How much gold should I make on the Auction House?

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.

21 comments: on "How much gold should I make on the Auction House?"

  1. You kinda confirmed my idea that jewelcrafting is the biggest moneymaker of them all, some of the things you listed do come as a surprise in the amount they can make on a day.
    I made a quick calculation and you make nearly 12K profit/ Day that should get you to the goldcap every 18 days or so.
    With all the free tips on the forum, I don't feel the need to get your guide just yet, but if I ever try for "the cap" then I may consider buying it (less then a month till goldcap)

  2. I figure every day
    1) I transmute saronite into titanium for titansteel
    2) I do the daily JC
    3) tansmute, cut and sell an epic gem
    4) JC icy prism
    5) Quest on my newest character and profession level
    6) Wintergrasp on dk trying to get honor and better gear through wg tokens.
    7) Scrolls for my enchants have been really good lately cause of random Dungeon
    But I really couldn't tell you how much I make a day.
    But I know I made at least 30k since November.

  3. JC is the king of all money makers only because of gems. Buying gems for 140 gold and reselling for 250+ is just insane money. And with the right addons... it's almost entirely automatic.

  4. I have a JC, what are the best Addons to have to help me utilise my JC and maximise my gold making

    Many thanks

  5. I have all those tradeskills except leatherworking, on a high pop server and doing fine i think (~120k) with like 4k/day profit with around 2hr/day spent. Saying you'd make even more on a high pop server may be a bit too simple. For example, on my server competition on JC is brutal. If you list gems at market prices, be it blue or epic, you *will* be undercut within minutes. This means that selling any reasonable number per day requires either really low profit margins or spending a lot of time in the auction house nurturing your listings (and relisting is expensive). Then again glyphs sell like a maniac and blacksmithing has very little competition in comparison to jc. Also, making money on disenchanting crafted materials is almost a thing of the past on my server, with dust at 90s, dreamshards at 4g etc, I'm personally no longer doing it unless they are leftover mats like sun crystals.
    But it's informative to see your numbers, even though mine are quite different.

  6. I think the automation of the crafting process is the main reason why inscription is considered to be the best gold-maker. Once you've learned all the recipes it's just a case of letting KTQ and Quick Auctions do the hard work while you do the mechanical button pressing.

  7. Can you explain your setup for making money with jewlcrafting? What addons do you use?

  8. Anyone should be able to make 1k per day on the AH (on average). Even if you don't have professions you should be able to buy low/sell high. The more markets you understand, the more you diversify the quicker your gold will go up. Pick one item to start with. For example frost lotus. Understand that frost lotus are used for raiding flasks and raids always reset on tuesday, which means tuesday the demand for flasks and frost lotus go WAY UP.

    Buy low: Sunday nights are great for this. Demand is usually very low on Sunday nights as everyone prepares for the work/school week ahead. Don't just buy off the AH, try and find someone in /trade. /trade skips AH fees and sellers usually cut you a good deal because of it.

    Sell high: Post the frost lotus you bought on Sunday slightly before prime time Tuesday(8pm server time, that's when most guilds start raiding). Post a small amount, and post frequently if you can. Posting in small amount is very helpfull in avoiding the undercutting war. Chances are there is atleast one or two AH campers in any market, and if you post too many of any one item that "camper" will get scared and dump their entire postings so they can relist one silver below your posting. If the camper sees only a few items above theirs on the list they most likely will let it slide, or perhaps they will buy you out. That's when you post 4 more. The cycle continues. You also want to undercut by a few gold to make it even more likely the camper won't relist.

    Flasks work the same as frost lotus, buy sunday-monday, sell tuesday-saturday. No proffession needed but if you wanted to maximize your profit on these you can buy frost lotus when cheep and make a bunch of flasks too. Make sure to use an elixir spec'd alc if you don't have one. There are lots of other markets out there and they don't all follow the same trends. JC/enchating for example has a much bigger wave where profits are higher over longer periods of time which seem to be when ever new patches/content is released as there is new gear to be gemmed and enchanted.

  9. Marko... a clarification please. Is the 3000g for JC from new cuts or dose it include flipping gems as you seem to state in your comment above? Is the 140 to 250 actually crafting raw to cut?

  10. I know many JCers use the Saronite Shuffle, but I stick to my own Thorium Shuffle.

    Thorium has been my most consistent money-maker, and thus is the market I follow the closest. I snatch all stacks at 25g or less. My server usually sells for 40g a stack, even at that price I could make money, but my profit margin wouldn't be as large and as I see it, keep the more expensive thorium available to keep gem prices higher.

