I apologize if anyone received 0 or multiple copies of the JMTC Digest. I am afraid that there may be an issue with the script I wrote (being run on my 20kleveling.com server) and I will have to do some testing to identify if I am having any issues. Please check your spam filters to see if the email was sent there.
If you did not receive a copy of JMTC Digest please leave the first name you signed up with in the comments section so that I can look to see if certain emails are being sent but not others.
Thank you and I hope that those who received the digest enjoy it. If I figure out what is wrong I will fix the script tonight and resend the email.
EDIT: It appears that the server got hungup the first time I ran it and that process needed to be killed. Now it appears to have worked. Let me know if you didn't receive a copy, otherwise I apologize for those that got more than one.
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Undercutting is an art form in its own right. Some players undercut by 1 copper, others by 10-50% of the original price. Some use the Quick ...
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Hey Markco, Just wanted to tell you another gold tip. With patch 3.1 the JC pattern Citrine Ring Of Rapid Healing no longer requires 2 eleme...
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Cataclysm has been out for quite some time now. People are tired of heroics and are now running raids, this creates a demand for one item th...
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Guest Post By Deepcut From Warcraft Gold Analysis My name is Deepcut, and I currently play on the Eldre'Thalas realm. After seeing al... -
So I've recently started up a new game; Runescape. Now don't be all like Mageshadow, WoW is better than Runescape because I know tha...
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Update: Silly me didn't read the fine print and Blizzard slid a low ball in, You can't stockpile valor for 4.2 as it will be conver...
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Scott Alan Smith is a Crook! Edit: Screen shots and proof/explanation of the cookie stuffing Scott has used in the past are present a... -
Hey Marcko, Was soloing Dwarfageddon earlier today and I noticed the dwarves you kill drop the Lovely Charm. You get 10 of these and tur...
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No, it's not. Buying low and selling high is supposed to be easy and intuitive. However, for many world of warcraft players it just d... -
Post by Kammler from Kammler's Korner One of my favorite movies is the 2004 King Arthur (Clive Owen, Keira Knightley) Not only is it...
Undercutting can be so annoying, especially when it's just one copper.
How People Undercut by One Copper
Either by typing in the numbers manually or by using addons like auctioneer or quick auction.
Why You Should Undercut by One Copper
For gems, glyphs, and other high frequency items that you sell very quickly. Posting with very few items is also key so that you reduce the amount of damage when you in turn are undercut. It's pointless to post 30 glyphs of one type for 48 hours only to have a dozen people undercut you thus limitting your sales to a handful of glyphs.
Why You Shouldn't Undercut by One Copper
You don't want an item to be profitable for someone else, so you consistently post at amounts you'd like to sell each day that are lower than what you assume the other person can afford to post for.
Why Deep Undercutting can be Foolish
You foolishly assume that posting much lower than the person will allow you to 'sell faster' or 'ensure a sale.' It's better to understand the market and not post if you are going to have to deep undercut in order to sell that day.
Having two accounts in world of warcraft is amazing. Here are five reasons for having a second world of warcraft account:
1. Crafting on two characters at once
2. Double space
3. 20 characters = 40 possible daily cooldowns depending on professions taken
4. Neutral Auction House made super easy and safe, no need to rely on friends
5. You can have conversations with yourself in trade, and you can be very clever with this to make gold ;)
I absolutely love having a second account, and it has openned up the amount of ways I can make gold tenfold. Just being able to use the neutral auction house to transfer higher quantities and types of items quickly has been a huge bonus. Do you have more than one account? How do you use it to make gold?
Here is the email I received from "A B", I left it entirely unedited:
You may have noticed that iLevel 245 Gear has slowly decreased in value since ICC was released. I sure have with the sales of my Saronite SwordBreakers. These beauties have made me around 35k gold from selling 6 of them. My sales started at 4k and have slowly decreased down to 1.6k as of last week. Some days I sell one or two, other days I sell none as my server is rather small and there just isn't much of a market for tanking gear.
That being said, the Saronite Swordbreakers are the go to item for new tanks entering ICC. They want the gear now and to complete their epic sets, with no alternative except for a drop off of flame leviathon or for badges.
You may be wondering if my profit margins have changed much with this item... Yes they have. At first I was making 2200 gold profit and now I'm making 500 gold profit, but it isn't that much of a change considering the item has gone down 2400 gold in value. I luckily never stockpiled mats and simply bought enough for super cheap when I needed to make the next one.
This is the strategy I always recommend for epics:
Buy mats cheap, but never more than enough to make two of the item.
Aim to break even by sale #3.
Adjust your price with the market as your mats go down in value; don't be greedy.
Sell one and then post another, don't damage supply by posting multiple items yourself that are this expensive.
Not all glyphs were created equal. There are numerous factors which determine if a glyph will sell for profitable amounts of gold as well as how frequently.
The first and greatest reason glyphs sell more frequently is because there are only two specs a character can have at one time. This means that paladins, druids, and priests will always have the highest purchase rate of glyphs because they can fulfill there roles. However, keep in mind that certain glyphs are kept by all three roles for the classes in question.
Another factor which determines frequency of purchasing is popularity of a class. Rogues are the least popular class and therefore you will most likely sell these glyphs less than any other. It doesn't help that this class also can only fulfill one role so if a rogue doesn't pvp as well as pve then they will only ever buy one set of glyphs.
One factor that often gets overlooked is the availability of a glyph to scribes. Glyphs made leveling inscription are notoriously cheaper than ones learned through research.
Some factors are the same as with any profession:
The number of scribes you have effects how expensive glyphs are as well as how many you can sell for maximum price because no one has put any up when you go to post yours.
The number of glyphs posted by any one scribe of each glyph type can greatly cut into your profits. Most scribes who automate their inscription sales do not post more than 2 or 3 of any one glyph on the market at a time. Sometimes however, you get people who dump glyphs onto the auction house for way too cheap and you will need to buff up your addons to account for these anomalies.
What should you do with this information?
