Optimal posting patterns and durations

As part of developing good gold making habits you need to know how long to post items for as well as how often you should repost them and run cancel scans.

Different markets have different cycles

Obviously this will vary quite a bit between markets. When you are looking at auction durations you care about:

  • Auction deposit cost
  • How quickly the item sells
  • How quickly you are likely to get undercut

In general you will want to repost more often when deposit costs are low, there is a lot of competition and the items sell fast you will want to re-post as often as possible.

Below we will go through the three potential auction durations and look at which markets make sense for each duration and what sort of re-post cycles are optimal.

12 hour duration markets

This is the group of markets where speed matters. You will typically only get the kill here if you are the latest person to post on the auction house. These markets will be characterized by a high degree of competition.

I personally don’t bother with cancel scans in these markets at all. This is typically only markets where the items you sell can stack. You should do several post scans per day if you can as you will usually be undercut fairly quickly.

Markets where I use a 12 hour duration are:

  • Enchants
  • Gems
  • Glyphs
  • Flasks
  • Food

As you can easily see this is mostly consumables as they are the items that are characterized by the fastest sale rates in the game. Glyphs also make a honorable appearance due to their low deposit cost and the usually very fierce competition.

24 hour duration markets

The middle of the road duration is in a weird spot. For me personally I do not use this duration for too many markets.

The 24 hour duration will give you longer auctions at a higher deposit cost. If you are very active this duration can be great for most markets that were not mentioned under 12 hours. It is cheaper to use 24 hour reposts than 48 hour reposts. If you can keep your stock posted in 24 hour intervals you will also be the cheapest auction available more often increasing your potential sales.

In general this can also work well for slightly slower markets where you have a chance of selling later even if you get undercut. The markets where I have used this are.

  • Crafted Legion Armor
  • Darkmoon Decks
  • Crafted mounts
  • Legion material flipping

As mentioned above if you are active I would add all the markets metnioned under the 48 hour duration below as well as a faster posting speed is worth it.

In terms of reposting it doesn’t make sense to do regular cancel scans at this duration. Doing one is OK, but at that point you might be better off with shorter durations. For items with low

48 hours duration

The longest auction duration is also the most expensive. This one saves you by far the most hassle and puts your items on the AH for the longest time period.

This makes sense for markets where competition is not too harsh and your auctions are likely to remain the cheapest auction on the AH for a long while. It can get expensive however if your auctions are routinely undercut so make sure you get a decent number of sales. I use this setting for almost all my markets as I just don’t have time to re-post more often.

The list of markets where I use this are:

  • All crafted transmog
  • Battle Pets
  • BoE Flipping

If you are active enough that you can repost once a day then you should not run cancel scans, but rather stick to 24 hour durations for these markets. It doesn’t really make sense to run a lot of cancel scans for long duration auctions as it is expensive. If you have that amount of time you are better off with shorter durations.

For markets with very low deposits this does not hold true however. Battle pets have the same cost regardless of duration and can be cancelscanned to you hearts content.

Hopefully this will help you dial in your durations to increase your sales.

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5 thoughts on “Optimal posting patterns and durations

    1. It depends on the realm, but I would probably post them for longer. Unless you know the competition is extreme

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