Post Weekend - Bidding Strategy

On Saturday I posted that I was up to 1.4 million gold and was going to try out some new strategies for making money in Diablo 3.  Outside of the hour and a half I spent listening to podcasts from Markco about auction house strategies, I only spent a few hours this weekend playing the game.  Most of my time was spent combing the auction house for deals and learning how to flip items for a profit on the gold auction house.  I still have yet to make a sale on the Real Money Auction House (RMAH), which has been a little frustrating...but I did see a ton of success making gold this weekend.

My current gold balance shows around 400,000, but I have 8 auctions up that if they all sell will net me around 3 million gold.  I also have about 1.5 million tied up in bids - which is where I am seeing the most success in flipping items.  So even if only half of my auctions sell, I'll be up to around 2,000,000 gold and plus whatever gold I am refunded for my bids and the value of the items that I do win when the auctions end.

From my experience over the weekend, I found that bidding is where the biggest profit margins are.  Players that are buying upgrades are not going to bid on items and wait for the auction to end - they will sacrifice a few Vit points (and pay more gold) to be able to get an upgrade right now.  Here's the bidding strategy that I used this weekend to play the GAH.

1. Pick a niche. - I play a Barbarian, so I started looking at level 60 armor for Barbarians.  
2. Find items that you would purchase for your character. - My search criteria included: 100 Vit, 100 Strength, and I tried several other key stats like movement speed, attack speed, and resist all.  I picked one niche (belts) and decided to play in that space until I learned the price points and how to make a profit flipping items there.
3. See what the lowest buy outs for items with your search criteria are. - If you find a belt (or whatever other armor choice you pick) that has 100 vit, 100 main stat, and 40 resist all for a 50,000 gold bid with no buy out, check to see where similar items are priced at with buy outs.  If the lowest buy out for a similar item is 500,000, put in a bid for the item.
4. Bid on lots of items. - The easiest way to track items is to bid on a ton of items.  Once you bid on a item, it will show up under your auctions tab until it expires.  Right now I have 26 items that I've bid on and am following, but as I grow my gold and expand to other markets, I expect to be following hundreds of auctions.
5. Don't overbid. - Set a top price for each item that you are bidding on and stick to it.  You want to be able to sell the items you win for at least 2x the amount you paid for them to make it worth your while (and the auction slot). 

The first step to making money in Diablo 3 is having a handle on the gold auction house.  I feel like I'm getting there and learning, so I'm hoping that my first sale will come soon on the Real Money Auction House.  A huge thank you to the guys over at Diablo 3 Gold Secrets forums for continually posting and helping out guys like me who are struggling a bit!  Keep up the good work.