Making money with Inscription without Glyphs

Before I start, let me say that this post could also be called: "Making money from what people want instead of what people need".

A little bit of backstory
I have been trying to break into the Glyph industry for a while now.  Using my DK, I power-level his inscription up to 400, and started to to the daily research, creating 5 of every new glyph, which normally listed for about 20-30g each.
I'm up to 435 skill points now, and I have quite a few glyphs listed on the AH any given time. I also try to check if I've been undercut 2 or 3 times a day, and relist everything if I have.

The end result? Almost nothing, not even 100g a day. I'm still hoping that once I get more and more new glyphs, I'll start making money eventually, but this post is not about that, actually, it's about making money without the glyphs.

How?


I have to admit, I actually stumbled upon this miniature gold mine by accident, you see, I started inscription on my DK, not for the gold making opportunity, but for a specific item that I wanted to craft. That's right, a long time ago, I started inscription because I wanted to craft this. The thing is, I eventually forgot about it, and abandoned my DK's profession for a while, until the other day I remembered that I wanted this item, so I leveled him up, soon to realize that the technique required to craft it, was a drop from a specific part of Grizzly Hills.

Lucky for me, my DK is lvl 74 (has been for a long while), the exact same level as the mobs I had to kill, so I went there and killed humans for almost 30 minutes until the item dropped.
Once I was back, I decided to check the AH, since now I'm all about making gold with this toon, I thought I would see if this was actually a gold making opportunity. As it turned out, there were 4 other books listed on the AH, 3 of them were listed at 500g buyout, and the last one was listed at 1000g buyout.

When I saw that, I thought about listing mine (I had only enough money to make one, since I have been trying to make Northrend Cards aswell, and they are expensive to make), but something stopped me. Something I read somewhere around internet about using the Trade channel to sell your items.

So I gave it a try:
When using the trade channel, things change, for starters, you're offering a product, and specially in this case, one that not many people know about or even care about, so your message to the channel has to catch the readers attention.

You can't do something like this:
/2 WTS [Rituals of the New Moon], 500g

Simply because:
a- Some people will see you listing an unknown blue item at a relatively high price and won't care to look again.
b- You're actually setting the price, limiting yourself to only people who have 500g to spend on a luxury item, and leaving those who are willing to negotiate with you, out.

So, I choose the following message (wich produced nice results actually):
/2 WTS [Rituals of the New Moon], pst me and GET YOUR WOLF ON!

There are some key points we should be looking at on that text:
a- No price, this normally makes the initial whisper something like: "how much?", or even, people giving it a prices already. I haven't had the luck of having someone offering me an initial amount higher than what I normally ask, but still, it's a nice open door for that kind of opportunity.
b- The last part: "pst me and GET YOUR WOLF ON!" actually catches the readers eye. It will make them wonder: "why the hell a blue item will get my wolf on?" and subsequently, makes them click and read the tool tip. This way, you get people interested in what you're selling instead of waiting for those interested in it to go and look for it on the AH.
c- Negotiation: This relates to point "a" actually. My normal initial price for this item is 500g, so, when people say "how much?" I answer with: "500g", to wich sometimes I get a "ok, i'll get it", sometimes I get a "lowlz no" and sometimes, I get a "100g and I'll take it off your hands".

This last one is the most interesting one. You see, making the item (in my realm), costs about 80g on a bad day, so selling it at 500g is a super profit, one that allows me to actually lower the prices as much as I like. I normally take it down to 250g at most (which also makes for a killing profit if you ask me).

So, back to the negotiation part, if you happen to get a possible buyer who wants to save himself a few bucks, you can actually arrive at a middle point, where you feel comfortable with the profit, and he/she is happy thinking what a great deal they just made (a win-win situation :) ).


There are two important points here:
1- Instead of listing your known-to-few-players item in the AH and wait for them to go look it up and pay and overpriced amount of money, you offer it in Trade, making it posible for them to buy it and also letting everyone else know about it, which increases your customer number.
2- You are free to choose the price you want to sell the item for a specific customer, instead of having the strict and cold system that the AH has.

In my experience, I have to spend between 20-30 minutes offering the item and chatting with users until I sell it for a nice price.
I have had luck on some cases and I've sold it 2 minutes after my first post on Trade, at 500g.
One thing to notice about my experience, is that even though it's an item that requires lvl70 to use, most of my buyers are lvl80s, who want it exclusively for the use effect.
What does this tell us? Well, to me, it tells me that I'm not selling a standar item, and as such, I can't charge it at a standar price, no matter what some people might say.

Hopefully, you'll get lucky and in your server this item will sell for a nice profit aswell :)

Have fun making money!