Mats = 100 gold and Price = 175-300 gold.
Oh one more thing, Gevlon completely puts off spell threads in his post as being a worthless way to make gold with tailoring since so many people try to do it. This couldn't be further from the truth. The profit ranges on spell threads (including the rares) is often 20-50 gold a piece and the brilliant spellthread (requiring reputation to learn) can sell for 100-200 gold profit each.
Diversity is the key to every profession. Sell cloth, sell bags and sell threads to avoid putting all your eggs into one basket like Gevlon tends to do. It's also important to improve upon the manner in which you go about collecting materials for your crafting professions. Be sure to explore every avenue for obtaining mats before stating that a market is not profitable on your server.
Inscription Part Two
While we're on the topic of fail Goblin strategies, I recently received an email from yet another player who has taken my advice on how to deal with undercutting goblins in the inscription market... buy them out using the knowledge of which glyphs are the most popular against them.
"Hi Markco!
Ive been a reader for a few months now and you've made me a great deal of gold, thank you!
I wanted to drop a line to you a while back about how to deal with deep undercutting of glyphs, goblins, and these terrible 5g and under glyphs. Finally I figured it out; Why go through the hassle of trying to find suppliers, spending hours crafting and mailing and positing, when I can just buy these under priced glyphs and post them at a more appropriate price? So every once in a while I do my /getall and purchase every glyph 4.99.99 and under, then repost them at my threshold.
Nothing but win... all day long. I haven't crafted a single glyph in weeks, and its been nothing short of miraculous. The attached screen shot isn't my crowning achievement (purchased at 99s and sold at 75g) but it does show that a little persistence and patience will pay off every time.
Thanks Markco!
Rob from New Jersey"
Rob continues...
"This is a perfect example of your buy low sell normal mantra that's worked wonders for me. I've never really invested into flipping and I'm not great at market control, but I've managed to make my money easily enough.
-Rob"
The first 20 or so comments on this post have been very interesting, here are my thoughts on them (too big for a comment):
It takes 45 seconds to make a netherweave bag so that's 75 bags per hour. A bag should make at least 3 gold profit each, but on many servers you can post at 48 hours and make 6-20 gold profit.
If you count afk crafting time (something most goblins completely write off as not counting towards gold per hour) at a minimum of 3 gold profit you will make 225 gold in an hour crafting 75 bags. If you make the more normal value of 12 gold per bag then you will make 900 gold per hour. Also, the demand for these items allows you to post for several gold over the lowest person at 48 hours and still sell quite often.
Netherweave cloth that goes below 6 gold a piece could be purchased by anyone and turned into netherweave bandages to be vendored for profit. I doubt cloth remains at all times at 4-5 gold a stack on his server, it sounds like a complete lie made up to simply write off netherweave bags. Every day I find people posting netherweave cloth for cheap from leveling in outland, but that doesn't make it the 100% PCT value in auctioneer nor does it stop me from buying all the cloth I see below 7 gold a stack. NOTE: I messed up here, it takes 40 cloth for the 20 bandages so it's really 3 gold per stack. Even still, seeing 4-5 gold netherweave is ridiculously cheap, you may want to consider crafting and disenchanting items from the cloth.
Bag markets MOVE quite a bit throughout the week. One day netherweave bags could go from 20 gold to 10 gold and frostweave bags could go from 40 gold to 70 gold. Materials tend to reflect this and go up and down to about the cost of a bag. The trick is hitting the peaks with bags and buying mats during the valleys.
With regards to frostweave bags and infinite dust, on some servers the dust you create on your own can be sold for more gold than you would get back using it on fostweave bags. However, getting back to diversity, it is better to not put all your dust up and instead sell some dust in the form of bags in order to get gold back faster from your initial investment. If you want to talk about absolute best use of infinite dust well enchanted vellums are the real winner but it's far better to diversify and make gold from multiple markets.
Rob continues...
"This is a perfect example of your buy low sell normal mantra that's worked wonders for me. I've never really invested into flipping and I'm not great at market control, but I've managed to make my money easily enough.
