Undercutters

My wife's jewelcrafting and enchanting businesses are going well. She's making a steady income and not really spending a lot of time farming for anything other than honor for pvp gear. One of the guild officers (and now temporary GM) Krys, is also doing quite well for himself mainly from his glyph and alchemy businesses. Both of them have a few competitors in their markets that undercut them by quite a bit, usually by several gold and sometimes as much as 10-20 gold. Both my wife and Krys follow the unwritten rule of undercutting by a few silver.

Why would someone undercut by so much? Here's one possible reason: volume. If someone is undercutting by 10 or 20 gold, they are probably selling a lot more of that item than the rest of the sellers who are colluding on a higher price to try to maximize profit per item. That increased volume could mean higher overall income than those selling fewer items at a higher price. If that is the case, then there's really nothing you can do but to either hope the undercutter depletes his stock of goods, leaving no other option for buyers but to buy your higher priced goods OR to start lowering your prices and try to take his market share. If supply of the item is fairly limited, then you can simply buy him out and relist. It's always risky to buy out someone who listed low and relist at your price, especially if the demand is limited because you may not be able to sell off all your stock plus the relisted stock. As always, know your markets.

In other news, not much has been going on. The gem, enchanting and buff food markets seem to be doing well. Goods are moving and prices are leveling out. Even Saronite ore has rebounded from just before patch 3.1. I only wish I had bought all of the saronite that was listed for 15 gold and less per stack. At the very least I would have a huge stockpile of ore for making ammo. Which reminds me...

Gevlon over at the Greedy Goblin recently posted about a thread on the official WoW forms regarding maximizing dps in raids by uncovering the math behind the game. The overall impression I got from the original poster was that he (or she?) doesn't like math and doesn't want to bother trying to figure out how to increase his dps and would rather just wing it and go with what feels right, no matter how stupid it is.

These people, dear readers, are your target consumers. They don't like math and are afraid of it, thus they will never do even simple arithmetic to figure out what's a better deal for them. How do I know this? Well, there are plenty of auction house tricks out there like selling single bars of saronite and buying things that can break down into smaller things and selling those smaller things. I've tried most of them and they work. They may not sell fast or in big quantities, but it's money for almost no time spent farming or grinding.

Hard work won't make you rich, smart work will.