Beginner's guide to making money.

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Beginner's guide to making money.

PostPosted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 12:17 am

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Ozone
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As of 8June08, I sat down, took on board a few suggestions and rewrote the guide. I had posted it in it's original format on Allakhazam on 6June08 and was requested by the admin to make it a wiki. So, I did. here's the revised guide:

==Moneymaking 101 for New Characters==

While levelling, money is often scarce though very required. I put together (pieced together) this guide for new, first time WoW players on how to get some dosh. I'm sure there's a lot of addendums which can be made to this, as well as a lot of advice from seasoned moneymakers, it is in no way concise and complete, but, you can make a CONSIDERABLE amount of cash this way as opposed to simply selling items to vendors, and in some form or another it is utilized by many a WoW player.

This guide begins with the assumption that you already have a main character running about, if you're truly new to the game, you need to make your main character first, then...


==Make a stockbroker==

Make an secondary character (an 'alt') and immediately run the nearby quests to get to level 5. One he/she is at level 5 don't bother with any more quests.
Your main objective now is to get your alt to the nearest big city with an auction house (AH). Auction houses are not located in all towns/cities, but are located in the major ones (Stormwind, Ironforge, etc...) If you need to, simply ask in the chat channel where the nearest location of a city with an AH is. When you find the location, run for it. You may die along the way, but don't worry, respawn and keep running. Don't stop to kill anything (unlees you want to) as you will no longer level with this character in the near future - he/she is going to be a go-between for you your main character and your money.

Arrive at the city, have a dance if you like, then go say hi to a guard. Ask the guard where to get 'enchanting' training, then go get it (thats why you need to be level 5 - it's the the minimum level requirement to train professions). As per why you need it, you'll see later. Also, while you are at the enchanting shop, buy a 'copper rod', 1 'Strange Dust' and 1 'Lesser Magic Essence'. Then, open your enchanting skill and enchant the 'copper rod' so that it becomes your 'runed copper rod' (aka magic stick with feathers on it) - this allows you to make full use of the enchanting profession. Now, head outside and ask another friendly guard where the AH is, go find it, and then go find the mailbox closest to it. Your alt will spend his existence (at least, for the time being) running between the two of them. For now, position him/her near the mailbox.

Once you're set up with this, log out your alt. All the hard work is done.


==Set up your supplier==

Go back to your main character. If you don't already have two collection skills (skinning/mining/herbalism), take two up. Make sure 1 is skinning and the second either mining or herbalism. For skinning go find and buy a 'skinning knife'. For mining go find a buy a 'mining pick' and a 'blacksmith hammer'. Herbalism needs no special tools. The collection skills are the big moneymakers of the game at early levels - you simply skin/mine/gather, gain skill levels, and sell anything you collect for profit.

Now, play your main game, Cry havok and release the dogs of war! As your main runs about on his/her quests, skin, mine, and/or gather everything you can.
Hold onto most everything, do not sell items to any vendors (aside from the gray items, which are common and worthless - these you can sell).
When you get to an area with a forge (look for the dwarves, a blower, or a fire somewhere in town (usually at a blacksmith's), use your smelting skill (comes with mining) to convert your ore into bars (if you chose mining instead of herbalism).

When your main eventually gets to a mailbox, mail all your collected items to your alt. Note: As you play you'll begin to learn about what's worthwhile to mail to your alt for sale and what you should simply sell at a vendor. Until you figure this out, assume that anything that isn't listed in gray is worth a shot at profit.


==Now, play the market==

This becomes your Donald Trump part of the game. Sign in your alt, get your mail, then run with all his/her goodies to the auction house.
Browse the auction house for the goods you are about to sell and note the prices - you can do this by opening the 'browse' tab on the auction house panel and right click the item in your bag (its name will appear in the item field of the AH window, saving you typing), then hit the 'search' button in the AH window. Look at the competition's prices for the item you wish to sell, then create auctions for your items undercutting the competition by 5-10%. If an item you are selling is not on the auction house (for example a certain weapon or piece of armor), search out something similar for reference and undercut that price by 5-10%.

