With trading,
Anyone in azeroth can be in a farm-free state
Anyone in azeroth no longer need to grind for consumable, repair bill, enchanting and gemming
Anyone in azeroth can be on baby mammoth (Not recommended however)

Excuses

“I don’t need gold” -
you need, let’s face it. Even you are not into vanity like Me/Gevlon/Seth. You still need to pay your repair bill / consumption/ gear enchants etc. Unless you stop raiding and pvping altogether, you need money. And there are different way to gather the money you need. Why don’t take your time and find a good way for it? (And proven profitable e.g. crafting)

“I don’t have time for this” -
Trading didn’t mean AH-camping, which some of our fellow trader trade in that style, but it’s not necessary. You can still be rich without camping. Yes, you may earn less compared to those camper. (Here’s why). But so are working, you work less, you gain less. I would said the loss is acceptable, Trading still give you much higher gold/hour then other form of grinding.

Take my glyph industry as example, I post twice a day, which takes me 1 hour, which reward around 1-2k gold per day, While the mail getting and posting part is mostly afk.

“It’s too complicate for me” -
if you notice, this is the same line a M&S would said. “I can’t do 1800+ dps” , “I can’t get out of the fire”, “I can’t interrupt/CC/[Insert any task here]“. No, trading is not hard, compare the time you need to grind to the same amount of gold. Some area in the trade is easy to learn, e.g. Cross Faction Pet Selling, Cooking Receipt Gathering.

I know the picture is scary to some of us, but this is not the only way.

“I am not that kinda evil trader, who prey on poor and clueless people” -
These group of people, In Gevlon’s word, Social. Trading is not evil, in terms of economic, a efficient trade will give everyone better off. Econ 101: Alisa want an glyph/[whatever goods], she is willing to pay 20g, Bob want to sell a glyph, he’s willing part with it at 5g. When the transaction happen, we had a 10g net gain. The bargaining only occur between 5-20g range, otherwise, the trade will never occur. The so-called evil-trader can and will do his twit and twist on pushing the price near 20g, but can never exceed it, the trade will always be efficient, as long as the trade is voluntary.

“I may lost money” -
This is the greatest resistance for anyone to get into trading.
Translated in Social’s word, “losing make me feel stupid, and that should be avoid at all cost. Grinding, Farming, Doing Daily is risk-free, I rather spend my time there”.
Everything induce risk, and the price for “risk-free” is so high that you don’t even had to think twice on that. And, the risk factor usually is over estimated by ignorance. Trading is not about luck.

For 100% risk free investment, everybody will be drawn into it, and thus the profit will be lowered. Simple Demand Supply rules.
However, since most of the people drawn to those risk-free option, which left the risk bearing opportunity much more profitable. Identify those risk, and when odds are good, strike. That’s what it takes for a trader.

Conclusion

Did you hear these word from your guild mate? Or did you hear this from your heart?
It’s okay, everyone prefer a comfortable place and afraid of change, but given embracing this can change the very game play of yours (farm-free state, anyone?)

At least give it a try.

A little short blog update…

As you may notice, I started my raiding career with my New Main Notus..
I am still work hard to balance time on blogging, raiding, work and family (especially with gf)

I would really want some help on having guest poster here…
A little summary of the state of the blog. There are 5 type of post we had here now

1. Reactive post – post that reply to others’ post, thoughts and comments
2. Wow Econ, Some economic perspective to Wow, including trading, player behavior, guild, pug etc. (Included but not limited to Gold-Making)
3. Trader Tips – Fellow trader’s tips, e.g. how to start a bank guild
   (notice: not guild bank), New Add-on, Market Change
4. Me as player – Rant, Goblin type – thoughts on Raiding,
5. Others – Silly post and Not-so-Weekly Report for instance

I had been posting like 4(Player), 1(Reactive), 5(Others), 3(Trader), 2(Wow-econ)…

In which I would like more post on 2(Wow-Econ) and 3(Trader-Tips).

