My Mogging Success Story by Bovis

Though I've been playing World of Warcraft for five years, I am relatively new to gold-making. My interest was peaked due to a guildie posting in our guild forums: "You too can be a WoW Millionaire". He posted a few podcast links, one being PowerWord: Gold.  The very first episode I downloaded was Episode 24 where Flux interviewed Keehaul, aka The Mogfather.  Hearing that I could flip a worthless piece of Vanilla or Burning Crusade gear into a huge profit seemed too good to be true.  51 days and 75k gold later, I assure you, it was worth the investment. Head past the jump for a few thoughts on mogging.

I started selling transmog (xmog) gear on 01 Jan 12.  Since then, selling exclusively plate, I've made 75k gold on a 100g investment. According to Blizzard, my server population is Medium. In some ways, it's quite backwater when it comes to xmog in comparison to the high-pop servers of Proudmoore, Hellscream, Moon Guard, etc.  I initially started selling based on Keehaul's tier pricing guide but at random prices per armor set, per piece of gear.

In the beginning, using my Blood Elf priestess as my model, I based my auctions on asthetic appearance and simply put, sexiness.  Bloodscale Armor became the number one seller (and still remains to be).  That worked out well for the first couple of weeks but it became confusing on which piece of "Commander's" or "Darkcrest" plate was more rare than the next. By the end of January, sales began to decrease on the Horde side and after a quick tweet exchange with Keehaul, I determined that a faction change was in order. Let's put it this way: only so many Blood Elves can look the same.  The possibilities with Alliance races is endless...ok, male draenai may be the exception. After the faction change, sales took off.  Now, I essentially own the market on plate.  I've consolidated my prices to a set price per item. Instead of pricing each individual item according to server rarity, I sell each gear set at a baseline price.  Bloodscale: 1k.  Darkcrest: 650. Conqueror: 350.  It alleviates confusion (for me) and creates a distinct pricing guide for my customers. There are instances where an exceptionally rare item is sold for a higher price.

There is a caveat to my pricing guide.  Every other week I'll bump the prices by 10-15% to shake-up the market. Not surprisingly, my sales during those "down" weeks jump significantly. As it's been stated in PW:G podcasts, transmogging is not your average gold-making venture.  Unlike the gem, glyph, or herbs/ore market, prices don't necessarily fluctuate based on supply/demand.  It's a set price and people will either buy, mull over buying, or wait til the price drops.  If you're on a low or medium pop server, and control the market, you can force the buyer's hand by raising and/or "lowering" prices.  If the player wants it, they WILL buy it.  Just this week I had two players create an Alliance character to request a piece of gear be sold via the Neutral AH.  Yes, the Neutral AH takes a huge cut and there are ways around that, but considering I paid 25g total for Tyrant's Legplates and Jade Gauntlets; I wasn't all that upset losing 500g when I made over 4k.

Transmogging is no longer a "get-rich-quick" scheme.  Keelhaul hit the lottery by capitalizing on the unknown.  I think I speak for everyone when I say that while we're jealous of his "1 million gold in 45 days", he is held in the highest regard for being the trend-setter for WoW transmogrification.

Best of luck on your transmog sales.  If you have any questions, you can contact me directly via Twitter: @SMDAU.

-Bovis

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