Wednesday 29 February 2012

Selling Transmog Gear


The Knowledge
The Inventory
Pricing strategies
Prioritise Plate
Patience is key


The Knowledge

Going over lists and podcasts will help you when you are first starting out to sort out things you really badly want to buy and those things you want to either avoid or only pick up if they are very cheap.
It might surprise you to learn this but I don’t use Auctionator or TSM buying lists anymore. I search max level 70 choose an armour type and sort by price (cheapest first). I do it this way because I like to experiment with different items/slots.You need to start buying and trying to flip, the experience on your realm will give you a feel for what moves and what doesn’t for you.

The Inventory

So you have been shopping for transmogg items a while and got a few hundred items, you have the edge as you are already in the market, buyers are looking over your wares and prices.
The next person has to snatch those items before you but it will take them time to amass your inventory (hopefully mainly highly sought items not 10 infantry bracers). Having other people enter the market is not necessarily a bad thing if they can bring additional supply through old raids, rare farming or dungeon clearing.

E.g. you have chest of a nice set , they put up the legs for this chest, those items might sell faster now a buyer can see “ hey I can grab those 2 at the same time and get a good chunk of a new look started”.

I am currently playing below the radar on one auction house, I’ve been buying up transmogg items for 2 weeks but not posting them on the AH. There is no competition here, I am going to wait to get 200 items then step into the market before anyone else here realises there is a market, have 80 items so far.



2 Pricing strategies

Playing the waiting game with transmogg, posting high and waiting for your customers to come along.
Two ways of going into it are using a one size fits all pricing structure, or using a tiered system (tiers based on the item and/or the slot)
One price to rule them all has the advantage that if buyers know the set price; they can easily calculate the price of a full set.  With varying prices it may be harder to calculate the total cost of a new look.


3 Prioritise Plate

In terms of sales I would rank the different armour types as follows:

Plate > mail > leather > cloth

You might be surprised leather is ahead of cloth but I have found with cloth it is very hard to move and get good prices for non-chest slots, there are some exceptions.

 

Leather is a great way of getting into transmogg on a realm that already has competition; you can still pick up great items for silvers because the prices have not gone up as much as plate or mail.

4 Patience is key

This is not cut inferno rubies don’t expect to sell out in one night, if you can’t handle the thought of relisting items for days/weeks before they sell maybe transmogg isn’t for you.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes in the first week of patch 4.3 I sold a complete knight set for a few hundred gold, don’t worry about selling an item too low or buying an item that you end up disenchanting or vendoring, learn from it.
I don’t have a fantastic eye for style/looks but what I lack in that department I make up for with my willingness to experiment and learn.





3 comments:

  1. Interesting....total value of your auctions is 2.8 million. But what % of that is sold per day?

    By setting your own pricing, you could just list them double that and say 5.6m. Does that matter? Or cut them in half at 1.4m?

    It's just a guess, but if you cut your prices in half, what would happen? Three times the sales, four times the sales? Half the sales? Which gives you a better bottom line when comparing sales and relists?

    I see your screenies of sold items on twitter, but wondering if you looked at %'s.

    % auctions posted versus sold
    % of sold items versus days posted
    % of listing fees versus sold items

    Just some food for thought. Didn't know if you tested the waters, or how often you change pricing. You might be surprised what you find out... =)

    Alto.

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  2. From time to time i like to list my entire inventory (3x burnt leather vest etc.) just to see where I am / get cool screenshots.

    about a month ago (around 1.5 mill up) i guestimated 0.5%-1.5% of total auctions by value per day. I did 115k (around 2 mill posted) last week around 0.8% per day, but last week was crazy, will be less this week.

    I have a follow up post about my pricing in more detail coming up.

    I fluctuate prices for different tiers every 48hrs but only around 5% up or down.

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  3. i do maybe 5 weapons which keeps posting fees down, for me i am happy to pay around 900g in posting fees every 48hours if i will make say 5/10/15/20k in that time frame. Its transmogg very hard to predict what and when it will sell but i do tend to sell more on weekends.

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