I decided to do a little experiment where I used one batch post to post around 2,000 auctions live with the majority of them acquired via methods similar to my 22 steps to auctioneer and auction house viper strategies. After 12 hours I opened my mail box live on XFIRE and produced a whopping 5k gold. By the next 12 hours it was up to 8k gold and by 48 hours it was at 10,400 easy wow gold. The vast majority of these items were simple flips from both normal and cross faction auctions. I did not include an epic gun I sold for 770 gold in these sales numbers as that wasn't a typical item for me to sell. I'd say 4k of this gold came from profession manipulation (infinite dusts, netherweave bags, armor vellums, weapon vellums, snowfall inks, cobalt bars, etc) and 400 gold came from a stratholme run.
What does this mean for anyone starting out with auctioneer trying to make easy wow gold? There's hope and you don't even need professions! All you need is the simple knowledge of individual markets and how they cycle in prices during the week. Buy/Bid low, sell normal... remember? I aim for items that are 50% or lower PCT and I rely heavily on my snatch scan to help remove the 'filth' from auctioneer's normal resale scan and make my purchasing faster. I cannot stress enough the importance of building a snatch scan that encompasses as many items as possible in the game when trying to make wow gold efficiently. This is just for simple flipping, that's not even taking into account buying out items for professions to manipulate and make even more wow gold.
A snatch list of 100+ items is not uncommon among auction house gurus, what does yours look like?
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Besides being a proud American and an enterprising entrepreneur, I am also a member of the Roman Catholic Church (tithing ftl). This being s...
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Just My Two Copper's One Year Anniversary is today! So much has happened and been going on that I didn't really even notice the time...
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There’s a lot of information to sort through when bidding, buying, or posting items on the auction house. In fact it’s too much for any one ...
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Wow Crusher : How The Pros Do It As you know, our ground-breaking system WOW Crusher system was released 10 days ago to much fanfare.... -
Scott Alan Smith is a Crook! Edit: Screen shots and proof/explanation of the cookie stuffing Scott has used in the past are present a... -
The wow gold carnival for September is finally here! Sit back, relax and enjoy the epic pwnsauce that is this month's collection of art... -
This is a fascinating market that has been around since the start of the Darkmoon Faire. I only learned about it a couple months back when a...
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Shattnerhoff said... " I hate that you try and gouge people for items that cost you nothing to make. How much is enough? You can...
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"Hey Markco, I wanted to ask you about something I've got mixed up in with the greedy goblin. A guild mate of mine directed me to h...
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Perhaps you were considering 'cashing out' and calling it quits with the end of the wotlk expansion? Maybe you thought you could sel...
Players are always wondering how people can make thousands of gold in wow, I mean where do they put those materials anyway? Once you get into making an easy 8k+ wow gold a day then you really do run out of space. If you're marketing the materials as well as the crafted goods for several markets at once then you surely will end up with too much mail for your guild banks to soak up.
How do players making thousands of wow gold handle situations where they have more mail coming in than they can physically handle? It's simple really, they use one of their alts as their mail box bot. Every time there are too many items coming in they simply mail the surplus to this designated mail bot, wait less than thirty days and then mail the items back. All it costs is 60 copper and you have an extra bank slot. I don't think that 60 copper per slot is going to really effect your gold making efforts too much.
This doesn't just affect the super rich wow player either. If you aren't a millionaire in wow and you are struggling on bank space this is a great way to alleviate those concerns. I know some players that go to the extreme and don't even buy guild banks thanks to this easy gold making tip.
Do any of you use this tip frequently?
Wow Gold Making Podcast
Click the above link to listen to the famous How I Wow podcast that I did with Sean and Patrick before they ended their series. I managed to meet up with both at blizzcon and thought that they were really nice/fun guys to speak with.
