I started with just 1 gold. And i focused on green quality gear.Armor mostly. This is basically how i "flipped" items.
Start by choosing a level range- the 30's work very well for this. Set the filter to only bring up green quality items, and hit search. Now - organize items by the highest value. Usually these will be between 10-15s each, can go up to 25s+
Once organized- go through every item and put in a buy order of 2-3 of them-- always do the custom buy order price. Usually i can get items for 1s, sometimes 1s50c exetra.
You can spend a good hour just putting in buy orders - i have put in over 1000 buy orders in a 24 hour period (taking 3 hours or so to put all the buy orders in) -- Items that are really nice for this are those that have 0 buy orders currently in. I tend to put buy orders at different prices so when people browse it doesn't show 48 orders by 1 person - and makes it less likely others will start doing this. ((that was before i chose to write this guide))
You will quickly see items start to fill up for pickup. Remember - the trading post is region wide - it's extremely active - and the lower level range is where many players currently are - which is why 30s and 40s work so well.
Every few hours - pick up the items from the trade post and repost them at 1c less than the lowest seller. Don't undercut by more than 1c- there is no point, people can't choose the seller, only the lowest seller price.
You will notice items are actually selling at the 5-10-15s marks. Sometimes even 20-30s.
Typically i can have 200-400 sell orders and roughly the same buy orders going at a time. Once a day or so i may cancel all buy orders and start to put new ones in.
Tips:
1. Don't put in bulk buy orders on any item - it will not help your cause.
2. When you're re-listing an item, check how many other buy orders are on it. IF you see an item with 0 buy orders, you are selling 0 of it - that means you have listed this item before and it sold - and no competition at the moment. Put 5+ buy orders on it, at different prices.
3. You can cancel your buy orders from the my transaction screen- but sell orders will cost you the 5% cost of listing. - cancel sell orders that are not being fulfilled once every 24-48 hours.
4. You don't ALWAYS have to have the lowest cost. If there is 1 seller selling at 4s, and the next 20 are at 18s, list yours at 17.99 -- that 4s will sell (don't bother buying it yourself) - and then yours will be next up.
5. Armor tends to work better than weapons. Experiment - avoid the super high end (exotics) - mind you, i have been able to flip exotics i buy for 3g for 9g - but often times the markup (as you can see) is not as large, the risk is higher - and the TP cut can really get into your way especially if you see fit to re-list and lose the 5%.
6. Have a lot of bag space - it helps tremendously.
7. If you see an item with 50 buy orders - put in buy orders in front of them in 1c increments simply to hide their order. It will make it so *some* sellers don't see "oh hey buying bulk and selling is a good idea".
8. Don't mystic forge the items up. The results will likely be one of those crap items that only sell for 1c more than vendor price.
9. Set items do well in the 30 range. The shadowfang stuff (or something like that) - medium armor set alone has made me a big chunk of gold.
10. Stick to armor- commodities are traded for tiny profits too often and as such the amount of arbitrage you will find is negligible.
EDIT: Extra Tips:
11. If you can find your own niche / market - more power to you (be it a level range you focus on or item type) -- may help battle any competition.
Ill likely remember other tips when i get back to doing this later. These are just a few things i picked up as i was going along. Good luck/enjoy the cash. It's not unusual to make roughly 3-15g an hour. ((By this i mean, if you spend 4 hours putting buy orders, then 4 hours putting sale orders later.. that trip will likely net you 50-70g over the next day or so, rather than hour by hour.))
Good luck-- please post your success stories/questions/ your own tips as you go along with this!
TY to the mighty 9 who enjoyed/repped this!