Two Ways Auctionator Has Changed How I Make Gold

As gold-makers we have lots and lots of tools available to help us improve our efficiency. We have addons to help us craft. Addons to help us put up auctions. Addons to help us cancel auctions. The list goes on and on.

These auctioning addons hold great power but also often come with steep learning curves. Add the fact that they are always in a state of constant updating and it can be a lot to learn (and try to remember).

Luckily for us we have gold bloggers to us learn. Two recent video from Gimp's Golden Adventure (See "Gimps Golden...Addons! #1 Addon Overview") and Nerf Faids (See "WoW Gold Rush - Blacksmithing") helped me learn an all-new (and better) ways to do my auctions. Find out what I learned (including a how-to video) after the jump.

Video Tutorial
Here is a video tutorial for those of us (like me) who are visual learners. There is also a full write up below for those who like step-by-step guides.



Auctionator Selective Selling
The first change I've made is I've started selling the majority of my single items (those not in a TradeSkillMaster group) via Auctionator's sell tab. In the past I'd always use Auctioneer's "Appraiser" tab but one thing I learned from Gimp's video changed all that: Selective pricing.

Auctioneer's Appraiser tab does well showing you the cheapest segment of the market and allows you to quickly undercut the cheapest auction but what if we want to be more selective about what we set our price at? What if we don't want to undercut the cheapest? Auctionator gives us the tools to make better and more informed pricing decisions with our auctions.

Click on the Auctionator "Buy" tab and hold the Alt key and right click on an item in your bags. (You can drag each and every item into the window but then you'll make baby-flux cry because of your inefficiency.) Once an item is in the window Auctionator goes to work automatically scanning the auction house and giving you a display of the items that match yours.

Auctionator Sell Tab after placing an item into it.

Now that we have the information on the current auction house climate for the item we will now engage our brains to take a second and look at the landscape and make judgments on what the best price we should sell out auction should be.

The screenshot below shows the area we need to spend a few seconds analyzing.

Auctionator Sell Tab current auctions information area.

By spending time looking over the number of auctions posted at the various price points, the stack size, along with my previous knowledge of the market I can make an informed decision as to what price point to selct that will be in my best interest. The days of simply undercutting the cheapest auction are over. We need to make better decisions to maximize each and every sale.

Looking at the screeshot above as an example I can see that people are posting Dust of Disappearance mostly in 20 and 5 stacks. Knowing that often people will only need one or two dust at I time I could conclude that I'd be better selling them in singles.

Looking at the screenshot I can see that the first auctions listed in singles are going for 11.6399g. If I then decided I wanted to sell mine as singles I would conclude that it would be in my best interest to ignore the 20 and 5 stack auctions and undercut the seller listing them as singles (my competition).

Auctionator makes undercutting a selected set auctions a breeze. All we need to to is click on the auction listing we would like to undercut and Auctionator automatically sets our listing price to undercut the selected auctions.

Auctionator Sell Tab selecting a different auction to undercut.

As seen in the screenshot above I've selected the 11.6399g auction listing and Auctionator has set my auction to undercut it by the amount set in your Auctionator options. I set mine to undercut by 1c and as you can see Auctionator has set mine to list for 11.6398g.

This flexibility and speed is what makes posting your auctions this way so much better than Auctioneer's "Appraiser" tab. You get a clear view of the current auction house price landscape for that item and are able to make much more informed pricing decisions.

Auctionator Recipe/Material Shopping
The second way I've change how I auction is the recent addition my Auctionator of the "AH" button on any profession recipe window.

Auctionator's new "AH" button appears in your profession recipe window.

When you are at the auction house and have Auctionator's "Buy" tab open along with your profession recipe book open there will be a new "AH" button that will appear in the recipe interface.

Pressing the "AH" button will automatically run an Auctionator scan for not only all the materials needed to craft the item but also the item itself. Having these numbers scanned automatically saves tons of time that you'd otherwise spend shift clicking the names of each material into the search box.

Auctionator's "AH" search button searches for all materials and finished items.

Once the scan is finished Auctionator will display the prices for each material as well as the finished items. This is handy for putting into your own profitability spreadsheet (See "Calculating Maelstrom Crystal Price Vs. Engineering Goggle Price" for more info on setting up a profitability spreadsheet.) or entering the prices on a crafting website such as BankAlt.com.

Once you have the general listing you can click "Save this Shopping List" to save an Auctionator shopping list for this particular crafted item or click on a particular material to see more detailed information about its pricing.


In the above screenshot you can see the listing for an individual material. From this screen you can purchase items or check pricing. Once you are done you can click the "Back" button to get back the the material list.

For me this has sped up my crafting considerably. I know Faid uses this to check for profitable crafting recipes by checking the material cost against the current selling costs. It's a great way to start to get an idea about what some of the profitable items are if you're new to the profession.

Bonus: Auctioneer 10x Vendor Value
Faid asked me on twitter how I went about setting up my Auctionator to list my level 77-80 green Cataclysm items for 10 times the vendor value.

While in the auction house with a Auctioneer tab open press "Configure" then turn down the "UtilModules" section. Select "VendMarkup" and enter "1000" for "Vendor markup (in percent)". 1000 is the highest Auctioneer will allow although I'd like to go to 1500 or 2000.

Setting up Auctioneer to sell items at 10 times the vendor value.

Once you have your Vendor Markup percent set when in the Auctioneer Appraiser tab select "Stats: VendMarkup" as your "Pricing model to use" and it will auctomaically list the item at 10 times it's vendor value. I do this with many of the level 77-80 green Cataclysm items I'm selling.

Select "Stats: VendMarkup" as pricing model.

I hope you've learned a few things about how you can be more efficient and (more importantly) smarter about how you list your auctions using Auctioneer. Thanks again to Gimp and Faid for puting out great content and teaching me new ways to use the addons I already have to become a better gold-maker.

Remeber: Always be learning and engage your brain.

Talking Points

• What is something new you've learned about auctioning addons lately?
• What addons have increased your efficiency the most?
• What addons would you like to learn more about?

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