Making gold with proffesions

Many people just dont see how much gold you can make with their crafting proffesions, and not limited to theirs.

An good example is the Titansteel stuff. Sells pretty ok at AH:
Titansteel Shanker = 1000gold
Materials needed:
6x Saronite Bars =~ 15g
2x Frozen Orb =~ 80g
6x Titansteel Bars =~ 400g
1 Titansteel Bar =~ 65 g
3x Titanium Bar =~ 30g
1x Eternal Fire = 22g
1x Eternal Earth = 6g
1x Eternal Shadow = 6g

So a grand total of max 560g if you pay 10g for Titansteel Bar cooldown. This is 440g with 10 - 15 minutes of trouble. Or 240g if you decide to buy the Titansteel bars directly from AH.

There are also a lot of people that will buy BOE bracers for Emblems of Valor for you with as low as 800g. The lowest price at AH for one of these is 1000g. The highest can get to 2600gold.

Another trick is to buy enchanting materials from AH, pay a 50g fee for about 20 enchants on scroll for greater potency as an example.
The materials for it are:
2x Infinite Dust = 10g
4x Lesser Cosmic Essence = 16g
1 x Weapon Vellum III = 12g (ask an inscriptor, and for 20 or more you can get maybe a better deal)
2.5g fee to enchanter
Total = 41g
For 20 investment is 800g

The average price for it lately at AH is arround 80 -> 120g . So for 20 you get arround 1600 -> 2400g. Thats a minim of 600g profit over 30 minutes hassle.
So if you play with your bank 2 hours a day with crafting only and a bit of investment you can make arround 1500 -> 2500g / day easy.

If you got the proffesion, the profits are slightly higher. If you do i recomend getting LilSparky's Workshop Addon along with the usual Auctioneer.

Happy crafting!

Farming

I've leveling an rogue lately for some time, and doing some quests in Nagrand i remembered back in the days when i used to farm Mote of Water there on my Warlock to get that Frozen Shadoweave Set and i was farming those Motes all day long, in the morning before going to work. And let me tell you that the satisfaction of having all the set on was priceless.

Since then i leveled up an paladin, hunter and now rogue, and for all of them i got the materials for crafted items, or just bought items directly from Auction House, but never felt so good as i was then. Farming at AH is much more easy, less time consuming, but the reward is not that great.

I saw many people farming a lot of things for gold. There is even these chinese farmers that farm for RL money, but AH is much more rewarding gold wise, still no matter how much gold you make, no matter how much fun you have doing so, i never felt again that good as i was back then.

Making gold is somewhat easy, playing the AH, finding that very underpriced item is aswell a matter of luck but pretty easy with the given tools, keeping (spending) wisely the gold is not.

Mr. Trade Police Guy

As you might already know from diffrent blogs, there is a post at wow insider about Mr. Trade Police . This is the guy who knows all the markets, all the prices and allways knows that you are overpricing, no matter how low you sell.
I encounter one of these guys yesterday, while trying to sell Tome of Polymorph: Turtle for 400g. The price is very good considering is selling for arround 1000g if you stay enough with it on the AH or trade. Now this guy offered me 20g for it saying that it is overpriced. Whenever i encounter one of this guys the discussion goes something like this:

Trade Police Guy: How much?
Me: 400 gold
Trade Police Guy: WTF, that is so overpriced. It is not worth more than 20g.
Me: Hmmm. You are right. So i will sell it to you for 20g.
Trade Police Guy: Really?
Me: No. Bye :)

There is of course the type who just likes to annoy:

TPG: How much?
Me: 400 gold
TPG: 300 gold, because "n" reasons
Me: Ok. Lets say 350 gold.
TPG: 310, because etc and etc and etc
Me: Ok 310.
TPG: Nevermind

The /trade channel is just something that never stops to amaze me (no matter the realm). And as someone said on a diffrent blog, every server(faction) has a celebrity wanabe and Mr. Trade Police Guy is an well known candidate.