I would consider Wow-econ post is hardest to write (for me), since it’s usually long and hard to polish…

I am continuously looking for guest poster on these topics, If you had an idea would want to talk about, and think this blog is worthy for your publication, please contact me

Dazzer321 send me an email, and I would like to give it an highlight for you guys.

Seth had mentioned on his monday post.
I was having a problem on the email, so there was a delay..

Dazzer321 had a rapid growing collections on low end money making tips.
Which is nice for new comer for trading…

In his word:

My blog is a gold making guide it shows you how to make cold quickly. The posts are usually short and snappy for easy reading but the content is there at the moment is been focusing on the lower end of gold making for the low level character but will eventually branch up all areas of wow gold making.

Definitely worth your time for a visit if you didn’t yet,
and great for recommend to your less fortunate guild mate.
On my daily RSS reader
Good work Darryl.

http://afistfulofcoppers.blogspot.com/

Especially true on the 71 to 80 AV Bracket (As of pre-3.2.2)

Player Composition

1. Serious Pvper – Who want to win the battle with strategy and group work.
2. Gankers – Who want to show how powerful they are, by one hit others. And they can’t twink anymore, since they can only face player who are twink as well (From the XP lock system). They want to slaughter, not a fair game… (I am not saying all twink are ganker, but the ganker had a large portion of the pre-3.2 twink community)
3. Low level pvper, (and now, Leveler) – The High level player (e.g. 80 or 70) used to boo them for dragging back the team. But they become the major group in Battle Ground now.

What happened in 3.2

Group 3 increase dramatically, just like what happened welfare Epic handed out back in TBC.
Incentive of leveling in AV is huge (I got a level (73) in AV in 8 battles on Sunday as well).

Group 2 increased as well,
Since the twink battleground do not work anymore, rather than spending hour in the wild for picking low level player, they can just kill those 72-74 player, who are definitely squishy for them.

Conflict of interest

Player in Group 1 and 3 want smooth battle, fast-game since XP only reward on achieving goals only.

While Group 2 (Gankers) don’t give a damn, they just want to show how IMBA (they think) they are, they are the guy who (attempts) kill everyone they come across, start fight in cross road, which will ends up in a turtle game.

Summary

Pre 3.2, the effect of gankers is much more devastating. Since in the past, opposite group 1 players are powerful enough out-weights the gankers,

while in 3.2 the leveler is helpless against them (And thus fuel them with oil).

Thus the setup will shift the balance of fast game to turtle game.

The 3.2.2 71-79, 80 bracket change should able to ease the problem.

I should be happy, since I sold around 800+ glyphs last week, I was making 1-2k per day. Consider the price range is 4-10g each, that’s a lot.
(due to my over-stock setup, the glyph to craft number is larger)

but yet, I had some problem crafting them all….
Aside from a very long craft time, my bag was full, when I try to buy all those parchment (177g+ )
And also bag space when crafting….

I also used up half of my stockpiled ink of the sea.
Time to get more herbs….
(It’s funny that, every time I wonder if I am overstocked, I’ll run into shortage soon)

I could use some _Free_ leveling for my banker for travel from (Druid)

I joined the party, and most of them recognize my bank alts name from the AH (Fame may not be a good thing for us though).

The catch about the boost thing is that the DK want to collect wool and silk for leveling tailoring.
So she decided to do it herself, and she even let us keep on the loot (Blueies and greenies).

I didn’t pick much, since the other alts are so eager to loot all the corpses, and I don’t really need that. (In goblin term, I don’t even want to do the clicking)

I tried to give her some advice (Since I would said it’s pretty time consuming on farming wools there)

1. She should consider buying cloth on AH, instead of farming that herself. (Consider 2-3 stacks of wool, per run of stockack, and it’s sold 1-2G per stack?)
   - She refused, I suspect she had no idea of what’s opportunity cost
2. Boost people for payment and buy those cloth is much more effective (If she’s not willing to pay for cloth)
   - She refused too, for a social reason “people boost me before, so I shouldn’t charge others for it”
3. The price on AH is on 4-5g due to shortage on weekend, so I told her if she ever consider to buy them, she better do it on weekday
4. She believe the cloth should be sold at 50% price (50s) on what show on my auctioneer average, and said anyone selling higher than that is a evil trader (Bxxxtard etc). I doubt that anyone will sell her except morons.

