Splitting my end market

for other ideas on the glyph market and other general tips see the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide


There has been recent debate in the gold making community about posting at high prices vs constant under cutting.

I would have to admit that i am in both camps!

It is worth remembering that maximising gold earnings in World of Warcraft is not only a function of “gold per hour” but also a function of the time a player is willing to devote to gold making vs other activities such as questing and raiding or even levelling alts etc.

I would rather make a steady 5000 gold per day with an hour’s work rather than making 7000 gold one day, 1000 gold the next, 5000 the next etc and fighting the whole time to achieve this.  Even if i found that the stable market earned slightly less than the unstable market the time i could devote to other projects whilst operating in a stable market would surely offset this.

The way i achieve this is to make my minimum glyph price 40 gold per glyph against a crafting cost of 20 gold (currently a stack of herbs costs 40 gold, and each stack can make 2 glyphs).  I have a fall back price of 600 gold (and i sell at this level).

And hence i am adopting a strategy of splitting the glyph market.

The image below shows my Tradeskillmaster settings for posting 1 of each glyh at a minimum price of 40 gold, a fallback price of 600 gold and undercutting by 10 silver.

There are plenty of my competitors who are willing to operate in the 20 to 40 gold range earning profits up to 20 gold per glyph sold (which is still a good return compared to the crafting cost of 20 gold) to generate their daily earnings from the glyph market.

By setting my minimum price at 40 gold there is one less competitor at this 20 – 40 gold end of the market (i.e. i am not there) and hence my competitors have it slightly easier.

Furthermore, i find that because my competitors are happy with their daily earnings from the glyph they are less likely to camp the Auction House to squeeze every copper out from their glyphs.

That makes for a stable market.  It also makes for a market where what all participants fear most is an aggressive new entrant and we all will fight hard together to prevent a new entrant destabilising our market.

When to sell inks instead of glyphs

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

My minimum price for selling glyphs is 40gold.  It takes 3 inks to make a glyph therefore i should be indifferent to sell inks at c14gold each.

However, i must consider the actions of me selling inks at this price.

Firstly, the only buyer of inks are other scribes and the only reason they would buy inks is to craft glyphs or other inscription items or to level.

I can’t slow down the levellers (the future competition) by restricting my sales of inks to Blackfallow Inks – they can merely buy those inks and convert them to their required inks.  So, by selling inks i do provide the future competition with a route to levelling.  But at least i pick up gold along the way.

The other Scribes will be buying my inks to produce items to post on the Auction House to compete with me.

Now, by selling inks at 14gold i am setting their floor price at c40gold per glyph.  Given most of my competitors are willing to take glyph prices down to 15gold my actions of selling Inks at 14gold is forcing them to reset their prices upwards and therefore forcing discipline into the market.

Another way of looking at this is that for every 3 inks my competitors buy off me i therefore can claim 40gold of each glyph they sell (i am their cost price).

I can withdraw my sales at any time.

Therefore, i am happy to sell inks at 14gold each.

My cost price per Ink is 7 gold (it takes c3.33 Whiptail per Ink) therefore my profit per Ink is 7 gold (or 21 gold per 3 inks bought = the profit per glyph sold at my minimum price of 40gold).

Who are my competitors’ secret alts?

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


Most expert crafters have an alt that has nothing to do with their Auction House businesses.  This alt may be raiding or levelling but its other task is specifically to watch the Friends List and see when my competitors come online so that i can wait and then repost my glyphs when they leave.

However, i know my competitors are doing the same.  If i can find out the names of their secret alts then i truly know when my competitors are online or not.  And so i need strategies to flush them out.

One such strategy i employ is to try and make their secret alts buy crafting materials off the Auction House from me.  And then watch to see if they log on and off at the same time as my known competitor alts.

To do this i create an alt to post cheap herbs – and so this alt is new and hence can not be linked to me.  I don’t post too many stacks, say 5 stacks of 20 of whiptail at 20 gold a stack should do the trick.

