Phase 3: Profit !

Spaces are not created equal
Some space is more useful than others.
No, I am not talking about profession bags. That would be too trivial (It’s still trivial for some trader though).
When it comes to trading there are different types of space.

1. Backpack
Backpack space is most useful, since all your traffic from AH is on your bags, All the mail first go into your bags. Here is a tip: Consider having different bag for switching
My Glyph and AH alts had both normal bags and glyph bags, in case I need to route my traffic to other alts. I can change an empty glyph back to a normal one, and switch back to glyph bags after.
2. Bank Space Slot
Bank space is second most valued, because of the ability of switching; you can switch a bag from your bag directly with one in the bank slot. This is the Dual spec of you backpack.
Use other means for long term storage, if you do this a lot. (E.g. My shaman main will also do some auction posting; I’ll switch her normal bag with the 3 scribe bag in the bank, and switch back after posting)
3. Mail box Space
The beauty of Mail box is that it’s near infinity. The Cons, only the top 50 mail can be retrieved (No random access beyond that), and risk for out dated mail to be lost if you are not careful. It takes a long time to clear out the storage, and block your traffic as well.

4. Auction Hall Space
It’s a specialized storage, for low deposit cost goods, you can actually store your material on AH! One of my friends stores all his enchanting material stock on AH. He set an overpriced price of each component. If anyone request an enchant, he cancel those auction. And a plus, if anyone buy his overpriced material.

5. Guild Bank
The first 3 tab is much cheaper than an alts’ bank. Good for storage for a long term investment. As mentioned bank space is better for switching, from a trader, it easy to over stock goods. This should be your largest temporary and long term storage (Though Gevlon against long term storage, since the econ is always deflating. That would be another post)

I come to notice that Sarainy had two similar post about the very topic.

But since I already finished this one, and scheduled this, I am not going to trash this…
This post is more on trader’s perspective than storage. There will be another post about the different (if this is not too trivial)

Be sure to visit Sarainy for some complement information I missed.

Did you notice, after each patch,
The price of Fish and Eternal Water will raise?
And then fall back to normal after 1-2 week?

Demand for buff food increases after patch? That’s one of the factor…
But Today I’ll tell you a secret one….

Fishing activities, reduced a lot after each patch. But after 1-2 week, they’ll return to normal.
The shortage of supply will cause the spike.

One of the reasoning would be fisher gone to raid, after the patch.
That’s possible too…

The Reason

But one of my friend got another explanation.
The 1-3 week is highly co-related to the bot-program update schedule.
On the very day the new bot version hit the net, price start to drop significantly.

You don’t need a bot nor be a fisher to get profit

By knowing this cycle, you can just buy those fish when the price lay low and Supply the market in those 1-2 weeks. Beware that you need to sell all stock in 2 weeks though…

Thoughts

Sadly,
I don’t have enough data to prove this observation…
Maybe anyone can continue this work?

Why Having Alts increase Gold/Hour

In respond to Gevlon’s Post
No, I am not against his point.

But Rather I want to point out why people think (Or may be indeed there are) there is a synergy

1. Time reduced on listing and buying (Gevlon’s point)
2. Reduced some factor on price fluctuation (Since you had more way to get what good you want, e.g. Infinity Dust for Bags, can be from Gears (Disenchant) / Eternal Earth (JC/Disenchant) rather than LFCrafter)
3. More Profession, really means more Gold/Hour! (Thus the Reason for this post)

Why More Gold/Hour

Said giving a profitable profession A, (Same apply to dailies as well)
There are Three Operation to earn gold
A1, yields A1g/hour
A2, yields A2g/hour
A3, yields A3g/hour
for A1g>A2g>A3g, a rational person will always pick A1 first…

the catch is, A1g will decrease if you keep doing Operation A1 …. (Making/Selling too much Netherweave bag, will result in returning bags, which increase the deposit cost and time needed)  Diminishing_returns

Gaining access to an additional profession grant him more choices, (Think of open up new daily quests for a player, with similar Gold/Hour Ratio to the existing ones…)
Say Profession B, with A1>B1>A2>B2>A3>B3

With a player can only do 3 Operation,
Player with only A will do (A1,A2,A3)
Player with both will do (A1,B1,A2)
Which always had a higher Gold/Hour  (B1 > A3) by definition

Exceptions

1. One operation already use up all the time of the player’s play time. (e.g. for Casual Traders or glyph making (Which need very long AFK time))
in that case, Since Player can only do one operation, picking one profession is enough
2. There exist one or two Master profession with All A > Bs

In which case, having another profession gives you no benefits at all…

However, Don’t

Don’t mistaken me of agreeing on leveling alts for profit
Even with DK, that’s a large chunk of time to spend, The extra Gold/Hour just couldn’t justify it.