Insanely Busy

First off, I'd like to apologize for a lack of posts lately. It seems like as soon as I get a project started, other projects get in the way. But no more excuses.

Today I'd like to point the finger at keeping yourself organized. A big part of playing the AH, as well as motivating yourself to keep playing the AH, is being organized and orderly. I used to be frustrated not knowing which bank what items were on, who to mail what items to, etc. This is especially important when you are dealing with large quantities of different sorts of items, as most AH players are. I used to log in and out of many toons to find items, and it was extremely frustrating. Because playing the AH can be stressful for some, you want it to be as seamless and smooth as possible.

My favorite organization AddOn is.... drumroll please..... ALTOHOLIC. Altoholic, while being great at things like tracking money, /played time, and professions without logging into your other toons, it has a little easter egg that I find extremely useful. Altoholic adds a section to item tooltips that shows how many of the item you have. It breaks it down into items in the mail, in the bank, in your bags, on the AH, and of course, a total. It also shows you a character-by-character breakdown of which items are where.

Altoholic can be found here: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/altoholic.aspx

Also note that you must log in to all of your characters, and open up all of their professions and banks to allow Altoholic to properly scan and save the data.

Supplying The Raider, Part 3: Enchants

So you picked up your new Sword of Epic Win from Trial of the Champion, and you want to get it up to snuff with the latest beastly enchants. Uggh. All these crystals, dusts, and essences, and on top of that, you have to find an enchanter! But no, you can buy a Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Berserking, right off the Auction House! Wouldn't you do it?

Most WoW players would. The hardcore of the hardcore, those who need all the beastly enchants, are willing to pay a few extra gold to save a bit of time. This provides you with an opportunity: Use your enchanter to either buy mats off the AH or disenchant AH-acquired greens. Turn these into some of the best-selling scrolls, especially best-in-slot ones for the

min-maxers among us. These will need Abyss Crystals, which have dropped sharply with the release of free epics from ToC. Find ones with a good profit margin (Once again, Value - Mats Cost+AH Cut, factoring in time spent) and post 'em during peak hours. Another good time is after raids end, as raiders will be eager to enchant their new phat lewtz. As usual, focus on the 20% of endeavors that make up 80% of your profits, and you can maximize your moneymaking potential.

Get out there and try it.

(Also, apologies for the lack of posts recently, I haven't had a lot of WoW time, and with Brewfest out, the 15 minutes a day I have are spent on my dailies. Gotta get that Beerboy title!)

Supplying The Raider, Part 2: Grub!!

Many players will pay for the extra stat boost from buff food. While most raids have one or two people who bring Fish Feasts, some raiders will pay an extra 25 gold for 10 more attack power, 20 more spell power, stuff like that. While there is little room for profit if you buy both the Northern Spices and the meat, if you can get a direct supplier of either, or both, you can profit. Try to find someone who doesn't want to deal with the AH, and is willing to miss out on an extra few silver for a quick sell. Trade chat is a good place to find a supplier.

Back to the cooking. When you have found what food is best, check the prices. You don't want to cook 200 Firecracker Salmon if they aren't worth anything. On the flip side, you don't want to make 200 of the most expensive food on the Auction House if its not going to sell. Try to diversify at first, in order to find out which ones sell the best. Make 5-10 of each and post 'em right before raid time. Of those that sell, find the one with the highest profit margin. (Profit minus mats cost or value of time spent farming). And make these. You can make as many as you'd like, but don't plan to post them all at one time. Try stacks of 5, 10, and 20. I'd recommend selling the stacks of 20 at a slight discount (per food). For Example: If you sell 5 of X food for 5 gold, try selling 20 of X food for 17 gold. People will see these posted at a lower cost per food, and are likely to buy them. I repost after around 75% of my posts have sold. When you get undercut, DO NOT cancel your auctions if you have more items in your bags! Post the ones you have under the undercutter's posts. In the event that there is a mad rush of purchases, you want to have auctions up. If you get into an undercut war and have run out of items to post, cancel the highest priced ones you have, repost, and work your way down from there. There is a limited time when these will sell well, take advantage of this by staying on top of the competition for this short period.

