Trade chat is a very underused asset, but it can be a source of fantastic deals! As most of you will be aware it is primarily a channel for guild recruitment, memes, gold sellers and boosters. If you use it correctly you can increase your AH sales and find materials cheaply.
The main advantage
The main advantage of negotiating deals in trade chat is that you do not have to pay the AH cut. This means you can buy materials for a lower price than the AH and the seller is still better off. The same holds true for when you’re selling. Avoiding the 5% cut can be a big deal, especially long term.
Use cases
Below is a list of potential use cases for trade chat:
- Purchasing materials
- Advertising high-end items
- Advertising your AH listings
- Finding deals
We’ll go through them and then cover some basic tips that hold true across all of these use cases.
Purchasing materials
This is what I have personally used trade chat the most for. The general idea is to make a macro where you advertise that you are buying an item at a specified price point. This will usually be around 70%dbmarket or even lower. The price point should be chosen to guarantee a profit. A sample macro would look like: “WTB Chaos Crystals 100 gold each, any amount COD or trade!” If you find someone who’s a big time farmer you can make a deal for purchasing his stock continuously using COD mail. I have had ore suppliers before where I would literally buy all the ore they could farm at rates far below market value.
You can learn how to make chat macros that includes item links in my post here.
Advertising high-end items
Truly high-end items are usually only of interest to a very small amount of players. The items are usually very expensive, and the market is limited. This means you might get stuck with the item for a long time. This could be very high level Antorus BoEs, high item level 101 BoEs with leech or extremely rare transmog. In all cases it’s a good idea to advertise in trade chat. Tell the people that you have the item and that you’re selling it.
For these items it is also VERY important to include some marketing in your trade chat message. You need to help foster the demand, as it is not necessarily automatically there. Follow the tips in the Standing out section below to increase the chance of people noticing the message.
Advertising your AH listings
This is very similar to the use case above, but I am going to illustrate it with some other examples. For the high-end items above you are likely to end up selling the item through trade chat and by negotiating a price. Here you would be advertising your listings of items that have a potentially wide market, but that needs some prodding.
The main example would be selling Cards of Omens. These can be flipped to get a vendorable card with a random gold value. A lot of people are likely willing to gamble, but not if they don’t know. A chat message here should include the item link to the 6k gold epic vendor card to whet’s peoples appetite.
Finding deals
The last use case is when you pay attention to what scrolls past you in trade chat. There are players who just want to get rid of their stock and you can often find some great deals in trade chat. During my zero to one million gold challenge I found several great material deals in chat from people advertising their stock. Keep your eyes open and whisper anyone who’s selling at low prices.
Standing out is key
Trade chat moves at a ridiculous pace. It is incredibly important that your message stands out. To optimize your message you should take some cues from the field of copywriting. First of all you want to focus on the benefits for whoever you are trying to get in touch with. If you are selling a high-end BoE lead with a message about the potential to top the DPS-meters. If you are looking to buy large quantities of items focus on the fact that you will pay quickly and take large amounts of items.
The second main idea is to be memorable. Make sure you stand out from the idiotic background chatter. Don’t be afraid to be really bold.
A sample text for trying to sell a very high end BoE would be:
“Is your DPS sub-par? My Ilvl 975 [item link] will help you put your guildmates back in their place, below you on the DPS-meters!”
Now get out there and find some deals!
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How do I evade being scammed? I remember one time selling a gem on trade chat, I made the exchange, the buyer got his item but I didn’t get my gold, even when we click “accept” same time. I asked him to pay but he refused. After that I never tried again tbh.
No idea how anyone would do that, but you would likely have a case if you put in a ticket. i have never been scammed like that trading with people using the trade system at least.