Most items like skins, leather, ore and bars you can put up for 12 hours on any day of the week, resting assured of a sale, as they are items required by many players to advance their skills. But, when you put up any green or blue items for sale try to put them up for sale on a Friday with a 48 hour limit on the auction. Why? Because green and blue items are not 'needed' items, they are 'I want that' type of items, and there are many more casual players online and shopping the auction house on Saturdays and Sundays for 'want' items.

When all of your auctions are created, run back to the mailbox and wait for either the money from your successful auctions or the next mail from your main.

Note: There is an add on program out there called 'auctioneer' you may eventually want to look into which helps with auction prices, and can be incredibly useful, but it does have a tendency once in a while to give you a price way off current market value. The best method is to scan current auctions to get a current value idea.


==So, why the enchantment profession on the alt?==

Every once in a while you will find you have a green or blue item which just doesn't seem to be selling. If it doesn't sell after two postings, it probably isn't going to sell at all.
As an enchanter, you also have the ability to 'disenchant' the item, which breaks the item down into its original magical components which have just about a 100% sell rate.
Note that this setup will not last forever as, at some point or another, your main will be sending your alt items which are too high in level for him/her to disenchant, but, at that point, which is a ways off, you should be familiar enough with the game to know how to compensate for it.


==A couple of bits of advice if running this scheme==

If your limited on bag space, you also have the bank nearby to store any green items for weekend sale.

As you start pulling in cash, consider investing in larger bags for your alt. This allows you to store more items for weekend sales and cuts back on running back and forth between the auction house, the bank and the mailbox, which can get a bit frustrating.


==And, whatever you do...DON'T EVER BUY THINGS FROM THE AH!==

You're the one playing it for profit, not falling prey to the money pit it is. I can't imagine how many seasoned players would tell you this. Those green/blue items that you may come across and want so badly are the world drops from other players who are also trying to make a profit. Did you just hit level and there's a great piece of level 12 armor at the AH? Avoid the temptation. Why? Because you're now level 12 and items like that will be dropping for you.

But note, there are two feasible exceptions to this rule, which are right here...


==Things to buy from the AH ;)==

This is the first feasible exception to the DON'T BUY ANYTHING FROM THE AH rule. While scanning the auction house for the competition's prices, keep your eyes open and buy anything which is underpriced. For example, if you are looking to sell 'item x', lets say you scan the auction house to get an idea on price and find 8 'item x's' at 50s each and 1 'item x' listed at 10s, immediately buy the one selling for 10s. Then post both of your 'item x's' at 40s each. There's some good money to be made this way. Your expenditure is 10s, you profit is 70s. I've sat once or twice and played this game for an hour or so with a considerable profit made at the end.

This is the second feasible exception to the DON'T BUY ANYTHING FROM THE AH rule. You may want, at some point, to use the AH to advance your alt's enchanting skill while still making a profit. Here's how. Go to the AH and bid on the lowest priced low level green items. Disenchant them. Then take the magical components that you recovered and re-list those on the AH for a bit of profit. This may take a few trial and error runs until you begin to become familiar with the items, their components and their relative values, but it does have potential to net some decent (but not great) profit.


==A few bits on finding miscellaneous cash==

If you visit a vendor and he/she has an item in limited stock (shown by a number in parenthesis, e.g. 'Potion: Major Rage (1)'), BUY IT! These are the equivalent of 'rare spawns' for vendors. My auction house alt character, alone, can make quite a bit of money in just under an hour by running about town, buying every rare vendor spawn, then immediately putting them in the Auction House. For example, whenever you stop in a town, go visit the local enchanting guild and buy out enchanting mats such as 'strange dust' and 'lesser magic essence' as well as any rare recipes they may have. These periodically renew at the vendor and sell for a few silver each for the dust and essence, and a few gold each for recipes, BUT, at the AH stacks of dust/essence may sell for 1g+ and some recipes go for up to 15-20g.

If your main is in the Ashenvale area, run south to the building just north of the lake. There you can buy cooking training books for 70s each, I've been selling these on weekend auctions with a 100% buyout at 2g50s.


