Example logic

I wanted to make an example for my readers, just one of today's practices of preparing to make money:

So, first thing to check is our data resources. Today I am going to see what future changes Blizzard has announced for the game, anticipate what that may do to demand in the markets, and prepare supplies. To begin, we do what many players already do: Check mmo-champion, or your favorite blizz news website for changes in the next game build:

According to this information, we will finally be gaining a new use for Snowfall Ink. We know that the current best raid buff for stamina is Commanding Shout, which would be more overall HP than this. It says Stamina though, not HP, and these two values are separated in the game code and this would stack with Commanding Shout. Priests use Prayer of Fortitude, which is the same value of 165. This means they will probably will not stack. This glyph only offers the priest exclusive buff to raiding groups that did not bring a priest. So let's look at our server's demographics and guess if there are a shortage of priests:

I've narrowed my search on Warcraft Census to the Doomhammer server, level 80 characters only, Horde side only, and Priest class. It says it has only seen 354, and we'll add an extra 50 for error adjustment. Some of these players will be no longer playing. 400 is not a lot, considering there are an estimated 8,239 characters on our server.

Most groups will include as many raid buffs as possible to promote their success, but we have to remember that Blizzard has also introduces new 5 man content. It's much less likely for a priest to join one of these groups, so they will be our target audience. Thanks Blizzard for making us tradesmen a nice profit.

This leads me to believe it will be profitable to stockpile a small amount of Snowfall Ink for this expansion, and make some profit from this new item. Herb markets will probably increase due to the additional demand for these Inks. It's important not to stockpile too much though, you may over-anticipate demand. Then you'll have a large amount of goods you can't sell.

Let's take a second look at today's notes:

Apparently, Arcane specialization Mages may be popular again. At least to some extent, but this opens up many opportunities we might have not had before. Glyphs for Arcane will increase in value as they are sought after by more players. A good move now would be to slowly increase prices for these Arcane glyphs, even though the changes aren't in effect yet. This slowly improves Auctioneer data for other players to adjust it's median calculator. Many people use Auctioneer, and in some ways it was a death of intelligence. It's great for us because it's able to be manipulated to some extent. I'll make a long post about it later, for now just focus on the arcane glyphs themselves.

Currently they are selling for 32-40G each. We can slowly increase that to 45, 50 G over the next week. Auctioneer will see this within it's tolerance. We may be undercut a small amount, but what's important is the Auctioneer data. When the change occurs to Arcane, these glyphs will basically be impossible to keep stocked because there will be a small flurry to purchase them. If we price them at say 65G each, people would have listened to whatever their auctioneer told them which would have been "This is too high" and not purchased. Other crafters would post auctions up based on whatever their mod told them to price it at, which would have been the old prices. They would be selling at 32G still, regardless of the fact they could be selling for 65G.

Now, the real secret is not to undercut someone, but to destroy their will to undercut. Remember, we make a profit no matter what on these glyphs. If we are greedy, someone else will profit. If they think their precious glyph is worth 65G since we've convinced them so, because they just listen to whatever their mod tells them, they won't be happy to sell it for 32G anymore. We may find that the market cools down after 50 of these glyphs being sold, and competing for best price on that day around 65G will make us the most money. Remembering of course, that as soon as sales go down to price them at 32G again. We'll have less competition from the greedy people. The only mildly tricky part of this whole attack plan would be not getting greedy ourselves.