Most of the time I spend on the auction house isn’t to buy stuff I can equip or use, it’s to buy materials in order craft items I can sell. The thing about the auction house is the prices of many materials vary depending on a variety of factors. These factors include, time of day, number of auctions, day of the week, and other factors. Basically we’re looking at supply and demand and how it affects the WoW auction market.

Know The Market Prices Well
I’ve said this many times on this site, you really have to know your market well if you want to buy things at a discount. Keep a written list or use an excel spreadsheet to keep track of items that you are looking to buy in order to craft. This can also be useful to keep track of the items that you want to buy and want to make sure you get the best price when you buy it.

Stocking Up When the Materials are Cheap
It’s extremely important to know what you are selling, and to know that you can make a profit with what you are trying to sell. But what’s also extremely important is to minimize your costs when you are crafting so that you can maximize the amount that you make on each item crafted. This is why it is so important to stock up on the materials that you need when they are relatively cheap on the auction.

How Should You Stock Up?
How much do you usually use? If you seem something that’s a little cheap, maybe buy one or two extra if you need just a couple to craft the item. But if you find that the material is extremely cheap than you usually see it, like 50% cheap, then stock up on as many as you can! It’s unlikely that the market will fall that drastically and even if it has fallen quite you should be able to make it back easily if a crafted item or two sells.

Chances are, when you have chosen items to craft, you are very comfortable that you will be able to make a decent amount of profit. So that means that even if the market does fall you can still turn out a profit.

I usually stock up as much as I am comfortable with. This “comfort level” will probably be different for everyone and you shouldn’t be buying too much if you can’t afford it either. Stay within reason. If you can sell 5 of your item every hour, then it might make sense to buy a lot of the material. However, if you sell maybe one or two a day, then you don’t want to have overstock.

Hope this article helps! Have fun making tons of gold. Be sure to read the articles on this site to make full use of your time in the World of Warcraft to make tons of gold!

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