Runed Orbs

Hello,

Long time no see. Lately with the release of Runed Orbs i tried to get a hold of a few at low prices to get a boost of a few k gold on my stash. I've got 2 for 2500g and another 2 via bid with 1100g each. The problem is that 2 days after that some guy flooded the AH with 6 orbs at 1000g bid 1200 B/O.
There are several facts about these types of goods (they are into an extent the Sunmote of Wotlk):
1. There will allways be someone selling them each week (raids and pugs are made each week)
2. There will allways be someone buying them
a) Casuals that dont have time to raid , but want the gear :)
b) Raiders that want to consume DKP on some rare items rather than what can be crafted with orbs
c) Other business men

So i have several options here:
1. Sell them with little to no profit (even a loss) at 1199 g or something
2. Wait with them for a while to establish when is the highest request and the lowest offer (risk of the price fall even more)
3. B/O all of them and control (attempt to) the market
4. Just put them in AH with an extra 100 -> 150g profit for 2 weeks and hope they will sell eventually
5. Advertise on Trade, escape the AH cut, and sell with little profit

Out of these options 2 is the one with most chances of success, however this means ~ 5k gold that are on hold for undetermined time.

This was my mistake because i got greedy over a trade with someone and bought them with not a lot of chances of profit.

What i also noticed with this experiment is my lack of interest for low /small profit. I used to "transport" items, bid for 1-2 g profit and so on. With more gold the more greed, the more risks, and less interest to actually make a steady income.

So i finally concluded that this should never happend again, and i will slowly and steady start again transporting, and biding for small profits.

Have fun playing and remember that nice profits are not allways what they look like.

Playing with the fire

Today is a tips and tricks post, for making gold at AH.
Lately my way of making gold is no longer bid an insane amount of items for 1 - > 20 - 30g profit, but rather buy low and make a lot more (since i dont have a lot of time lately) .

This is more for people that dont have time to play regulary + 2H /day.

Here is what an WoW session looks for me:
1. Check the bank alt from Booty Bay to see what pets he sold, and if any others can be sold . Same for horde only recipes. Also check for bargains and alliance only pets/recipes at low price
2. Put in the G-bank anything worth sending to main bank from Orgrimmar.
3. Log on main bank from Orgrimmar, scan AH. Post anything that was unsold, and anything sent from main or Booty Bay bank alt.
4. Search for vendor items (i.e. items that sell with more at vendor than the price they are posted in AH) - certain profit. Usually i search for anything thats +1g
5. Search for resale
6. Here is where it gets tricky. Not all the items are at their real price, because Auctioneer can and is fooled alot by over (under)pricing.
7. Spot a good bargain (+300g profit according to Auctioneer) (or several items, +10, that can be all sold with that +300g profit)
8. Check allakhazam for the price. It has an min, an max and average and most seen at prices.
9. If the profit still stands in relation with most seen at buy the item(s) and repost them undercuting it by 2-5%
10. Finish the breakfeast. :)

Please note that some items will take more time to sell than others. This is most of the times not instant profit. Keep in mind that you have to play safe but also risk some gold to.
Also keep in mind the 10% AH cut + each deposit you make for an unsold item.

Happy hunting :)

Curse, WoW Interface and WoW Matrix drama

So it seems that once again i have to do the search for addons on 10 websites, and still might not have the most up to date addon.
Curse and WoWInterface have shake hands to eliminate one of the competitors : WoWMatrix

WowMatrix have been so far the greatest addon updater out there. Basically what he did is update all your addons from the author's website , but mostly from Curse and WoWInterface. Curse and WoW interface have complained about being leached on, and that Matrix are eating out their bandwidth, especially on the patch days, so they both locked out its access on their website.

Of course both parties say that they are holding the best intentions for user comunity, however none of them actually do something that will show that (other than stating it so).

My opinion on that is on one hand Curse and WoWInterface should shake hands and create something togheter (similar to what they already have) and make a sort of joint venture. On the other hand WoWMatrix could still keep the so called "unsupported" addons on their application but with link to Curse or WoWInterface, so user cand download it from there himself.

This basically is just a fight over the cookie. Matrix started to gain way to much popularity and they only show their "adds" on the application and it bite a big part of the player base onto it.
All three are making money on the 11.5 milion WOW playerbase, and i am sure none of them have player best interest at hearth, however i am inclined to believe Matrix side of the story rather than Curse & WoWInterface one.

Suicidal advertising

A while back WoW Insider wrote an article about some gold sellers . They wrote with dead gnomes i think, their website.

While, many gold sellers try to get the attention by spaming /s , /trade, /general annoying people and a while back there was /w random online player with this you can bet they draw the attention.

On a server i play (Daggerspine EU) they just came back, disturbing my lovely buyers from getting those awesome items i had for them on AH :)
The "art" is not finished yet on my server, but i am to tired to actually wait for it, i will check it in the morning if it is still there and update my post. Here is what is so far:

Being informed

These days, being informed is one of the most important things in ones life. Without information (and i am talking about massive amounts in comparison with what humans had at their very begining).