-Rob"
The first 20 or so comments on this post have been very interesting, here are my thoughts on them (too big for a comment):
It takes 45 seconds to make a netherweave bag so that's 75 bags per hour. A bag should make at least 3 gold profit each, but on many servers you can post at 48 hours and make 6-20 gold profit.
If you count afk crafting time (something most goblins completely write off as not counting towards gold per hour) at a minimum of 3 gold profit you will make 225 gold in an hour crafting 75 bags. If you make the more normal value of 12 gold per bag then you will make 900 gold per hour. Also, the demand for these items allows you to post for several gold over the lowest person at 48 hours and still sell quite often.
Netherweave cloth that goes below 6 gold a piece could be purchased by anyone and turned into netherweave bandages to be vendored for profit. I doubt cloth remains at all times at 4-5 gold a stack on his server, it sounds like a complete lie made up to simply write off netherweave bags. Every day I find people posting netherweave cloth for cheap from leveling in outland, but that doesn't make it the 100% PCT value in auctioneer nor does it stop me from buying all the cloth I see below 7 gold a stack. NOTE: I messed up here, it takes 40 cloth for the 20 bandages so it's really 3 gold per stack. Even still, seeing 4-5 gold netherweave is ridiculously cheap, you may want to consider crafting and disenchanting items from the cloth.
Bag markets MOVE quite a bit throughout the week. One day netherweave bags could go from 20 gold to 10 gold and frostweave bags could go from 40 gold to 70 gold. Materials tend to reflect this and go up and down to about the cost of a bag. The trick is hitting the peaks with bags and buying mats during the valleys.
With regards to frostweave bags and infinite dust, on some servers the dust you create on your own can be sold for more gold than you would get back using it on fostweave bags. However, getting back to diversity, it is better to not put all your dust up and instead sell some dust in the form of bags in order to get gold back faster from your initial investment. If you want to talk about absolute best use of infinite dust well enchanted vellums are the real winner but it's far better to diversify and make gold from multiple markets.
25 comments: on "Tailoring and Inscription Goblins Misconceptions"
Cold said... August 9, 2010 at 9:28 AM
Reading Gevlon is Like a Guy Reading Cosmo. It's not that you use his information for yourself; it is just reading how the other side thinks.
Anonymous said... August 9, 2010 at 9:52 AM
I think that Gevlon was more saying that netherweave bags are not worth the time that it takes to make. He says that you make a profit of about 3g/bag. It takes about 45 seconds to make a bag. So you're making about 240g/hr making bags. To him, that's not worth it.
I often craft netherweave bags, but only if I'm not going to do something else, simply because I can't actually play during that time. I have to stand there and watch a bar go across the screen. While it's an easy way to make money, I'd often rather be grinding out dailies as at least then I'm actually doing something.
While you continually put Gevlon's strategies down, you just have to realize that he values different ways of making money than you do. He tends to go for less time invested and so doesn't think as highly of grinding. Both work great, it all depends on what you want to do.
Tolgrim said... August 9, 2010 at 9:57 AM
"(...)and if you create your own infinite dust for the imbued bolts that will lower the cost of production significantly."
While I agree with the rest of your post, this is a (common) misconception.
When you do the saronite shuffle for cheap infinite dust, you create value - you could just sell it, for example.
Nevertheless, the cost of your imbued bolts does not really sink, they are not more profitable suddenly, because you could just sell them, as I said before.
You often hear something like this from other players: "i farm my own mats, so they do not cost anything if i make them to [glyphs...]"
This is the same mistake. Behind all of it: opportunity cost.
In real life (for internal controlling purposes) I would calculate the cost of renting my office, even if I own it and don't have to pay anything. This is because I could lease it and create profit just by doing this.
DarkKnight said... August 9, 2010 at 10:23 AM
Tbh, I stopped reading Greedy Goblin for the gold-making part. It is just too much trying to be right nowadays. Personally I am only using a part of tailoring to make some side money (in case inscription fails to deliver for a week... haha, what a good joke ;)), and I do so by making netherweave bags for around 8g and selling them for 24+ g. Seems like a nice profit even when factoring in the time it takes to craft them. And that time I just spend alt-tabbed to surf the internet anyway.