==Finally, what if the items you're receiving are too high a level for you to disenchant?==

Its relatively easy (at the low levels) to correct this, but, be aware that at some point your alt will not be able to level his/her enchanting any further and will hit a roadblock (but can still function as a money go-between). Anyways... run on over to the enchanting shop and buy a recipe or two along with any 'strange dust' and 'lesser magic essence' that's in stock, or if you are buying them out as mentioned in 'miscellaneous cash' above, hold a stack or two of each aside for yourself. Train your new recipes. Now, open your enchant window and find an enchant in your list which will allow you to level (listed in red, yellow or green). Lets just say, for example, you have an enchant (listed as green) to put +1 Stamina on gloves. Run off to find a shop and buy a few pairs of gloves, then enchant them with the +1 Stamina. With each pair of gloves enchanted, your skill increases by 1 (till that enchant tops out (it turns gray)). Then either give the gloves out as gifts to level 1's (if you feel charitable) or, better yet, drop them in the AH for sale - after all this guide is about making cash.


==Resources and thanks for help in writing this Wiki==

Please note that this guide came about from many posts here at Alla, info from my guildies, and from experimenting a bit. My thanks to all the advice, critiques, and suggestions. From the SSX I'd like to thank Magdelena, lili, undrin, FlyingDanish, and Padisher. From Alla I'd like to thank Wordaen, ohmikeghod, ArtemisEnteri, Miskreant, mikelolol, bkhovde, PentUpAnger, cafeenoftheazurestorm, and YJMark. Their suggestions and opinions were considered and incorporated into the writing of this Wiki.
Last edited by Ozone on Tue Jun 10, 2008 3:48 am, edited 2 times in total.
"Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" George Bush, Jan. 11, 2000

PostPosted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 5:07 am

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Ozone
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Bumping for the addendum. :)
"Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" George Bush, Jan. 11, 2000

PostPosted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:10 pm

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Magdalena
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Two things worth adding in here...

1. The auctioneer beta has a tab called appraiser... use it to refresh for current items so you can see suggested price alongside what's up on ah at the moment. It's currently a little buggy though, so you may have to do /reloadui a couple of times while putting a bunch of stuff up.

2. The vendor rare items can be profitable, but be careful of doing this too much as it's not always so and they may take a while before they sell if at all. Spawn times on these can also vary from once every few minutes to once a day. Knowing that can be very helpful in determining which ones to buy when you see them.

3. Play the AH. This one is a bit trickier... and will pretty much require something like auctioneer. It's also a risk as you're basically playing the in-game stock market. Watch items on AH, if you see something posted for lower than it's usual, buy it and wait for the price to go back up then post it back up at the higher rate. Many items have huge fluctuations, the more they're used and farmed, the more the prices fluctuate via supply and demand. Likewise, if you're very lucky, you can sometimes find items posted for less than what they sell for to a vendor... someone else's stupid mistake of not knowing their value is your instant gain... buy it and vendor it.

4. Use your non-gathering professions to their max potential. These often allow you to turn something non-refined or a lower level that is currently flooded and selling cheap to a more valuable item. Tip: Money here is never turning it into armor/weapons or things commonly used to level the profession. If it takes more than one non vendor item, chances are slim to make money by buying those items off of AH.

5. This isn't as much for making gold as it is for saving it... if you want enchanting put it on a clothy and choose cloth crafting as your second skill or have another toon that's leveling leatherworking or blacksmithing at the same time. As you make armor/weapons to level cc,lw, or bs, get them to your enchanter and de for items to level enchanting. www.thottbot.com will give you a good idea on which ones are best to make for the enchanting mats you need. This saves time/money as you only have to farm or buy items for one profession instead of both.

Re: Beginner's guide to making money.

PostPosted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 8:08 pm

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lili
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Ozone wrote:
Major bonus is I got a recipe (Transmute Life to Earth) for 3g40s and sold it almost instantly for 50g.
you got really lucky on this because who ever bought it probably thought that it was earth to life. earth sells for much much cheaper than primal life does and there's very few transmuters that wants to transmute life to earth to lose money to sell on the AH. But another person's stupidity is somebody's lucky day.

Once you get to lvl 70 you'll find that the fastest way to make money would be fast instance runs always take an enchanter along for these when ever possible the enchanting mats probably will sell for the most if you don't need it. And if you got a high lvl enchanter right now might want to think about buying up voids hint hint.
Babydolly Frost Mage 70
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What do you mean my halo is lopsided, it's balanced perfectly on my horns.

PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 4:16 pm

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undrin
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Great information Ladies and Gent. I have to agree with it all. I have been doing this for quite some time and seem to be making enough money for all my toons.
Xbox One: Auravil come and visit sometime!

PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:46 pm

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When i was leveling my mage to 70 i had herbalism and mining at around 90, didnt have the patience to level it as it takes the most time out of all the gathering professions. By 40 i had around 230g, 60 i had 1500, by 70 i had 3000. If you're rolling a caster class then you can easily have around these amounts while you're leveling. We are less gear dependent, therefore require less money towards it. When i hit 60 i was still using sm blues merely because i couldnt find anything better or if it was, cost too much! Stingieness is the key to success!

P.S. Taking enchanting is good for a while while leveling if you have the ability to get runs through instances. You make lots of money from mats later on and after 40 or so if you want to you can level it up so it's useful at 70! from 58-70 in outlands you can get around 100+ arcane dust + prismatic shards and planar essences! ah!

And if you dont have enchanting from 58-70, save all your green drops, arcane dust sells very well and chances are most of your stuff wont sell. Quest greens are often on par or better than boe greens.
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 3:09 pm

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Ozone
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Bumping for addendum II
"Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" George Bush, Jan. 11, 2000

PostPosted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 9:12 pm

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lili
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good ideas to make small amounts of cash when you are not 70. at 70 you are better off with instance runs or dailys for some serious money. I usually end up with over 200g and a bunch of high end enchanting mats. Note these runs are only worth it if there's no wiping involved. Of course i eat though that much gold in one night of raiding *sigh*. I still manage to keep it in the positive even with the 200g a week of respecc costs. another thing if you have an epic flyer making that skill herbing is probably one of the best incomes you can find. raiding nights for guilds usually mean mass buyouts of herbs for those that didn't have the time to farm for it during the week. as long as the price is reasonable you'll have no problem selling them. they generally sell better than pots due to people wanting to have discoveries and procs. only exception is probably mana pots they sell well no matter what. and since injectors stacks in 20 that's all i keep now a days.
Babydolly Frost Mage 70
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I didn't fall from grace, I dove.
What do you mean my halo is lopsided, it's balanced perfectly on my horns.

PostPosted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 2:46 am

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Padishar
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Thx for this run down Oz.
I think your run down is quite valuable to those new to playing and in need of funds.
Sorry I missed this somewhere along the line and stickied it now.

Quick correction though, this 'alt' you speak of to do the storage, auctioning and disenchanting has to be leveled as well. Disenchanting items have level restrictions, so you can't just make a new low lvl character to do it all anymore. Bliz nerf enchanting so low lvl's can't do all the work anymore unfortunately. So it might be better to simply instruct those new to the game to pick the right money making professions right off the bat and level them while they are leveling instead.

Good guide all around though, GJ.

PostPosted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 4:31 am

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lili
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Padishar wrote: Quick correction though, this 'alt' you speak of to do the storage, auctioning and disenchanting has to be leveled as well. Disenchanting items have level restrictions, so you can't just make a new low lvl character to do it all anymore. Bliz nerf enchanting so low lvl's can't do all the work anymore unfortunately. So it might be better to simply instruct those new to the game to pick the right money making professions right off the bat and level them while they are leveling instead.
i believe he's only buying enchanting mats not disenchanthing them himself. you cannot have an enchanter who isn't lvled best to take enchanters on runs with you there's plenty of enchanters to go around. you can also save greens to be de'ed by enchanters if you need them done i'll be happy to de for you.
Babydolly Frost Mage 70
Pocky Protection Pally 70

I didn't fall from grace, I dove.
What do you mean my halo is lopsided, it's balanced perfectly on my horns.

Re: Beginner's guide to making money.

PostPosted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 11:05 pm

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Padishar
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lili wrote: i believe he's only buying enchanting mats not disenchanthing them himself. you cannot have an enchanter who isn't lvled best to take enchanters on runs with you there's plenty of enchanters to go around. you can also save greens to be de'ed by enchanters if you need them done i'll be happy to de for you.
Ozone wrote: ...Make an alternate character and immediately run him to the nearest big city with an auction house (e.g. Stormwind, Exodar, Ironforge, etc). You will probably die along the way, dont worry, respawn and keep running. Don't stop to kill anything as you will not level with this character, he's going to be a go-between for you and your cash flow and will never leave the city you station him in. When your alt gets to the city, ask a guard where to get enchanting training, then go get it, you'll see why later...