Make more glyphs that are popular and post them more frequently then ones that are less popular. Since glyphs are so cheap to post for 12 hour increments there really is nothing wrong with doing a smattering of sales, but by focusing in on the ones that really make the most money you will increase your profits substantially.
Apply this analysis of the glyph market to other markets if you can in the comments section.
UPDATE: See my top 10 items to stockpile for cataclysm.
I've been thinking a lot about cataclysm lately and how best to prepare for it. What items can I stockpile, and more importantly what changes with cataclysm should I allow to influence my choices while stocking up? Let's look at this logically by laying out some facts:
- We don't know all the changes.
- We know that they will change the way you level professions and so some crafted items will be worth multiple skillups, maybe even all pre some determined skill level.
- There will be many new characters entering the game and trying to powerlevel professions.
- Some materials for crafting might even be removed from the game or made much easier to get.
How do you take advantage of the situation with those simple facts? How do you know what to stockpile? It's simple really... the lowest level items. Copper ore/bars, peacebloom, light leather, etc. These items are the first skill ups, so even if it's made easier to skill up through all parts of a profession, these will always be essential to the leveling process. Perhaps mid level stuff will be more profitable but who knows? What if thorium ore drops 3x as frequently from nodes in the expansion? Since the lowest level of mats will surely be used in cataclysm these are the only materials you know will remain unchanged and valuable to those leveling professions in my opinion it will be worth it to keep a large stockpile for cataclysm.
If there's anything I learned during the BC to WOTLK expansion metamorphosis it's that being first means you lose out on lots of money. What I mean by being first is that you take the items you find through professions or looting and use them on your characters before you decide to sell the new items. Don't do this! Instead, SELL EVERYTHING you find in the game through professions or looting and you will most likely make 200-400% profit off items that in the near future will drop like crazy in value (especially as more toons level to max with their gathering professions that created goblins or worgs). Herbalism/Alchemy and Skinning/Leather Working will be very common combos by the new races so you can expect for herbs and skins to drop in value once enough of the new characters hit 85 and farm for themselves.
In the meantime while people are leveling like mad and using up materials to craft new gear you will be selling to them for maximum profits. A quick example: In WOTLK I remember selling cobalt bars for 100 gold a stack and within four weeks they were down to 20-30 gold a stack.
Keep this in mind when the mad dash for Cataclysm profession leveling starts! Get your gathers at max level, they will be the true money makers in those crucial first four weeks.
My idea for how to create a glyph wall is extremely useful if done correctly. What is a glyph wall you ask? It's when you create a literal wall of glyphs of every profitable type that your competition sells and then post them for way below normal price. You're probably thinking why the hell would you want to do that? The answer is simple: learn their fallback prices and discourage competition.
To create a glyph wall, create 10 of every glyph worth over 5 gold and post them all for 2 gold each. Make sure you got all your herbs for 15 gold or less and sell your snowfalls for 10 gold each. You will make around 5 gold per stack on average from milling and turning herbs into inks (taking into account average parchment costs).
Your competition will do a few things:
1. They will most likely post like always but their addons will push their prices up to their fallback rates.
2. They will not find any glyphs worth posting and will probably be very confused.
3. They will buy out glyphs they remember are worth much more and relist them.
Doing this every once in a while really messes with the heads of your competition and provides you with some valuable information about their market awareness, thresholds, and fallback prices.
An extension to this method is to continue doing this but raise the price up from 2 gold incrementally until other suppliers start undercutting you. This will tell you the lowest rate you can sell all your glyphs at and have glyph sellers wanting to buy off you because their threshold is below your price. Many refer to this as the 'goblin method' and it's an ok way to make gold with inscription but definatley not the most profitable. It is far better to use this method once in a while for information gathering purposes and to throw off the competition. Simply buy the glyphs off people practicing this method too often and relist them for their actual market value. They'll make money and you'll make more.
Have you tried to make a glyph wall for the fun of it? Have you taken advantage of those that do it too often?
Twitter has never been a huge part of this community so I am going to start including it in posts and other activities.
First off, if you aren't on twitter and following foldberg1, you should be!
Next, for every daily post on jmtc I want you to start giving a quick opinion on your twitter account of what you read. You don't have to necessarily link to the post or anything, but you can say #JMTC and then whatever you'd like to write.
This #JMTC topic will allow everyone to click on it and see all the buzz around jmtc on twitter.
I think that this will help the community grow and get more people interested in twittering about JMTC. Feel free to talk about the forums, youtube, this blog, or anything else JMTC related with the #JMTC topic.
Suggestion Box Friday is your chance to be the blog writer! It's when I, the gold making guru, steps down from my frozen primoridal saronite throne and allow you, the adoreable yet amateur auctioneer, make heads or tails out of the world of warcraft economy. Anything goes today, but to help you out I would like to provide some discussion starters.
Today's suggestions should focus on:
How to make gold Mining Azeroth - Where do you mine? What do you mine? How long?
Community Spotlight:
Here is the link to a very useful tool for moving into new markets
It will tell you the average going price on your
realm, give an estimate of sales by volume for days of the week, give a graph of
prices and more
~Nuclearmage of Alexstrasza~
Blog News - PODCAST Finally Here!
Call to Auction - Here is the New Podcast where I and several other influential members of the blogging community discuss making gold in world of warcraft. Visit and check us out on ITunes under "a call to auction"! We expect to make a new podcast on a weekly basis and I look forward to continuing to co-host this great podcast with Euripides and Faeghleis for a very long time. Warning: The first show my sound was very poor, but episode 2 and all future episodes I sound 10x better.
The above title is a lie! Low population servers can make gold in world of warcraft, it's just a matter of how much. On my low population server I can rack in 17k gold in a day, but on a high pop I'm sure I could make 30k easily. There are more materials, more buyers, and although there is more competition the numbers should scale around the same. The glyph market, for instance, has so many items to sell and buy that even on a low pop server I'll see a dozen glyphs sell while I'm crafting and posting new ones.
