"Help! I Can't Make Gold" --- Selling on the Auction House

Ugh. You know what? This is something I have seen and heard quite a bit over my blogging "career". If it isn't those exact words, it's something near: "I was making gold, and lately, I just have too much competition" or "I got bullied out of "X" market". There's many of them. You know what I say to that? One question, simply answered.

No, it isn't "oh, go do this, pick up this, grab these mats, craft this, post at this time and at this price" or something to that affect, which, although it is good advice, but no advice helps if you don't do one thing.....

I have coached near a dozen folks over the past month, I have assisted people with answering questions in emails, on skype (altosgoldishadvice), through twitter messages (@altosgold), a bit here and there in IRC, basically everywhere, and the number one issue that people have with making gold can be answered by one simple statement.....

I can hear you now. "CMON ALTO, GET TO THE POINT!". Great! I like your enthusiasm. Now use it. The number one issue folks have with making gold is......Auctions. Not that they are getting undercut, not that they are only posting once (or twice) a day, not that the materials cost is too high, but the issue is that they do not post auctions. Easy huh? Mos definitely. Do me a favor. Check TuJ (if you are US) and search yourself. How many active auctions do you have? 5, 10, 100, 500? 1000?

Ok. now, check your personal bank. If you have one, check your personal guild bank(s). What do you see? Schtuff? Probably. And alot of it. Why are you not selling it? Why are you not using the items in there to craft and sell? Ok, you might have some stockpile of XX item(s), but my point is why are you not listing them? And don't give me the "They don't sell" or "They cost too much to list" answers. Not a good enough excuse. I don't buy it (see the pun there?).

Ok, ok. You are wondering if this makes a difference. I keep a contant 4-600 auctions on this toon (shown below). For those unfamiliar, the top is when I post, the bottom is sales.

As you can see here, you need to keep a constant supply in the auction house to get consistent sales. Other than a few blips here and there (and server downtime), I basically have sales every hour of every day....and I am not on 24/7, I am not always undercutting, I am not always canceling and reposting (with the exception of glyphs here and there). I just keep things in the AH. Simple as that.

Or are you the type that gets into a market, sells a few here and there, gets into another market, and forgets about the first one? Probably. Alot of us fall into that, and I admit that it happens to me as well. But it happens. Dust off your shoulders, get back in.

Once again, this is so simple. But it's the simple things we forget about the most, and this is one of the traps that we all fall into, and it really disrupts our "goldflow". I will leave you with a thought:

"If you don't have it in the AH, there is no sale. Someone else is getting gold because you are slacking. You need to always have something posted. Always. If you can afford it, always have two of them in the AH. If one sells while you are away (sleeping/working/etc), there is another one to sell....Once you get back logged in, make/craft more, repost so you have two, then go on with your day"

Get to "work", and start making that gold again!