In summary:

~Highest Profit Margin among Best sellers

~Find a direct supplier for meat or spices

~Post in stacks of 5, 10, or 20 at a slight discount

~Post before prime server raid time (usually around 7-8pm, your server may vary)

~Undercut Undercut Undercut!

Supplying The Raider, Part 1: Flasks

One way that I make money is by supplying the raider. Specifically, providing Flasks of Endless Rage to the hardcore WoW players. Every weeknight before raid time, I buy mats for Flasks of Endless Rage (1 Frost Lotus, 7 Lichbloom, 3 Goldclover, 1 Enchanted Vial) in bulk. Usually, the market allows for a small profit (between 3-10g per craft of 2 flasks). However, most of the profits comes from proccing flasks. Each proc is an extra 2, 4, or 6 flasks for free. Thats between 60 and 180g of free profits on one proc. I usually sell around 20-25 flasks per raid night, but there is definitely room for more sales. Make sure you are posting during your server's prime raid time, which is usually between ~6 and 10pm. If you keep at it, you will sell out without a problem. Remember, even if you craft 40 flasks without procs, you will still make off with over 150g in profits.

Looking for a way to make more profit before procs?

Find a direct supplier of Frost Lotuses. I can get my lotuses from between 5 and 10 gold cheaper than the AH price.

Sorry for such a short post, I'm swamped with work for tomorrow, and still getting over my cold and fever. Good fun.

Khurse

Khurse Out!

I've been busy with work and a high fever/cold combination. Posts will resume tonight as soon as I get through the stack of papers I have sitting on my desk. Thanks for bearing with me!

Khurse

Market Watching

Pay close attention to the markets. There are situations where, using professions, you can take advantage of huge changes in price. Today for example, Frost Lotuses were dumped on the AH at 7g under the normal price. I quickly bought em' all, got the Lichbloom and Goldclover at regular prices, and made a bunch of Flasks of Endless rage. Even selling these flasks at normal price, I have a 7-10g profit on each one. Don't flood the market, sell em' 4-5 at a time, over a day or two during raid hours, and they should all sell no problem. It just so happened that on the very same day, no one else had Flasks of Endless Rage posted, so I ended up selling em for a good 8g over market each. Thats 15-18 profit on each one, on 26 of them, thats 390-468g profit total. One night, one item. There are many options for this to work across the AH, all the markets, any profession. Just keep an eye out. Try to build up a list of things to check every day. After a few weeks, you will know the schedule for different items, and can begin to take advantage.

Tarou WoW Guides

Today I'm feeling a bit sick. Rather than write my own post, I'm going to recommend that you all visit one of my favorite sites on the net. Tarou WoW Guides is full of both text and video guides for leveling professions AND using them to profit. The videos are high-quality, the audio is great, and the methods are extremely easy to follow. The profession-leveling guides are very good, they are easy and inexpensive on top of being simple and fast. As an added bonus you'll find some miscellaneous guides, such as 4 Man Flame Leviathan and a general Auctioneer how-to guide.

You'd expect to pay for this quantity and quality. The best part about Tarou WoW Guides is that its entirely free. Get ready to start using your professions for profit.

Check it out at http://www.tarouwowguides.com/

Professions

A majority of my money comes from my professions. I leveled with two gathering professions, herbalism and skinning. At 80, I switched from Skinning to Mining. Now, most of my money comes from Alchemy and Inscription. If you are either new to the game or are leveling on a new server, you should pick up a profession as soon as you can. The earlier the better, and leveling professions as you level your character is a lot easier than leveling professions at 80. If you have professions, you don't necessarily have to drop them to pick up the professions I talk about. You can make money with just about any profession. If you want to chose a new profession, whether it be because you don't enjoy your profession or because your servers economy doesn't have room for you to use it to profit, you can. I will have posts on what professions to choose and why. In my opinion, you have two options if you're leveling a new character. Either two gathering professions, or one gathering profession and one production profession. As far as gathering professions go, I'd recommend Skinning and something, rather than herbalism and mining together. The reason for this is because you cannot track both minerals and herbs at the same time, so you won't be able to find both as easily. There will be posts later with more details about crafting professions.

