TL;DR
Last week, posting 8 times on each of 3 toons with 3g60-4g20 prices. 3072g in sales. Sold 800 glyphs, with 1300g profit. Drove out many competitors, but made mistakes.
This week, I will sell at 3g-24g, 5g undercut.
The longer version
This post is a bit of ramble. I am using in part to try to organise how I post glyphs, and to give an insight into my very untidy mind. I can write better than this, but meh.
During the last week, my posting strategy (using QA3) was :
- Post 3, 48 hours, no cancelling
- Undercut 50s
- Threshold 3g60s (10% price gap)
- Fallback 4g20s (no auto fallback)
- Posted and collected mail 8 times
My sales values (according to Auditor: Mail + AH) have been are:
| Toon | Glyph types | Gold Gained |
|---|---|---|
| Foobarfoo | Paladin, Rogue, Priest, 1/3 Hunter | 1176g |
| Foosglypha | Death Knight, Hunter, Mage, 1/3 Hunter | 948g |
| Foosglyphb | Shaman, Warlock, Warrior, 1/3 Hunter | 948g |
| Total | 3072 |
I sold out on some glyphs. Even worse, on one of the glyphs I sold out on, I had some in my bank. Selling out on glyphs is bad. It defeats the strategy I am trying to use (cap profits for others), and just ends up with me loosing gold. I will need to restock midweek.
Using Skillet and Kev's Key tool, I am recrafting sold glyphs, with /ktq queue 10 glyphs (three times). This means that if I am sold out, I will craft 30 of that type; If I have 5 I will craft 15; and if I have 10 or more, will craft 0.
I will consume:
| Count | What | UnitCost | TotalCost |
| 138 | Ethereal Ink | 1.5 | 207 |
| 300 | Resiliant Parchment | 0.45 | 135 |
| 192 | IOTS | 1.7 | 326.4 |
| 102 | Heavy Parchment | 0.1125 | 11.475 |
| 45 | Shimmering Ink | 1.7 | 76.5 |
| 123 | Midnight Ink | 1.5 | 184.5 |
| 162 | Light Parchment | 0.14 | 22.68 |
| 30 | Celesital Ink | 1.7 | 51 |
| 78 | Jadefire Ink | 1.7 | 132.6 |
| 105 | Common Parchment | 0.0112 | 1.176 |
| 63 | Lion's Ink | 1.5 | 94.5 |
| 1338 | Total | 1242.831 |
I don't think it's free just becuase I farmed it. The same goes for milling. I consider that the cost difference between raw herbs and milled inks to be what you get for milling inks rather than making glyphs. The prices above are roughly what I would buy for, or the cost of converting IOTS via Jessica. I could sell inks at these prices, though maybe not in the quantities I trade.
In approximate terms I sold 810 glyphs and will craft 670 (1 ink + 1 parchment make 1 glyph), for an average cost of 1.86g each, highest cost 2.15g each.
It takes me about 4 seconds to craft a glyph, (3 seconds + lag + distractions) to work out at about 1/2 hour of crafting.
Other changes. I have put all of my glyph toons in the same guild. Foofixit (my glyph maker) doesnt run much, and most players who know me know how to find me.
Goals for this week:
- Track actual number of glyphs listed, using auditor's numbers at 1s per listed glyphs.
- Track how long it takes to cycle through the posting toons
- Sell a smaller number of glyphs at a higher profit
- Only have 60 pages of glyphs on the AH
Explanation
- I want a quick measure of what I am listing. If it's too hard, I am not doing it
- I want better stats on how long I am spending on glyphs
- I want Breevok's gold/hour
- I want to cap the number of competitors on the AH. Number of pages is a good estimate of how serious the competition is.
Posts
I'd question the effectiveness of driving out competitors at this point. Any glyph seller with remote intelligence would come back for 4.0 regardless.
ReplyDeleteIf I were a seller competing with you atm, I would be buying up all the inks and herbs I could, and take a short vacation from selling. I suck up as much supply as possible, and let you keep the sales down.
Come 4.0 and cataclysm, I'm back with a vengeance, hoping that the burst of demand gives me room to jump in and dominate.
My fear though would be that if you have the supply and reserves to fill the entire server demand for 3g each, I'm going to be out in the cold. But with as much demand as I'd anticipate, and the low margin's you're getting, I'd expect your glyph wall to get wiped out fast, and for there to be plenty of room for me to make heavy profits for a bit.
So... is it better for you to put the other sellers into hybernation, thus increasing competing supply during what may be the most profitable wave in inscription history?
The goal is to encourage other inscriptionists to take a nap. Many players will be concentrating on the new level cap. Other players will try to purchase herbs or inks on the day, but the supply will not be there.
ReplyDeleteAnd rougly 5 players will have huge stockpiles. There is nothing I can (or should) do to prevent this. I could price glyphs at 1g, or leave the market entirely, and these players will still have reserves.
Also, while I will write a detailed post after the week is out, I have already made more profit than I did during the entire of last week. But there is no real demand for glyphs. Even the first time player on a level 20 can afford these prices.
I have, and intend to mainain large reserves of inks, as well as a stockpile of 40 of each glyph for when patch 4.0 hits.
No action of mine will prevent dedicated and researched players come cataclysm. I expect that 4.0 glyph sales will initially exceed anyone's capacity to be a single sellor. Prices will rise.
Alright, I hear you. I only mentioned it because my own strategy (on a similar server) has been to choke supply as much as I can (which is limited, since I only have purchase access twice a day) while I also stop using glyph walls.
ReplyDeleteWe've got about 6 big sellers and some 40 odd smaller sellers (people that post 20-50 glyphs per toon). You're right, the biggies will be stocked and on it no matter what. My hope though is to milk as much of the supply as possible from the smaller sellers, and at the same time build up my own supply as much as possible without increasing my crafting time. I'm spending the same amount of time milling and crafting as I used to when I was doing glyph walls, but I'm selling far less (for triple the average sale though), so my stockpiles are rising steadily.
Maybe I should have started that a long while ago, but was trying to wait to find out which glyphs were going to be turned to vendor trash.