When they are sold i look at the data on Auctioneer Beancounter to see who has bought them.  Over time it becomes apparent that certain names that i don’t see posting glyphs are appearing with regularity on the list.  I add these names to my Friends List and sooner or later i start to notice that when they log off my competitor posting alts log on.  I therefore determine that this alt is part of my competitor alts.

Periodically i disband my herb posting alt and start a new one.

Over the course of time i now know who most of my secret competitor alts are.

Of course, as a directly related observation, make sure your secret alt does not buy items on the Auction House that are used in your crafting businesses.  No point in falling for the same strategy!

All counter strategies lower profits for a while

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

It is important that one is reconciled to this fact.

If a competitor undertakes a course of action to increase their share of the market then, whether or not you undertake a counter strategy, you will be getting less profits from this market during this time.  If you undertake a counter strategy, which i strongly advise you do, then the profits coming to you will further fall during this time.

Therefore, when i am participating in a market i do so in the knowledge that at various points in time the profits will fall away and my time devoted to that market will rise to counter competitor actions.

I also operate in the knowledge that during calmer periods, time spent researching my competitors will pay off down the road.  They will be researching you.

As will time sent ensuring all end markets in a profession are researched and, if appropriate, entered.  For Inscription that means entering the off hand, certificate and scrolls markets for me.

As will time spent developing a new market.  For me, that is enchanting.

Time spent exploring all options will enhance the avenues for profits and narrow the avenues to make losses.

Start posting as soon as your competitors leave

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

Start posting as soon as your competitors leave. . . . .

 . . . . . . it demoralises them!
Quite often i will be questing with an alt that has nothing to do with my Auction House alts and therefore i don’t believe any of my competitors know who it is.  I will note a competitor come online and cycle through their alts and then leave.

Clearly they are cancelling and reposting.

As soon as they leave i wait for 2 minutes to make sure they are not going to log back on and recycle, and then i log on my posting alts to immediately undercut them.  And then i leave.

This has two benefits.

Firstly, it reposts my glyphs to be the best price and so maximise my profits.

Secondly, when the competitor next comes on they will have low sales and see that they have been undercut.  Better still, if they come in within, for example, the next 10 minutes they will see that they have been undercut without ever seeing me online whilst they were posting.  They will therefore know that i am watching my market.  That will demoralise them.

I don’t wait and complete any part of a quest, or get more xp – i immediately log off and log on my alts.  Takes 10 minutes.  But it is time well spent.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

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

I have a backup market which i turn to if Inscription becomes too competitive and i want to let it settle down and reset.  My backup market is enchanting.

Everyone should have a backup market – it opens up a whole new range of options that can be deployed as counter competitive actions.  The most obvious being that you can temporarily leave your main market if it all gets too much.

In fact, i often operate in the Enchanting market at the same time as the Inscription market.  I am not aggressive and i don’t seek to own it.  Merely i seek to make 1000 – 2000 gold per day from it whilst i operate in the Inscription market.

But right now one of the more aggressive competitors in the Inscription market has moved over to the Enchanting market.

By leaving the Inscription market the time i need to devote to cancelling and reposting my glyphs has gone down materially and my weekly income has risen.  Indeed, it has risen by more than i make in Enchanting and what’s more, i have more time on my hands to level alt characters.

Thus, i prefer this prior competitor of mine to stay in Enchanting and out of Inscription.

Hence, i am not competing in the Enchanting market.  I don’t want to take part is dissuading the new entrant from the Enchanting market.  In a sense, i am letting the other market participants have my 1000 – 2000 gold per day.  And given the competitive nature of this new entrant, i suspect much of it will go to him/her.

The competitive landscape has changed for the better and i don’t want to disturb this.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

The Holiday Goblins has left the building

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

The Holiday Goblin is the intrepid gold makers that surface during the holidays, enter a market and add extra competition during the holidays.  As the holiday draws to an end their pricing moves to a "price to sell at any cost" strategy and generally takes the market prices right down.  They are most common at the end of the long summer holidays and i generally step out of the market for a week at this point.

I never really saw them at the start of this holiday season.  For a couple or so days last week the “holiday goblin” dumped their items on the Auction House and then disappeared.  The glyph market prices barely wobbled.

