This article has been written by Ashley. Please leave a comment if you'd like to see more articles from this author!
When trying to make vast amounts of gold in WoW a lot of people talk about the following things:
- Buying and selling at the right time (i.e. buying when mats are cheap, selling when supply is low)
- Diversification (i.e. dabble in all professions and selling a large variety of things)
- Predicting the market (i.e. stocking up before a major patch)
However, one thing is often overlooked when it comes to making gold, and that thing is patience.
Patience is the difference between big and small profits. If you buy when materials are cheap (whatever that may be) and have the patience to wait until the supply is low, then you are due some much bigger profits.
Let me give you some examples. On my server I know plenty of people that "do the shuffle" to buy ore cheap, vendor all the gems but keep carnelians and inferno rubies (possibly keep orange and purple rare gems) but vendor the rest. With the massive drop in ore price this is indeed profitable, on my server obsidium and elementium ore hover around the 25G per stack price, so there is indeed descent profit to be made from this.
Buy some ore -> shuffle -> vendor -> cut gems -> list on AH -> quick win.
From a 5k investment this can easily yield 1-2k return in a 24 hour period depending on the market.
However, let now give you an example of what I do with a little patience.
Buy a load of ore when the price is cheap. I know the market on my server so I set myself a target of 25G per stack of elementium ore and 27G per stack of obsidium. If on any given day there isn't any ore at that price, I simply don't buy any. On other days there may be 500 stacks available, in which case I will buy them up. I then do the usual prospecting, but instead of vendoring the uncommon gems for the "quick win", I craft them all into rings, send them to my enchanter to disenchant and sell the enchanting mats.
Enchanting mats have the very nice benefit of being very cheap to list on the AH (only 1 silver per stack). So I list all my mats at fixed prices for 48 hours (hypnotic dust at 100G per stack, GCE's at 30G each in stacks of 10, and heavenly shards at around 100G each). This is often higher than the materials that are currently available on the market, but remember I'm patient, not here for the quick win. The result is that I may not sell any mats for a couple of days (when the market is flooded) but then I'll wake up one morning and find I've sold 100 stacks of hypnotic dust, making 10k. Whereas all those impatient people before me were listing at 40G a stack for the quick win I will continue selling enchanting mats at around the amount I think they should sell for. When my supply of mats gets a bit low, I just delve into some of the ore which I have bought when the price is right. This allows me to have a consistent supply of enchanting mats, as well as consistently high profit margins.
One day I actually came online and saw I was the only one on the entire AH selling hypnotic dust! At which point I cancelled all my auctions and doubled the price to 200G a stack - they still sold!
Currently I am not selling many cut gems because the market on my server is flooded, infernos are around 30-40G each, and the rest are little over 10G. Whereas many people are still frantically buying ore and cutting gems to make very small profit margins, I am stockpiling with the view to large profit margins in the future. I will begin selling cut infernos at around 100G each (which will happen soon if you're patient) just before and after the 4.2 patch.
In conclusion, quick win = long term loss - be patient and you will make more gold, guaranteed.
Ash
5 comments: on "Patience is a Virtue"
Skyfangs said... July 2, 2011 at 3:12 PM
Well I honestly do like this tip, but mostly because i can relate. Instead of with the ore though i will actually buy abyss crystals for 30g or less a pop and will actually hold them until either the cosmic essence of infinite dust market is dried or way too expensive(300g a stack of infinite dust).
At that point i will start shattering and then i will list dust for 5-6g each and essence at 10-12g each. Eventually I will get undercutted, but it might be by someone selling 2-4 stacks...which is nothing. In the end this is how i do that market.
As for why people were buying and vendering the other uncommons(I assume this article was written before patch 4.2), is because they are also considering the time it takes and even the lack of a disenchanter. When you craft rings and send them to your disenchanter(if your jc isnt an enchanter like mine)then you are also using time and there was another article written by a person on JMTC that explained about the importance of time...sure im not speaking about 13 xmute alchemist, but the fact remains that to some people with limited time it is just not worth it to craft and DE massive amounts of stuff.
Overall I love the article,although personally I apply it differently then with shuffling. Anyways before I make my own blog post full of grammar errors in this comment section I give it a thumbs up for the general idea of it all. Hope your not taking this as criticism and actually a compliment.
Ambreya the mage said... July 2, 2011 at 5:00 PM
Love it! Especially since GCE's have jumped from 30-60g prior patch, to 100-150g each after patch :) Would love to hear from her again :)
Nigel said... July 2, 2011 at 11:57 PM
The subject and post are fine but I do have a comment on the web design.
Can we please move the advertisements to a different box besides the main post? Very annoying and distractive. Really don't care about looking up backgrounds on folks.
Ash said... July 3, 2011 at 4:04 AM
Thanks for the comments, and Skyfangs yes i do take that as a compliment so thanks :)
p.s. I'm a guy :)
Wearepo said... July 22, 2011 at 6:03 AM
Ash I'm impressed, didn't know you had it in you to write so well =) you know I'm gonna be stealing your market right? Nah just kidding, I've got my lovely inscription gem doing well for me now ^^
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