Certain markets really suffer for low population servers, such as high end epics and expensive pets. The lower number of buyers can be pretty painful and most players will completely ignore these major markets on low population servers. It takes me 48 hours to sell a major 245 epic usually per market, and a 1600 gold pet can take as long 100 hours. My server is pretty low pop, with the alliance side being 1/4 the size of the already tiny horde side.
There are some advantages to being on a low population server and that is finding great deals. When a hundred auctioneers are running their addons to scoop up deals on the auction house it can be difficult to make a quick easy gold on a high population server. However, on a low population server there are usually more deals and they are left out for longer periods of time due to there being less auctioneers. I happily scoop up dozens and dozens of sub 25% market priced auctions daily for resale.
What are your thoughts on realm population and the amount of gold you can make in a day?
Which is better, thousands of small very good chance to sell auctions or two really big ones that sell maybe once a day? My answer will always be thousands of small auctions with a very good chance to sell. That doesn't mean you should overlook the power of selling big auctions once every couple of days, but the consistency of selling thousands of small auctions with maybe only 1-30 gold profit each is definately how you make the most gold in wow.
Where are these magic markets that can make you so much gold? Probably right under your nose, let's see... what do you buy on the auction house on a weekly, daily, or even upgrade basis? Bingo, that's where your markets lie. When you upgrade your new chest piece you buy three gems and enchant chest powerful stats. When you upgrade your belt you buy an eternium belt buckle and two gems. There's more to it than just listing these 'surface markets', as there are components which create the eternium belt buckle and enchant chest powerful stats. What about those markets, are you involved in those? That's how you need to think in order to discover high demand markets which will make you the most gold.
Here are my stages to becoming a wow millionaire, hopefully you will be able to identify which stage you're at and then figure out how to move on to the next one until you reach a million wow gold.
Stage 1: Vendor Discipline
Vendoring items suddenly is restricted to grays and all whites or greater get sold on the auction house. You find that you have enough money to pay for repairs while leveling and get your mount, skills, etc.
Stage 2: Bidding on the Auction House
You discover that selling the items you farm is not the only way to make gold on the auction house. By bidding on trade goods, especially old world mats which often lie under the radar of more experienced auctioneers, you find great deals and an awesome supplemental income to your leveling or farming endeavors.
Stage 3: You find farming spots that make the most gold
You wouldn't think of this normally as a stage to getting good at the auction house, but it actually is! You have to search the auction house for the items that sell the best and then where to farm them, or you work backwards and find farming spots then look up how much they are worth. You also have to figure out the demand for the items farmed and several other factors.
Stage 4: Buying low and Selling Normal
You have auctioneer and you understand the basics of scanning, buying low, and selling normal. At this stage you start to take risks and move away from the comfort zone you created by farming and selling goods at the lowest possible price for quick cash.
Stage 5: Competition
You learn how to deal with your competition on the auction house, more specifically, you learn how little the competition should influence your markets. This stage is where most people get stuck, and they allow competition to determine their prices, thus limiting their sales and wasting a lot of time.
Stage 6: Market Focus
You start to focus on markets that really give the most bang for your buck, and you eventually develop a system of scanning, snatching, distributing to crafters, crafting, then selling.
Stage 7: Farmers
You find that just running snatch scans, even multiple times a day, does not provide you with enough materials to satisfy the hungry auction house's demand for goods. By recruiting farmers, whether professional or just random acquaintances, you are able to finally get access to thousands of gold worth of materials each day.
Stage 8: Millionaire
You combine the lessons learned with even new and craftier ones which allow you to become a powerhouse seller who processes thousands of gold a day in the shortest amount of time possible. You are an expert auctioneer not because you spend hours of time, but because you found the fastest ways to make the most gold with the least cost to yourself.
What stage are you at?
I get this question constantly, and the answer is always going to be the same: At market value. Too many players, even after having read this blog, the forums, bought the gold guide, etc post their items at the lowest possible value currently on the auction house. Trying to undercut in order to 'sell items faster' is not a wise business decision! If posting at market value means you won't make a sale than either your market value is incorrect or you shouldn't post at all! Letting a handful of undercutters decide the price of your item is foolish, instead you should figure out what the demand for an item is and then set your price accordingly. If there are a dozen frostweave bags at 35 gold but you know the market value is 42 gold, as well as the average number of bags sold per day are around thirty, then you would be making a wise business decision posting about eight bags for 42 gold. If you dump fifty bags on the auction house for 34 gold each then you are throwing away gold!
If you have a problem with posting items at market value instead of the lowest current value, perhaps you need to slow down your auction house mentality. This is not a game where impulsive moves make the most gold, in fact you would love to take advantage of all the people who do make impulsive moves!
Some markets you do want to post at the lowest value because demand is so low for the item in question. This would include items like saronite swordbreakers, which I sell for 3.6k gold and the mats cost me anywhere from 1,000 to 1,600 gold depending on if I get the orbs for free from badges. If someone else posts a swordbreaker then I will relist mine for 12 hours just a bit cheaper than their item. I normally only see a sale on this item once every 1-2 days, so there's no way I want to wait for my competition's saronite swordbreaker to sell first!
Awesome tip and I don't think I need to add anything to it, as Achilliz already did a great job with the details in this email:
Hi there,
I don't know why, but not many people bother to cook on my server, so I do it for alot of money.
I go to Fish [Dragonfin Angelfish] in the river between Dragonblight and Grizzly Hills (only in pools, so no fishing skill is needed).
In about an hour, I fished 105 Dragonfin Angelfish, about 10 reinforced creates, and alot of Pigmys.
I bought 105 northrend spices for less then 100g. In my server, both Blackened Dragonfin and Dragonfin Filet go for about 6-7 per one.
I sell then in stacks of 2, they sell very fast.
105*6.5-100 = 582.5 gold without even considering all the other stuff I fished.
Please don't do it on my server :P
--
Achilliz (Karazhan-EU)
My thoughts on the proposed nerfs by ghostcrawler to prot pvp.
