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Auction House Arbitrage is one of those things that everyone claims is the easiest thing ever. Seriously, go over to the forums and mention it, and you’re practically guaranteed to get “I made XXXXX gold doing arbitrage, people are stupid” or some variation of that. It’s not quite as easy as some say, but it is true that anyone and everyone is capable of doing some gaming on the auction house in some scale. I don’t get too involved with it, but occasionally I’ll see an opportunity and go for it. Which brings us to my first point…
Be Patient This is the biggest mistake that someone new to arbitrage makes. “This is gonna be easy!” you think, as you buy as many primals as you can and then re-list them at a more expensive price. Don’t. Take your time, ease into it, try something with low traffic and work your way up. Find out what times are less busy than others. Ideally, you want a time when people are buying but sellers aren’t around to undercut you. Weekdays are best, but if you work like me, that’s not exactly plausible, so week nights work out pretty well too. But before you do, consider an item’s…
Rarity is important when deciding on what item you are going to pin down the market on. You want something that will be fairly easy to sell, but not something that people are constantly putting up for sale. Primals are out, shards are out, don’t even think about cloth. If you want to succeed in the art of arbitrage, you’ll need…
A Niche! You’re looking for rare, specialized items that sell but aren’t widely available. There are plenty of times where you search for something on the AH and there’s nothing there. This is an opportunity, you know others must be looking for the same thing too, right? That lets you name your price. Competition in a niche is bad, so if all the items listed are from the same player, chances are they’re already gaming it and you really don’t want a price war, so move on. I’ve had success with Sanguine Hibiscus, netherweb spidersilk, and even some rarer herbs like ancient lichen. Once you have a market pinned down, you may actually have to take the time and check out your auctions every so often. If one or 2 people are listing under you, buy them up and re-establish the price point where you want it to be. This can be a slippery slope, so BE CAREFUL. If for some reason there’s a sudden influx of your item, don’t buy up another 30 netherweb silks and hope to make your money back. Simply let the auctions go, hope demand outstrips supple, and if it doesn’t come back at a later time when there isn’t 5 billion people trying to sell the item.
All in all auction house arbitrage can be fun and profitable, if done the right way. Good luck!
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