Not a bad showing this holiday.  Perhaps the season was too short, or some other reason that i don’t know.

But, either way, business as normal!



. . . . . . . as a side  note, because a girlfriend has come onto the scene my posts are now going to go to once every two days!

Some Glyphs are being undercut, some are not!

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

Some glyphs are being undercut, some are not. . . . . .

. . . . . . so, what is going on here?  And what does it mean?

You post your glyphs and watch for your competitors coming on line.  None do and yet at least a quarter of all the glyphs you have posted have been undercut by a player you have never seen before.

It is likely that there is one of two things happening here.

Firstly, it may be a gold optimiser.  These are players that use an addon (mostly TradeSkillMaster) to determine the most profitable glyphs to sell and so crafts and posts them.  To determine if this is the happening look at the glyphs being posted – if they are the higher value glyphs then it is likely it is a gold optimiser.  Check them out on the Undermine Journal to see if they post other profession items – it is unlikely that they will use one character for just glyphs.  These are fairly harmless competitors in the Inscription market.  They are normally using the same strategy in other markets.  Their glyphs are undercut quite quickly and they don’t return to cancel and repost for a long while given they are crafting and posting other items from other professions.  However, whilst their profits are low from Inscription they are generally happy with it so they carry on – so say 500 gold a day from Inscription will be added to their daily gold from Enchanting, Jewelcrafting and Tailoring for example.  Hence, they are unlikely to turn into aggressive competitors.  They are happy, and you are happy.  A win win situation.

Secondly, it may be a new entrant coming into the market and posting the glyphs as they are learned.  These are harmless competitors now but may become dangerous.  It will take them a while to get all the glyphs given the daily research required.  But they are at their most vulnerable now.  They are unlikely to have devoted much time and gold levelling Inscription to date hence now is your best chance to persuade them to leave the market.  You do this by making sure they are undercut the moment they come online.  Add them to your friends list and the moment they come on and then leave then you log your posting alts on and undercut them.

See my post here on using a Friends List and Section 6n in my Inscription Guide.  A stitch in time saves nine.

The Posting Cycle, plus 1

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

When i go through my cancel and repost routine by logging on my posting alts one after another i always watch the Friends List to see if any competitors are coming online.  Even if i see none, at the end of my cancel and reposting routine i always log on my first alt to see if any glyphs have been undercut.

Hence, i do my posting cycle, plus one alt.

Normally one or two have been my minor competitors.  I don’t mind that and i leave.

Occasionally, a lot more have been undercut.  In this case i take a look at the posters name(s) and look up the Undermine Journal.  If they are maxed out in Inscription (currently level 525) then i note them onto by Friends List – they are likely a potential competitor.

They may only be posting once to experiment with the market but the sooner we get a started on keeping an eye on them the better.

Indeed, the fact that they posted whilst i was going through my cancel and reposting cycle would indicate that they do not know the market well and therefore are new to the market – all my competitors know that i will remain on the cycle until i am satisfied.  And indeed, all my competitors do likewise.

A new entrant often comes armed with strategies to try and will likely try them all at some point if they persist with the market.

In any event, always going back to your first posting alt to check for undercuts is worth while time spent.

Never Buyout items to reset the price

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


Often i will see glyphs posted for 16 gold, say 2 or 3 per glyph.

I am tempted to buy them out to and repost at my fall back price of 400 gold.  If, for example, there were 3 glyphs posted at 16 gold then i need only sell 1 glyph at 48 gold to break even (Auction House fee aside).

I run a number of risks in doing this:

Firstly, they may be a “levelling glyph” and hence in high supply and so naturally low – so check the Undermine Journal for the average price.  If it is constantly low, say 5 gold, then it is a glyph used to level the profession.

Secondly, a competitor may have a low fall back price for these glyphs.  On my server there is one competitor who has a fall back price of 30 gold for the more common glyphs and these very quickly get down to cost price.  I will very quickly find that my 400gold glyph will be sitting there above glyphs posted at 30gold.

Thirdly, there may be plenty more to come at this price and a competitor is slowly releasing them into the market.