In patch 3.0 I decided that I would quit pvp in world of warcraft. The skill didn't matter, the experiences I'd had up to that point didn't matter, all that mattered was the fact that my arms warrior could not defeat any class one vs one consistently and several were virtually impossible. In desperation I put on a shield, my thinking cap, and the rest is history. The way I approached the problem of developing a way to defeat opponents who had it far easier than I did is how I approach my life: go 110% or don't go at all. I did the math for prot pvp, I adapted with patches, I tested my strategies against pro players, and I created a gearset that could get the job done. Prot pvp has changed drastically from season to season, with the adjustment from block value to arms gear with 3.2 and now with the removal of 2v2 I can no longer focus on my favorite pvp bracket.
In patch 3.3 I decided that I would quit pve past 5 mans, old world 10 mans for 5 badges, and wintersgrasp. I have no intention of doing the daily 5 man quest or other methods of getting emblems of frost every single day, and therefore it will probably take me all season to get a mediocre prot pvp set. I'll start looking into gearing out my alts more as it's a joke to do that now and enjoy the game at a much more casual level than what I've been doing already. No more competetive pvp or pve for Markco, just gold. Sure I'll have some fun here and there with prot pvp in bg's and I'll easily get 2k+ in arenas but I'm not going to put the pressure on myself to be the 'best' anymore.
This trend of quiting parts of the game is due to the fact that I've found myself growing less and less interested in the actual gameplay of world of warcraft. That's not to say I find the auction house boring, on the contrary I really enjoy it! What's boring however is getting really good at the game and having to continuously update gear only to compete with those who are not good but have better gear. It doesn't matter that I can reflect death coils consistently on any warlock because I still need to have good enough gear to kill him before his dots kill me. In a game where gear determines your ability to even participate in the first place it is annoying having to spend so much time gearing instead of playing. The fact that you need so much pve gear to make a warrior work is also frustrating because I do not like a system where loot is totally random. Case in point, I have killed grobulus in 10 man nax 17 times but never got my shield to drop. Do you find yourself being pulled away from world of warcraft's gameplay due to gearing? Are you finding that the auction house is far more entertaining than farming for gear or being part of a raid? Personally I would find the game more enjoyable if they allowed people to customize the gear they could get more, such as the reforging ability that has been mentioned for cataclysm.
Today's suggestion box friday is a pretty special one. Anyone out there who has guest posts and wants to get more traffic sent to their site should take a look at the following submission by Chris from Brattgaming with regards to pets in world of warcraft. The post is thorough and I'm certain many of the readers of this blog will flock to see the rest of the great information contained within his site.
Also be sure to check out SrsBusiness.org's post on selling your tanking skills to stranded dps.
Guest Post by: Brattgaming
Hey there JMTC fans and as you may have noticed, this is indeed a guest post. I will try to keep in with the general theme of this blog and look at a great gold making idea in the World of Warcraft.
I’m going to focus on one of my favourite markets to play with via the Auction House and one of the most ‘collectable’ set of items that seem to have people spending ridiculous amounts of gold: WoW minipets. There are many different types of pets available and I will now split these into categories to explain how we can use some of them to create a great and relatively constant income.
Faction Specific
These pets can only be bought if you belong to the relevant faction, either Horde or Alliance. This is one of the most basic pet selling ideas and has been always been a great strategy. Simply buy the pets that only your faction can buy and then post them on the Neutral Auction House for a massive profit. Recently players have been given the opportunity to have both Horde and Alliance characters on both PvE and PvP realms and now you can take advantage of both sides of the market and double your potential sales.
Faction Specific pets are split into two categories at the moment. The vendor bought pets found near each of the capital cities can be bought for a measly 50 silver and yet sell for around 15-20 gold on most servers at a very constant rate. Level 80 characters involved in the Argent Tournament have the option to buy another 5 faction specific pets for Champion Seals and these are more difficult to obtain but can easily be sold for a few hundred gold. The Argent Tournament pets can sometimes take longer to sell and can often be worth advertising in the opposite faction’s Trade Chat (if you dare!)
Rare Drops
There are a large amount of minipets that are dropped from various mobs throughout the game and these are usually sought after by the die hard collectors with the largest bank balance. The pets with the lower drop rates are always the most expensive. Some of you may wish to farm for these pets yourself and could start with the various hatchling pets or whichever you feel puts your time to best use. However you are relying on luck for the most part and you really need to think how much your time is worth. My advice for selling rare pets is to try and get a really firm grasp on the market prices and what you think the pets should sell for on your server. From here you can use the Snatch function within Auctioneer to purchase any pets that are being sold for a lower price than you expect. To quote Markco: ‘Buy cheap and sell normal’. So work out what prices you expect the pets to sell for and set this as your ‘normal’ price. From there you can look at buying and selling and really start to get a feel for the market. As a final tip for rare pets, always try to sell them on your own faction’s Auction House. These pets sell for a rather large amount of gold and unfortunately the Neutral Auction House will be more than happy to take a nice slice out of your profit. In my opinion the Neutral Auction House should be used to sell faction specific items and little else.
Vendor Pets
Similar to the Faction Specific pets there are several other minipets that can be purchased from vendors throughout the World of Warcraft. These can often be sold on the Auction House for some easy profit. I am not suggesting that you try and scam people into thinking these pets are Rare Drops but instead think of it as charging them for your time spent collecting the pets from the various locations. Therefore I would usually sell these pets with a much smaller mark up price and avoid any dishonest behavior. My favourite minipet vendors to visit are extremely easy to find:
Breanni
This NPC can be found within the Pet Shop of Dalaran. She sells three different types of pets at a price of 50g each. These can be bought and placed upon the Auction House for some easy profit. Please note that these prices are changed by your Kirin Tor Rep and you can get them for slightly lower prices.
Extra Note: Breanni is named and modeled after the creator of WarcraftPets.com, which is a website that can provide all sorts of valuable information for the collecting and selling of WoW minipets.
