WoWGrrl's World

"Auctioneer" is one of the main addons I use within World of Warcraft as a tool in my "how to be wealthy" toolkit.

Each day, I scan the current Auction House listings with Auctioneer, and then I use it to determine what of my auctionable materials I put up for sale, how many get posted, and what prices I list them at.

By using Auctioneer, I've found a lot of "good deals" for my own purchases, and have been introduced to a number of easy-to-buy or easy-to-make items that have a low investment cost but high profit return.

But, by using Auctioneer's price-suggestion features, I've also noticed some not-so-reliable results being suggested to me, and have had to pay close attention to the true worth and value of materials I am looking to add to my sellers list.

Auctioneer Downside #1 - Starting With Nothing

The biggest detriment is that the Auctioneer addon package comes to you with an empty database - that is, until you have allowed the addon to scan Auction House listings at least once, the addon has no stored prices for anything and cannot offer listing-price advice.

Therefore, until you've completed a dozen or more scans with enough time between them (different days at different times of day) to make them useful, the Auctioneer's suggested prices are likely to be way off from your realm's "average", and it won't have ANY information for things listed infrequently.

In short, the more scans you do over time (1-3x a day maximum), the more complete the addon's information will be for you, the player, to use. Keep scanning regularly!

Auctioneer Detriment #2 - Price Storage Rules

A second detriment to consider with Auctioneer is that its suggestions are based only upon LISTING prices, NOT actual Auction prices. Auctioneer can only see what value things are listed for currently and record that, it cannot tell how much that item actually sold for, or if it sold at all.

What does this mean for you, the user? Two main things:

First off, it means the information Auctioneer provides as it makes recommendations for your own listing prices may be WAY off of the profitability mark, especially with a small number of scans to base its information upon.

Secondly, it means that Auctioneer data can be "skewed" by purposeful and excessive over-pricing of items posted by its users.

The result of both of these may likely be your vast over- or under-pricing of auctions until enough information has been collected to be accurate and for you to get a better "feel" for the acceptable price for this particular market.

How To Compensate / Find Your Profit "Sweet Spot"

Without scanning the Auction House for 2 weeks twice a day in order to start to build a respectable database of information, what's a player to do in order to recognize and avoid these under- or over-price skews?

Stay tuned for Part Two!

Related posts:

1. How To Back Up Your Auctioneer Database To Another Machine
2. World of Warcraft Scams: Overpriced Items, Bad Pricing
3. Auctioneer Showing Pages Again… Weird