Back when World of Warcraft was released and before the common use of mods to earn a descent profit of the auction house there was this random guy I never met on my server that spent all his time farming light & medium leather in Stonetalon Mountains and selling them for just above the price you got selling it to a vendor. When ever I was online a did a /who Stonetalon to check if he was there and then I went over to the auction house and just sat there for a bit until he put the leather up for sale and I bought it all and sold it for a +300% profit and that is how I managed to get my first few hundred gold.
So my thanks, random guy!
lol, crafting and selling in a MMO was my first business lesson.
Final Fantasy XIV has timed events every now and then that reward you with some corresponding cosmetics. Usually there is a requirement to craft a specific item, which is something some players may have not touched or their crafting levels aren't high enough to create the needed item.
Some try to take advantage of the demand and start selling at a ridiculous price, and they sell because people need the item. Eventually the price stabilizes because you'll get other crafters trying to undercut the opposition by just enough of a discount until you get it to a fairly reasonable price where the people looking to make big money aren't interested in spending the time for that little profit and the people who want as many people to complete the event as possible are churning out the item for a reasonable price.
I was a naive fool the first time I was in an event and had my crafting at good levels. I saw the ridiculous prices in the market and wanted to do something about it. I made a tonne of the event specific items and flodded the market with them for 1 gil. What didn't cross my mind is that the people who were selling them for hundreds of gil could easily buy what I was selling, and that's what happened. A handful of people bought the item for 1 gil but the vast majority was picked up by other sellers and then they put it back up for at ridiculous prices. Not to be discouraged, I realized where I messed up, crafted twice as many items, and put them up for a price where it really wasn't worth anyone else time to buy and resell. They responded by lowering prices, I did the same, eventually we got it down. I unsubscribed from the game because crafting sucks so much.