Dealer Rashaad
This NPC is located at the Stormspire in Netherstorm. He sells eight different pets: four of these can be found at other locations and importantly four of them are completely unique to this vendor. The Blue Dragonhawk Hatchling, Brown Rabbit Cage, Mana Wyrmling and Red Moth Egg pets are only available from Dealer Rashaad. They range from 10 gold to 40 gold and can once again be bought and then placed upon the Auction House for some quick gold. Please note that once again this vendor is subject to faction reputation and if you have reputation with The Consortium then you will notice lower pricing.
Extra Note: Dealer Rashaad sells the Cat Carrier (Siamese) pet which can only be obtained elsewhere by killing the Cookie boss within the Deadmines. He has a 13% droprate for this pet and therefore buying it from Dealer Rashaad can save you a lot of trouble.
Engineering pets
For those who say Engineering isn’t a profitable profession, they really need to take a look at some of the minipets engineers can craft. Although some of these pets are used only by Engineers there are three pets than I can think of that can be sold and used by non-engineers. These pets vary in rarity and the usual prices they sell for reflect this. However they are essential for any pet collection and people will be willing to part with their precious gold for these vanity items.
The Tranquil Mechanical Yeti is the first of these pets and can be picked up via the ‘Are we there, Yeti?’ quest-line in Winterspring. Once crafted it can easily be sold for around 100- 200g depending on your server. The other two pets that can be sold are the Mechanical Squirrel and the Lifelike Mechanical Toad. Both of these are learnt from recipes that are considered rare drops, found in Azeroth. The Mechanical Squirrel is much easier to obtain and the recipe drops from a whole variety of level 10-25 mobs throughout the game. This is not usually a rare sight on the Auction House. For this reason you cannot sell it for a very high price, you will aim to sell a large amount of these pets for a smaller amount of profit. However the Lifelike Mechanical Toad is a complete opposite. It is a much more difficult recipe to obtain and when you have it you can craft and then sell it for a larger amount. I would not be surprised to see these selling often for over a 100 gold and are always snatched up by collectors that recognize a rare pet.
There are plenty of other pets that can be collected or sold throughout the World of Warcraft and I hope this post has emphasized how large and profitable this market can be. I will apologize if this writing style is not great, as I have only just started blogging and this entire process is still very new to me. Thank you very much for reading and feel free to check my own blog out if you have the time.
Thanks to Markco for allowing me to steal his blog for a day!
Chris
brattgaming.blogspot.com
Some massive changes are coming into play with the world of warcraft phasing system in cataclysm. For one, phasing is no longer going to be limited to the mobs and nodes you see in an area. The ground intself will become phased, as well as buildings and other obstructions that have never before been moveable. There's even talk of leaving much of the old world intact for players who haven't reached a high enough level to experience cataclysm yet. That means that if you buy the old game, you won't see the torn up world until a higher level or some quest or something. This has very interesting implications for farming old world mats after cataclysm launches.
Obviously you will still be able to farm old world mats even if you participate in whatever quest unlocks the destroyed and changed world, but who's to say there won't be easier places to farm highly valuable old world mats in the old azeroth versus the cataclysm version? Perhaps the zombies in eastern plaguelands will be the best place to farm for essence of undeath and it will be used as a major leveling block for archaelogy? There's really no way to know how important old world mats will be, as blizzard has already stated that they want to change the number of skill levels you get for crafting harder to make items and to make leveling professions easier in the earlier stages of the game.
I could be totally wrong on all accounts for my vision of cataclysm, but I know for a fact that blizzard is going to be forced to make level 1's in azeroth phased into a different zone then level 85's. Imagine a level 85 camping lowbies in the barrens on a flying mount. /shudder
Now, how can you avoid having all your farming level 85 toons getting phased out of awesome old world farming spots? I'm assuming that level 80+ is going to be where you get phased into cataclysm, so leaving behind a level 70-79 is probably all you will have to do.
So, am I dead wrong on my predictions of cataclysm? Perhaps reading too far into it? Or is this discussion getting you to wonder as well about how to profit from azeroth wide phasing?
Are you wondering what materials you should stock up on for Cataclysm levelers? Will the changes to leveling professions make items like thorium ore easier to obtain or required less to mid-level professions?
Since the introduction of the looking for group tool in patch 3.3, horde players have been able to que up for stockades both in random LFG and specifically queuing for it. What will this mean for the wool cloth trade? The fact that stormwind still houses the stockades should ensure that many more alliance will run it than horde even with the LFG tool. Hopefully horde will only see a small decrease in prices on their side but alliance prices should remain virtually the same.
Has the LFG tool affected other markets? Have you noticed a steady decline in low level mats that have become flooded by players running instances instead of questing to level?
Organization does something very important for auctioneers, and that's save time. The more time you have the more auctions you can sell, markets you can explore, and fun you can have in wow. Auctioneer already saves you huge amounts of time, but if you don't make use of snatch and batch post then you aren't going to be performing anywhere near as well as someone that does. What I do is I have all the items I want for all my crafting toons listed in one snatch list. I view the list, buy out any items that appear (though I keep an eye out for unusually large amounts of items for shifts in the market) and then I mail out the goods to my crafters, craft my items, and then post the auctions on the crafting toons. The fun for me is in being super organized and running a mini-business where I get to buy out lots of goods and modify them for great profits. Over time I've learned to focus my efforts mostly on the items that are going to make me the most gold, and that wouldn't have been possible without organization.
So how can you get organized with auctioneer? First, you need to learn how to use the snatch tool and not just how it works, but how to really use it. You'll need to learn when to update the numbers on your tool, when to use percentages instead of real values, etc. After that you will need to setup your batch post properly. Now that doesn't mean just mass post all your items at max stacks and for set prices, instead you should be setting up batch post to limit the total number of items you post at one time and to have prices based on market value for some items but fixed value for others. Eventually you'll be ready for the next and final step to organizing your business: Quick Auction, which allows you to easily cancel and repost items.
In the long run taking the time and effort to setup your business correctly will allow you to reap the rewards of being an organized businessman. What's more, you will easily be able to add markets to these addons as you grow. To give you an example of the power of these tools, I went from an obscene number of hours a night to around one for posting my items thanks to these addons.
