Monday, February 28, 2011

Starter Guide To Selling Companion Pets

Vanity Pets aka Companion Pets

The Companion Pet market is an excellent market to add to your auction house business.  I have been selling vanity pets for most of my auction house career.  The vanity pet market is a lucrative market and is one of the entry level markets that I would recommend to anyone new to the auction house.  When setting up your pet shop business there are a few tips that will help you be more efficient and profitable, as well as reduce the number of unsold auctions.

Top Tips For Vanity Pet Sellers
  1. Vanity Pets Sell Better On The Weekends - More players means more buyers.  You should still sell during the week, but add a few extras on the weekends, especially on the neutral auction house.
  2. Vanity Pets Sales Spike During Game Holidays - Any World of Warcraft in-game holidays that reward pets or allow their purchase (with holiday items) will lead to a spike in sales.  Getting a pet or two from an in game event triggers players to look for more pets to add to their collection.
  3. Introducing New Pet Collector Achievements Will Increase Pet Sales - Players have been waiting for more companion collector achievements and they have been announced for Patch 4.1.  Already sales have started to increase on some servers as players look to gather their 100 and 125 pets for the new achievements prior to them hitting the live servers.  The new achievements should also award us new companion pets as the 50 and 75 collection achievements did.
  4. Park Your Alternate Characters Near Vanity Pet Dealers - If you park an alt near a vendor that sells the companion pets, then you can easily restock your auction house pet dealer via the mail system.  I like to buy 12-24 pets at a time and send them via the mail to my pet selling alt.
  5. The Neutral Auction House Is Key - You can make a nice profit selling pets to your own faction, but the real gold is in selling your faction's pets to the other faction.  There are pets that only the alliance can buy, therefore more profit is to be made selling to the Horde as they can only purchase the Alliance pets from the auction house or from other players.  Even without a second account for cross-faction trading, you may be able to buy cheap pets from the other faction via the neutral auction house and sell them at marked up prices to your own faction.  I don't have a second account and I continually buy Alliance kittens for 3-4 gold from the neutral auction house to sell to Horde players for 15-25 gold each.
  6. The Remote Auction House Makes Cross-Faction Pet Selling Easy - The ability to simply post your pets right to the neutral auction house without having to be in a neutral city is super fast and easy.  This is a market that I highly recommend utilizing the Remote Auction House for ease and efficiency.
  7. The Super Rare Expensive Pets Sell Better At Expansion's End - At the beginning of an expansion, players are focusing their purchases on being "raid ready" which means gearing up with expensive gear, gems, and enchants.  At the end of an expansion all the luxury expensive items have much better sales when players are gear capped and are piling up extra gold.  Early into an expansion players tend to buy upgrades and required items, then tend to blow excess gold later in the expansion.  So if you snatch up some super rare pets don't get frustrated and unload them for cheap.  Save them for a few months later and sell then for top gold amounts.
  8. Don't Forget The Oracles Pets - The Oracle Pets from the Mysterious Eggs continue to sell.  I still sell the proto-drake whelplings for 200-250g each.  The egg hatches after 3 days now instead of 7, which is a nice change.  If you have an engineer you can use your Wormhole Generator to get really close to the Rainspeaker Canopy where the Oracle vendor resides.
The Vanity Pet market is a highly profitable one and is an inexpensive market to try out if you are a new auctioneer looking to learn about the auction house.  Just remember these 8 tips to help you maximize your profits from these cute little companions.  The market will be seeing a spike in sales for companions as new pets and achievements are coming soon.

Where to Start?

Brand new to the market and unsure where to start?  Here is a quick start guide for you.

Are You Horde?  Start With These
  • Snakes from Ogrimmar
  • Cockroaches from Undercity
  • Prairie Dogs From Thunder Bluff
  • Dragonhawks from Fairbreeze Village, Eversong Woods
Either Faction Can Get These
  • Faire Frogs from Flik at the Darkmoon Faire
  • Exotic Pets from the Exotic Pet Dealer in Stormspire, Netherstorm
Are You Alliance?  Start With These
  • Moths from Exodar
  • Kittens from Stormwind and the Cat Lady outside Goldshire
  • Owls from Darnassus
  • Rabbits from Dun Morogh

6 comments:

  1. For both factions, too: Exotic Pet vendor in Dalaran. Steady and constant sellers.

    I think you intentionally left this out...

    C out

    ReplyDelete
  2. I usually manage to sell the snakes from org at the org AH for 5g each... i've had very little success at the neutral AH though. During Winter Veil I made a killing on Boots and Green Winter Garb... didn't sell a single item through the neutral AH, and i posted their for days. I don't think my server uses it much at all... I'll scan it and usually just see random crap there from people who think its the same as the main one

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just sold out this weekend of all my snakes, prairie dogs, dragonhawks, and roaches on the neutral AH.

    And moths and kittens always sell well in Org.

    ReplyDelete
  4. How are the Argent Tournament Pets selling for you?

    ReplyDelete
  5. "If you have an engineer you can use your Wormhole Generator to get really close to the Rainspeaker Canopy where the Oracle vendor resides."

    A shortcut for non-engineers is to port to Uldum, and just fly north across Ungoro. It takes less than a minute to get to the portal from there to Scholzar.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Also if you want to take the time a few times a day go around to all of the raptor pet spawn areas (Their nests) and check there, they sell for a pretty hefty amount for minimal time

    ReplyDelete

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