Example Gold Tips

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

"Hey Marko,

Relatively new to the whole 'OMFG GET TONS OF GOLD IN WOW' scene, but I apparently had been doing it for a while without realizing it.  I'm a casual player, really only on for maybe two to three hours total a week, I have a 65 rogue main and 2 alts; a 15 pally and a bank alt (poor guy, lives next to a mailbox...), and I currently only own the Burning Crusade (may buy WOTLK, not sure).  Anyway, playing casually, and not really hardcore into it, I've managed to amass about 3k in gold liquid and I have no idea how much in auction assets (i tend to price some things really high on the off-chance it sells, so I don't really count the 'value' on that until someone buys it) .  It wasn't all that hard, mind you, just playing pretty efficiently.

It wasn't until I was level 12 that I started to realize that some people power-leveled professions.  I had never played a MMO before, so this seemed odd to me.  I did some research online and found some 'power leveling guides' and they were in general all over the place, or used materials I had no way of getting to.  It wasn't until I was in the auction house and nearly died from standing in a fire ring (I was on the phone at the time) that I realized that there were a ton of people who were probably making Death Knights and power-leveling cooking.  Turns out I was right in range to make some insane money on some Tangy Clam Meat.  Luckily I was heading to Westfall at the time and just slaughtered the resident Murloc population, racked up a ton of experience and made about 300 gold.  But that was nothing.

I had started playing the game in early December, and had never experienced a 'world event' before.  The Christmas one hit (forget what it was called), so I decided to look up the auction house and see what kind of quests there were.  Took me about 5 seconds before I was back at Westfall and farming eggs.  Couldn't believe people were spending 5g a pop on an egg that they could get themselves, but never underestimate the difference in the cost of labor (the concept that something that is a hassle to you, but nothing to me makes that something more valuable to you to avoid and me to profit off of).  So I was a level 27 human rogue with about a thousand gold sitting in my bank.  I managed to join a guild at that time, and they were complaining about no one donating any money to the guild.  I got promoted pretty quickly when they saw I had deposited 700g one day.  What was I going to do with it?  I hadn't had the desire to get a ton of gold yet, and honestly I wasn't sure I even was going to play this game for very long.  I was still playing vanilla WoW at the time.

Anyway, I got my main to level 60 recently and I bought Burning Crusade, parked a bank alt with Auctioneer next to a mailbox in Stormwind and sent him 300 gold.  Just have him set to buy low and sell high.  I joined a Trading guild and deposited a couple thousand in their bank, bought flying and set off to fight in battlegrounds with a PvP rogue having about 80 gold in her pocket.  My bank alt is now up to 3,000 gold (thanks to your site and podcast), and that's after I opened a 'pet store' in the trading guild (we host bazaars once a week, it's pretty cool).  The pet store probably loses money long-term, but I have fun doing it.

Right now I'm thinking of buying WOTLK maybe and making some money on leg armors, since the profit is pretty good, along with the bags.  My goal is to stockpile a bunch before Cataclysm comes out, because I figure everyone is going to roll a werewolf and they'll obviously need bags.  I'm looking into that 'snatch list' thing on auctioneer, I'd probably program it to buy up netherweave and whatever the other ones are if they're profitable.

Oh, almost forgot.  I can't believe how well these are selling: My 65 is in outland, and I bought some vender profession bags (the 20 slot ones) and mailed them to my bank alt.  There is zero competition for these things on my server for some reason (I think everyone is into glyphing, the market has completely tanked.  Kind of sad), I flip these things for double.  Consistently.  I wish the vender would stock more than one at a time, because I can't believe I'm flipping vender items for double what they're worth.  On the off-chance it may happen I actually once sold Rune Thread for 15 gold.

So yeah, seriously, anyone can make gold in this game.  I don't even have the most current version.  Granted, I'm kind of an amateur econ nut (my family and I place varying bets on the stock market, I'm hovering at about a 60% win rate), so I may have a slight edge; but I'm not doing anything special.  I'm just always trying something new.

Oh, by the way, I did that 'buy wholesale, sell retail' thing with saronite ore.  I bought a stack of 20 and sold them one at time, they were actually - and I am not kidding - selling faster than I could post them.  4 were gone before I finished posting the whole stack.  Small profit but it's free as far as time invested is concerned.

Thanks man, and good luck getting the word out,

-Harrison"

Harrison, the way snatch list works is you run a normal auctioneer scan and then hit snatch and a list of items will appear for you to purchase that meet your predetermined criteria. Great tips in this email so I'm going to leave it as is :)