Milestones are helpful for everyone who tries to make gold on the auction house. What then should newer auctioneers shoot for when comparing themselves to the pros? For starters, you should be able to net 500 gold from any crafting profession daily with minimal effort. An expert will be able to make 1,000+ gold per day on any of the professions, but for certain professions that can prove fairly difficult depending on server size and day of the week. A gold guru will take multiple professions and turn his gold making into a automated business, buying up materials on the auction house, modifying them through multiple toons and then selling the items every day for huge profits.
When I combine all my professions into a big list of how much a gold guru like myself can make every day it looks something like this:
Smelting - 100 gold (most of the smelting materials are modified, not resold, so they are part of other profession sales)
Inscription - 2100 gold
Tailoring - 1400 gold
Alchemy - 800 gold (The daily transmute is part of jewelcrafting profits.)
Jewelcrafting - 3000 gold
Engineering - 600 gold
Cooking - 200 gold
Blacksmithing - 300 gold (most of these crafted goods go to disenchanting)
Enchanting - 1200 gold (scrolls)
Disenchanting - 400 gold (old world mats sell as well as new materials and much of my mats go to enchanting scrolls)
Leather Working - 300 gold
Flipping Random Auctions - 500 gold
Cross Faction Flips - 800 gold
This isn't to say that I don't have bad or good days, just that this is around what I expect each day from my toons with the professions listed. If you can focus on any of these markets to the point where you make as much as I do or more than you're on the right track. Without the snatch list or batch posting features from auctioneer this kind of profession manipulation would take hours, instead it takes about one and a half.
Don't forget that I also am playing on a very low population server, so you should see much more gold coming in on larger population servers with bigger pve/pvp communities.
Using this information, take a look at your own sales. Are you pulling in the same amount of gold for your professions as I am? If not, you definately want to find out why by making use of the gold making profession forum or search this blog for more information on your profession. Be sure to check out the addons section as well for help automating your sales.
Flipping is such a great way to make gold on the auction house but it is not noob friendly at all. You need to understand when items sell, why items sell, and where you should strike... that's quite a bit to ask of someone new to the game. With lots of experience however you can make flipping into a side business all by itself.
What do I mean when I say 'quick flip'? Well it means that I buy an item out for .8 * X price and I resell it within 1-4 hours for X + .10 * X price or more. The key is knowing that the item will sell fast enough. If you place the item up for 12 hour auction then you want it to sell fairly quickly and avoid getting into undercutting dilemas where a 48 hour auction would fair better. What items do I do this with? LOTS.
Here's a few major ones:
large brilliant shard
infinite dust
greater cosmic essence
eternal fire
greater eternal essence
abyss crystal
arctic fur
eternal belt buckle
frostweave bag
saronite bar
illusion dust
strange dust
dream shard
...and the list goes on and on.
Keep in mind that this strategy requires you to focus on items which sell crazy fast all day long or atleast during the time you are doing the quick flips. You want to get in, make a quick gold and then get out to allow the undercutters a chance to get the price back down to where you can buy and flip again.
Example: Large brilliant shards are going for 4 gold each and there are fifteen on the auction house for this price. I buy them all out and relist for 6 gold each. Within a few hours they all sell. That doesn't seem like much gold and it isn't, but when you do this with twenty different markets you make a decent amount of money. The trick is to automate this process with a snatch and batch post which will avoid wasting time on checking prices of each item individually with the standard search bar.
Here's a video I made showing where the snatch tool is located, which will help you with finding items to flip much faster:
60 Borean Leather turns into 10 Heavy Borean Leather which in turn can be turned into one arctic fur.
Your snatch list should look like this:
X = 75% Normal Arctic Fur Price
Arctic Fur = X
Heavy Borean Leather = X/10
Borean Leather = X/60
You can tinker with the value for arctic fur as much as you want, but be sure to use the altered X to determine how much you want to pay for the leather on your snatch list. Keep up to date with the current value of arctic furs and update the list frequently.
Currently, you can use percentages of market values in auctioneer to determine price, but there's no way to say always buy borean leather that is 1/60 the price of 75% of the price of arctic furs. You'll need to update the list about twice a week to keep an eye on arctic furs as they will probably continue to decrease in value over time.
If the creators of auctioneer update their tool to allow dynamic values... OMFG would this be overpowered. Imagine the power that would give auctioneers that want to adjust their buying patterns within changing markets.
Suggestion box friday is your chance to be the blogwriter! It's when I, the gold making guru (you know the one with the smoking hot body and huge ego?) allows you, the adorable rank amateur, to ascend my frozen saronite throne and attempt to make heads or tails out of the auction house.
Discussion:
For the suggestions, let's see how you would make money with blacksmithing while leveling it. Try to be crafty here (pun intended) and list particular items that you made while leveling up to make some gold. Perhaps recommend certain items to be made even when they turn green because they are worth the money to help cover profession leveling expenses.
Community Spotlight:
Bobreaze recently leveled blacksmithing and used enchanting to make some gold.
Check out this article which helps explain my questions regarding engineering pets during winter veil. Christmas Noobs by Cold.
Comments:
Regarding Disenchanting Notched Cobalt Axes
Gold NoScripts said...
This reminds me of when dream shards sold on my server for 80g and I used my blacksmith to craft the level 77ish mace and I would get a gaurenteed dream shard out of the 15 saronite bars and 2 crystilized fire (can't remember the exact mats, but it was something very close to this). Total cost of mats was about 40g.
Regarding Engineering pets during the Feast of Winter Veil
Cold said...
Another influence on these pets is the influx of Christmas Noobs. As getting ten pets is an easy start at the achievement system, and most people opened a gift that got the started on their way to collecting pets. It has trigged people to look for more.
Regarding Tips for Making a Modest Amount of Gold
rachaels_dad said...
Best Help ....EVER!!!!
Regarding my personal and blog info:
- Weight loss: Down 38 pounds and feeling pretty damn good. In the best shape of my life.
- Forums and Blog saw record numbers this week for readership and hits. Been working hard to get more google hits on both and it has paid off. Play around and try to find the blog with google search terms, it's fun!
