Trade chat is a spamfest on most servers but I still pay attention to it while in town for that small chance that I’ll spot a great deal.
I use trade chat for the following:
1. Spotting flips – you can smell the desperation from some people who are trying to sell a high priced item fast, in my previous post about flipping battered hilts I paid particular attention to players trying to get rid of hilts. I picked up 2 hilts for 7.5k each and flipped them for 11k – a total profit of 6400g for just a few minutes of work.
2. Finding Suppliers – In any market you’re serious about you’re going to need a ton of a certain item, for example in the glyph business you’ll want a lot of icethorn/adders/lichbloom. The cheaper you can get these materials the higher your profit be or the more room you’ll have to squeeze competitors out. Trade chat is the best place to find these suppliers as they’ll usually announce large quantities of items for sale at bulk discount prices.
3. People Looking to Buy High Priced Items – I usually have a lot of darkmoon cards on hand and while I keep around 2 of each on the AH at all times there are usually players who don’t like to check the AH (don’t know why) but will ask in trade chat “WTB STR Darkmoon card! PST” there’s a sales opportunity to move product faster.
The unfortunate thing about trade chat is that we have to be in a main city to view it, that means you’re missing out on gold making opportunities when you’re sitting around in a raid or AFK in an AV (just kidding 
) but the addon TradeForwarder fixed that problem!
Trade Chat Forward to You
What this addon does is broadcast trade chat from anyone who has the addon installed currently in a town to everyone else with the addon regardless of their location.
That means the usefulness of the addon is dependant on how many people on your server have the addon installed, so spread the word! Email you’re friends the link to this post or on your guild forums etc.
You can download the addon over at curse: TradeForwarder
I’m interested to hear, do you use the trade channel? what do you use it for? or do you find it too spammy and turn it off? lets discuss in the comments below.
Wow, amazing find! I constantly use Trade and this could be extremely useful, thank you very much!
I think this is an amazing add-on and have told everyone in my guild about it. I love that I can see trade chat for those hours you inevitably waste sitting in ICC, ToC, ect waiting for those few people. The problem now is I have another reason to leave a raid for money.
As for trade chat and me, I’ll always keep my eye open for a good bargain. Someones offering Battered Hilt, primordial saronite, ect for a good price, cut some gold off the price with my offer and see where it goes. Last night alone I picked up 72 stacks of Northrend herbs for 6g a stack (30s each) cause someone wanted to clear out their bank account. Amazing deal found via trade chat.
I don’t tend to advertise in trade chat very much though as it seems on my server that it’s more of a quick way to unload product for a lower price than I can make via the Auction House. Even when the market shifts and I’m sitting on a large overstock of product, I’ll still tend to hold on to it and see if the market will shift back or even if you overprice it by a large portion to get everyones Auctioneer average to shift back up over a month or two. I’m not trying to buy short sell short after all.
As for the spam aspect of Trade Chat…..I will admit I find it to be full of junk and want to sport a “I survived Trade Chat” t-shirt at times, but it does offer some entertainment as I’m inscribing, jewel crafting, or blacksmithing at times. Personally i’d love to see trade chat be “TRADE” chat but that will never happen so for now it’s just something I put up with to gain the benefit of good deals.
Dude,
This is AWESOME. I tend to hang out in cities, vs farming rep, items or whatever because i’m trying to either find a particular run or find good deals.
This is going make me even more money.
Your website has been an awesome resource for taking my AH flipping business to the max.
Thank you very much
Put this together with the Badboy addon and you’ve got yourself a [mostly]spam free AND remote trade chat.