This is my submission to Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival, for the month of June. If you have not checked out Colds Gold Factory or GoldGrub's Goblin Academy yet please make sure you do for some great WoW Gold-Making tips.Also make sure you check out the Auction House Junkies Podcast Put on By Cold from Colds Gold Factory and Wes from Capped By Cata.
How much time do you spend focusing on your competition? Are you constantly watching what they are doing, when they log, when they post, what other markets they are in? Do you find yourself constantly cancelling auctions and re listing based on what they do on the Auction house? Could this actually be hurting you?
Let me tell you a real life story that I feel relates to the Auction house and your competition. A few years back I was a manager of one of the big three pizza companies.We were doing well, the crew was having fun, and sales were on the rise, So much so that our major competition, another big chain,closed their doors. Boy was that a rush! We shut them down and at the same time reaped the sales growth from crushing a big competitor. Can any of you relate to that in one of your Gold-Making markets? A competitor that you pushed out or maybe they transferred, left WoW, or whatever happened your competition is no longer there. We will say for your own pride sake that you pushed said competitor out. So what happens next? You set your eyes on you next major competition of course!
In my real life story this was exactly what I did, after a few months of getting sales under control and manageable, I was ready for the next guy. The next pizza shop down the street. I was going to crush them like I did the last and continue my rise to dominance in the pizza market.
This is where everything started falling apart though,While I was focusing on the first guy, and starting to focus on the next, a few other big pizza shop players moved into my market that I didn't even see coming, that coupled with the fact that I had been neglecting things in my own store, Marketing opportunity(or in the case of WoW other Markets,Barks,etc), trouble with my employees(Suppliers,White Lists) Cleanliness (Guild Bank Organization) I started to see my sales decline, I was lucky enough to have a supervisor pull me aside and explain that its great to focus on your competition and know what they are doing or even try to plot the next move they might make, but if you are spending more time worrying about them instead of your own store then you are being counter productive and things can spin out of control very quickly.
To sum this up in the WoW markets and on the Auction-House you need to make sure you know whats going on with your competition, but you need to make sure that its not taking up all of your time, make sure its not hurting you in any of your markets,make sure that you are not undercutting so much that you are taking a loss just to prove a point, and make sure you are staying in control.
Then when the time is right, Make your move, crush them, and watch your back, because trust me the next Auction House superstar is gunning for you!
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