The best way to reset prices is to let natural buyers buy the low priced glyphs and then the fall back prices to kick in.  If any of the above are true then i will not have wasted gold buying out the glyphs, i will merely have wasted a very small deposit fee.

However, where glyphs are posted below cost then they should always be bought to replenish your stock piles – but no more.

Off Hands – the general strategy

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

Off hands are typically items that players use to level and therefore not capital items.  i.e. players know that they will be buying a new off hand every 5 or so levels, and know that the old off hand will be worthless given it is bind on equip.

Furthermore, at the lower levels players may not bother at all with off hands.

Hence, demand may be variable whilst every scribe can enter the market indicating that there is a risk of oversupply and therefore low profits, or even losses.

Therefore, on the face of it, the pricing should be naturally low.

However, in my experience not many scribes craft the off hands and instead prefer to focus on the glyph market.  Hence, the level of competition is very low and more than compensates for the lower demand.

The mechanics and strategies of the glyph end market and the off hand end market are very different.  Off hands compete with dual handed weapons for slots, at heroics and raid levels mob drops are better, the deposit costs on the Auction House are higher, the raw materials are varied and you cant stake them in your bags so they take up plenty of space.  The differences are vast and certainly enough to put most scribes off focusing on this end market.  The glyph strategy of undercutting would merely see any profits eroded by Auction House deposit fees.

In addition, the volume of sales and hence level of profits is low enough to put further scribes of this end market.

Therefore, the trick is to find a pricing level which maximises profits but deters new entrants from coming in.  In essence, i aim to operate under the radar of the other Scribes who are focusing on the glyph market.

There are two parts to operating under the radar: pricing; and volume.

Mainly through trial and error i have found a pricing level for most off hands which i will be posting in the coming weeks.  I resist the temptation to increase this pricing because i have found that this is a sure way to attract new entrants who will bring the pricing right back down through undercutting.

For volume, i only post one of each off hand at a time.  For sure, that means when i sell an off hand i do not have another one posted so i may miss out on a sale.  But, as long as any potential competitors only see one item posted they will deem this market to be too low a profit stream for them to bother with.  Of course, i will doubtless be posting items which are very slow sellers as well as those that have a better selling rate.  But, as is the case in the glyph market, that is my way.  I want to own the market – its just with off hands i am trying to do this without anyone noticing!.

Over the coming weeks i will be posting about each off hand and the strategy i use to sell it.

The Auction House Camper – how to combat it?

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


following on from yesterdays post The Auction House Camper - what is it and what is its purpose?, today i look at how i combat the Auction House Camper.


To beat the Auction House Camper I use their own momentum against them.


They are the hardest to beat and hence it is a battle of attrition. They have the one key resource that we all want in abundance but just don't have enough of - time. And they have loads of it! The Auction House camper will not give in so easily and therefore you need to wear down their time and gold. You need to convince them that there are easier markets to attack than yours. And this will take a while. I have been known to battle it out with a camper for over two weeks. Though the use of the word "battle" is perhaps too strong - more like i suspend making any profits in inscription and let the camper slowly die out.



Four things to do


Firstly: find out when they are on: use the Undermine Journal. And find out if they operate in other markets or just one. The true Auction House Camper will focus on one market. If they also post items into other markets you have a mch better chance to force them out of yours. But the prime reason to find out when they are on is to determine the time they spend camping. Is it during the day, or night. And so you can start to get a feel as to how much time they truely can devote to this.


Secondly: find out if they camp all the time or just at the busier times. The true camper is on all day and all night. If they are just camping during the busier times then try at first to combat them using the strategy outlined in Croda's Inscription Gold Guide, chapter "6o. How I deal with a serious new entrant". They may not be a true camper, merely an aggressive new entrant.


Thirdly: find out where their minimum price is: the true camper will always go down to cost and often use their gold surplus to go below cost. If they have a minimum price that is sensibly above cost then again try "6o. How I deal with a serious new entrant" as a first effort.


And then fourthly: take the glyphs down to nil profits through my standard quick cycle routine below. Not worth hanging around – you know they are going to be a tough competitor hence as you compete you need to compete hard and demonstrate to the Camper that you are willing to deny them profits from their actons.


