Super Glyph Shuffle

The sudden spate of glyphing posts on TUJ is making Critical itchy. Twitchie's 2 character post makes Critical super itchy. While a 2 character operation is nice, Critical says to go balls out, triple that and then plus one. Who can do this? Anyone who has a scribe, therefore basically everyone! Read on to see how Critical pwns his server with a stupidly ridiculously specialized glyph manufacturing team.

Quality, Cost and Time

PS: how do you guys like the weekly Wednesday (or Tuesday for most readers) posts so far? Yea i know, a big change from the daily posts in the past. Anyway thanks for stickin' around. 

So as you can guess, today we're going to talk about the magical relationship between quality, cost and time, in relation to business. 

80 / 20 Rule for Inscription

Albertus asks an excellent question on Croda's blog:
"Why will you spend a ton of time and money to max a profession and in the end only use a Small part of it."

I know I promised to move away from wow/glyph/gold topics but this worm was too juicy to not take the bait. Why was this an interesting question you ask? Because Critical's whole blog previously was focused on only part of the inscription profession: glyphs and DM trinkets. I never sold books, inks, pigments, raw materials and the only times I sold MFCs was to cheese off a particular competitor until they buggered off and then I stopped. I am the guy the question is exactly aimed at and it was thought provoking to say the least, thanks Albertus.

So I'm guessing most of my Critical Readers will know or have heard of the 80/20 rule yea? By having it in the title its pretty obvious that's what we're going to talk about today.

Best 28 Glyphs!

Last week Critical managed to sort out his sales data and finally figured out the actual worst selling 28 glyphs of all time. Holywarrior also asked how did I extract sales data into excel. Well I cant find the consortium link where someone created and shared a java jar program that does the extraction so I cant really do a How-To.

This is my nasty, simple way using mysales (bit lazy to learn TSM_Accounting):
- install and run mysales to collect sales data
- ready to extract data, then find the mysales.lua in WTF folder and cut and paste it somewhere else (which forces mysales to create a new empty file the next time i log into wow)
- use msconvert.jar program which converts the txt into csv
- open the csv file in Excel, use Txt to Columns and save the resulting spreadsheet as a .xls in Excel
- tada

Anyway thats not the point of today's post. Today is the opposite of last week, here are the best 28 selling glyphs! As an added bonus I also included a quantity sold column!

Showing the bottom 28 (highest selling) glyphs of the sales list.

Bad 28 Glyphs of all Time!

Ok Critical Readers (yes Azz this is for you), Critical spent a WHOLE SUNDAY AFTERNOON learning how to do pivot tables in excel to bring you this info so you better click this page 100 times and boost my page count.

How-To Focus Fire a Competitor

(See Bolded header below for the actual How-To if you want to skip the intro)

The War updates actually take up more time that I thought they would. This How-To guide describes how to focus fire on one competitor, in this example it's Hottempered:

Flipping is Bad Mmmkay

Flipping in wow is the act of buying something "cheap" and relisting/selling that exact same item at a higher price earning "profit". This is different from Converting which is where you buy something, convert it into something else which has a higher value and then sell it at a higher price.

The trigger for today's post is Abeni's Reseller strategy. Nicely presented, detailed instructions and some smart thinking regarding only snatching Researched glyphs. In a nut shell its a bait and flip (something similar to Vile's AH Baiting strat).

Now Critical is not so blind as to think only his strats are right and all other methods are wrong, but there is one thing that he sees alot of players waste time on. Yup you guessed it, flipping (did the speech marks in the first sentence give it away or was it the title??).

How-To TUJ Stalk Competitor Alts (Updated)

Dammit, Mox has cottoned on to my secret that tutorials brings in readers. Gonna have to start churning out more How-Tos quicker =(.

This is an oldie but a goodie. Firstly big ups to Erorus for building such a pro site and service thats FREE. Cant ask for more. Go http://theunderminejournal.com/ !!

Ok so Critical has a competitor called Discretetime. He has an alt called Silverpack. How does Critical know?

1. Add all your competition to your friend lists and you'll start to see this sort of funny business:

How-To DOS Wall

Ok enough poking wild animals with long sticks. Time for another How-To lesson. And no internet nerds we are not going to DOS attack by spamming your competitor's mailbox with mass trash.

On Critical's, DOS stands for Denial Of Sale, not denial of service. Keep reading for a short and simple example.

Fallback Glypher

This is a very interesting strategy. Admittedly Critical never used it but one of my last competitors did and I admire Shamanta for his thinking. Basically you create a single 1-glyph wall of all glyphs at a high fallback price maybe 250g, something like this:

Solid Walls - Advance Strat

My second best buddy Mox (yes Foo you're still my BFF) doesnt like Critical's Solid Wall technique because it takes too much work. Critical agrees it does take work (actually time is probably the better descriptor), but keep in mind it's front loaded work.

-----------------------
front-load (frntld)

v. front-load·ed, front-load·ing, front-loads

To concentrate costs or benefits in an/the early period.

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Faid's Exit Strategy

This is not the post you are looking for. Nah just kidding it is, I just wanted to say that.

How can Critical resist a pretty damsel in distress (even if she is actually a sexy metro belf). He can't if she says the magic word (PS for new Readers it's glyphs baby yea!)

Floors and Ceilings vs Solid Walls

Sidebar: Yesterday there was a myriad of great comments which has provided Critical with around 3 months ideas worth of non-stop daily posts. Thanks Foo, Al and Mox for contributing. I don't know what Critical would do without Readers like u guys. Ok enuff sniffling, on with the show!

There are two distinct methods Critical has used in the past during his Glyph Market Leader times: floors and ceilings, and solid walls. Click the heading links below for more details. This is an advance discussion. No cheap cat pics here.

Today Critical is going to briefly discuss why to use them, for new Critical Readers who have only started reading today. In both methods you completely ignore the market/current selling prices and use your cost price as your basis for setting glyph prices. You also post all glyphs in game (or at least the top 316 glyphs). Remember this is a Why post, not What or How (see links for more info).

How-To Wall with TSM

If you dont ask you wont receive, that's one of Critical's mottos. Because you asked how do you correctly wall with TSM (well not really but for the purpose of this post let's say I3ig Al did), here you go.

Today's post will focus only on how to do multiple walls neatly using TSM (like in the pic!). Not pros and cons or when to wall and why etc.

Glyph Walls Increase Sales

Well actually I just made that catchy title up. Glyph walls are the bomb though. Remember Undercutting was the new kid on the block and anyone and everyone's momma started learning how to do it? Walls are the new goblin skill everyone will need to master to stay competitive.

Faid's experiment continues however she has correctly picked up on the weakness of her current 3 glyph single wall strategy. A single 3 glyph wall @ 30g is easily defeated with 90g. Strong and multiple walls sufficiently spaced apart are the key to defending against a 90g buyout attack.

Boiling Point

Today's post is short and sweet.

A goblin's boiling point is where they cannot stand the heat of the current market and give up.