Tips To Making Gold While Leveling

Posted by The Lost Meeple at 8:00 AM

" Hi Markco,
I was going to post this as a comment on your "Making Gold at Low Levels" post, but according to the comment system it was too low, I have emailed about this while I was doing it with the Jasper cuts being below vendor tip, but thought I would drop you a nother mail with this comment, and another round of thanks for all the tips and techniques you provide, before I discovered your blog I would have never even dreamed of making 1500g in a week on a new server.

Here is the comment I was going to post:

I did a similar thing recently myself, I was not prepared to transfer my 80 (now 85) Dwarf Hunter to a new server, and switch races to play with some Uni friends.

So I rolled a Goblin Hunter and seeing as I level a lot faster than my friends, I decided to follow the "sell everything" mantra, picked up double gathering professions (herbalism and mining) and kept a sharp eye on the Auction House for any Cataclysm stuff I could abuse.

With only 23 hours played on the main, I had reached level 26, and on my bank alt had acquired around 200 gold with a further 300 or so on the AH.

I had not played the main character anymore since, but I logged onto the bank character 3 times a day for about a week. By the end of the week I had 1500g.

Here is what I did for the most part, it's all normal stuff, but I cannot stress how important the little things were, things which I usually ignore, and subsequently wonder why I am always broke :)

Do not buy Netherweave Bags: Usually I kit myself out with 4 of these ASAP, but given Cataclysm has just come out, I was not prepared to pay 15g for them when I am used to paying 7 - 9 (or making them myself) so I went with bags I found while questing only and used the mailbox to store excess items.

Vendor Recipes: Do a loop of Orgrimmar and pick up one of each recipe, even on the non-limited ones, they won't all sell, but they only cost a few silver so one sale at 7 - 19g will pay for it all. In that week I sold roughly 1 - 2 of every recipe, none of which were below 4g. The best of these were the limited sale tailoring recipes, and the Heavy Leather Ball recipe which I sold about 2 - 4 of each day for 15g. I sold
so many Heavy Leather Ball recipes I actually ended up making a character to plant there and use the mailbox outside the store rather than run my bank alt to the shop.

Mining/Herbalism: I didn't go out of my way to farm this stuff with the main, but I did pick up every node I passed by. I found that the ore was worth more than the bars, and just sold every single piece of it in stacks of 5, 10 and 20. Same for the herbs, although I did sell mageroyal and briarthorn in singles and 2's, with Cactaclysm Horde peoples eating it all up for their Goblin Alchemists, I was making 3g per Mageroyal sometimes, but usually 1 - 1.5g

Daily Scan: I cannot stress how important this was, here are the three biggest things I made money form regularly by simply scanning the AH.

Herbs: Although the Goblin Alchemists were eating them all up, at 8am or around midnight, it was easy enough to buy up random amounts for mere silvers from players who were leveling but don't know the value of these items. As I said above, Mageroyal was going for up to 3g a piece, and briarthorn around 1.5g

Gems: Cataclysm Gems are being bought up and thrown on the AH at such a rate that sometimes I didn't have enough gold on my person to buy them all up to vendor. I found that a green gem called Puissant Jasper (or something similar) was appearing en masse for less than vendor (vendors for 9g, I was buying them as low as 4g b/o sometimes, didn't even bother bidding) I made a LOT of money this way.

Riskier, but I also managed to get some cheap higher quality gems (16g each, I bought about 7) and sold all but one of them at the weekend for 60g+, although these are wildly fluctuating in value as people level JC'ing.


Cloth: As always, lots of people levelling means lots of Cloth on the AH, Linen and Wool I was able to pick up on my main, or buy on the AH for silvers, and sell for gold. Netherweave Cloth was a good one as well, tons and tons of it being dumped as people zoom through outlands I would buy it for 3 - 5g/stack, then sell it the weekend for 9g. I went through about 50 of these no problem, crafters bought it all up at the weekend as their bags sold out, and they didn't care because the bags reached about 18g.

I found that boar meats, eggs, feathers etc weren't selling well, they certainly sold for a good price 50s - 1g each, but with so many people leveling, they were often flooded, or people were just using their own drops to level cooking (or ignoring cooking, because their mains have it at max I guess)

I also managed to pick up some odd things for cheap, like a couple stacks of Adamantite Ore for like 16g/stack, sold them for 45g/stack relatively quickly.

It pays to look out for things like that, and although obviously risky, can come through for you. Although even if I had not taken risks like this I would have ended the week with about 900 - 1000g because of the amount of gems selling for below vendor price.

In short, if a dumbass like me can do 1500g in a week with nothing more than 2 days of leveling and 2 - 3 AH scans per day (IE, a normal work week + weekend) then anyone can do it :) "
- The_A_Drain

What an excellent e-mail from The_A_Drain! It outline ways to make gold while leveling, and even while at low levels. One of the best e-mails I've received from a reader, by far. Thank you for taking the time to send it in!