A Story About a Failed Mog Seller
I have recently made friends with one of the other Mog Item sellers on my home server.
I can hear you tutting at me here, I know “There Can Be Only One” but I can be a soft touch. So we made friends, and who knows he might help me out in the future. Or maybe I was just feeling a little guilty for selling him mogging gear at 200g per piece, knowing he couldn’t sell that piece for more than that.
Last night, just before I was logging out after a quick repost in the AH, he whispered me, seeming quite depressed.
“Such a pain selling these sets :(”
“I give up 🙁 invested too much money :(“
I felt sorry for the poor guy. I knew exactly which fundamental rule of gold making he had broken.
[learn_more caption=”What’s a Mog Seller?”] A Mog Seller is a World of Warcraft Gold Making player who sells uncommon (green) or rare items for mogging. These items would normally have a low value for sale to players still leveling their characters. When the items are sold for mogging reasons, they are sold due to their visual appeal. With the transmogrification from patch 4.3 players can now alter the visual appearance of their equipped armor to match any soulbound item in their bags., Mog sellers typically farm low level instances, rare mobs, or use snatch lists to buy these items at a low level when they are wrongly priced for their ilevel or stats, rather than for their visual appeal and use for transmogrification (mogging).[/learn_more]
“You did,” I said. “You need to focus and think what you’re doing. Who are your buyers, how much will they pay, which items are valuable, how can you store and repost the gear.”
“How am I supposed to find this out when no-one buys the gear?”
“Besides it takes me hours to repost since I have to search for the name first (because of random enchantment) then post individually! 🙁
Then I was surprised to discover that he wasn’t even using Trade Skill Master to quickly relist failed auctions, using TSM categories and groups. I was prepared to help him. However, as he was my direct competitor in a lucrative market, then if he didn’t yet know how to relist the items quickly, then I wasn’t ready to teach him how to instantly undercut me by 1 copper! I’ll let him discover that part on his own.
“Nothing at all?” I asked. “Are you tracking sales?”
“No I got ridiculous number of spare pieces”
“Track sales?”
I wondered if this guy was just throwing his money at the auction house in the random hope that his extortionately priced auctions would sell to a passing idiot.
“What does that say about your prices?” I asked
🙁
Here was an otherwise intelligent guy, about to abandon the gold-making game he loved. I tried to explain to him about mogging prices. You can’t just post them at a random gold amount and hope the buyers don’t notice all the other items listed at 1/500th of your sale. I tried to explain to him the reasoning behind the prices I chose.
“Ok lets think about something like Queen’s Garnets.”
“They are suddenly available. Like Mogging Items.”
“But there are few. Not like Mogging items.”
“Prices start high because of rarity.”
“Now think about mogging items. There are many, and awareness is low”
“So consider: sell low, and as more and more people are interested, raise prices. Does that make economy sense?”
“If you buy an item for 5g and you sell it for 20g. That’s good or bad?”
“If it sells its good of course
“If you buy it for 5g and you post it for 5k and repost and repost … good or bad?”
“Not so good hm”
“So buy an item for 5g, sell for 20g.”
“Then buy an item for 20g and sell for 50g.”
“Then buy an item for 50g and sell for 100g.”
“That’s 95g profit from 5g.”
He thought about the pricing ideas for a while, and seemed already to be more optimistic.
“Ok one question for you? For example my Vanguard Shoulders I’ve only seen 1 on the server! How much would you sell it for?”
How to find the real selling price of mogging items
There are at least 3 other mog sellers on my server, apart from him and me.
“I’d look at the prices of the other sets and watch to see when they sell and at what price. If they are selling at 5k, then put the shoulders at 4k and be grateful, rather than sad you didn’t get 5k.”
“ah”
“If they’re just being reposted and reposted at 5k …
“Then no one on the entire server wants them at 5k!”
“Good point.”
“If you have only one then you can hold them back. Create scarcity. And keep watching until other parts sell.”
“aah this sounds much more logical”
“See what price people are willing to pay.”
“and at the same time, look around, see if you can spot the person who bought the Vanguard items, or ask in trade chat. Because if someone bought the chest and you are the only one with the shoulders on the whole server they are going to pay a hell of a lot. Agree?”
“agreed 🙂
“So that’s two things you can do with that.”
“thank you ever so much for this”
Did you invest gold in mogging items?
Finally I needed to address the first more important issue, that he was throwing his money down the drain.
“By the way, you didn’t invest a lot of gold … you GAMBLED a lot of gold. Not the same 😛
“I stand corrected!”
I felt I’d been too harsh. “It’s ok some people enjoy the rush of gambling. Just start small, build up. And watch”
“Keep notes if you dont use TSM accounting module or MySales”
“Will definitely do”
“You can do it”
“Thank you 🙂 motivational talk always works on me. Not meant in sarcastic way 🙂
Are you going to give up on the Mogging Market?
I hopefully inspired one player to re-try the mogging market, at a more realistic pace, with a buyer-led price point rather than a fantasy price. Have you given up on the mogging market, or will you continue?