The topics covered in this podcast were:
Real Life and Balance
Gold Making tips
Arenas
Inscription Strategies
Being Successful (not just in game)
I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed recording it with Sean and Patrick. It was an honor :)
As you can see from reading my blog, there are hundreds of methods that I've tried to make easy wow gold. Sometimes I'm successful but the large majority of the time I'm sifting through blunders and missteps on my long journey to gold guru status. My specialty and the thing that got me started using the auction house to make easy wow gold was flipping items. It didn't matter if the item was worth 10 copper or 10 gold, I sold them all with the same feverish dedication and insane patience. If I knew an item was worth 10 gold and someone posted 100 for 5 gold then damn it I was going to buy every single one and relist them two at a time for fifty days until they all sold. This was my bread and butter and recently I decided to get back into this strategy.
So what is my famous strategy for making easy wow gold every single day on the auction house in world of warcraft?
Buy Low, Sell Normal. That's right, BUY LOW, SELL NORMAL. You're probably thinking to yourself, "Self, WTF does that even mean?" The meaning is two fold: first, you are buying items that are under priced and second, you are selling under priced goods at or just below normal value. In essence you're presenting goods to the consumer at or below the normal price range, and if done correctly, all your flipped and posted auctions will sell.
Just how profitable is this method? What if I told you that I can bring in 5k-15k easy wow gold every single 12-48 hours depending on day of the week and my posting schedule? Sure I've had my insane days like when I posted 8k auctions and made 30k gold in a night and a half, but that's not realistic and took way too much caffeine for the average human being. No this wasn't on a weekend either, you'll soon learn that weekends are not necessarily your best days when flipping because of how quickly competition appears and mass undercuts can happen. Weekends are actually your best buying days unless of course you camp the auction house every hour then it's a nice selling time. Case in point for buying days: Saronite Saturdays.
The way I make thousands of easy wow gold every day comes down to being able to pin point not just one or two profitable markets but every single gosh-darn one in existence. It's all about experience, non stop learning, and above all: patience. My goal is to flip 80+% of all profitable auctions on the auction house, which includes any items below 50% market value that I believe can sell quickly. Some nights I will lose money because I invest so much, but that money always comes back ten fold within a week anyway.
What's the best part about the way I make easy wow gold? No one can stop me. You physically cannot stop a person from posting for too little, undercut every auction I post, or even know what I'm going to post tomorrow or the next day. I'm the auction house viper, snaking in to get some gold and zipping back out before you probably even knew I was there. I'm everywhere at once and then suddenly I'm gone again.
This concept is what propelled this blog into existence and grew it from 300 readers into the wow gold making monster it is today. I think it's time to get back to my roots, and yes I will keep experimenting but I want to write more about my flipping style and personal methods which work regardless of level or personal professions.
An excellent find by Thrim on the JMTC forums can be found here.
The gist of it is that you can stand outside by the mailbox that is attached to the auction house, press your hotkey for viewing friendly health bars (shift + v is default I believe) and then you can browse the auction house or open the mail without moving!
Pretty sweet trick and it allows you to do something while you wait for your mail box to load for those lucky enough to have that problem.
When I originally designed this aucitoneer's playground I had hoped that it would be the perfect forum to send people who had wow gold related questions which I saw every day and just didn't have time to answer in detail. At first I thought that I could just write a big FAQ section but the dynamic nature of wow and the diversity among the questions made this unreasonable. A forum seemed like the perfect way for newer users to get their feet wet making easy gold in wow without having to pick my brain to do it. It ended up being far greater than I could ever imagine, and soon even I, the gold making master, found myself learning from the forums as well!
Many have commented that these forums pose a direct threat to my gold guide. Here you have THOUSANDS of players pooling their ideas together creating incredible strategies and investigating every aspect of the game for the sole purpose of making gold. I'd have to agree that this does create an obstacle for the guide, but luckily from the onset I designed a document that taught people how to think instead of how to play directly. By avoiding the do this do that and you'll get rich quick methods of other wow gold guides I actually inadvertently designed a guide that fit perfectly with the JMTC forum.
There was another unforseen byproduct of these wow gold making forums that I never saw coming... people enjoyed writing about wow so much on the forums that they started their own blogs. I've counted dozens that have spawned from readers of JMTC and many more appear each week. Previously, the wow gold blog niche was originally filled with nothing but spammers and gold guide oriented blogs that had almost no real information on them. Now, thanks largely in part to the Just My Two Copper community and JMTC itself, there is a wide variety of gold oriented blogs which discuss real, current information on world of warcraft. When someone thinks gold making blog today they think of Just My Two Copper or a cousin blog founded by one of the forum members.