Here are some pairs that work well:

Jewelcrafting/Mining

Blacksmithing/Mining

Alchemy/Herbalism

Inscription/Mining

Tailoring/Enchanting*

There are others, remember to be creative and not always choose the cookie cutter combinations. If you have money to sponsor your professions, you can do whatever you want to, because you wont have to worry about supplying the production profession.

*The reason two crafting professions work well here is because you will get mats for tailoring from leveling as drops from humaniods (cloth), and this will allow you to "produce" mats for enchanting in the form of green items to DE. Tailoring isn't great for money, but Enchanting is pretty good. I wouldn't really recommend this combination, but if it benefits your class or playstyle, it is still a viable option for moneymaking.

More to come!

Starter Funds

Heres the worst case scenario: Your level 10. Your either on a new server or you just picked up the game. You don't know anyone on your server, and you don't want to rely on a loan shark for funds. You know what you want to do on the auction house, but you don't have the money to do it. There is a solution. If you don't have any money whatsoever, vendor everything in your bags (Be sure its no more than there are slots in the buyback tab of a vendor window, and don't worry, you may them back later. If you do this, be sure not to log out, it will clear the buyback tab.) Pick up auctioneer. It looks complicated, but we're gonna start with one part, you can ignore the rest. In your Auction House window, you'll find a Searchers button. Click it. You should see a window. Your going to want to find the "vendor" section in this window. In the box for buyout limit, put the amount of money you have. Don't worry about spending all your money. Auctioneer will only show you items that you can buy and then sell to a vendor for more money, meaning you will get your money back, and more, guaranteed. Then, press search or scan, depending on your version of Auctioneer. Soon, you will get a list of items. You may only be able to purchase one or two of these items. If this is the case, run to the mailbox, pick them up, and sell them. You will have more money, and can then return to the AH for more. You can pretty much clear all the sub-vendor items off the AH, and make a bit of starter cash. If you vendored items, be sure you go back and buy them. This method does not yield tons of money, so if you have other methods, this is probably not worth your time. As I mentioned before, this is for those of us who don't have any funds to start with. Now you should have a small stash to start buying items with.

The Beginning

Welcome to the blog! Your probably here to begin or improve your World of Warcraft character's financial status, or because your already successful, and are just looking for other ways to make money. I was there. I still am. One very important thing to remember is that you can only make so much gold using one technique. Any market has its limits, so you need to diversify to make big bucks. I personally enjoy using some of the more hidden and unique techniques to make money in WoW.

I have two characters and a bank alt. My main is a level 80 Troll Hunter (For the Horde!) with 450 Mining, 450 Herbalism, 500+ Fishing and 450 Cooking. My only alt is a 72 Death Knight (never took the time to level it past there, he's mainly for professions) with 450 Elixir Mastery Alchemy and 450 Inscription. I also have one Bank character who deals with selling the many relatively low value glyphs I sometimes produce, and other odds and ends. This character also does some buy low-sell high stuff, but I do less of that now that my professions are bringing in more cash. I rarely farm, so Herbalism and Mining are essentially useless, but I havn't chosen new professions yet. Its always good to have Herbalism in case a certain herb that I need for alchemy or inscription is insanely overpriced.

The server I play on (which will remain a secret) has a very inflated economy, from what I can tell. Most items range from slightly to much higher in price than on other servers. Because I don't farm, it doesn't really affect me. Most of my techniques can still work on your server because of one simple "rule": when the cost of materials goes up, the cost of the final product generally follows. However, its always a good idea to check your server's prices before following my advice word for word.

As much as I'd like to, I can't spend my entire life on the internet. I'm going to try to post as often as possible, and regularity may vary due to my schedule.