zenga
07-11-2010, 11:19 PM
I play horde and on my medium populated realm alliance is double the size of horde. While the top 20 guilds are divided evenly among both factions, alliance has way more casual guilds than horde. Bottom line: 90% of my gem cuts and crafts are shipped to alliance over booty bay. On top of that it seems like horde on my realm gives no shit about vanity items, whereas they sell like candy on alliance. Anyway, few weeks ago I got intrigued by a pet on the neutral AH that was up for days, without getting sold. It was listed for 400g: the mechanical chicken. My auctioneer has seen 2 of those since december. Did some research and figured out it's a rather easy to get pet. So i got this idea for a while that i wanted to create my own market, or even a bubble/hype. Here is what i did.
Over the course of 2 weeks i advertised on horde side in /1 in lower zones that i would pay 500g for each chicken they could deliver me. Whispered a few officers from 'leveling guilds' as well. A couple of friends who were leveling alts got informed. I tried to avoid drawing too much attention by using trade or advertising with my main. The feedback was overwhelming and I ended up with 27 mechanical chickens, a 13k investment. A few days later I created some alliance lvl 1 toons, did a few easy quests to get them lvl 7, 13 + a dk. Send them a chicken, equipped it and went to stormwind on hours i figured many 'younger' players would be online. Did many inspects and used armory as much as i could to 'spot' people who i thought would be interested and who would have enough gold. My first sale was like this: i listed a chicken for 4k on the alliance AH? Then i whispered a player who clearly had enough gold: many BOE items on her (all female toons) main, and her alts were in the same guild and had similar names and also a mix of heirlooms and lower level crafted BOE (few low level epics). I asked her some basic questions about the game, made some jokes, ... actually some pure role playing. When i got her attention (standing in front of her) she spotted my chicken and asked me where i got that. No kidding, 3 minutes later my 4k listed chicken was sold. Over the course of the next week i kept repeating that a few times. And the chicken hype more or less created itself. I played the AH a bit with listing several chickens on different toons, and started to bid myself on my own auctions.
Long story short: over the course of 6 days i sold 24 mechanical chickens anywhere between 2k and 7k with net earnings somewhere between 55 and 60k. I couldn't do anything but smile when i logged my AH alt in stormwind today (sunday afternoon) and i saw 6 mechanical chickens all over the place. Other people stepped in the niche and I'm sold out.
Since I have read a ton of good gold making tips on this forum, i figured i'd share this little story with the community. Be it for lols or as an idea, that's up to you.
On a final note: While the net earning is pretty decent, i could have probably made more gold for my time spent by farming dungeons (i really spent a lot lot of time to find the right people). But the fun i got from this experiment was really worth it :)
Over the course of 2 weeks i advertised on horde side in /1 in lower zones that i would pay 500g for each chicken they could deliver me. Whispered a few officers from 'leveling guilds' as well. A couple of friends who were leveling alts got informed. I tried to avoid drawing too much attention by using trade or advertising with my main. The feedback was overwhelming and I ended up with 27 mechanical chickens, a 13k investment. A few days later I created some alliance lvl 1 toons, did a few easy quests to get them lvl 7, 13 + a dk. Send them a chicken, equipped it and went to stormwind on hours i figured many 'younger' players would be online. Did many inspects and used armory as much as i could to 'spot' people who i thought would be interested and who would have enough gold. My first sale was like this: i listed a chicken for 4k on the alliance AH? Then i whispered a player who clearly had enough gold: many BOE items on her (all female toons) main, and her alts were in the same guild and had similar names and also a mix of heirlooms and lower level crafted BOE (few low level epics). I asked her some basic questions about the game, made some jokes, ... actually some pure role playing. When i got her attention (standing in front of her) she spotted my chicken and asked me where i got that. No kidding, 3 minutes later my 4k listed chicken was sold. Over the course of the next week i kept repeating that a few times. And the chicken hype more or less created itself. I played the AH a bit with listing several chickens on different toons, and started to bid myself on my own auctions.
Long story short: over the course of 6 days i sold 24 mechanical chickens anywhere between 2k and 7k with net earnings somewhere between 55 and 60k. I couldn't do anything but smile when i logged my AH alt in stormwind today (sunday afternoon) and i saw 6 mechanical chickens all over the place. Other people stepped in the niche and I'm sold out.
Since I have read a ton of good gold making tips on this forum, i figured i'd share this little story with the community. Be it for lols or as an idea, that's up to you.
On a final note: While the net earning is pretty decent, i could have probably made more gold for my time spent by farming dungeons (i really spent a lot lot of time to find the right people). But the fun i got from this experiment was really worth it :)