On to part 2: Rob, or someone else, how do you buyout all the glyphs below a certain threshold? Is there an easy to use option somewhere, as I don't really feel like buying several hundred glyphs one by one to be honest.
Anonymous said... August 9, 2010 at 10:27 AM
Though I tend to agree with you that the Goblin's statements were a little overly strong, it feels to me like you're falling into the same trap of doing the same thing on the other side. It's silly to say that making Frostweave bags or spellthread does not work. But it's no less silly to say that those things will net you a profit of X-Y, just because they do that on your server or another blogger's server. It's all based on the supply and demand of your own server, and it might be completely accurate to say that making Frostweave Bags or Spellthread is not a good use of your time on *your* server.
These particular examples are sensitive for me, because my primary AH activity is tailoring and inscription, and ours is a very competitive market. I do sell spellthread, but at margins of 3g-20g (for epics) only, and have a lot of competition even at that rate. For glyphs, I'm happy to sell them at 5g each, as are too many others on my server. I could try buying them all up and reselling them higher, but the supply is far more elastic than the demand. My fallback is still at 69.99 but I haven't even been able to post at that (much less sell at that) in months, posting every glyph in the game twice a day religiously. And there's typically a minimum of 10-15 of each type of glyph that would have to be bought out to reset the market.
Supply and demand. The strategies that are pure gold when you're one of two or three in the market are not pure gold when 5 other people are already doing the same thing to you. The Goblin/Stokpile way of thinking (keep competitors out by keeping prices low) is no panacea, but is certainly not always as easily counter-able as this example makes it look. Ultimately, if you have enough tough competitors in the market, he who will work for the least gold per hour (and the most hours) will set the market price and everyone else will just have to find the best way they can to pick up the scraps.
John Galt said... August 9, 2010 at 10:28 AM
Don't forget to mention that Gevlon can't speak english! His posts are impossible for me to read. A little hint goblin boy...learn to walk before you run...learn to read and write before you blog. Just a thought
Shadowstep said... August 9, 2010 at 10:54 AM
Something I need to get into is the frostweave bags, it sounds stupid, but I originally chose to skip them because it felt like I wasn’t making much profit. But I was looking at it on a percentage sense, I was making frostweave bags for 30-35g a piece with the prices on my server and selling them for 40-45, and it was less of a profit percent than the netherweave bags I was selling for 7-15 (usually 8) at the production cost 3-4g a bag. Of course one frostweave is the same profit as 2 netherweaves for the slightly more crafting time.
Anonymous said... August 9, 2010 at 10:55 AM
Decent post. It would be 'good', if it were not such an obvious sniping at another blogger. Please stop doing that. It makes it uncomfortable to read.
Back on topic:
My tailor is currently working on the rep for the Brilliant Spellthread, but in the meantime, I average about 250g for my Sapphire spellthreads. ~30g Frozen Orb, ~30gx2 Eternal Fire, ~5gx4 Iceweb Spider Silk... 110g average cost (I won't pay more than those listed prices for the materials if I am buying them, and often can get the orbs for less than 20g - then I'll use them to get the fire).
I'm hoping the Brilliant will do as well, if not better. (In the meantime, I've actually been selling the rare quality versions for ~40g each.)
Frostweave bags are DIFFICULT to sell on my server for more than mat cost, but I manage it now and then. It takes some persistence and more time than a really casual AH'er would want to invest, I think. And a lot of 'lost' deposits. I won't, usually, sell my bags for less than 90g.
I do produce my own Infinite Dust, and that may lower 'production' cost, but using it in bags is usually a fast way to lowering my overall profit. It is FAR more profitable for me to sell the infinite dust, which averages 3.5g each on my server.
Oombulance said... August 9, 2010 at 11:05 AM
Spellthreads always seem artificially high in cost (on my server) compared to the raw materials.
From an outsider it seems like a mega profitable niche, much like twink 'chants (in terms of final cost vs mats).