About the Author
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
I started buying items as soon as I read that it would be in 4.3. I spent about 40k and now have about 400k along with a nicely AH equipped rogue, quite a few more mounts (including Sandstone Drake)and pets for my collector and some other gear for my main. But the x-mog market is getting quite crowded now. I still have lots of great stock and know the market better than most so I’ll not be getting out, but as each week passes I seem to be making less for more work put into it.
That’s a nice success story. Have you seen any changes in types of mogging item demanded, over the months?
Hi from another of your transmog competitors 😉
I’ve made over 500k gold just selling transmogrification items since I started on the market about 3 months ago. I got into the market because I love transmog, rather than because I like making gold (although making gold is a nice bonus), so I went into it from a slightly different perspective.
For every item I bought, I asked myself, “would I mind getting stuck with this thing if it doesn’t sell?” If the answer was no (either “nah, I’ll just transmog one of my billion characters using it” or “nah, I can disenchant it and profit”), I bought it, otherwise I left it there. I made some exceptions and bought items I knew were really rare even if I personally wouldn’t use them, but overall that’s the rule I stuck to when I didn’t know prices.
(Now that I know what most everything sells for, of course, I just think “can I resell this at a profit?”.)
And speaking of prices, just pointing something out. You said:
I would say it depends on the item. For example, I bought a pair of mail legs about a month ago for 16g, relisted them every day. Had four different people offer to buy them for 100-400g, which would have been a profit – but I knew that, considering their rarity, I could get more for them when the right buyer came along. I sold them for 4500g yesterday (along with the matching gloves for another 4500g).
It’s like profession patterns, or vanity pets. Most common ones will sell for anywhere from 250-1000g, but the really rare ones go for 5k+ to the right buyer. Sometimes it pays off to wait.
I just hit 100k from doing nothing but transmog for 4 months. The main thing that helped was the only other guy doing it was just dumping tons of the same items for ridiculously high prices. Like 5k for ornate shoulders when he had 6 up. I undercut his prices by quite a lot and he would buy up my items. He spent probably 20k in my first month. I thought he had given up a few months ago, and I was able to implement a more stable pricing structure. But now he’s back and is viciously undercutting me and even spamming in trade chat not to buy from me. I reached my goal that I wanted to hit before I wanted to try other methods of making gold, especially preparing for MoP, so I don’t know if I’ll stick with transmog.
I know a few people now (I’m including you in the list!) who have made lots of gold from nothing but pure mogging items.
I think your competitor is trying to annoy you out of the market, because the market is so lucrative, that he wants to take it away from you.
How stubborn are you feeling? Or are you bored of mogging now?
I think he’s seriously angry that he wanted to own this market. He went to the lengths of buying your items.
***
I’ve got a sneaky idea, I don’t know if you will like it.
Pretend to him that you are leaving the market. Offer to sell him all your stock at “discount” prices. Of course, your discount prices will be several times the amount that you paid for the item. Settle back and enjoy his gold for a few weeks, and then jump back into the market, with the items that you “accidently” forgot to sell him.
On the other hand, I think that will enrage him even further.
Thanks for a fun story anyway!
Ah crap I just bought 4k of mogging items, some priced at 200g each, and tried to relist them for prices I found in this:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mhr8lj57GXCBwcVdzq7l44aJ_hVrwBRdcBfRN8h8OXE/edit?pli=1
I guess my server’s too low populated to reach those prices. Damn.
That’s a really great list actually, it includes a lot of uncommon and rare items that will sell.
May I politely suggest that you missed the part right at the top
“I usually do not spend more than 100g on items to flip”
and
“Patience is key in this market!”
Because I think that you can still sell all those items that you bought.
The prices on any list should be adjusted according to your buyers. Not much interest? Then start low and build up as you gain confidence. Increase awareness with trade chat, forum posts, word of mouth.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is take the list as a starting point. Be patient, you might be able to get those prices on your server, with some of your pieces. Others you might need to compromise on price.
Good luck
Thank you very much ma’am. I made about 3 sales today from items I bought for 5g-15g each so that confidence is building up.
You are a nice person 🙂
Hm not sure about “nice”, I can be quite ferociously competitive. Perhaps “occasionally considerate” might work?
Nice article and good of you to offer advice to others maybe new to the market. My own experience started with there being about six competitors, me blindly farming/buying and selling gave me only small gains. Then one day I recieved a whisper from a competitor asking why I undercut him by 1c, we discussed sales tactics and mogging and having now read up th differing views on this I now opt to undercut but by more than 1c most times.
Anyway my competitor had decided to quit the market & offered me their whole stock at a set price triggering me to research further as to what was I buying/selling. Mogging tastes swing back and forth, seeing one great look on a toon in AH all the time triggered many to copy that look, sometimes setting a price is a best guess and adapting it on what sells or not. Some rare pieces I set high prices knowing they are rare or took me an age to create and if they don’t sell I store them or give them away to friends or use them myself having the full 10 toons on this server. Seeing a friend – Mysticmaze afterall in a nice mogging set was (almost) priceless! Often players ask for set pieces which I sell low if it completes their sets and fosters goodwill, although there are still the few haters out there that blame mog sellers for upping the prices and denying them sets it comes down to knowing the market and having an enchanter to d/e the 40 knights boots you have helps too!
Hi Sablemoon
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there, researching what buyers want and catering to them. You really seem to know your server well. Grats dude