This friday I'm not here because I'm currently flying out to see my favorite resto druid. Feel free to turn the comments section into your own personal soap box for discussing your favorite ways to make gold in the game but with a twist:
What are your favorite ways to make gold pre level 50? Comment!
While on the trip I have posts pre-made for the blog but will be unavailable for emails/comments/questions/etc until I return on the night of the 14th.
I will check periodically to moderate comments whenever I have a free moment, but that's all I'll have time for.
There are so many ways to trick people on the auction house that I could sit down and write 5,000 words in about an hour on the subject. One of these 'tricks' is something I like to call the Artificial Ceiling. Perhaps someone more astute and in line with marketing jargin can reveal the proper name for this method in the comments section.
It's elementary my dear watson... first you get on a toon and post items for 200% market value. Just a couple as you are not trying to sell these items. Next, you get on another toon and post the same items for 120-150% market value. If there isn't much competition you are creating the stage for someone to come along and think that they see a great deal. Sure someone can undercut you but they also look like a great deal as well! If a new person running auctioneer or even just a noob browsing the ah sees your goods they will possibly buy them out as well as anyone who undercuts you.
Not a foolproof method but still an interesting way to make gold. I used to do this frequently with mammoth meats and it seemed to help me sell about 25% more meat when I set up the artificial ceiling. People just love deals, even if it's only a perceived deal.
If you go on the JMTC Wow Gold Forum you will find people with gold in more than 6 figures... and they haven't been playing all that long either. Although blizzard took steps to reduce the effectiveness of farming, they actually increased the amount of gold circulating within the economy tenfold with this expansion. From daily questing to leveling people now have been given fun new ways to make more gold than they will require for repairs and other minor expenses. The overall effect on the game has been simple: people purchasing expensive items on the auction house or on vendors. If the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth had existed in vanilla or even burning crusade it would of been very rare to see anyone with the mount. With the onset of easy to get gold outside of farming for hours, players can just save up from their dailies and eventually get their vendor toting mounts or gasoline chugging motorcycles.
Blizzard created this system of providing large amounts of gold because of farming concerns. Now farmers can still run around for hours making money but the margin of gold they get compared to someone who just does their dailies and calls it quits is far smaller than it was in burning crusade. With mobs dropping very specific drops per mob type and few boe epics/blues in their loot tables there just isn't much to actually farm at one time. When relics of ulduar were big you could farm seething revenants for insane profits, but now they are about as good as any level 80 clothy you farm with the tailoring specialization.
The only prevelant farmers left in the game are mining/herbing ones, using the fancy fly under the world hack that reminds me of noclipping from doom II. These farmers are awesome because they use the auction house to sell all their goods and at amazing prices for milling.
Eventhough farming was greatly reduced during wotlk the past few weeks I have seen an incredible drop in the number of materials normally farmed by the farmers appearing on the auction house. I can only assume that many have been banned or moved on to other methods of making gold.
Some players (including yourself I assume) have discovered just how to grab up all that excess gold that people have been aqcuiring this expansion with... cough... the auction house! I have to wonder though, how many farmers have learned to use the auction house? What if someone like myself were to start selling gold to gold companies? Hell I can pump out a good 10k gold profit a day with ease if I use all the tools at my disposal... what's that? $20 a day? Now imagine if I played all day farming my mats and then started crafting items for even more profit. That kind of salary would be amazing in some of the poorer countries that setup gold farming companies. The only thing holding back this kind of farmer is the shifting nature of the auction house: their profits would not always be gauranteed with some days being better or worse than others. Businesses don't like to operate that way and it would take an owner willing to gamble on the skills of his farmers to make this happen.
Would you be able to make 10k gold a day if you played let's say 10 hours a day using both the auction house and farming? You'd have to diversify like crazy and make use of every market in the game, but it can certainly be done and consistently at that.
Enchanting mats are such an awesome way to make easy gold in wow. Oh I'm sorry was I typing out loud again? I apologize for that, excuse me.
