Many long-time readers here are at the point in their gold progression where they can focus on lucrative, high-payoff gold making ventures like the recent stockpiling and selling of goods for 4.3. But what if you're just starting off making gold? Either you're too low level to max professions or you don't have much capital to invest?
Well, the new Darkmoon Faire has some options for you! One of the new features is the weekly profession quest. I took my main character to the Faire and figured I'd do the profession quests just to do them. I quickly found some roadblocks to quick completion: I had to leave the Faire and return to Stormwind to purchase supplies.
So this led me to thinking, why not sit and sell the reagents needed for the quests? I gladly would have overpaid for them in order to save the trip back to a city. Not all the professions need items from a town, but here are the ones that do:
Tailoring
1
Coarse Thread, 1
Red Dye, 1
Blue Dye, sold by the tailoring supply vendors. Ask a guard for tor the location of the Tailor trainer in any capital if you aren't sure where to go. The base cost before discounts is 10 copper for the thread and 50 copper for each dye, or 1 silver, 10 copper for the group.
Inscription
5
Light Parchment, sold by the Inscription supply vendors. Ask a guard for tor the location of the Inscription trainer in any capital if you aren't sure where to go. The base cost before discounts is 15 copper per sheet, or 75 copper for the group.
Cooking
5
Simple Flour, sold by the Cooking supply vendors. Ask a guard for tor the location of the Cooking trainer in any capital if you aren't sure where to go. The base cost before discounts is 25 copper per flour, or 1 silver, 25 copper for the group.
Leatherworking
10
Shiny Bauble, 5
Coarse Thread, 5
Blue Dye. See Tailoring, above, for information on the Coarse Thread and Blue Dye. Shiny Baubles are available from fishing supply vendors. There's actually
a fishing vendor on Darkmoon Island that sells these, but some people might not bother looking. If you skip the Baubles, you'll need 3 silver for the thread and dye. If you purchase some Baubles to save your customers the hassle, you'll need another 5 silver, or 8 silver total.
Alchemy
5
Moonberry Juice, sold by Innkeepers. Stop by your favorite inn to get some. The
base cost before discounts is 20 silver each, or 1 gold for the group.
Once you have the materials, park yourself at the faire and advertise in General Chat (/1 will start typing in general chat) that you have materials for these 5 professions. When I was playing around with it, I found it most helpful to play off the convenience factor, and generally sold supply packs for 5 gold across the board. At worst, that's still 4 gold in profit for each pack.
I didn't stay long, because I had other things to do that were more profitable, but if you don't have the capital or professions to do those other things, this is a great start. One particularly useful message I was barking was: "Tailoring, Inscription, Cooking, Leatherworking and Alchemy quest items for sale! Turn 5 gold into 16, get 4 tickets and 5 free skill points in your profession!"
Don't underestimate how much gold people are willing to spend to avoid the hassle of gathering these materials themselves. You still have a couple days to give it a try, but chances are most of the player base that is going to do the quests are already through them. But keep this in mind for the next Darkmoon Faire as a way to make some start-up capital!