Who i am making gold on :)

This is such a perfect example how stupid people are.
They were talking about Book of Glyph Mastery at the begining then they just went out amazingly prooving how much stupidity can be out there.

This is the perfect example of Mr. Trade Police Guy and the perfect example how they lose gold on AH due to stupidity. And the worse thing is that they are aware that this is stupid.

On another hand a quick tip on selling :
Buying low priced epics and selling them high is not allways a good choice. i've found that anything above 2000g sells very very hard (in 1 -2 weeks or so) and that something needs to be good enough versus farming its replacement in dungeons/raids.
This leads to a limited number of epics that sell.

Also the item enhancements sell good over the week but rarely or not at all in weekends. I will try to sum up a list of epics that are worth fliping / crafting as well with a list of item enhanchements that sell on week days and when is the best to post them.

Paying for confort, bragging!

It is just amazing how much gold can you make by just selling crap. Both in WoW and in real world.

Take for example this sweet ride: The Mechano Hog. The materials you buy from vendor is the gold sink. The rest of them is just about 1 -> 1.5 k g. But this baby is sold with 15 -> 16k gold and there is a demand for it.

There are people farming Stratholme (or it was Scholo) for the Undead Mount, doing arround 200 -> 500 runs, just to mount up on a city, and people to see that they own that mount. It is just like in RL. A car sole purpose is to transport you from one place to another at a faster speed than the one you would have by going on foot. Some more things apply to a car that do not apply to mounts that good. You will get more mounts for faster speed but thats it. For a car you would want to have good reliability, safety and some confort. All the rest is just vanity.

There are a lot of companies in the world that do not produce anything usefull to the basic needs of humans, but they are succefull because we like others to see how good we are doing, etc.
So it is only obvious for those companies to provide for that demand, and milk those morons.

Cheers

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

Easter break

Well, i decided to take a few days off from WoW during the Easter holly days. So most probably my next post will be on the Tuesday or so.

Until then i wish you good luck in your adventures around Azeroth and happy Easter.


Observ

What a business

Today i felt the competition... hard. I was outbid in like a few minutes after i bided. It seems that slowly the bid days are over, however i am trying to gather as much as i can to start putting up for some crafted epics that sell. I am making a list of them and hopefully i will make some progress in that direction. Anyhow a little over 100g difference since the last day. I was hoping for a lot more.

It is weird to see a market so dead on some servers and one so active like this one. A fact stands constant no matter the server: There are and there will be allways dumb people.

One thing i like about auctioneer is that you can search for items that can be sold to vendors for profit. And i am still to find the server that does not bring at least 5 items to be sold for profit to vendors :) . Most of them are old Jewelcrafting stones like Star of Elune, Nightseye, etc. But it is amazing how some put 20 Stars of Elune for 20g BO and they sell for 60 g to vendor. Check out the Wowhead price for them. AH price 2g, vendor is 3g . Most common price i see is 4 - 5g a piece, but there are still stupid people that will undercut under vendor price just to sell it to a player. I guess they dont really like right clicking a vendor or something :)

Tomorrow i am going to try something funny in regards to above stupidity. Untill then have a great evening and come again tomorrow.

Best wishes,

Observ

Nice day

Well, i know.. i play with addons way to much, but still i can't help it. As you can see i am trying a font addon (ClearFont2) and while is working like a charm for every other addon it doesn't seem to like BigPicture.

Well, you can see how this turns out. There is a total of 453 g total on this character. There is another 50 or so on the one selling pets, and 20 and something on the Death Kinght.

So far so good, but i did some mistakes that brought me back a little. I am now forced to sell arround 5 stacks of Nightmare Wine and i am not happy about it. This could drag me back a lot, however they will sell eventually.

A few tips to anyone who wants to start this:
1. No matter how low you start dont get to cocky when you reach like 2 - 300g and jump into buying all the stuff auctioneer tells you would make profit on. Think!
2. Try to bid more and buyout less at the begining. It is more time consuming but is much more awarding.
3. Go for things that sell like warm bread: Raw materials
4. Try profit from proffession made items . Find one that sells good, and buy slowly all the materials as long as they are underpriced. Pay 10 for a craft and make profits of over 50 - 60% .

Well that's it for today. With some luck i shall get arround 1000g in 3 days.

Regards,

Observ

Total Wealth - 265g

So i made it. Over 200g total in just 2 days.

Auctioneer is improving getting more accurate data with each scan. However no ground shaking deals so far, but since the server is a full one, i would expect other "business man" to interfere.

I am trying in the same time to level up 2 professions on the Death Knight. I will reaveal which are those later on :)

In the mean time the target will be a character total of minimum of 400g by tomorrow evening, which should be attainable.

This is arround of 15 - 20 minutes / day scan, bid and post job, and as long as you have the right tools (addons) and an open mind is easy as cake.

I am using the following addons:
Auctioneer
MarketWatcher
EasyMail

and some other i can't remember right now.

Until tomorrow,

Observ

Not much

Well , i manage to reach a hundred and something gold. Not very happy about it, but still.

I took the DK to Thrall (last DK quest) and then i parked him on Ogrimmar. He will buy stuff from all over azeroth :D

The booty bay orc is a female warlock and she is doing fine so far. Sold one Crimson Snake and made about 8g profit over it. Still there is much to work on that side.

The Thunderbluff Tauren is a druid, on which i will gather all the gold. He is doing fine so far, but still the money are still to come.

Hopefully by tomorrow i will reach 200 and something :)


Untill then,


Observ

Home sweet home?

Today i am creating a new character on a server i dont have any other characters and will start my experiment. Basically what i want to do is to maximize through concret calculation the amount of gold i can make through a month of playing.
The process of doing so has several steps:
1. Create a DK level up to 58 until i can get all FP
2. Create a level 1 character Orc and move it to Booty Bay
3. Create a level 1 Tauren and move it to Thunder Bluff

The DK will gather all the stuff i need from vendors: Pets, Recipes, Rare Items, etc
The Orc will just sit in Booty Bay and sell horde only stuff and buy cheap alliance only stuff
The Tauren will just sit in Thunder Bluff and scan AH with Auctioneer 2 - 3 times a day

I will also post each day a screenshot taken from the morning of the Auctioneer estimates (how many bids, how many auctions, how much gold worth, etc)

Wish me luck :)

Observ