What I meant to say is that large brilliant shards are one of my favorite enchanting mats to sell and farm for that matter. On my snatch list I buy out these babies for 4.5 gold a piece or lower and I relist them at 6-8 gold depending on market value and day of the week. When I've posted all my auctions and have nothing better to do I go to old world stratholme and farm the whole instance for tons of blues to disenchant. Farming this instance is one of the oldest forms of making easy wow gold and it has been farmable by a single player since burning crusade. Every single blue in the instance becomes a large brilliant shard and there are tons of other great items to grab such as stacks of rune cloth or righteous orbs. If you don't have a dispeller for the nasty diseases and curses you can get from the mobs of this instance then you have two options:
1. Use my video to see how you can skip all the way up to the live side of the instance where righteous orbs can be farmed.
2. Bring potions that dispel the debuffs.
Many players go for Baron runs in an attempt to get the Baron's mount but do not finish the live side of Stratholme. I am the opposite: I always finish off live side with the Scarlet Crusaders before deciding whether or not I want to do the Baron's side. Regardless of whether you do either side or both, this is by far one of the easiest sure fire ways to make gold in wow. If you want to make even more profit from this place then you may want to invest in creating enchanted vellums from the mats you farm. There's a lot of easy wow gold to be made from these enchants and that's the market you're selling to anyway with the dream shards, illusion dusts, and greater eternal essences. That being said, be sure to diversify as sometimes you are selling straight to enchanters trying to level their profession and they don't want your enchanted vellums.
Patch 3.3 Analysis from Just My Two Copper
What's going to happen in 3.3? I'm sure it's on everyone's minds. If you've been checking the JMTC forums then you are aware of several major item changes that will affect the game and making gold in wow.
1. Saronite Bar -> Titanium Bar Transmute Cooldown Lifted
This has sent buyers running to grab up all the Saronite Bars and Ore that they can find in anticipation for transmuting them into titanium bars. What will this do? Decrease the value of titanium bars and all the items made from them, as well as increase the value of saronite bars. Saronite ore will also be affected and this will greatly damage the profitability of the 'Saronite Shuffle.' Infinite dusts being made more readily thanks to a recent hotfix will also help to ruin the profitability of this method. Will it still exist after 3.3? Probably, but it will not be as profitable.
2. Heavy Borean Leather to Arctic Furs
Arctic furs and 10 heavy borean leather are going to even out to the same price.
3. Rare/Epic Gems going up in value along with other with upgrades
People are going to be upgrading at an insane pace thanks to the 5 mans. Not to mention the fact that t9 will also be available for triumph badges and 5 mans will drop it. Getting 25 arena points for the daily bg will help people upgrade somewhat faster as well. Leg enchants, enchanted vellums, titanium ore and spellthreads should see huge price increases for the first few weeks of the patch.
4. Raid Consumables
The more top end raiding guilds you have the better this market will be on your server. Everything from flasks to potions to elixirs to fish feasts will fly off the proverbial auction house shelves.
5. Snowfall Ink Glyphs
Two new glyphs are appearing which cost snowfall ink. Expect the price to rise on your server for these inks. I predict that it will increase even more so than the week of a darkmoon faire.
6. Pygmy Suckerfish Flood Incoming
With the emphasis on fishing and leveling fishing thanks to the new fishing competition expect pygmy suckerfish to flood the auction house. Definitely look for some great deals on turning these into pygmy oils for resale directly or indirectly as potions.
7. Disenchanting Option
Disenchanting option is equal to greed. If you roll a 90 on De and someone with greed rolls an 89 you will win the item in disenchanted form.
8. Random Dungeon
People will run WAY more dungeons thanks to this new tool. Get ready for enchanting mats to drop like a rock with this new option. People will que for dungeons the way they que for battlegrounds, resulting in far more runs and the incentives to try this new tool will have everyone doing it.
9. BOA Shoulder Enchants
Say goodbye to what was left of the Relics of Ulduar market.
10. New Leveling Rings
Say goodbye to the amazing profits of selling low level bis rings. Look into disenchanting if the mats for these rings plumet.
