Using a “Discount Alt”

I always have surplus inks for my scribe, pets to sell, mob drops, items crafted whilst levelling a profession and other items where i can get a better price on the Auction House than from a vendor.  I am not too fussed by what price i get as long as it is a large mark up to the vendor price.  Furthermore, i don’t want to litter my posting alts for Inscription and Enchanting with these items.

To resolve this i use a “Discount Alt”.

My “Discount Alt” is sent all items that are surplus to my crafting requirements and/or that can command a better price on the Auction House than from a vendor.

This alt posts these items for 48 hours undercutting all competition all the way down to a price that still commands a large mark up from a vendor price (which can get quite low but of course including the cost of a repetitive deposit lost).

Its sole aim is to get a better price including all deposit costs than i would have done selling direct to the vendor.  Therefore, to many it will be seen as a rogue competitor – and it is for this reason that i use a separate alt for such selling.  I don’t want to tarnish my posting alts with a reputation as a rogue competitor.

The income generated will be lumpy and inconsistent, but a respectable income nonetheless and does allow me to keep in touch with the markets outside my normal crafting professions.

This Discount Alt has one further use.  Where i am building a presence in a market – Jewelcrafting or Alchemy, for example – i will use this Discount Alt to post items to see how the market works, who the competitors are, what their strategies are.  I can use this alt to determine how the competitors react to my strategies whilst at the same time slowly building product range.

If i determine that a market is worth breaking into with the view to becoming an established participant then i create a dedicated posting alt which takes over from the Discount Alt.  To other participants in the market this posting alt will have a “clean” reputation and so have an upper hand on the competitive landscape when seemingly entering the market for the first time.



for this and other ideas on the glyph market please follow the link to the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide