Hitting reset... Diversification or Specialization?

Sometimes we find ourselves in a position where we need to reevaluate where we are at, and if we're smart it may be necessary to readjust our direction. For me I've just hit that point in game. I had dropped a lot of gold into leveling some of my professions. I only have a Druid that has made it to 85. And my operating cash (gold) stores had dwindled down. So it was time to readjust my business plan to move back to profitability. To be honest I'm an average guy with a hectic life. I work 2 jobs, go to graduate school, have a wife and kids, and don't have a lot of time. I enjoy doing pvp, some 5 mans, working on achievements, and of course making gold in the AH.

One thing that hurt me was working on the Darkmoon card decks. The cost of putting together several decks, only to find them not selling well on my server at all. So I decided before the Darkmoon faire left Shattarath I turned in the deck for myself. And I gifted one to a good friend I play with. So I found myself at the 15k gold mark, and realized I needed to change some priorities. Just to be clear this is the gold on my AH banker, I use a separate alt with a guild bank as a sort of non-interest bearing savings account. That gold I didn't dip into.

So I re-evaluated what I was doing differently. As of right now I have max leveled inscription, herbalism, alchemy, and tailoring. After Cataclysm I continued to craft netherweave bags (which has recently increased in profitability due to netherweave cloth dropping in price and netherweave bags selling for higher). Also I began selling mysterious fortune cards, fortune cookies, inferno inks, relics, embersilk bags, hyjal bags, abyssal bags, some crafted cloth items for lvl 80-85, flasks, health pots, uncut meta gems, & raw and cooked food items.

I also re-evaluated the glyph market which I had backed out of once prices dropped. Mostly because of the effort to auction glyphs. So I decided to work my way back on the glyph market, crafting any glyphs that were over 50g buyout. With all of the herbs I'm milling I use the ink trader to get the inks for the different types of glyphs, then all of the inferno inks I sell in stacks of 5.

I also realized some of my other scans i used to pay attention to in Auctioneer were being ignored, so I began looking at resales (which can be tricky because people do manipulate junk prices) and vendor sales (when people sell or place for bid an item which would they would get more money selling to a vendor, so I help them with that). Resales aka flipping items can be tricky and my opinion is to stick to things you know, and avoid buying big ticket items unless you do a little research. Make sure that item didn't plummet in price because the last patch increased the drop rate by 100 times or that the quest that used to use that item is now obsolete. I try to stick with items I know will sell, and that I'm familiar with assuring its a good value. Learn the twink market if possible, many times people will place twink items up for a super cheap buyout or bid because they don't realize the value of the items to the twinking community.

Another suggestion is to look at The Undermine Journal for your server and faction to see what is selling and for how much on average. Its also a great spot to see what the top sellers in your competition market are selling and how many of them for what price. Maybe you're missing something in your market.

So sometimes it's time to hit reset and get back to diversification rather than make money in big riskier specializations. Diversifying allows more subtle adjustments before you find yourself with a cash flow problem in your operation.

My lesson from all this - stick with DIVERSIFICATION!!!

It's all about base hits not the home runs. There's always a good feeling when you go to your mailbox and pull 5 - 10,000 gold from it over the last few hours, which you spent watching Criminal Minds with your wife.

Happy Prospecting,

Fat Jack