Know Your Customer

Splitting Greater Eternal Essences into Lesser and splitting Eternals into Crystallized are good old tricks to make a few extra gold. Now one might wonder why do these lazy people spend unecessary gold on a single Essence when they can buy a Greater and split it up - and save alot of money?

First of all, it's not laziness. It's convenience. If I need a pen, I buy a pen - even if there's a "special price only for you" offer for 10 pens. I don't need 10 pens laying about, and I know somewhere down the line when I need a new pen, I'll buy it then -instead of saving loads of pens which most likely will be thrown away. This is the way most consumers think, if they want it or need it and can afford it - they will buy it. It's not an investment for them, it's simply something they want, need or think they need.

So who are the lazy customers?
On Sunday I thought I'd try to sell a Merlins Robe, which I've actually never dealt with before. I posted it on the Auction House for 3500g (raw material cost on my server is 1500g) and announced it on /trade. I immediatly got 3 whispers asking "how much?" and I gave them my AH price. The response was what I'd expect; "Lol no, I can buy the mats for 1800 and have it made by a friend", "No thanks" and "Hell no". Well, these guys knew what they were doing and were not my targetted customer for this item.
I want the lazy one, who's got shitloads of gold he's bought on illegal wowgold4guildlol sites, and has no clue what such epic items are worth. Merlins Robe is a pretty nice piece of robe, especially when put on your newly dinged level 80 alt. And the weekend is all about alts and pvp, in case you didn't know. Now, before I even had the chance to reconsider my pricing on the robe - someone bought it -giving me 1800g profit.

What kind of player is willing to give me 2000g for simply crafting a chestpiece from quite a common recipe? No doubt the lazy one, who don't bother to research the robe and it's material costs, and then simply ask in trade for a crafter with the promise of a nice fee. These customers are the ones to make the good (unilateral) deals from. But most of the customers will be the one that buy your merchandise for his own conveniance's sake, at a reasonable price level that he understand is reasonable.

Now I just expirienced something new on this matter. I had done some saronite shuffling for the first time in ages, and I was sitting on too many stacks of Infinite Dust. I've never sold dust before (on a professions level), so I wanted to see how the marked was. As usual with enchanting mats there were some pages of single posted items before the stacked ones appeared. Singles were priced at 1.65g while stacks were listed at 45g (2.25 a piece). I posted mine in stacks of 20 at 44.99g just to see what would happen. They sold within seconds, so I posted more. All gone within the evening, and naturally it made me wonder: "Why do people buy my overpriced wares when cheaper ones are available for just a bit more work? Who are these customers?" I then considered what my shopping patterns would be if I needed dust, and how the quantities depend on what I will buy (and not how much I'm willing to pay).

If I need 3 dusts for a simple enchant, I will buy 3 single dusts obviously. But if I need, say 40 dusts for a more expensive enchant, I will prefer to buy the dusts in stacks of 20. Now, I see that single dusts are 1.65g and stacks 2.25 per piece, so what do I do? Do I want to sit and click 120 times to get my 40 dust or will I simply don't care about the 25g I lose (most people won't even bother to do the math even). I know I would waste a few extra gold so I don't have to sit and click my finger to death, and I know most people don't have mail adons, and would want to avoid clicking 80 times just to collect some dust.
People are willing to pay for convenience, so supply it for them and make some extra cash.

The dust example is a fun one, it shows that alot of sellers think they can charge more for singles - as shown in the first example with essences/eternals - but dusts are needed in much larger quantities. When enough sellers don't understand this marked, they will compete on the single ones, forcing down the prices, while the stacked ones will sell at higher price levels - as long as it's reasonable.

Know your customer, but also know your product.