How to profit on the Auction House (beta)

or Bendyr's Guide to getting rich, bitch.

Requirements

• The "auctioneer" add-on, obtainable at http://auctioneeraddon.com/ (NOTE: the current version is technically old, but you can load it from the "Add-ons" menu at the character selection screen by selecting "load out-of-date addons"). The Auctioneer add-on is a plug in that allows you to "scan" every page in the auction house, and keeps a historical record of all auctions that you've ever seen, for the purpose of getting accurate historical pricing for an item.
• Time. A high tolerance for boredom.

The Basic Method

1. Go to an auctioneer, and click "Scan". This will scan every auction in the house and keep a record of it. A full scan can take about 10 minutes, and even longer at busy server times. Go brush your teeth or something.
2. Once auctioneer announces that it is done with the scan, go to the "Search Auctions" tab.
3. Select "buyout" from the dropdown menu, and set the minimum percent profit level to something like "45". Buy items with a high percent profit level (SEE WARNINGS BELOW).
4. Once you're done with those, select "bids" from the dropdown menu, and set the minimum percent profit level to something like "40" and minimum expiry as "Medium". Again, bid on items, with the same caution you took before.
5. If you boughtout any auctions, run to the mailbox, pick them up, and list them on the AH. Auctioneer may suggest a price for you based on your historical prices.

I usually try to do this twice a day. I usually do the scan while I'm waiting for a battleground queue, so it's not so bad. However, if you can scan at odd times of the day (and I've seen some of the strange hours you guys play), you'll get better deals.

Warnings

Auctioneer bases its prices off of historical prices for your server. Because of this, it is a little dangerous.

• Auctioneer is well known, and many people attempt to "trick" auctioneer users. The method is basically to list an item with no deposit (i.e. reagents or trash drops with no sell price) at a very high price for a long time, like a week or two; the item will never be sold, but the seller will keep re-listing the item, as there is no consequence. Then, after that week, the lister will re-list the object at a lower price (but still well over the items actual value), and auctioneer will show that the item is ridiculously underpriced. Be skeptical of any item that you keep seeing, or something that looks like it should be common (in addition to reagents, I see this a lot with very cheap items like "Light Feather", "Brilliant Smallfish", etc.). A good reference point is http://wow.allakhazam.com or http://www.wowecon.com, which has an item database with cross-server and historical sales prices.
• Sometimes there will be a green or even blue pattern listed that looks pretty good... Sometimes these are good deals, but beware of a few things:
  • Is it a quest reward? Several green recipes are quest rewards (such as Pattern: Deviate Scale Belt), and therefore are ridiculously common. Investigate this on thottbot first.
  • Does the recipe require ridiculous ingredients? You still may be able to turn this recipe around for a profit, but saavy crafters may stay away from this. In addition to "hard-to-find" ingredients, I stay away from recipes with "hot-demand" items. As a rule, I don't bid on any alchemy recipes that require Sungrass, Swiftthistle, or Fadeleaf, as both of those herbs have very high demand.
  • As an odd note, be a little wary of smithing recipes on our server. This is purely observation and I have no evidence to back it up, but I think that our server in particular has a dearth of high-level smiths. I base this on the fact that I can never find "Inlaid Mithril Cylinders" listed on the AH and I have a hard time moving high level smithing patterns.
• Expensive items can have high profit margins, but even good items can be hard to move at a high price, even if the price is well below the market, due to general liquidity issues. Remember, the deposit fee is a function of the price you pick for the item, so if you have to list an item more than twice, you've probably sucked all of the actual profit out of the item.
• If you're ever uncertain about an item, you can always just not buy it. There's so much action on the AH, that you should plan to make your profit in volume by making small profits on lots of auctions rather than large profits on one or two auctions.
• Similarly, if you have to relist an item more than twice, it's probably just worth it to cut your losses and vendor it.
• Clear out your auctioneer history every month or so with the /auctioneer clean all command. Due to changes in item availability (due to patches), seasonal supply of items, and occassional spikes in demand due to temporary quests (AQ, Darkmoon Faire, holidays), the prices of some items fluctuate wildly and can give you bad data.

Crafty Crafting

Another cool addon is ReagentCost, which estimates the price of raw materials on your server and estimates how much it would be to craft items. You can use it in conjunction with a crafting profession to determine what items you can make for profit. Here is a quick example:

Click on a recipe in your crafting menu. Based on your recent Auction house scans, Reagentcost will estimate the price of materials for your item based on their cost in the AH and from merchants.

Then mouse over the item in the window:

Compare the reagent cost estimated to both the Vendor sell price, and the suggested Auction House sell price. One thing to be interested in is the number of times that the Item has been seen on the AH. If it has not been seen many times, the prices may not be an accurate indicator of demand.

Using this method I have found 2 or 3 engineering recipes that sell for at least twice what their reagent cost is (usually items required for other crafting professions or for quests). I try not to put more than one of these on the AH at a time.

Shoppinglist

Another great mod is "shoppinglist", from the same author as ReagentCost. This automatically prints a list of the lowest price for any items on a list that you can add and remove items from. Add commonly demanded items as well as any particulars you might be looking for to this list and you'll definitely see right away if there are any hot deals right after your scan.

Other methods

If you are familiar with a specific class of materials or items, you can select "Items" from the dropdown menu in the "Search Auctions" tab, and enter a string to search on. This is great for looking for particular items that you think there may be a market in, such as Elementals or gems.

Also, when I am looking for items for a crafting recipe or something, I always use this tab first to see if the market in general is overvalued and what the cheapest unit price I can find for an item is.

I have found that the best type of items (i.e. constant, high-demand) are the ones that high-level people will be using to "power-level" their professions". This includes low level metals (Copper, Bronze, Iron, Mithril), most leather (but not hides), and medium-to high level shards. I also have found a market in 29 twink weapons (as it's a market I know), because casual players that find the item may not realize the high demand for these items. I recently picked up a Zealot Blade for 6g on the AH, and was able to turn it around for 22g within 24 hours.

Additional methodology

There is another mod called ShoppingList that automatically shows you the lowest prices for a list of items after every AH scan. It's very useful if you craft one thing a lot and want to keep an eye on the raw materials. I typically monitor wool, silk, and mithril, as they are very easy to move.