Wow Gold Making Question

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

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.

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11 comments: on "Wow Gold Making Question"

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Anonymous said... January 5, 2010 at 8:23 AM

I would say: Hit the battlegrounds for honor and sell the gems you get from that (since you're grinding the levels anyways)

The most time-efficient way of making gold is using the auctionhouse, but so many use this, that making huge profits mostly depends on timing.
jimmyolsenblues said... January 5, 2010 at 8:26 AM

Steps to make even modest amount of gold...
Read the section on this blog about auctionneer..that is exactly what I did.
I now have over 65k gold...and I installed auctioneer in November.
Run it in morning when you leave.
Run it at night before you go to bed.
Get your wife to run it.
Soon you will build a database knowing what is a great buy and what is over priced.
Thanks to Marko for a fantastic post on how to use auctioneer.
You should keep that link on the home page...FOREVER.
jimmyolsenblues said... January 5, 2010 at 8:38 AM

http://justmytwocopper.blogspot.com/2009/02/22-steps-to-using-auctioneer-correctly.html

Best Help ....EVER!!!!
Rob Dejournett said... January 5, 2010 at 9:29 AM

Given the professions you have this is what I would do. First, stop buying anything until you get cold weather flying at 77. That's 1000g each. You should be completely fine making that much gold from just questing.

You need to get the enchanting skill higher to make some money from Wraith enchants, but right now that's not that hard. Find someone to make you armor vellum 3 scrolls (don't buy them on AH, they can be made for 1-2g each). Identify what enchants actually sell. Make those. Forget about cost, if it sells you make profit, so the cost is irrelevent. This is profit source #1.

Profit source #2 is from providing enchanting mats. You will need to do math. Figure out a) cost of making a LW item given the cost of leather on the AH. b) cost of expected materials (use auctioneer/enchantrix for this).

For example, lets take Leather Leggings of Suck (hypothetical). It takes 6 light leather to make this. It disenchants (DE) into 1.5 dust X and 0.25 small essance Y (This means on average if you disenchant 100 you will get 150 dust and 25 small essence). Now you look up the cost (average) of dust X and small essence Y, and do the math. Is this cost worth more than 6 leather? If so, craft what you can until break even and sell it.

This looks like work, but it's pretty guaranteed, as long as you set it up correctly. I would use QA2 and set your banker to sell dust and essence at the price point you set. Otherwise you could sell at a loss. Given that there are 8 tiers of dust and essence, there is bound to be some profit here somewhere.

Profit source #3. Quests. This is straightforward. Just keep questing until 80, and quest some more. Finish all of scholozar, icecrown, storm peaks, zuldrak. The quests from 75-80 will give you some nice gold when you hit 80, and you should be able to pull in 300g an hour or so per toon.

Profit source #4. Farming/grinding. I never ever grind/farm, but if you want a) easy b) straightforward c) 100% profit just pick one of Markos many farming spots and have at it for a few hours.

Profit source #5. This is quite small. Do the daily random once a day at least. The rewards at 80 are 23g and two emblems of frost. When you get 24 emblems of frost buy a primordial saronite and sell it. Right now these sell for about 2000g each, but prices are going to continue to drop. If each daily takes an hour (including queue time, you can quest while waiting for queue), and you do 12 of them for 12 days, sell the PS, its about 200g an hour, maybe less. You can sell emblems of triumph for crusader orbs, but I wouldn't recommend it, the orbs only sell for 200g or so.
Anonymous said... January 5, 2010 at 10:01 AM

You didnt list a 2nd profession on your hunter. If you really dont have one, why not pick up herbalism. Herbs are a hot items right now, and even though you will need to take the time to level to your current area, low level herbs are selling at good prices, so should be worth your while. Then just pick them as you go to your quest areas and through up a stack on the AH as you get them. Painless gold that should add up quickly.
Anonymous said... January 5, 2010 at 12:27 PM

Also make sure u know the items before buying every blue priced items like crazy. Will make you poor instead.
sherretz said... January 5, 2010 at 1:51 PM

Both characters are above the minimum level required to get to the 400s of crafting skill. I recommend the both of you take one evening and get those skills to the 400s so that you can take advantage of WotLK-level materials.

1) Download and install Little Sparky's Workshop (there's a link in the forums if you can't find it). It will update prices in your crafting windows based on AH value of the mats and the finished good.

2) Do some DE legwork using Wowhead. For example, TBC essences and dust are high priced right now due to Mongoose still being an in-demand enchant. There are many other examples; you'll just have to take about 10-15 minutes to check Wowhead.

3) I'm married with a 1 yr old (my wife does not play) so I understand your time constraints. As mentioned, use Markco's 22 tips to at least get your feet off the ground. Use the money you gained to fund your characters getting their professions up.

4) Your wife can convert her leather into both leg armor and arctic furs to help fund your enchanting leveling. Also, enchant any greens you don't need. Make sure if you don't need a quest reward to choose the item that vendors for highest. While not perfect, this is generally points to the items that DE for the most value. DE everything neither of you need and use those mats to level.
Unknown said... January 5, 2010 at 2:49 PM

Become a tailor as the second profession and start making and selling netherweave bags en masse. I currently buy any stacks of netherweave for 5g or less and sell the bags for 9-13g, 8 or more sell every day. You should also be getting lots of netherweave from where you are leveling.

You should be able to fairly easily 2-man Stratholme at those levels, I believe. Take your enchanter in there and DE everything that you find, sell the cloth in large quantities (save some to level tailoring).

I get the impression that the OP is not a regular reader of this site, or they would already have the idea of buy low, sell normal and snatch lists, etc. and would not be emailing in for advice. The two tips above for bags and Strat are perfect for the player that isn't quite ready to put in the time and research to effectively studying the WoW economy and how to use Auctioneer effectively.
Anonymous said... January 5, 2010 at 2:57 PM

There's a lot of wanna-be goblins on Duskwood, hence why the prices are so crazy. Low to mid-range herbs and ore sell for good prices though. Usually on Duskwood you should sell your raw mats in the week, we have a lot of players who farm mats like crazy on the weekend.

Prices are generally higher on the Horde side of Duskwood than Alliance. Since you have 2 accounts you can afford to compare AH's -- park a couple alts in Booty Bay. Since you have a leatherworker I would look into armour kits.
Crabby said... January 6, 2010 at 8:00 AM

Some of the pre BC and BC enchants can make a consistent profit. Try Fiery and Crusader enchants, look at stamina, hit points, and spell power enchants, particularly in the range used by 50-70th levels. Otherwise, just be sure to know your market. There's good advice on these pages, but if you don't know your market, well you won't do so well.
Meka said... January 7, 2010 at 8:32 AM

I rely almost completely on using a finely tuned Snatch list coupled with using Appraiser to post a set amount of stacks of the items for my income. (For example, posting 'only' 4 stacks consisting of 8 infinite dust). This I spend about 15-20 minutes on each morning while I have my coffee before hitting the shower and going to work. Sure, it'll need some time investment to set up a good snatch list that works for your server, and find out the amount of each item you wish to post. I'm no AH tycoon, but it pays for all my gems, enchants, raid consumables and some pets :)

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