For a second opinion on Patch 3.3 Analysis here is Mark from Wowzer Gold
Hello my name is Mark(not Markco :)) aka The Wowzer and this is what I have done to prepare for Patch 3.3. The obvious ones have been stocking up on Heavy Borean Leather and Borean Leather for the Arctic Fur Exchange and Saronite Bar for the Titanium Bar Cooldown removal. The not so Obvious one are stocking up on things like Pygmy Oil, Flasks, Frost Lotus, Eternal Life, Lichbloom, Goldclover, Tiger Lily and Icethorn, and that's just for One Profession. Other mats are Rare and Epic Wrath gems, Infinite Dust and Abyss Crystals, Glyphs Galore and Nobles cards. Yes, I Don't Believe the new DPS trinket that drops from the new 3-Part 5man is that much more desirably and you could always have both. I predicted the 15th for the drop of 3.3 but am quite happy to be wrong and for it to drop this Tuesday/Wednesday as the Darkmoon Faire is in Elwyn Forest that week (Yup I'm Alliance). Last but not least, Eternal Earth and Shadow for the new ammo as they will take 2 Crystalized of each for a stack of the new ammo. Massive Thanks to Marco for the guest post and all his help.
What do you think will happen after Patch 3.3 hits? What have you done to prepare? Comment!
Cooking, like every other profession has what I like to call 'sweet spots' that make leveling it difficult because materials are no longer farmed on a regular basis.
For Blacksmithing this is thorium bars, for tailoring it's bolts of netherweave (largely due to bag makers buying up the cloth), etc.
When I was going through auctioneer I noticed something peculiar that really surprised me: Burning Crusade fish going for 60 gold a stack. At first I thought it was just some fool dumping his guild bank, but after watching the market for a week I noticed that it was actually pretty active with about six sellers and obviously more than one buyer. Since the food from these fish weren't appearing on the auction house I had to assume that it was for cooking. Having leveled my only cook during BC I never knew this market existed until now!
Spotted fel-tail and Crescent-Tail Skullfish seem to be the real money makers, possibly for the 330 and 335 cooking recipes that these are required for.
Definately add these to your snatch list as they can easily sell at 2-3 gold a piece.
One of my most lucrative business areas of interest right now is none other than the arena. Getting paid 1.5-5k gold to carry someone up to 1800 for their weapon has not only been easy and quick, but also hillariously entertaining.
What I do is join someone's team and have them que me while I simply go in and lose the game (sometimes I play for the fun of it and crush some 1600 teams 2v1). Once my mmr is down to 200 points below the team I'm going to carry, I then proceed to win 6-12 point games all the way up to 1800. By the time we get to 1800 usually we are facing 1700-1900 teams and my partner has learned a thing or two which helps the odds of winning tremendously.
NOTE: The team I'm carrying and the team I tank my rating are different and have different players queing me.
So far I've carried ret pallies, disc priests, mut rogues, resto druids, resto shamans, holy pallies, and even a destro lock. It's been an absolute blast and I'm getting to play with teammates who would normally be strolling around trade chat dreaming of a chance to play more competetive arenas. By the end of the carrying session I hope that they not only had a blast but learned a thing or two.
If you are a gladiator or even a really good duelist don't just sit up at that pointless rating or mmr, tank your team and make some easy gold! Be warned, tanking your mmr too low is pointless; ie more than 200-300 points below the starting team rating of the person you are carrying.
"Hey Markco,
I wanted to ask you about something I've got mixed up in with the greedy goblin.
A guild mate of mine directed me to his main page branding me as "moron of the week" informing me that I was a moron for attempting to explain to this "Jason" on my server why he shouldn't undercut glyphs by 40% (the conversation with Flamybank, who is me).
This person would go down to 11g on ~20g glyphs that I had listed throughout the day. When I went to go check on them, I didn't expect for the price to be as low as it was. Spirestone has four players on it who habitually undercut on glyphs regardless of their price. Several others had undercut his 11g, he undercut again to 5g, and believe it or not, three others had brought it down to 3g per glyph, this particular case being the popular Glyph of Judgement. I believe he's citing his piece about inelastic demand and supply as the source for me being a "moron," because dogmatically, higher prices = higher profits = more sellers (according to his blog). This is definitely not the case on my server, as these four individuals don't seem to mind undercutting to 2 or 3g on important raiding or PvP glyphs.