At this point the standard routine of cancelling undercut items, posting 2 and emptying the mail box is too slow.We need faster action. Hence, my routine here is:

1.Cancel all glyphs on the AH and empty the mail box for all alts – so starting with no posted glyphs

2.Set the number of glyphs to post to 1

3.Post 1 of each glyph in my normal price range for all alts

4.Assuming the competitor is posting just as fast as you then . . . . .

5.. . . . go back to the first alt and cancel the undercut ones and repost again

6.Don’t empty the mail box, stay in the AH – we are looking for speed of posting here

7.Rotate through the alts again

8.You can do this 8 times (assuming you stock at least 8 of each glyph)

9.After the eighth posting, cancel the undercut ones and then empty out the mail box, and start again!

10.Occasionally rotate the order you go through the alts to put the competitor out of step

Very quickly the glyphs will get down to cost price.Stop there. Let the Camper go lower. At this point they will be using their own momentum against themselves and making all sales at a loss. They will be taking a lot of time to craft new glyphs to sell at a loss. And so on.


They will very quickly be selling glyphs at a loss and be the sole buyer of herbs on the Auction House. And it will become tiring for them and indeed they are likely to become demoralised. It is not selling at a loss that will force the Camper to stop, it is the prospect of never selling a glyph at a profit that will. And you must keep that prospect a real possibility.

All you need do is make sure your glyphs are posted just above cost. As long as the Camper is in operation then make sure your glyphs are up at just above cost. Therefore, you need to set your minimum post price to be just above cost and you need to make sure you post even if there are cheap glyphs posted. You dont want to let the Camper reset the prices upwards and so make profits for a 12 hour stretch. Furthermore, hopefully the other market participents are doing the same as you! - that way even if the camper tries to buy you out your other competitors will take up the running for you until you log back on.

And then settle down for the long battle of attrition.  And it will be long.

The Auction House Camper - what is it and what is its purpose?

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

continuing with the series on Advanced Strategies, we are now looking at the Auction House Camper.


The strategy itself is not advanced but the counter can be. It is however the most common strategy that is adopted in the market and typically adopted by competitors that have plenty of time on their hands! We have all met the Auction House Camper, and indeed their strategy is needs very little description.


The primary purpose of a strategy involving Auction House camping is to ensure that as many sales as possible of glyphs, if not all, go to one player. This is achieved by undercutting all competition within minutes of them posting glyphs on the Auction House. It is the ultimate “being there at the lowest price all the time” action.


Spotting this strategy is quite straight forward. Your glyphs are consistently undercut within minutes of being posted by one competitor and their alts. And despite constantly cancelling and reposting still your glyphs are undercut within minutes. Indeed, the camper may not even cancel their own glyphs and you will see their name several times in the order book as they focus on speed of undercutting.


The constant presence of this competitor ensures that profits from the glyph market all go to this one player whilst lowering the profits to other market participants to almost nil.


The Auction House camper may not be concerned with the sales prices as long as they are above cost price – though i have met some that do have a minimum posting price. Ideally the camper would like prices to be high but recognises that this strategy is likely to force prices lower and quickly, and keep them there. It is a strategy of high volume, low price.


The ultimate aim of this strategy is one of two aims.


Firstly it is to gather all the profits from the glyph market to one player. Whilst this player is willing to lower the profit stream from the glyph market they do so in the knowledge that they are increasing their market share to compensate.


Secondly it is to force other players out of the market by signalling to them that there is a competitor that is willing to sit at their keyboard at all times at the Auction House and so deny other market participants


In any event, it is likely that the camper will persist with this strategy until they are forced out of the market or forced to cease their actions. This is not an opportunistic strategy but one with longer term aims.

In tomorrows post i shall discuss how i counter this strategy.

The Holiday Goblins - nowhere to be seen?

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


Here we are, Christmas has been and still i see no sign of that Holiday Goblin.  These are the intrepid gold makers that surface during the holidays, enter a market and add extra competition during the holidays.  As the holiday draws to an end their pricing moves to a "price to sell at any cost" strategy and generally takes the market prices right down.  They are most common at the end of the long summer holidays and i generally step out of the market for a week at this point.