Keep the post rolling bro :)
Cody Hess said... August 9, 2010 at 11:43 AM
A few unrelated comments:
I sell Netherweave bags 20 at a time for 19g with a 48 hour post. They always eventually sell at that price for an 11g profit (even when there are cheaper bags sometimes ???).
I'd rather tip another specialty tailor for making cloth for me than pay 150g to respec. I have a spellfire friend that would happily accept 50g to craft 100 spellweave (200 cloth).
Tailoring: RP clothes (tuxedo, haliscan, wedding dress, mageweave shirts) and Frostsavage Battlegear - 200% profits and oddly high selling on my server.
What method is used to determine the most popular glyphs? Server market knowledge? I know the two major glyphers on my server do this constantly (we have a good relationship) but I'd be afraid to buy and relist crap glyphs that wouldn't sell at any price.
Cody Hess said... August 9, 2010 at 11:47 AM
"Decent post. It would be 'good', if it were not such an obvious sniping at another blogger. Please stop doing that. It makes it uncomfortable to read."
I disagree. Someone needs to call out Gevlon on poor advice and it might as well be the other major gold blogger. Gevlon's advice and tips are often excellent, but limited in scope and combined with a fierce insistence that his is the only way.
I do like what he's doing with the pug guild and find it way more interesting than more articles about inscription.
Anonymous said... August 9, 2010 at 12:49 PM
"Gevlon also neglected to even mention netherweave bags, by far the easiest and most sure fire way to make gold with tailoring."
Gevlon's first paragraph, linked in your blog:
"... No, I'm not talking about netherweave bags. That's a nasty grind, you buy lot of cloth for 4-5G, craft bolt of cloth, then buy thread and craft the bag just to sell for 8-9G. No thanks."
Assuming you actually read the post (I believe you did but how could you forget the first paragraph?) I think you missed his message. He's talking about gold per hour, not absolute profit. He doesn't deny the profits from Netherweave Bags or spellthread, simply dismisses them as a waste of his time. He could be wrong about that, but your post fails to prove him wrong on without gold-per-hour analysis.
And you assert that Frostweave Bags sell above material cost if you "understand market cycles." How about showing where Frostweave Bags can sell, thus proving him wrong? Or shall we take your word for it that prices will be high enough at some point in the cycle -- not an obvious conclusion at all.
So I agree with your conclusion about diversity. I'm sure there are plenty of ways for Gevlon to make money in markets he's dismissed as not being worth his time. But you don't get to draw that conclusion by misrepresenting his point of view and failing to provide any useful data to back up your claim.
Tacoman said... August 9, 2010 at 12:51 PM
You're just including entirely too much sniping at Gevlon here. I don't like the guy either, but it just seems petty now.
He posted the specific prices he finds the mats for a netherweave bag at, states the prices the bags sell at, and states that it's not worthwhile to him. It's also a market which is easy to get into without much effort, so LOTS of competition can be encountered, and I'm sorry, but there *IS* a limit to the demand on a server.
Different servers will have different amounts of farmers, crafters, and sellers. You know this and post about it often. Not accepting the prices someone else states just smacks of being a jerk.
I expect this comment won't make it through your moderation process, as it doesn't state that you're awesome, but what can I expect? None of my previous comments have made it through, even though I was posting something helpful. Maybe it was a "secret" of yours that you didn't want the general public to read? Pathetic.
Anonymous said... August 9, 2010 at 2:32 PM
Selling FW Bags on my server is profitable if you consider that the materials were received from SShuffling the dust and poaching the cloth under market value via regular AH watching....
but it isn't profitable (the majority of the time) compared to straight up selling imbued frostweave. I guess it just depends on the ratio of levelers to expensive bag-buyers.
Zamboni said... August 9, 2010 at 3:08 PM
You can make your gold/hour numbers be whatever you want by just counting some of it as "AFK time". You can get some really impressive numbers when you don't add in crafting, posting, or mailbox time. Gevlon counts the crafting time for bags to lower his gold/hour from them, but leaves it out of his glyph numbers to boost his numbers there.