    Huge Emeralds are usually the best seller, they tend to have a high demand while being relatively rare. I can typically sell these for 15-25g. Large Opals and Azerothian Diamons are also strong sellers, each one I can sell for 12.5-20g. Star Rubies are finicky however, they are the rarest, and their prices vary the greatest. I've sold these anywhere between 5 and 20g per, but I usally buyout any compeition posting these under 3g as their rarity leads me to be the sole seller often. Blue Sapphires are the worst, maybe 3-5g per.

    This is my main market. I also use my smelter to create saronite bars from cheap ore to then have a guildie transmute them into titanium bars. I split the profits with her, netting each of us 4g a bar sold.

    The new epic bullets/arrows, I've been watching as prices bottomed out to 1.5g a stack of 1000, and bought 24 stacks as I often see the market dry up. I've also been posting stacks of 100 at 75s which is 100% of market value on my server, pushing out the scammers while making a small profit all the while.

  11. While Markco is right in most aspects a high pop server is actually much worse for JC.

    There are way too many people with the profession and in most cases a good flip is buying a gem for 145 and reselling for 180 cut. Most epic cuts (Especially the popular ones str, sp, agi, etc) on my server Arthas (Alliance) sell for marginally more or less than the raw gems. In most cases buying raw and cutting popular cuts will net 0 or less profit after the AH cut (~10g). There is more customers but also much more competition constantly listing their gems.


    The only time you make reasonable profits is when you find a cut that isn't popular yet still sells every once in a while or when someone dumps several raw gems for quick sales at 80% or less market value.

  12. You don't think that on a higher population server your income would be reduced because there would be more people such as yourself?

    The most I've made in a single day on a single profession is 500g with inscription. That was amazing!! With inscription, I usually pull in a few hundred every few days.

    I work full time and conduct my business before bed at night. How much time are you spending on all these inter-character transactions and AH posting?

  13. Using the new chapter of your gold making guide, I've managed to fill up my stock completely in 24 hours, with quite a decent amount of extra mats to spare. And 12 hours after that I have 1350G in my bags, after having paid back all the initial costs to my other chars (to better keep track of how much I'm earning).

    This is the most steady income I've made so far. Just before christmas I had my earlier record of about 4.5K in a week. And if this keeps up, I'm going to break it easily.

    So thanks for all the help. =)

  14. The leatherworking profit seems pretty high to me. Although I use some tricks to make some money with it, it's usually not more then 40 gold. Now I'd love to know how Marco get's so much profit from leatherworking. Tricks, anyone?

  15. Nice list - gives me something to think about

    And nice Blog in case you needed more affirmation

  16. > How much time are you spending
    > on all these inter-character
    > transactions and AH posting?

    Alts, login/logout, play AH, professions, crafts, send email, get stuff, ... Even with good addons you still need *HOURS* to do that.

    He can do a lot of gold per day but surely it wont play 1 hour. You really need time for that... a lot.

    Even if you keep wow in windowed mode you still have to invest time (and you can do it if you work from home or have a job that allows you to play WoW safely).

  17. Playing on a high pop server myself and it is insane at the AH, you get undercut within minutes, if you want to make money you have to spend more time babysitting your auctions

  18. I'm not sure how you can get this kind of return and have time to do anything else. Here's my current results with time investment:

    1000g Inscription (1 hour)
    200g Alchemy (10 minutes)
    200g Leatherworking (10 minutes)
    100g Jewelcrafting (5 minutes)
    200g Dis/Enchanting (10 minutes)
    200g Tailor (10 minutes)
    100g Blacksmithing (5 minutes)
    100g Smelting (5 minutes)
    -----
    2100g (1:55 hours)

    As you can see I've focused on Inscription and these are just estimates but I like to play the game too and don't want to spend more than 2 hours making gold. I know I could get a good return on time investment in Jewelcrafting but I really don't want to increase my time spent.

    My question is this -- how much time do you invest to get this type of return daily? I don't think I could get the daily returns you are getting without spending at least 5 hours a day crafting/ (dis)enchanting/ auctioneering.

  19. What do you guys call a "high pop" server? I tend to think the real question is "how many auctions does your AH have up, at any given time?"

    Auctioneer scanner tells you how many auctions it found after a quick scan. My server is usually around 20,000 auctions, which I tend to think is average?

  20. My server on average has about 30-50k auctions at one time. I'm on Proudmoore (US)

  21. Based on my experience on US Eonar, I completely agree with the comments about high population servers.

    Quite frankly, I'm shocked that Markco would say that you can make more profit on a high pop server. Yes, the potential market is larger, however the competition is much greater. And we should all know that competition amongst retailers always benefits the consumer with lower prices.

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