My only strategy for attempting to sell glyphs in such a market defined by "geniuses" who think everyone else are "morons" is to attempt to sell them as high as possible and hope that players needing the glyphs will go to the auction house while mine are the cheapest. I do post these only at prime hours. I've had conversations with many people on the matter, particularly what they believe a fair price is for a glyph and the herb supply on my server. In my surveying, I have found no reason to believe that individuals are turned away by a 20g price tag for a glyph, nor have I found any reason to believe there is a shortage of ink supply for these four players.
I apologize for the lengthy e-mail, but I was hoping you'd be able to shed some insight on my situation. Frankly I'm quite offended to be publically listed as a moron when very few people are aware of the greater picture (my server's dynamics) and read his blog with a dogmatic knowledge of "right" and "wrong."
Thank you for your time :)
~Flamy"
It's suggestion box friday, so how would you handle this?
I'll give my response, then you guys as a community take a crack at it.
First off, they are mocking you because they are undercutting you and still making money and they really don't care how far they undercut as long as they make a sale. To them they are winners whether you whine or do not, so therefore they don't care what you have to say. If you want to win, then you need to compete with them. Start selling the two ink types themselves, armor vellums, weapon vellums, offhand weapons, cards, and glyphs that are discoverable. This is what I do and I make an easy 500-1400 gold every day.
What you posted to the person screenshotting your conversation was actually a viable way to deal with the situaion. You could also offer to buy his glyphs up every day and relist them. In the end though these players only really hurt themselves. They compete with each other down to the wire and scrape up a small fraction of the profit they could make sharing the market and diversifying. Be smarter than them and expand into the other ways to make money with inscription. Also look into all the other ways you can make money on the auction house; never ever stick to one market/profession.
It's been a long time since this blog has had a guest post (not including the countless gold tips that stream in on a daily basis from normal players) and I wanted to offer the opportunity for any gold making blog out there that would like to reach this astute audience.
Looking for quality information on making gold or even just conversation starting material on patch 3.3. Feel free to email me at freebeertomorrowonyxia AT gmail DOT com with your submission and I'll be happy to respond with an approximate date of when I will be able to display your work.
I ask for these guests posts because I understand that it is refreshing to hear someone else's opinion on making gold and it opens up more discussion as well as provide you the reader with even more blogs to dive into. There are some really high quality blogs out there with the same gold tip sharing orientation as JMTC, and I highly recommend visiting the Link Love section of my forums for a list of wow gold blogs.
Put in the comments section if you have any posts you'd like to see in the near future; which will in turn provide these aspiring authors with some material to work with.
Today I'm going to be openning my mail box live for all to see on XFIRE at 7:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.
It will be an excellent time to chat up with each other live on xfire and you can discuss what I'm selling and why. All auctions were posted yesterday between 4-8:00 PM Eastern Standard Time and will show up as having 29 days left in the mail box tab.
I expect it will take the usual 45 minutes to 1.5 hours to unload the mail box so feel free to stop in any time between 7-8:30 PM Eastern Standard Time on XFIRE with the name markcolol. I sold items from all of my professions at once except for jewelcrafting and engineering on one toon so that you could see how much money I typically make without having to switch characters.
My XFIRE link is in the side bar but for those reading on a feed, go here.
I highly suggest being intoxicated to help pass the time between mail box loads, as I expect 35-50 of them. See you tonight!
For feed readers today's actual gold making post was on Cataclysm Flasks in PVP.
EDIT: That was fun although I didn't sell as many auctions as I thought I would in the 24 hour period. Ended up with about 800 still being sold on the auction house but from the 20 minutes of openning mail I made almost 6k gold. Not too bad, I apologize to those that came late and were expecting it to go longer :(
This will be one of the greatest level 85 money makers. I highly suggest leveling up a level 80 alchemist with flask specialization before cataclysm hits.
Why? Well because of rated bg's that's why! There is one thing every pvper is going to need for group bg's and that's flasks which persist through death. This will greatly increase the value of the mats for flasks (mostly herbs and oils) as well as provide a constant stream of buyers for the market. Let's not even discuss consumables like free action potions...