- Gold Guide went back to full price and I added a new chapter, be sure to check it out if you are a gold guide holder. I tested the new chapter to see how much it improved my sales last weekend and came out pretty happy... 15k gold spent in purchases, 36k gold in sales.
If you haven't noticed yet, infinite dust, dream shards, and abyss crystals have sunk to all time lows. 'The Patient' puggers have been gearing their alts out in full tier 9 and in the process collecting insane amounts of enchanting mats. So many materials have been gathered from the new disenchant tool that eventhough the demand for enchanting mats have skyrocketed there is no way it can match the flood of new mats. What's more, you have people accumulating the enchanting mats who have no use for them except to sell on the auction house for super cheap. Normally this would result in a great deal for the auctioneer running his resale scan at that moment, but instead it has become a flood of raw enchanting mats that have completely overwhelmed the standard suppliers.
This gap of supply and demand is only going to get worse, except for one enchanting mat: Greater Cosmic Essence. The Cobalt War Axe happens to be the best way to get greater cosmic essences for cheap, and it takes 10 cobalt bars to build one. With the price of greater cosmic essences fluttering around 15-25 gold I can easily grab 1 gold cobalt ore, smelt it into bars, craft them into Cobalt War Axes and then disenchant for a 75% chance of 1.5 greater cosmics each. Reminds me of months ago with disenchanting the cobalt chest pieces and selling infinite dust for 10 gold each; boy was that even easier gold!
If you do try this method then avoid flooding and practice flipping the greater cosmic essences that fall below your cheap cobalt ore prices. Have Fun!
Jelsa, my favorite resto druid, noticed something peculiar about her sales of engineering pets during the christmas season. At first she thought it was just a random good day, but soon that day turned into a steady trend of engineering pets flying off the shelves for a week around christmas day. She almost exhausted her entire supply of engineering pets, which is extensive mind you, and it made me wonder why this happened. Since economic experts are so good at explaining why the things that happened today weren't what they predicted yesterday I thought I'd take a crack at figuring why those pets sold so well.
First off, it's christmas time and many players who don't get to play during the school year suddenly show up for about two weeks during their break from school. They reactivate accounts and they do the things that everyone else took for granted during the school year, such as achievements. Pets are part of those achievements, and so every day you had returning players wanting to complete something during their short visit to azeroth while on break from school. They picked achievements that they could obtain solo, as no one is going to defeat Arthas or get Gladiator in two weeks. Collecting pets seems to be one of the best choices for a solo player who wants to try something new.
A second reason is that christmas is a time when many players do send gift wrapped packages to their friends. Engineering pets are a fun, creative way to surprise friends with a little in game gift.
These two reasons are my answer for why engineering pets boomed during the holiday season. Did you see an increase in pet demand? Where there any other reasons you could think of for pets selling exceptionally well on your server?
Here's an email I got from Trunx regarding making a modest amount of gold in wow:
Hiya Markco,
I was wondering if you had any tips for making a modest amount of gold. You see, I have a wife, two kids, and a full time job. Both my wife and I play, but its only for an hour or two a night. Most of your blogging tips seem geared toward gamers with alot of playtime available. Im not looking to "Hit the Cap," (though I may consider it in the future) I really just want to make a quick 10000g if at all possible! My wife and I have a 76 Hunter (enchanting 375) and a 75 rogue (skinning 450 and Leatherworking 425). We are grinding our way to 80 at the moment and have no other toons at our disposal. Im pretty efficent with my AHing but my server prices flucuate like crazy. Any tips, for my situation, you could give me would be greatly appreciated. I really enjoy reading your blog and I cant thank you enough for all the information and experience I have gained from JMTC.
Thanks Again!
Trunx
Duskwood Server
Here's a few tips for making a modest amount of gold in wow:
Get better at the auction house. Read the JTMC forums regarding auction house strategies and do a better job of learning the cycles of wow: ie when prices fluctuate and where their normal values always return to.
Specialize in a few markets that make a modest amount of gold. Look into sure things such as buying out borean leather stacks for less than 1/3 the cost of a arctic fur (it takes 60 to make the heavy borean leather and then those can be turned into the arctic fur). Also buy the mats for a leg armor kit and see if you can make 10-20 gold from reselling as a crafted leg armor.
Get good at using the snatch tool with auctioneer and selling items outside of your comfort zone. Explore items that appear to be selling in the blue PCT on auctioneer and take the time to learn each new market. If you diversify your gold making with random items from scans you will slowly start to discover other profitable markets that you never knew existed.
So take the time to setup a game plan and find items that are going to make you gauranteed amounts of gold and focus on those, but set aside a section of play time to experiment with auctioneer and the snatch tool for random auctions. Eventually you'll get to the point where you log into your characters, setup your gauranteed auctions and crafted items, then finally scan and pick up great random deals with auctioneer. That's how you make modest amounts of gold and still enjoy having plenty of time to play the game. You do not need to be max level to employ this strategy and it's a great idea to start pre 80.
EDIT: Comments section gave some great advice, check out my post on 22 steps to using auctioneer.
I decided to be an absolute jerk and do something so wrong, so EVIL, it couldn't possibly come from a standup auctioneer like me. I took the Arrow/Bullet scam and transformed it into something much much worse...
The ZOMG-WTF-PRICING scam is just down right wrong. Don't worry, I will show you how to get around someone who uses this scam but first let me show you why it is so evil...
I bought 5 stacks of arrows for 7 gold each. I then posted 500 individual arrows for 1 silver and 500 individual arrows for 25 gold. Next I posted my remaining stacks of arrows for 30 gold per 1000.
Anyone who wants to buy arrows at normal values now has to go through 10 pages of auctions before they reach the prices they want, regardless of whether they sort by lowest buyout or shortest buyout price.
What's worse, my auctions up for 30 gold each don't seem so bad considering the time they save having to go through and find the normally priced arrows!
Ok I had my fun posting this ridiculous scam, here's how you get around it...
