Before I get started with the article, I want to say thank you to everyone who prayed or showed support in other ways when I went to the hospital two days ago. I'm still having a difficult time but the hard part is over for now. I am feeling better and obviously good enough to put a post out for you guys and girls!
The problem with making gold for most players is not that they are incapable of doing it but rather that they are not using proper problem solving techniques when faced with decisions pertaining to making gold. What happens in most of these cases is that the player freezes and is unable to make a decision. He or she is unable to become a problem solver and find ways to make gold because...
- The player is afraid to make a mistake and lose gold.
- The player is afraid that their experiences are inadequate for making a decision.
The best way to overcome fear is with knowledge and empowerment, so the way I try to help players learn to make gold is to show them just how smart they actually are through excersises in exploring their server's auction house.
For example, here is a list of wonderful strategies for making gold which cost you almost nothing and universally have a very high return on investment (that means you should go do them because they are easy and will make you lots of cash at any level and on any server).
- Bid on mid level profession items and relist for 100%-130% market value.
- Buy items from vendors like jeweler's setting or vanishing dust and list a couple for far more than the vendor price.
- Sell services such as portals or cooldowns (for most cooldowns you are better off supplying your own materials and keeping the cooldown for yourself, but using it now for fast gold while you are learning is ok).
- Modify items such as greater celestial essences and sell them in a different form (lesser celestial essences). It is almost always more profitable to uncombine an item but there are a handful of cases where you are better off combining (sometimes large heavenly shards follow this rule which is good because you can't unbind them).
- They can make gold by investing intelligently.
- They can learn to avoid flooding and sell goods properly.
- They can learn to price appropriately.
It is easier for most players to make gold when they are not afraid, and so removing fear through reasoning and empowerment are the keys to the gold guide being so successful amongst such a diverse audience.
Part of removing fear is increasing knowledge of a subject area, and it is for that reason I would like you all to try out The Warcraft Journal for free. Simply go to their page and sign up for the free trial which will cost you just one cent, and you will instantly gain access to all past copies of the magazine as well as the most recent article. Some of The Warcraft Journal's best articles are the gold making ones (hence my recommendation) and it doesn't hurt to toss in some interesting information on pve and pvp either right? Check em' out, you have nothing to lose and it's fun to browse through all the articles for free.
4 comments: on "Are You Afraid to Lose Gold?"
jimmyolsenblues said... January 14, 2011 at 9:46 AM
I agree its important to realize that everyone is going to make mistakes. That really is the best way to learn. Early on I bought two six's of chaos and I had no idea what they were. Then I was stocking thorium ore and wow changed the drop rates. Before cata , I thought to stock mithril but that was a mistake too. But overall I learned by leveling up every profession but engineering. I had 60k gold in Oct 09 and now I have over 700k. So just know everyone makes mistakes but the game over time is designed to create gold and use that gold to buy things in the game. I have friends who only raid or only pvp, and can't stand that I gold..they think I am using hacks and tricks..I can spend hours, opening mail, relisting , crafting , farming , using cross faction auction house work. You can't get gold capped in a day , but every day you can learn something about the economy of warcraft so long as you are willing to spend the time.
Markco said... January 14, 2011 at 12:15 PM
Nice point rachael, I love reading your comments because they are well thought out and good for all skill levels. (WHY AREN'T YOU BLOGGING YET?!)
@Shameanei You can ask warcraftjournal, my understanding is that they have to charge you one cent some how for the newsletter and I don't know if they take paypal. You can contact them they are very quick with responses.
Gertz said... January 14, 2011 at 12:32 PM
I think its important to let people know that they are going to make mistakes, but give them the ability to think through their mistakes and figure out what the root of it was.
Now when Cata dropped I was in between my wife and kid moving to a different state and a few other personal issues. I had stockpiled a bunch of stuff that should be listed the day of the expansion dropped and then some things that would be more valuable as the weeks rolled on and new characters were being leveled up.
I was able to get the initial stock up but didn't get to log in for a few weeks and missed my window with 70% of my stockpile.
Had I thought about it I would have known that I would be out of town for a bit and should have skipped stockpiling certain things because by the time I got back I had missed my window since the wave of new characters had out leveled that group of items.
The thought process is whats important, from here on out I wont make the mistake again unless an emergency pops up...as long as you learn something form your mistake I think you break even.
Smudger said... January 14, 2011 at 5:10 PM
We all make mistakes, its how you respond and move on from them that counts. To a degree we are all afraid of losing Gold one way or another but the more you use the AH and other gold opportunities the more comfortable you become with your decisions.
One bit of advise I would give is to know your markets, if you are going to move into a specific one then do some research on it. There are so many great sites, forums and blogs out there and doing your research will always pay dividends in the long run.
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