This is something that all new gold makers struggle with to some degree. The fear of losing the gold you choose to invest into the auction house.
Loss Aversion
In Psychology loss aversion refers to the fact that people very often prefer to avoid losing something than to gain something of equal value.
In WoW terms people would prefer to not lose 100 000 gold rather than gaining 100 000 gold.
As such harboring fears of losing the gold you spend on the auction house is to be expected.
Even if loss aversion is natural, it will hamper your ability to make gold efficiently if you let it take over.
Why too much loss aversion is a bad thing
All of the best gold making methods in World of Warcraft will involve spending gold. Whether you are crafting or flipping you will have to spend gold on materials or items if you want to be as efficient as possible.
Having a healthy risk appetite will help you pull the trigger on auctions and buy more stock, which will generally translate to more sales as long as your fundamental idea of how the market should be exploited is correct.
So let’s look at some ways to minimize your gold loss aversion
It’s just a game
World of Warcraft is a video game. As such the consequences of losing your gold will not be catastrophic for your life. At worst you will lose some amount of hours spent on World of Warcraft.
At the end of the day, it’s just pixels.
You can make it back
You already know that you are able to make the amount of gold you currently have on you. After all you have managed to obtain it.
If worst comes to worst you can just spend an hour or two doing cataclysm raids for a couple of thousand raw gold.
Bigger deals mean bigger sales
The more gold you are able to invest intelligently the more sales you can make. Don’t be afraid of spending all your gold if you have less than 500k and can find good deals.
Losses are great opportunities for learning
Your own mistakes are by far the best way to learn anything in the game or outside it. If you don’t make mistakes you won’t get better at gold making and you won’t get rich.
If you are on the fence then get a second opinion on discord, or just go for it if you know you can stomach the loss. (100k+ items are a different beast though).
Don’t get paralyzed
The main idea is to not get paralyzed into inaction. If you are not working a market or the auction house, then you will not progress. All of this is simply ways of convincing yourself that buying more, which will translate into doing more as long as the deals are good is the best way forward.
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