World of Cataclysm - Unique Gold Ideas

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

What continued to set JMTC apart from so many blogs and what made it grow throughout the past two years was its uniqueness.

I'm going to show you how JMTC is unique and then every person in this audience who is a blogger can go off and try to find their own unique take on this niche. For the standard reader I will leave links to the more unique ideas which can be found on this site for making gold. Some of these ideas have become so mainstream that you wouldn't know they came from this site originally. Some ideas just didn't have a name so I named them, packaged them and dissected them for your reading pleasure.

Some Examples of Unique Ideas

Bid Low Sell Normal
The crowning jewel of my earliest ideas on making gold. This strategy revolved around bidding on mid level items with random demand and selling them for 5000% profit. A peacebloom stack with a 1 copper bid might not look like much but it's nice when you win it and resell for 8 gold.

Bidding Times
Ever wonder when the best times to bid were? Ever hear of bidding on server restarts? JMTC was the first site to really talk about and analyze this information. I even put it into a pretty little chart.

Saronite Saturdays
Lots of players knew that there were quite a few deals saturday mornings but no one really took the time to explain why. Here's why: No one's on and all the auctions from thursday/friday are still up, meaning lots of supply and not so much demand. Same goes for Sunday.

Splitting/Changing Stack Sizes
Once again when I wrote about this there really weren't any guides or articles on how to do it successfully. Over time I've written about crystallized fire, arcane dust, infinite dust, abyss crystals, lesser cosmic essences, saronite bars, runescrolls of fortitude and much more. Buying a stack of goods like saronite bars and selling them individually since most players only wanted 1-4 was revolutionary at the start of wotlk.

Leveling Gold and Profession Funding (Guide Link)
My Gold guide which focuses on making gold while leveling as well as mastering the art of mixing professions at level 85.

Gold Forums
Finally a gold making forum where auctioneers share ideas instead of people selling gold, characters or services.

Markco-vian Economics
These ideas were in my head for some time, but after reading a great book I finally decided to put pen to paper and describe my over-arching strategy for making gold in wow. Applying these ideas to how you play should prove rather useful in cataclysm.

Blogging Carnival
The wow community, not just the wow gold niche, was completely lacking in carnivals. There was one I found which had given up years ago and I thought it was time to bring together all the other gold bloggers and make something unique. Many of these blogs have thrived as a direct result of the carnival, which means more content for you. Amazingly, JMTC's carnival is #5 on google (as of this writing) for the search terms: Blogging Carnival. That's partly because of the sheer size of these carnivals, with as many as 30 posts for each.

Supply and Demand
This post got quite a few comments because of its title but the main premise is one of those timeless truths about the wow auction house and item prices.

240k Gold in Two Months
During the slump of the final months of the expansion I not only made 240k gold in two months with 10 hours per week played, but also explained how I did it in this interview with warcraftecon.

If you think all of these ideas are unique/useful... wait until you read the cataclysm gold guide!

What Makes Markco Unique?

Prot Warrior Gladiator
I achieved gladiator as a prot warrior with a ret paladin in season 6. Some players consider this to be a gimmick, others consider it to be sheer genius. I was successful with both the shield block/crit stacking spec and the armor pen/attack power spec. For a time it was myself, Alloraan and Drek as the top dogs of the prot warrior pvp community. After enough nerfs all three of us kind of left the pvp scene and have popped up from time to time but never like we used to. Alloraan still tanks I believe and Drek is off killing stuff as arms. Of the three of us Drek was the most successful, creating the team every caster group learned to hate: African Turtle Cleave (survival hunter, prot warrior, holy paladin).

Writing for a Community
For the first time ever there's a large collection of auctioneers banding together to make everyone's life a little less boring. Before this there was a scattering of forums or articles on sites which would attempt to answer a question but the site's main focus was always elsewhere. JMTC wasn't just a journal because it housed a strong community.

Podcaster Extraordinaire
The fact that I am part of the largest gold making focused podcast and a decently sized castaclysm show (that's not a miss-spelling hehe) really helps to set me apart from being just a typical blogger.

Consistent Posting
I'm here every day at 8:00 AM for your reading pleasure. You know when JMTC's next article is coming and you know how many you need to read up on when you miss a few days. Consistency really helps to cement this site as the #1 wow gold blog. Just google "wow gold blog" and see for yourself.

Viewed as a Guru/Master
The 'gold guru' was a title I really enjoyed seeing people bestow upon me. It was earned for my knowledge in the areas of writing gold methods in an easy to understand fashion for all skill levels and my cross profession expertise. Am I a true expert in any one profession? No, not really, but I can show you how to be good at all of them and diversify your auctioneering to the point where you make consistent gold every day.

Cutting Edge Content
When 4.0.1 hit this site received approximately 9,000 unique visitors in an afternoon. It wasn't because of a special link (when wow.com links to JMTC it sees on average 7,000-8,000 hits, with 5,000-6,000 on a normal day). It was because players knew that I would be posting tips and suggestions for what to do with the most recent patch and the forums were alive with activity, seeing their largest numbers yet. Readers also responded well to my posts on the top ten items to buy for catalcysm prepartion as well as what to sell while we wait for catalcysm.

I Write So Damn Much
I write for JMTC, I write for forums, I write for emails, I write for comments, I write for youtube, I write for podcasts, I write for a gold guide, I write for guest posts, I write for twitter, I write for facebook... I write. Alot. I also know that the first time I write something is the worst. The second is usually only slightly better and the third time is when it starts to actually look like it didn't come out of my dog's mouth. You don't need to be verbose to write well however, it's actually harder to try and be concise. Writing on twitter will help you to be concise and get your point across.

Always Changing
Sometimes change is good and other times it's bad, but either way JMTC is always changing. That could be the way the site looks, new functionality or anything really. I'm always looking to change and improve my ideas, writing style and the site experience for you.

Why Does Uniqueness Translate into Success?

There's only one you and your ideas are only your ideas. By creating a consistently unique range of content, your readers then get a sense of anticipation when going to your blog. They wonder to themselves, what unique viewpoint will Markco bring to the latest gold making news? Since JMTC is a unique community, readers also come here with a different and far more powerful question: What will the thousands of brilliant minds at JMTC have in store for me today?

Your Turn

For your own blog, I want you to think of what makes you unique and then focus on writing from that angle. Are you good at pve? Do you have a certain profession you really enjoy? Are you good at giving small, useful tips that players can run off and use right now? Do you have a unique spin on making gold, any original ideas that have set you apart from the competition? Are you creative and like finding unique ways to make gold? Time for a brainstorm to improve your writing style!