But, this holiday, i dont see any in my Inscription market.  Perhaps the holidays are too short, or perhaps i am lucky this time.

Hard to say, but it is good news!

Sunk Costs

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

Many gold makers in World of Warcraft can on occasion find themselves in a situation where they have spent a large amount of gold on a project that is almost completed and then realise that the sales they will make will not cover the cost of the completed project.

Perhaps the most common example here is an alt that is almost fully levelled a profession.  It is 85% complete and you realise that the market you thought was present is operating at a permanently lower level and you will never recover the cost of your power levelling.

So, what to do?

The player must realise that the gold already spent is lost forever and can not be retrieved.  Therefore, it is a “sunk cost”.

Hence, the way forward from here is to determine the total investment needed to complete the project and compare that amount to the sales price of the finished item.  If the sales price is higher than the gold required to complete the project then the gold should be spent.  That way, at least the player recovers some of the gold already spent.

The Glyph Wall - how to combat it

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

Following on from yesterdays post on the Advanced Strategy The Glyph Wall – what is it and what is its purpose?

If the glyph is above my minimum price then i continue as normal until i reach my minimum posting price, which as i write is 40 gold.

However, given the aim of the glyph wall is to force a player out of the market it is likely that the competitor will start posting the wall below your minimum posting price - indeed, if the competitor has done their research the glyph wall is likely to start below your minimum posting price anyway. The normal Glyph Wall competitor is not an Auction House Camper – that is why the Wall is used.Hence, in this case i adopt the “race to the cost strategy”.

I can’t get way from the fact that during this counter strategy profits from the glyph market are going to nil for all market participants including myself.I have known this counter strategy to go on for almost 3 solid weeks before.

The aim here is to bring all glyphs where there is a Wall down to just above cost price and let the glyph wall competitor undercut me and so make losses on each sale. Eventually they will become dispirited at crafting, posting, making a small loss and repeating time and time again.

Therefore, my strategy is:

1.  I remove the 40 gold minimum posting price from my addon and lower it first to 30 gold, then 20 gold and then just above cost price.

2.  I undercut by the normal 50 silver

3.  Continue to post single glyphs in batches of 2

4.  Cancel and repost as normal

5.  But now i cancel and repost at least before i go to work and right before i go to bed

The aim is to bring the glyph prices down as fast as possible without using higher than normal undercutting amounts.I find it important to signal to the glyph wall competitor that i am a rational competitor but that i will fight hard for my market.

And of course i keep this up until the Walls are taken down – which is a signal from the glyph wall competitor that they are either leaving the market or giving up on the strategy to allow prices to be reset upwards.

In my experience, the glyph wall only works a third of the time in forcing another player totally out of the market. What i tend to find happens is that myself and another market participant will bring the glyphs down to cost price, other participants will step out of the market and the glyph wall competitor will start selling at a loss. Eventually they give up and leave. And then those other players return.

The Glyph Wall – what is it and what is its purpose?

Continuing the series on Advanced Strategies today I am looking at The Glyph Wall Strategy. Tomorrow i will discuss how i combat this strategy.

for other Advanced Strategies see Section 7 of Croda's Inscription Gold Guide and indeed for other ideas on the glyph market please follow the link to the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

But, moving to: The Glyph Wall strategy – what is it and what is its purpose

The primary purpose of a strategy involving a glyph wall is to ensure that the maximum price of the glyph never exceeds the price that the wall is set at.


Spotting this strategy is quite straight forward.  For a number of, or all, glyphs you will see about 6 or upwards glyphs individually posted by the same competitor at the same price, which is normally below the market average for each glyph.


The size of the wall ensures that no matter what the demand at least some of each glyph will still be listed for sale 24 hours later at the wall price.


In effect the fallback price of each glyph is reset downwards and therefore reset the price of each glyph downwards.  The effects of this strategy whilst it is in operation is to lower the total profits from the glyph market.


