I can guarantee that if you are serious about gold making you will make a mistake, and you will end up losing gold on occasion. I still make mistakes that cost me gold every once in a while, and I’ve been doing this for years. Letting losses discourage you is a major barrier though, and you need to keep your positivity up.
Doing is learning
People are generally way to focused on the theoretical aspects of learning and not focused on the practical aspects. Learning is doing, doing is learning. Put something into practice in the real world is the only way to truly learn it. In the context of goldmaking this means you need to make mistakes. If you don’t ever try something that doesn’t work you’re not actually learning or pushing yourself.
Don’t lose more than you can afford
Getting discouraged will set you back. Losses will also set you back literally as you will lose gold, so you want to limit the effect of this double whammy. The easiest way is of course to limit your potential losses. This will also limit your potential gains however.
You should spend as much gold as you can stomach to try to improve your AH position. Start out slowly, and then gradually ramp up. Hopefully you see some fast successes you can build on. There is no hard rule for how much gold you should spend in any one market or item, but staying at less than 5% per item can be a good rule when starting out.
Learn from your mistakes
Then you make a mistake. Now it’s time to figure out why. Treat it as a learning opportunity. Why were you wrong? Should you have spent so much gold? Look at what you did with fresh eyes and think deeply about how you can avoid it in the future. This is the most important part of not letting losses hit you too much. It was necessary to grow, so make sure you actually grow!
You can always make it back
Another neat little mindset shift is of course to realize that you can always make it back. Worst case you just have to run out and kill some mobs. (could be a lot of mobs). Whatever you did to take you where you are today can work to get you there again. So don’t sweat it, it was just a smaller portion of your gold anyway (unless you disregarded what I said about spending).