Guest Post: Another perspective on Inscription

I post glyphs for 12 hours and check them 2-3 times a day. More often than not, I’ve been undercut so I cancel and re-post. I don’t see any other way because people will undercut very often and I always need to stay on top of my auctions.

Good idea on trading in inks. That hadn’t occurred to me.

Here’s a suggestion you missed — add these two lines to the top and bottom of the macro:

On top:
/script SetCVar(“AutoLootDefault”, 1)

On bottom:
/script SetCVar(“AutoLootDefault”, 0)

This temporarily turns on and off autoloot. So that whatever you mill will automatically be looted into your inventory. It doesn’t work every time for some reason, but it works about 95% of the time.

I also mapped my mill macro to the G key. This allows me to pay no attention to the game at all when I am milling. I just tap G over and over while reading a book or somesuch and my milling practically runs itself.

On pricing, I sell tons and tons of glyphs as well on the AH and am rapidly approaching the gold cap. I am willing to post them lower than 20g though. For a standard “ink of the sea + resilient parchment” glyph, I’ll go as low as 6g. That’s enough I make a bit of a profit (albeit not much). And more importantly, it undercuts those above me that have annoyed me by undercutting me beforehand.

What sellers really need to consider is how much time they wanna spend in the AH. The less time you want to spend, the higher you’ll want to set your minimum on selling glyphs. And also, consider what you want to bump glyph prices up to when there are no other glyphs of that type in the AH. My standard price is 50g, and 75g on new glyphs. (I was charging 100+ on the new glyphs but have lowered it as their demand has decreased).

I also try to learn the pricing styles of my competitors in the AH. Some undercut me by less than a gold. That’s fine. Others go and post 5-10 glyphs at an undercut of 20-30 gold. That drives me insane. I dedicated myself to punishing those people by undercutting them by 50 silver and making sales that could have gone to them. They sometimes turn around and undercut me with their pile of unsold glyphs, but that’s fine. I’ll undercut them again, and in the end they’ll sell out their stack but it’ll take them forever to do so and their profit margin will be low. My intent is to drive them out of the auction house by making their profits low and time-consuming. Such is the fate deserved by anyone who practices 50% undercuts with large stacks of glyphs.

For my more reasonable competition that undercuts me slightly, I undercut them to the next 50 silver interval. So when they undercut me (and vice-versa) our profits will stay high. That’s the sort of competitor I prefer dealing with.

My method is to have a bank alt with 4*32 bags so you can track 143 glyphs with a slot to post. I tend to have the scribe make enough so that I have 20 of most glyphs count bag and in AH. It’s a pain since the scribe needs to be next to Jessica but some toon needs to be at the AH. And I started off having my alt on a different account than the scibe, which is handy in some ways and very frustrating in others.

P.S. I would also be very disappointed in myself if you sold too many glyphs at 20g on my server.

P.P.S.: on my server, you would be better off to almost never mill Lichbloom – sell it and mill a cheaper alternative.

P.P.P.S: Darkmoon Faire and making Cards has a significant impact on herb prices, although not as much as it has on Eternal Lifes. So stock up so you are not buying herbs when they are more expensive.

PPPPS: Since my scribe is only revered with KT, I have an exalted toon mail 12*20 resilent parchement to the scibe where they can sit in the mail w/o taking up bag space. . Note this is not so much about saving gold as a symptom of mental illness.

Another useful addon you didn’t mention for milling (or prospecting, if you’re a JCer) is Prospector. Lets you right-click herbs to mill them. Very convenient.

Since you have Auctioneer suite installed, why not enable autodisenchant? It automatically does DE, Milling, and Prospecting.

I wish I was some of your servers. There’s like 5 glyphs on my server that sells for more than 20g (and this is if you are lucky to catch it).

For some reason people take what they read as mantra and will apply it in game. Often the case, this does not work in game i.e. some twit has taken Gevlon’s idea of selling glyphs for 3g each on my server. Essentially what he is doing is wasting a lot of his time (small profit for the time taken) because I watch auctions like a hawk and will come back into the market when the price starts to recover (that and the fact that inscription is not my only source of income).

Gelvon is leveraging volume, he posts upwards of 2500 glyphs a cycle. By that definition I am a bit player, I post about 500. I will undercut down to 40% below market and always cut 10% below the lowest price. Yes I will knock the bottom out of your market to profit 50-100% as needed. I would rather move 5-10 glyphs at 5g profit than re-list trying to get market or greater price. Undercut me? Go ahead, that’s the market at work, I’m not vindictive about it, as long as I continue to net 500g+ a day for listing fees of 20g I’m happy. My stack just broke the 10k mark, and I spend less than 30min actually working the AH every two days. I also mess around with it more than that, tinkering, refining, and such, but that is fun.