will be those that cannot be farmed on mass, I.e. Dark moon cards or something similar.

  14. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by DeadmanWalking View Post
    I disagree about the 'serious AH player don't farm' thing. When I am qeueing up as DPS I go out and farm mats (all my dps chars have a gathering skill specifically for qeue times) because I'm going to be in the game anyways I may as well spend it being productive rather than just sitting in a capital city while alt tabbing.

    This way my mats don't cost me money, they cost me time. Time I was going to spend doing nothing else anyways. Unlike the guy who buys mats for 500 gold, I can go below 500 gold and still make a profit. I don't have to make a certain profit to stay in the black. Any money is a profit. If you buy your mats you have a ground level that you loose money, I don't. I can drive anyone who buys mats out of the market and still put gold in my pocket. I'm not doing anything else at the moment so why not? My tank characters have double non-gathering professions because I don't have a qeue on them. If you collect your own mats (Farming, or gathering) you have a lot more freedom to sell your wares without going into the red.
    If you only farm mats while queueing up for LFR's or whatever, you're never going to be able to drive a single person with half a brain and a big bankroll out of the market because they can just buy up anything you're able to gather and repost it at a higher price faster than you can gather more mats. You'll never out-supply them. You'll still make money, of course, since your cost is very small, but drive them out of the market? Not on your small supply.
    Humans are the only species on the planet smart enough to be this stupid.

  15. #35
    I disagree about the 'serious AH player don't farm' thing. When I am qeueing up as DPS I go out and farm mats (all my dps chars have a gathering skill specifically for qeue times) because I'm going to be in the game anyways I may as well spend it being productive rather than just sitting in a capital city while alt tabbing.

    This way my mats don't cost me money, they cost me time. Time I was going to spend doing nothing else anyways. Unlike the guy who buys mats for 500 gold, I can go below 500 gold and still make a profit. I don't have to make a certain profit to stay in the black. Any money is a profit. If you buy your mats you have a ground level that you loose money, I don't. I can drive anyone who buys mats out of the market and still put gold in my pocket. I'm not doing anything else at the moment so why not? My tank characters have double non-gathering professions because I don't have a qeue on them. If you collect your own mats (Farming, or gathering) you have a lot more freedom to sell your wares without going into the red.
    Unless you can farm 24/7, this is a case where I can just buy you out
    Last edited by shyruss; 2013-01-10 at 06:20 PM.

  16. #36
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by shyruss View Post
    Unless you can farm 24/7, this is a case where I can just buy you out
    Ofc you can just buy him out but if he makes you pay a decent enough price then he can leave you with a lot of mats you cant sell. ots quite easy to destroy someones market or profit margins.

  17. #37
    Its impossible to control a popular market like the flask market. There are simply to many players. Ofcourse you can influense the price, but with the amount of materials available, and keep coming in, you will probably wont make as much then when you do not try world domination.

    Basicly, what happens, you buy herb X and all Golden Lotus. Reset the price of your flask, and you are king of the AH for a short period. The someone smells flasks are way to expensive on AH, and he has some flasks laying around. He undercuts you, and so the undercutting war begins, soon others will join as they smell gold. Golden lotus has been removed from the AH, so everyone sitting on them will trow them on the AH in a massive undercutting war. Etc etc.

    Now, what have you done, a steady calm market with 40% profit has changed in a market with triple the players, where nobody is selling nothing, as the demand is not that high. At some point, you will think about buying out the others, and you will, and it all starts over again. You will make some profit on the bought out flasks, but you are also sitting on a huge stack of flasks. Potentially worth a lot, but it does require you to focus on that one market a lot.

    From my experience, do not mess a lot with a market, you can always reset a price, but dont overdo it. You will earn more if you keep your competition asleep!

  18. #38
    Deleted
    I would say don't bother. It can consume your playtime controlling a common market such as flasks.

    You should take what you have learned from the WoW AH and apply it to eBay. I've made more gold selling TCG mounts in-game than I ever did playing the AH, all of which were funded by profits I've made from reselling some niche items on eBay. So it's win-win, and I'm continuing to profit from these "skills" right now for very little effort, just need to snatch those bargains and resell them.

  19. #39
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Starsinn View Post
    Is market control even possible today?
    tbh market control novadays is pretty hard, because (like others mentioned) it's too big and to often its upgrading.

  20. #40
    Flasks are dirt cheap on my realm... 50g

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