The ultimate aim of this strategy is one of two:


Firstly, it may be to permanently reset the fallback price of each glyph and therefore change the profitability of the glyph market for all participants going forwards.  To achieve this aim the competitor merely needs to keep the glyph wall up.  The objective is to force some players out of the glyph markets who do not wish to tolerate these lower level of profits going forwards and to keep them permanently out of the market by ensuring the glyph prices do not reset upwards.


Secondly, it may be to temporarily reset the fallback price of each glyph with the aim of forcing some market participants to leave the glyph market and therefore allow the competitor to remove the glyph wall to reset the prices upwards and so enjoy the higher profits that the removed players enjoyed previously.


In any event, the aim is to force a player out of the market and hence the competitor is likely to persist with this strategy unless counter action is taken.

Why have a high fallback price

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

I set my fallback price at 400 gold.

I do this for a number of reasons.

1.   It resets the glyph price to 400 gold when all are sold out – and so starts the undercutting cycles from a high level.

2.   It sends a signal to my competitors that i am willing to sell my glyphs at those prices and hence perhaps they should join me.  I give the impression of being a sensible competitor.  That is key.  A market participant with the reputation as a rogue competitor receives more focus.  Furthermore, other market participants that have lower fallback prices become tempted to reset theirs higher as well.  Should this occur then the profits from the glyph market rise for all.

3.   A customer that comes to the Auction House to buy a glyph that is sitting on my 400 gold fallback price knows that the only way it will come down to its normal price (and lets assume that was 150 gold) is through a few days of undercutting or if another market participant has a lower fallback price.  I normally find that such customers just bite the bullet and buy the glyph.  Glyphs are considered capital items.  i.e. a one off purchase for use in perpetuity and therefore customers are willing to pay more than for say useable items like potions.

Forcing a competitor to leave the market

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

. . . . . . is not easy and indeed gets much harder the longer a market participant is around.


To truly force a competitor out of the market they must unlearn that profession.  A competitor that merely no longer posts has not fully left the market.  With no cost they can re-enter where they left off.  A strategy that aims to force a competitor out of the market must force them to unlearn the profession.


Aggressive competitive action may force another competitor to stop posting but there is no cost to a competitor of leaving 8 of every glyph in their bags as they focus on another profession.  The moment the market prices reset upwards they will be back.


However, for new entrants picking up the profession on daily research at a time are much more likely to find themselves discouraged and therefore more likely to unlearn the profession.  But that is mainly because they do not know the profits that can come from Inscription.  The longer serving market participants are likely to hang around and bide their time.


At the end of the day, the equation a market participant will use is comparing the time and cost to learn a new profession against the time to sit out an aggressive competitive action in their market.


The last time i really saw long term market participants leave the Inscription market was during the summer of 2010 when the glyph market changes were being debated (before autumn 2010 glyphs were destroyed when a character changed one glyph for another as opposed to today where a character only needs vanishing powder or dust of disappearance).  Many thought that the glyph market would be destroyed and so unlearned the profession.  See my post What changed the prices of glyphs after Patch 4.0.1? on why this turned out not to be the case.

Stable markets via high minimum pricing

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

Stable markets is what every scribe wants.

I would rather make a steady 5000 gold per day than making 7000 gold one day, 1000 gold the next, 5000 the next etc and fighting the whole time to achieve this.  Even if i found that the stable market earned slightly less than the unstable market the time i could devote to other projects whilst operating in a stable market would surely offset this.

The way i achieve this is to make my minimum prices 40 gold per glyph against a crafting cost of 12 – 15 gold.

There are plenty of my competitors who are willing to operate in the 15 to 40 gold range earning profits up to 25 gold per glyph sold (which is still a good return compared to the crafting cost of 15 gold) to generate their daily earnings from the glyph market.

By setting my minimum price at 40 gold there is one less competitor at this end of the market (i.e. i am not there) and hence my competitors have it slightly easier.

Furthermore, i find that because my competitors are happy with their daily earnings from the glyph they are less likely to camp the Auction House to squeeze every copper out from their glyphs.

That makes for a stable market.  It also makes for a market where what all participants fear most is an aggressive new entrant and we all will fight hard together to prevent a new entrant destabilising our market.

Feels like a win win situation.