I was thinking to sell her on 1g (100% market price), for some stock remaining in my mail box, (I would lost 200% if I put that on the market, since they’re 300%+ now).
But I didn’t even suggest that (Since she won’t accept that price anyway).

Finally I offered some tips on where to farm for mageweave. (If you really had to farm, at least find somewhere worth your time)

I can foresee she’ll be farming the instance for hours to get her tailoring up.
While telling her to stop boosting others is against my own interest (Since I can be boosted too), but….

There is not much I could do,
if she just didn’t listen to advice.
But at least she is happy about this (may be).

Sometimes, the reason for people remain poor is themselves.
-Zekta

There are only person who aware of there are needs, is that (Insert your insult here) who are making a fortune with it.

Had you think about it this way, you posses the most valued asset in order to change things around?

This market existed.

You’ll probably not the first one. Others had different responds

Such as:

1. Never notice the price outrage, buy (or not to bother)
2. Notice the price is outrage, but buy it anyway (or not to bother)
3. Notice the price is outrage, wait for a while, failed, buy it anyway (or not to bother)
4. Notice the price is outrage, research the alternative, and finish the need for themselves
5. The last, and I like most, research the alternative, and compete with the seller…

From 1-4, those buyers do nothing to the market accept enforcing the price,

Or even increasing it, since the seller found it profitable.

Passing through 1-3, all you need is knowledge, Not so hard of anyone care enough to installed auctioneer and doing a quick search / google on wowhead or wowwiki.

From 3-5, you need resources/connections, e.g. friend / worker with the associated profession…

But given the profit margin is so high, it shouldn’t be a problem.

The only barrier of being the seller and a grumbling buyer is the inertial…

Why don’t you take a slice of that market?

Not more delay, presenting my “Ten questions to ask yourself, on a pile of gold.” (and answers of mine as well)

1. How long did you spend on making gold every week?
2. How much you earn a week ?
3. Do you really need that much ?
4. Where are you going to spend your extras ?
5. Is there anyway can increase the amount you can get ?
6. Is there anyway can decrease the time you need ?
7. Will the method you are currently gather gold be obsolete soon ?
8. What’s the last time you get a new method for profiting ?
9. Is it fun at all ?
10. Planning to share what you had learnt ?

A quick review on how much time you spend, how much you earn, and how much you really need. The current state and future, and most importantly, is it fun for you? it’s a game after all…

Answers of mine:

1. 30mins a night for relisting, another 2 hours for crafting and milling, I would said 5.5 hour/week
2. 2-4k now, more than I ever need
3. No… , I don’t need that much gold for now, but later? Maybe, at least for me and girlfriend leveling, and occasionally I can buy her something special.
4. Was planning to stockpile it for the moment and buy BOE when my Shaman get to 80
5. Yes, I am currently leveling an alt for fun and profit (aimed at 50lv), for the netherweave bags and disenchanting business.
6. Am teaching others to make gold, for the business I left over. And one of my buddies is return after his exam, guess I can co-trade with him for some business. (Especially the LFB in trade channel, since I don’t have so much time to stay at city anyway)
7. I am selling glyphs, pets… glyph may obsolete soon (I always prepared for the worst), but I guess pets will stay. Also into the new business as I mentioned on Q5
8. Last week ?
9. Kinda boring now, that’s why I kept looking into new way of making gold
10. That’s what I am doing here for months…

P.s This is the 105th day that I started to gather gold, I did learn a lot from it. From market pattern, human behaviors, profession etc…

For the record, I started my trading at 1kg stocks, with a lot of left over of green leveling items, and I had 26kg now with a GrandMaster scribe and a Netherweave bag crafting Alt, I may goes into Jewel Crafting later, if the market settled down, for my newly leveling shaman.

My gold/day on trading raise from 50g/day to 2-400g/day (and I don’t farm nor do dailies, I value my playing hour a lot). I spent on everything I need from the fund e.g. dual spec, mounts etc… I didn’t buy much vanity though(But I did sold a lot ), Since The money can always put into better use.

I am kinda full of the money making game now, So I am working on new way of gold making, more on human behavior observing and reasoning from now on…

A current post he posted is about the reason riding a unicycle is difficult.

The reason riding a unicycle is difficult … is because it’s sudden.

…

Learning things that are binary like this is quite difficult. They are difficult to market because people don’t like to fail. They’re difficult to master because people don’t like to fall. “You don’t get it, but you will,” is a hard sell.

I am sure this also apply to every AH-Trader wannabe.

Trading is a habit, a sense of market, once you got that, Just like a Hunter learn the skill of Track Humanoids at level 10, It’ll show up in your minimap with red dots.

Thoughts and Blogosphere

Quite busy this week, had been trying to put myself together, but no luck…
There are some interested topic (experiments) reported last week, last talk about it

Begging

Seth concluded his experiment on begging

I must say most of us won’t take the time to do such an experiment.

Leveling an alt named after beggar, leveling it 40level and begs for 8 hours? I’ll never do it myself…

It spring lots of thought for me (Yet-Another-Thing-Want-To-Blog)… but I will not risk this idea from not publishing, I’ll just make a short list instead L

Here is a short list:

1. We tend to have a implicit thoughts about old people (See Reference), which also apply to beggars (IRL) as well. Do our despite for beggar really work as rational, or a comfortable (defensive) excuses for not helping (Social’s Subroutine)?
2. Reasoning if a person is indeed need of help before giving out the gold, seems pretty make sense to me, it’ll be much better than, “I’ll give you gold, since you asked”(Is the mount necessary is another question)
3. Is helping others that bad? E.g. the example Larisa talk about in comment a IRL’s friend first character on your realm, will you give them gold said (10g for first 10 level’s training fee)? Consider the fact, You earn money much faster than them (Since you have a 80 toons).

I didn’t make up my mind on this one yet. While a green goblin in my mind said “Don’t this will encourage slacking, and why don’t they earn their own gold?” and a pink-haired Gnome would say “It’s only cost you for selling a glyph, and they need to collect the trash on low level area, for at least 30 minutes”

I don’t know…

I used to give little change to old ladies on street, but not now, I keep thinking about it though. For the old ladies are picking cardboard box, and recycling beverage can. I know their life is harsh, that’s 160 beverage cans worth $1 USD.

The Apprentice

I love this series of blog from Gevlon I must say.

http://dalarangardens.blogspot.com/

from the first glance of the post

http://dalarangardens.blogspot.com/2009/07/mishaps-of-misguided-apprentice.html

I clicked the subscribe button on my Google reader

Gnome – Check (I grow up as a gnome mage)

Mage – Check

Sense of Humor – Check

Sarcastic – Check

Keep the good work coming, Ydraisa

Business

It had been boring recently, continuous on glyph business. Nothing special other than 2.6k /week (Try to avoid using the gold/day for weekend sells much better). With 10-30 mins play time per day on Auction Hall, I guess it’s more than enough for me. Saving up for my level Alt… (Should be able to meet my 20k milestone this few days.)

Reference:
From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageism
In Freakonomics, Stephen Levitt’s surprise hit of 2005, the study of hidden (or “implicit”) ageism was brought out of the psychologist’s laboratory and into the TV studio. Levitt described how, in the US version of The Weakest Link, contestants’ voting decisions were, on average, biased against older panelists. At the stage of the game where it is in participants’ interests to vote for poor performers, older people were likely to be chosen even when younger adults had performed worse. But when contestants would benefit by choosing top-performing rivals (to eliminate the competition), they tended to choose lower-performing, older contestants. Subconsciously, the panelists simply did not want to be around older people.^[27]

P.s a post about undercover economist is still on my pending list… didn’t finish the book yet thought ;P