State of the Union: Glyphs

I'll make it clear right now, I am very late to the party in terms of glyph-making. A lot of people got filthy rich off of this earlier in the expansion; by contrast, my scribe was first created about 2 months ago. Feeling there was still money to be had, and that if it failed it would still be a good learning experience, I dived right in.

At first I was very hesitant to use addons. I'd dabbled in Auctioneer before and I did regular scans, but anything beyond that was a scary jungle of command lines and Skillet buttons. And honestly? I still don't use Skillet or KTQ, holding a deep mistrust of Auctioneer's market data accuracy. What has revolutionized the way I post (in all markets) is Quick Auctions 3. I won't bore you with the how's and why's, since there are many excellent guides out there for this addon (Yumfries' on Youtube helped me immensely), but this is a must. have. addon. No if's and's or but's. I was ACTUALLY posting glyphs by hand before I figured this out, and on the scale glyph-making must be to be profitable, that is not an efficient, feasible, or sane way of going about things.

About two weeks after I started making max-level glyphs, the 2nd version of Blizzard's Warden came out, and the Great Bot Holocaust of 2010 occurred. Ore, herbs and leather vanished from the AH and prices for raw mats skyrocketed. Some influential crafters farmed mats or had their own stock that kept crafted prices down for a while; however, they have inexorably crept higher in price, sometimes by 40g (cut epic gems). Only in the last two week have bots slowly begun to trickle past the new security and back into the game.

After 10 days of scrabbling for mats, I was almost ready to give up on glyphs. Fortunately, at around that mark is when I found "my" botter. For a while we did face-to-face trades at great prices, but nowadays I usually let him post on the AH so I can see if he undercuts someone for even less. He's also a great source of Frost Lotus and Eternal Life - but his primary items for sale are Adder's Tongue, Goldclover, Tiger Lily, and Deadnettle.

I've been buying huge numbers of herbs from him for a couple weeks. To give you some stats, as of this posting I have:
6128 Adder's Tongue
2000 Tiger Lily
3528 Icethorn
1174 Deadnettle
389 Snowfall Ink
3140 Ink of the Sea

Of course,these numbers don't take into account the other herbs I have used crafting Runescrolls, offhands, cards, and glyphs.

With this huge stock in my bank, I got to work. After mass crafting about 10-20 of every glyph, I split them between two special glyph bankers decked out with 4 Pack of Endless Pockets. I do a Summary scan with QA3 and refresh my glyph stocks about once or twice a week. I do not cancel/relist. Instead, I do a "waterfall" posting strategy. I post in the morning, and then every few hours whenever I have time I simply post again. If no one has undercut me, my glyphs stay up. If someone has, I undercut them with MORE glyphs without wasting time running back and forth and refreshing the mailbox. Having a large amount of glyphs is what makes this method possible.

I realize by now this post is probably getting boring, so I'll end with a few tips about glyphs.

o Post for 12 hours. This way you can get your stock back without worrying about canceling.

o Find a farmer/botter who can supply you with lots and lots of cheap herbs. Having a "warehouse" of herbs can and will help you tough through AH dry spells.

o Oh, about that warehouse.... Get a guild bank. Hell, get two or three. When you start buying a lot of herbs and turning them into inks, you're gonna need the space.

o Know your market. If you're sure Glyph of Sunder Armor never sells even if it's listed at 45g, don't craft it.

o Post quickly after resets. When your glyphs are the only ones on the AH, people will have to buy them. For example, my server had a 24-hour downtime last week. Since then glyph prices has doubled because I posted at my fallback, and undercutting has been descending slowly from that point on. A formerly 5g glyph is now an average of 23g. Yay!




STATS
o 1000 - 4000g per day from glyphs
o 3 private guild banks
o 1 scribe, 2 posting mules
o approximately 1 hour per day posting; milling/making inks completed in windowed mode while doing other things