As I said in my last post I was going to do something about suppliers and being a supplier to an AH Goblin (someones that makes tons of gold on the AH). I will break it up into 2 parts I think, the first being getting and holding onto suppliers of raw materials you need for your AH empire, and the second about being a supplier to someone else.
First off though I think I should explain the role suppliers have in the great AH gold making game. Once you start to branch out into several markets and have the gold behind you to fund new ventures or your simply moving so much stock on a daily basis you will need a steady supply of raw materials. The AH can be good for this though it is volatile and when you need those 100 stacks of elementium ore that where 40g yesterday...but now 90g per today. Your screwed pretty much. Now if you had a supplier that farms ore for you at about 40 stacks a day so at 40g a stack, you would be ok. It wouldn't be optimal but at least you could keep on making some gold as opposed to shutting shop for the day. With that, time to get into the suppliers topic I think.
Getting and loving your Suppliers
So with the above example about elementium ore been show, I'm sure we have all been in that situation before. Unable to make anything to sell, or simply unable to up with demand. Suppliers can make this easier to combat, or in best case, a potential gold mine when material prices skyrocket but your supplier doesn't charge you more to compensate themselves.
Now how to get a supplier you may now be asking. Well there are a few ways to do this. The easiest is to check the AH and see who is selling loads of the item you want every day. You can be suere they farm it en mass. Drop them a mail or whisper them and strike up a conversation. Be friendly and respectful of them and gemerally they will in turn cut you a good deal. After all, no-one likes to deal with an asshole, even if your making good coin off of them, they are generally not worth the effort.
Another way is to advertise in trade chat that your looking for someone to supply you with whatever material or jut a WTB *insert items here* PST type tell. When people start whispering you saying they have it, ask them if they would be willing to sell to you via Cash on Delivery (CoD) every so often at a set price. Again be nice about it and if they are a big farmer with a brain, they will see it as a good thing as it means they have a guaranteed sale on whatever they farm for a definate amount so they know how much they are getting when they send that CoD and can account for it easier. It also saves them the 5% AH cut too, some notice this, others don't., but if your doing in bulk CoD's like over 100 stacks, that 5% adds up pretty fast.
Now for the pricing. Always have an idea of the current AH price and how much your willing to pay, but be flexible and open to barter. The deal cuts both ways remember. For example if Elementium Ore is going for 50g per on the AH on an average day, occasionally spikes to 60 and drops to 40, you could give them an offer of about 40g per stack. That way they are not getting ripped off, the deal is good for you and it's cheap enough to be able to buy in large quantities. However be willing to go up to say 45g a stack in this example with bartering. Sometimes the potential supplier will just accept that and start CoDing you mails full of stuff. Now this leads to a sub point here.
When the supplier sends you too much!
What do you do? Well if you can afford all the stuff they are sending your way and the price you agreed on is good, keep buying! Stockpile it either in a personal Gbank, or bounce it between toons with mails if you dont have a gbank or it's full of other stuff.
Here is an example of what happened to me a little bit ago:
I managed to get 4 elementium/pyrite/obsidium ore suppliers selling ore to me at about 40g/140g/50g per. Good numbers from my servers economy. Now 2 of them were only a 3-5 mails every 2 days type farmers. Casual players that enjoy flying around Uldum no doubt, good guys/girls though. The other 2 however where big farmers, averaging 15-30 mails a day each of elementium ore and assorted other ores. After the first week I had more than I could use, but the price was so good I kept buying it up.
Why did i do this? It let me expand into other markets from my primary. I managed to get into enchanting scrolls with the amount of DE rings I could do, boosted my gem sales via being able to xmute inferno rubies and more shadowspirit metas than i would need for a week. It also let me get into blacksmithing and engineering withthe over flow. Yet I STILL had excess ore clogging my gbank and alt's mails. When I was getting ready to start cutting down on the ore suppliers, the elementium ore market spiked to 80g per and hung there for a week, however my suppliers kept the 40g per sales flowing so I could keep going, charging slightly more for the gems and other wares I was posting, with the same material cost, thus more profit.
This worked for me due to having the liquid gold to sink into the materials as an investment that I knew would make money regardless (the elementium ore was under the breakpoint where prospecting, cutting the uncommon gems and vendoring them would result in a marginal profit, so literally, zero risk). YMMV depending on profession set up and servers economy however.
Being a Supplier
Alot of people see farming as a bad thing, a waste of precious time away from teh AH where they could be making more gold/hour. This may very well be true. I don't enjoy farming myself, however I don't see it as being a bad way of making gold, just not optimal use of time for me personally. Now if your down on your luck and just spent all your gold on PvP gear to get into heroics quicker or you generally don't have much gold to begine with or just have herbing or mining on your main, you have no doubt had to farm some seed money to get back on your feet.
Now there are plenty guides around the net for farming spots, addons like Gatherer 2 (from curse.com along with it's assorted other additions) make life easier. Now lets just say you get ready for a several hour farming fest. You have your coffee (or drink of choice) some music going and some stacks and get to it. Several hours later you have bags full of materials and ready to sell.
What options do you have?
Well option number 1 is dump it all on teh AH and pray it all sells before someone else undercuts you, which will happen quite often in the evenings. You could try and sell in trade chat. This is a good option as it makes you accessable to people looking for good deals and possibly someone looking for a supplier. Finally you could sit on the materials you farmed for later in the week when prices go higher then post onto the AH. Not advisable but it could work.
If you do any of the above you may be approched by someone looking to buy you out and possibly looking for a supplier for the items you spent time farming. Now the same rules apply as for those looking for a supplier. Let them make the initial offer of a price, barter slightly higher to get a better deal and just pretty much be a nice person.
Once you have sorted out a deal and established how often you will be CoDing them the items for the price agreed on, you can go your seperate ways and do whatever takes your fancy. Congratulations, you now have a guaranteed source of income as long as your willing to put in the effort to farm. Now just keep an eye on the AH cost for the items your selling so you can contact your buyer and adjust the prices accordingly. If they value you they will be flexible. if not then start looking for another person looking for a supplier I would say.
It's a complex topic that not many understand or do, but once you get some suppliers and gold behind you, you can make lots of gold. The reverse also works if you enjoy farming. However if you want to progress from being a supplier to being someone looking for a supplier, you do need seed money for the progression, and this is a good place to start. It also lets you do more research int eh time it takes to get to your gold goal.
In my next post I will go over some tactics to actually start making gold, be it starting with 1 gold or 1,000, I'll have some strats to get you rolling and making gold. After all, it takes money to make money!
Till next time
-Grey
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