In the snatch tool simply set the price you'd like to buy arrows for and do a scan. Next sort by buyout and viola, you have your normally priced arrows.
Check the youtube version of this video!
Today's actual post was on frozen orbs.
Email from Justin:
If you haven't noticed, as of late the prices of frozen orbs have dramatically decreased. This is a result of high supply (because of the new dungeon tool) and low demand (because of the new orbs/primordial saronite). It's no rocket science to assume that you can take advantage of these drastic changes. Although frozen orbs in and of themselves have no real value, the items it creates do. More specifically though I'm referring to Brilliant and Sapphire Spellthreads. Because even as the prices of frozen orbs sink, the prices of Brilliant and Sapphire Spellthreads remain relatively unchanged.This is because there is still a high demand for these (being the only spellthreads available) and a steady supply of them as well.
Now before you go buying out all the mats for these two threads, let me tell you how to maximize your profits.
Check the price of Crystallized elements, before buying the Eternal versionCalculate your total net profit before spending your gold: this should include the costs of one frozen orb, four of your specific eternal (life or fire), four iceweb spider silk, and the cost to tip your tailor (unless you are one)Buy the mats on Monday or Wednesday, and sell your threads on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Tuesday after the typical raid times or before the restart (I'll talk about when to sell in another post) There are also a few other items you can craft, but these are definitely the most profitable.
Thank you for the email Justin, and remember everyone, I'm always open to publishing quality emails regarding making gold in wow. Personally I have been buying frozen orbs for around vendor price and relisting for 1 gold profit, which has been working out great for me so far.
Wowenomics did a test on this and here were the results. Today's abyss crystals can be purchased for as little as 30 gold each, so odds are you will actually make a small amount of gold from doing this. With a minmum of 7 infinite dust or 1 greater cosmic essence you are looking at a loss of 10-16 gold depending on your server's prices. But if you hit pay dirt and get the maximum results, ie 6 cosmic or 19 dust then you are going to be rolling in wow gold. With an average amount of 3 greater cosmic essences or 10 infinite dust you are seeing some nice profits as long as you get the cosmic essences. The infinite dust are going to break you even at best.
Since more enchants use greater cosmic essences than abyss crystals and the materials to make greater cosmic essences have become more expensive, the real money maker for abyssal shatter is when you get greater cosmics back. Personally, I've found that taking cheap abyss crystals and turning them into enchants like berserking or powerful stats to chest are a better use for them rather than making use of abyssal shatter. What have your results been?
Tip from 'Red' regarding making gold at the end of the christmas season in world of warcraft:
Hey, figured I would give this tip to you since Gevlon gave up making gold to solo Wailing Caverns. Everyone was stocking up for this season (with eggs and what-not) but now its time to start stocking up for the flip side of that coin. Players with the same professions for the last 2-4 years will find they get the same recipe in the mail they already know. Loads of people see it as free gold and dump them on the AH. I snagged a 6-8 of each (Snowmaster 9000, Gloves of the Greatfather, Edge of Winter, etc) for 1g or less. In June-July-August people will have different alts working on new professions, and these recipes sell for 30-50 each easily. Just don't flood the market >.< -Red
Nice tip red, I'm also looking into selling the gingerbread cookie recipe although I think the things you listed will sell much more frequently out of season.
Suggestion box friday is your chance to be the blog writer; it's when I, the gold making guru, step down from my frozen, primordial saronite plated throne and humbly allow you, the adorable yet amateur auctioneer, take my place. Anything goes today as long as it pertains to making gold in world of warcraft. So grab your soap box and proclaim your gold making conundrums to the masses!
Comments:
Regarding Sporeggar Rep Gold:
Darraxus said...
I did this before. I usually just skipped to the Sanguine Hibiscus. It sells really well. You can skip most of the mobs at level 80.
Regarding Mail Enhancements:
Sunkist said...
To the person unable to use addons while alt+tabbed: I've also had this problem since 3.3. But to solve this all I've had to do is play in windowed mode and then simply minimize the game and the addons continue to run. Hope that helps for you too
Regarding Unethical Business Practices:
Baileykitty said...
I've hit gold cap without treating my customers like redheaded step-children. I can confidently say I don't purchase bot farmed items because I either farm it myself or simply don't use the item.
The items I do buy from people I have cultivated more than just a click trade enter xxxx amount of gold get goods relationship. I have actually made more of an effort to get to know my sellers personally. I know how they get their goods, when they will be able to sell, etc. I treat my customers (on and off ah) like king and in return I have started to procure a very loyal customer base. (who wouldn't want to see a 15k C.O.D of goods that you can manipulate into making almost double that)
I guess simple real life business practices are above and beyond those who are not willing to put in the effort. I guess it is a matter of whatever floats your boat, biting the hand that feeds you or treating them with kindness.
Personal Stuff:
I like to share with you my successes in life not to brag or put others down, but to give you some encouragement for your own goals and dreams in life. As Patrick once said: "you'd make an excellent motivational life coach." Regarding weight loss, I'm down 33 pounds. The slowdown in weight loss was mostly due to illness and holiday eating, but now that I can get back to a consistent workout schedule I expect to lose another 10 this month. I'm below what I was in college, when I considered myself a pretty good athlete and played sports consistently. Thank you Jelsa, my family, and the blog readers here for their support. For those that are also trying to lose weight, for whatever reason, one of the secrets I've figured out is picking foods which you truly enjoy but won't hurt you if you cheat and eat too much. By keeping these always available I've never harmed myself by overeating once in a while. For me these include nuts, veggies, fruit, popcorn and cold cuts. Also, if you keep a steady metabolism by working out you will be able to survive the occasional Christmas cookie.
Gold Contest Discussion:
If I were to run another gold making contest, what would you like the format to be in? What creative caveats would you set in place if you were running it? I'd like to do another contest but I'm looking for some interesting spin on making gold for it. Any creative rewards that you'd like given out? I'm thinking of giving away a premium membership to the forums as well as a copy of the gold guide for starters, but I'd like some other incentive for those that are already owners of both. All ideas are appreciated.