Don't delay, get an alchemist today! I highly suggest getting two (potion + flask specialization) but not everyone wants to be as hardcore as me so I understand if you only get one.
Discuss in the comments section :)
There are two ways that I make gold with smelting (mining's better half) and they are titansteel bars and cobalt bars. First, I buy the materials off the auction house cheap every day as I see them. Once I have enough to make a few stacks of cobalt or one titansteel cooldown I craft the bars and sell at 75% market price to ensure that they sell quickly and I get about 20%-30% return on the investment.
Another item you can make gold off your miner with is bronze bar. These take 1 tin and 1 copper bar so check your auction house prices to see if this can also make you money.
Any other bars that you know of that will turn a profit simply by smelting them? It's not usually the case because of prospecting being so much more popular than blacksmithing.
This strategy was written quite a long time ago when snowfall inks sold like hotcakes (they still can for the faire but it's better to convert them into runescrolls and offhands now a days) and herbs were around 20 gold a stack on my server. The experiment went very well and I managed to raise the price of glyphs by several gold over the course of a month or two. Many bloggers still link to this post so I thought it needed this preface and a small update. Enjoy.
Points of this Strategy
- Glyph sellers who are trying to make gold by selling glyphs very cheap need to make up the cost of their original stack of herbs through the sale of snowfall inks. We are talking about true goblins who are camping with 2-3 gold thresholds here.
- By reducing the cost of snowfall ink the glyph sellers must raise their glyph prices or else they will lose money.
- Goblin gives up the market or moves towards a more average price of glyphs in the 5-8 gold range.
Before I explain how to defeat a goblin, perhaps I should discuss what exactly being a goblin entails? A goblin gets their herbs and focuses on selling the snowfall ink to make up for most of their herb expenses. If they sell their snowfall ink for 60-100% of the cost of their initial investment then they can sell their glyphs (using the average 6 inks per stack of herbs) for super cheap and that is where their profit comes from. This profit margin is entirely dependent on how much the goblin paid for his/her inks, but the key here is that the snowfall ink is always the linchpin for their profits.
How then, do you defeat the goblin and raise the price of glyphs on your server? I have a theory and I'm going to implement it very soon on my own server. There are currently three goblins I've found using approximately 3 gold threshold and QA2. They post a 40 gold glyph three times and if anyone undercuts they will in turn keep undercutting down to this 3 gold threshold. To defeat these goblins I've been recruiting dedicated farmers with these mouth watering prices for herbs:
10 gold a stack of lichbloom, icethorn, or adder's tongues
5 gold a stack for any other stacks of WOTLK herbs
Sounds delicious right? Well with that price I can sell snowfall inks for 7 gold and then glyphs for 1.1 gold and make a 10 silver profit (-50 silver each for resilient parchment). The only thing is... I'm not going to sell glyphs! In fact I have almost never sold glyphs (I only focus on the discovery ones), and instead sell armor vellum III's and weapon vellum III's, as well as the inks themselves.
So my plan is to focus on getting snowfall ink [EDIT: I wrote ink of the sea here by accident the first time this was posted... sorry!] down to the 10 gold range (It's going to take thousands probably over the course of several weeks, I'm currently down to the 13-14 gold range) and in a sense cut the legs right out of the goblin method. Next, I'm going to control the armor and weapon vellum markets so that they have no way to compete with my prices. They will be FORCED to sell glyphs for more in order to make any profit at all.
I like to think of it as out-goblining the goblins. What do you think of my master plan? Comment!
Many of you may know Ashe from his YouTube videos on making gold, well he's back again with a series this time... he's going to try to make as much gold as possible on a new server within two weeks. All the gold he acquires will go to his first YouTube subscriber that has apparently helped him greatly since he started putting videos up.
Here's the link:
2 Week Gold Challenge by Ashe
OK so what does this have to do with JMTC? Well I want you guys to get involved with this. Discuss it on the forums, in the comments section here, and on Ashe's YouTube channel. Get involved and see if you can help Ashe make as much gold as possible in two weeks. Who knows, maybe you'll learn something from this as well!
Good Luck Ashe!
