Reader Question: Saving Money On Reposts?

Today's reader question asks for ways to help cut down on reposting fees. If you'd like your gold-making questions answered in future Reader Question posts send it to powerwordgold@yahoo.com.

Read on past the jump for more.

Question

"Hello Jim,

I have been trying to make gold but recently broke the 200,000 gold mark. I started by making profession kits and recently moved into the ghost iron ore shuffle. I'm still working small at about 100-150 stacks of ghost iron ore about 2-3 a week. I have piled up rare gems from my last prospecting "frenzy" and have around 200 auctions up. I've been trying to learn to use TSM but I don't understand it fully yet.

I recently found my self cancelling auctions and spending quite a bit on reposts. I had an idea, instead of posting at the undercut price why not post at about 100%-150% of TSM DBmarket value for 48 hours. I would then expect that the price would get up and maybe past that price in the 48 hours. In that case I wouldn't have to cancel auctions or undercut what the market value is. Basically I'm wondering if this would be a good idea and if that's the correct way to use TSM. Also would it help increase my sales and profit margin.

Also, I thought I'd through in a quick thanks. I started watching your channels and listening to your podcasts about a month ago and can't stop. Thanks so much for all you do!"

Answer

"While setting a 100-150% TSM DBMarket might help, one thing to note is that prices can fluctuate very quickly. In the case of gems, especially on a high population server, if you're not the lowest price you almost never sell anything.

What I would recommend is setting aside 30-45 minutes and babysitting the auction house. By this I mean putting 1 or 2 gems up and continuously checking for undercuts (Auctionator's "More" tab is good for this.)

When you see your item is undercut simply put up 1 more undercutting them. When undercut again put 1 more undercutting them. Leave the others up until you have, say, 10 items up then start going back and cancelling the oldest auctions.

I'd recommend doing this for maybe 5 different gems. I often do this with raw gems because it's very easy.

For that 30-45 minutes you will always be the lowest price for those gems and more importantly you will get a sense how quickly gems get undercut on your server.

This will give you some idea on the state of the gem market and let you decide in the future if it's better to try to stay on top of it or if you should experiment with working less on price and more on leaving them up for longer periods of time.

I hope that helps and best of luck on your conundrum. It's a common situation we often find ourselves in.

In my case I move to markets that are much less crowded (flipping 83-84 MoP items for example) but that's not always an option.

Let me know how it turns out."

What advice would you give this reader? What are some of your favorite ways to cut down on reposting fees?

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