Bags are easy. I buy cloth in bulk Auctionator and QA automails it to the tailor. At night, I queue up 100 stacks of cloth to bolt and go to bed. In the morning, I queue up 100 bags and go to work. When I get home, I let QA feed them into the AH. I probably have at most 5 minutes of my time invested in a batch of bags, and will probably get 1000-1500g in profit from it. It's hard to beat 18,000 gold/hour.
Frosty said... August 9, 2010 at 3:27 PM
I have the same problem
there is a guy posting every glyph at 4g each, 3-4x of them
but i haven't been so luky since he just raised his price from 3g to 4g and now from 4g to 5g i've stopped buying for a while, i don't know if that was the "right thing" but if you buy him out every time he can just raise his price by a bit every time and get more gold from you
Unknown said... August 9, 2010 at 8:16 PM
I have to ask...I can't see how you would make gold buying out all glyphs under 5g. Just this weekend, I posted about 20 glyphs on Medivh (not good ones, Dispel Magic and Devastate and the like) for 20 SILVER each.
They didn't sell. I have been trying to unload the glyphs that I made leveling up for several months now...to no avail (hence, the 20 silver attempt). I am close to vendoring them for bag space!
My server is Medivh. Is it just a messed up economy? (BTW,,,,Primal Might...no buyers at 20g....).
Uzume said... August 9, 2010 at 10:01 PM
I dont know what kind of server you play on, but on ours the Spirit/SP spellthreads VERY RARELY go over 120g a piece. Usually they are around 90-100g
Sean said... August 9, 2010 at 11:00 PM
First off, Markco's post is correct. The way to make money off tailoring is by selling the entire spectrum of the profession - spellthreads, bags, etc.
Two comments which stand out to me:
You can make your gold/hour numbers be whatever you want by just counting some of it as "AFK time". You can get some really impressive numbers when you don't add in crafting, posting, or mailbox time. Gevlon counts the crafting time for bags to lower his gold/hour from them, but leaves it out of his glyph numbers to boost his numbers there.
This was the first impression I got when reading Gevlon's analysis.
I have to ask...I can't see how you would make gold buying out all glyphs under 5g
You must realise that every server is different. For example, 5g in the US servers are worth more than 5g in European servers.
Anonymous said... August 9, 2010 at 11:08 PM
On Caelestrasz, Netherweave bags rarely sell for more than 6g50s
The cloth is 4-5g a stack. By the time you add the rune thread and listing fee, its very hard to justify the crafting time of the bolts and bag lately for such a minimal return.
FW bags sell for withing 1g of mat cost.
Spellthread is lucky to break over 150g.
Occasionally you'll get a break and get 200g, but on bigger pop servers, some of these gold profit figures that get listed are wishful thinking
(+35sp+12stam/spir threads are about 16g)
Sean said... August 10, 2010 at 1:35 AM
I forgot to post this.
Netherweave cloth that goes below 6 gold a piece could be purchased by anyone and turned into netherweave bandages to be vendored for profit
I believe this is incorrect. More accurately, it's netherweave cloth that goes below 3 gold that can be turned into bandages for profit.
Shadowstep said... August 10, 2010 at 7:42 AM
@Frosty
Its one strategy that Marco has that I dont participate in, because when i see that someone bought me out and re-posted I immediately re-craft and undercut him, especially since he already paid for me to get these glyphs
Its one of the very rare occasions that gelvon's idea works, when there is someone that will always mindlessly buy you out. But usually someone (like me) will undercut to thier threshold, (3g 50 for me) with a single qa post,
Markco said... August 10, 2010 at 10:32 AM
@Azzur you are correct, my bad on that :(
Anonymous said... August 10, 2010 at 11:31 AM
On my server, Frostweave bags have not been a profit since release. Here's a post to Undermine Journal showing the past prices to mats cost. It is more profitable and quicker just to sell the mats.
http://theunderminejournal.com/item.php?realm=A-Doomhammer&item=41599
Markco said... August 10, 2010 at 4:20 PM
@Anonymous Sigh a lot of people just don't get it. The average price of an item is not what you want to shoot for. You should aim to buy the mats at their lowest and sell the bags at their highest. Not aim for the middle price of both, obviously that is going to favor the materials.
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