In WoW this is translated by auctioneer/any other kind of addon that gathers that information. And it is your responsability to read it. Greedy Goblin has written today that he is moving to another server (Stormscale that is) and how prices are there. Ironicaly enough, when i started this blog, i tried my experiment on Stormscale horde side. While at the begining, working with the small things it worked ok, after that it was just stationary, and i mostly abandoned, going back to the so called "big business" i had on my server.
All of this is information used properly, and the Goblin knows well that on Stormscale the things might not go that well as it was on his initial server, and those 5k gold promised to the guild every week will go just that far, however he is most probably covered for at least a year from now, considering he will sell just a mechanohog once a month + extra other things.

However every now and then we find people that are against information, and into some extent they are right. The more information about something you have, the more responsability about that "something" you get, and in the same time it gets more complicated.
While for an average user, the Auction House is just for selling greenies, buying stuff they need, etc at an market price (or not even at the market price) they are simply not informed about how the market they buy on, and they dont care eiter. For them is simple.

The information you get by scaning Auction House, or writing down the prices for the items you want to bargain with creates a burdain. An perfect example was when i controled for a week the Mageweave market.
There was a guy selling imense amounts of Mageweave Cloth at 4g / stack just after a month or so with a steady price of 6-7g. I just bought off all that he had, for an entire week totaling 250 stacks i think. While this is an stupid move, for me it was just an 1.5 k gold experiment at max. After that i relisted the whole thing 20 stacks at one time for 9.50 g bid - 9.87 g buyout.
At first there were still people putting Mageweave on daily basis at 4, 5, 6, 7 gold a stack, and i was just buying everything out and relist at my price. After a week i started to sell, and in another week i sold all my stock keeping the price at 9-10g / stack. This was a bold move, but i got over 100% profit over in about 2 weeks and a half. And i did it with regards to the reliability of the information i had.
There is an margin error that becomes more acceptable with more info you have. I would not try this with Titanium Ore/Bar ever for example.

Which was first??

After a long break on deciding if i really want to actually make a blog on making gold on AH i decided that thats not the best way to look at it.

Still, i feel that some of my "experiences" must be shared, so here i am..

I was getting some bear with RL (and also WoW) friends, and let me tell you that we are tackling all the topics , from the weirdest to the hotest. This night we actually started talking about ideologies, and how the are all perfect in their way in theory, and from that we got to the point where we had this trouble getting to the same point. Which was first : Survival instinct or the selfishness (greedy).
While the term greedy and selfish is not equal , in my opinion being greedy = selfish while selfish =/= greedy.

There are a few cases to study here. One is when the resource in discussion is unlimited.
Unlimited is a relative thing. Universe might be unlimited in our eyes, but in somebody elses eyes it might be just a tiny part of the infinite alternate universes. The resources are of two types: Needed for survival, and luxury.
A luxury by definition is : an economic good for which demand increases more than proportionally as income rises; contrast with inferior good and normal good.
In case of needed for survival this is in WOW the gear you need to actually perform into an dungeon, and luxury are all the "petlike" items. So basically people will attempt to become more aggresive on items(goods) needed for survival.
However they become greedy rather when the item is of no use of survival, but rather a luxury. And the selfishness is an side effect of that. (i.e. the less for Onyxia at 80 the better)

The other part is when resource is limited. In WoW you can't see this often. You can see rather an incredibly rare thing like items received during festivals (as Brewfest or Hallowed) that are usefull for survival in raids. Just remember how many "ninjas" where shown during the Hallowed .

One other case in WoW when greed is shown at its best is pictured best in this following incident that happend long ago to some friends of mine.
One of them was lvl 60 rogue and he was boosting another friend of ours that was lvl 36 priest on some STV quests. At some point they invited an warrior in party because he was doing the same quest and the xp was better with another one of the same level (36). At some point the Green Tower droped. Of course the best one to use it was the Warrior, but would you let an occasion like this to get a free 250+ gold (in vanilla wow this was a lot) or would you give it to the warrior. Ofc my friends both needed it and won it and kicked the warrior out after.

Greed won over social skills, friendliness or anything else similar. And the freaking shield is only pixels in the end :)

I hope you enjoyed this post.

Have a great week,

Observ