Playing the Auction House PVP?

Several in the gold making community often talk about their interactions with their competition.  I refer to this type of player as a Auction House PVPer:  

This player is thrilled by the challenge of dominating a market within the game.  They are the ones who typically add their competition to their friends lists to keep an eye on them.  They are also the individuals who camp the auction house posting, canceling and undercutting their competition to keep control of a market.  

There are a number of techniques and tools that help the Auction House PVP player stay ahead of their competition.  I mentioned the easiest tool in their arsenal is adding their competition to their friends lists and keeping track of when they log into the game.  This helps them to time their actions taking advantage of their competitions auctions having ended.  One can also do this by looking up a specific auctioneer on the Undermine Journal and looking at their posting history.  Most auctioneers have a pattern to their posts.  Another staple of Auction House PVP is cancelling your auctions when you are undercut, and relisting them lower than your competition.  

While Auction House PVP can be extremely fun even exciting, I don't normally participate in it to a great degree as it is not what motivates me to play the Auction House.  As I stated in my first posts I play the Auction House because 1.  I find it fun.  2.  It allows me to spoil my wife and my friends.  3.  It helps me get decent gear to let me into what parts of the End Game I can participate in with my busy work schedule.

My approach is one of simplicity and hopefully elegance.  Lets look at a market that has consistently made half my money in game, inscription.  I setup my Auction groups by ink.  This allows me to set my minimum price for the glyphs in that group at 3 times the price of the ink plus some mark up for my time.  Now to set the price for the ink, I simply set a threshold at what I am willing to spend on an individual ink.  Now I know when I go to post I set my auctions to have a healthy underdercut and post away.  Knowing as long as they sell I am making gold.  

Since my schedule means I won't be around to babysit my auctions I dont cancel and repost.  This may mean I do not make as much gold as others who write about playing the Auction House in World of Warcraft.  But it means I do not spend as much time on gold making as others do.  Where possible I try to schedule my auctions to allow for quick daily posting.  For the markets where I have large volumes of product to post I try to stagger my posts.  I mainly do this for my my main transmog seller because gear does not stack like glyphs do.  On my glyph seller I can login open my mailbox and walk away to do something else or work through several other auction cycles while my glyphs stack up in my bags.  

Whether you are an Auction House PVP player or take a more casual approach to it, you should look at what motivates you and play it the way that is most rewarding and fits into your playstyle and schedule.