...Hold onto these items, do not vendor them (this also goes for any extra drops you get from required quests and any green items). When your main gets into a town with a mailbox, mail all these collected supplies to your alt...

...The reason for taking the enchantment skill - every once in a while you will find you have a green item which just doesn't seem to be selling. As an enchanter, you also have the ability to disenchant, which breaks the item down into its original components, which have just about a 100% sell rate...

PostPosted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 11:40 pm

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lili
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his addendum says differently though, i just assumed he didn't change his old post and just added to it. i'm also sure you can't train enchanting at lvl 1 unless blizz changed it i'm pretty sure you can't train anything as a lvl 1 and must lvl to 5 before professions can be learned.
Last edited by lili on Fri Mar 07, 2008 11:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Babydolly Frost Mage 70
Pocky Protection Pally 70

I didn't fall from grace, I dove.
What do you mean my halo is lopsided, it's balanced perfectly on my horns.

Re: Beginner's guide to making money.

PostPosted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 11:43 pm

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lili
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Ozone wrote:
Whenever you stop in a town, go visit the local enchanting guild and buy out enchanting mats such as 'strange dust' and 'lesser magic essence' as well as any rare recipes they may have.
Babydolly Frost Mage 70
Pocky Protection Pally 70

I didn't fall from grace, I dove.
What do you mean my halo is lopsided, it's balanced perfectly on my horns.

PostPosted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:14 pm

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Ozone
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Yep, didn't change old post, I'm running this on the fly as I'm also learning a few things along the way. My AH alt (lvl 19) is leveled up in enchanting to a minor extent - mainly to disenchant low level items that my main encountered early on in his career of face-smashin (and low level alt toons are gathering now). Though the AH char can no longer disenchant many items, I still run him about town buying various class specific goods (note I'm still on a learner with this realizing the different rares in different cities) before running to the AH. Understand the requirements on skills now, so will add in a 'take this alt character and kill wolves for 20 mins until...

With the addendums spawning as I learn (wait, they're not spawning, I'm writing them), and with this being stickied, I'll get up off my arse next week (have my board exams this week, so no time for thinking outside of rote memorization) and sorta coagulate the gop which is starting to, well, coagulate into gop, and mold it into a reasonable and readable singular post.

And though I know I'm infallible, I request anyone with any more tips or suggestions, please let me know, so I can scorn your arrogance of questioning me and...oops. Serious - any suggests or opinions more than welcome and will be incorporated.
"Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" George Bush, Jan. 11, 2000

PostPosted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 3:49 am

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Ozone
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Highlighting as I finally got around to writing this proper. Please fire off any advice or critique. :) Oz
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 12:31 pm

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A few things..

A) Your bank alt doesn't need enchanting any of your alts or your main or even someone elses character so long as they don't mind - can do that for you.

B) The deeper into end game (be it pvp, or pve) you go, the worse gathering skills are for you on whichever character you're going further with, compared to skills that bring unique benefits: Weapons/Armour/Trinkets/Gems/Enchants/Items/Misc.
The best raiding profession right now for 25mans is leatherworking - by a very very long way, followed by whatever skill is most applicable to your gear (tailoring for some enchanting for others, engie or jewelcrafting, etc).
These trade skills can be used to abuse the market too there is no reason to 'farm' if you can play the AH game (though you will have bigger profit margins if you do the whole process yourself - the actual amount of profit you can potentially make only depends on how much capital you can afford to put into any endeavour in the AH -> If you imagine you control the entire Crimson Spinel Market and dictate what prices the gems sell at you can imagine it's quite profitable same can be said of herbs, but you don't need to be able to 'create' or 'farm' these items to do this, you simply buy out the cheaper ones (all of them) and put them back on for an inflated price.

Another intelligent thing is (for example, S4 is announced -> Coming, 24th June) to stock pile enchanting mats/gems until a new pvp season comes out or herbs for new pve content (sadly not much left in tbc to do this but it'll apply to WOTLK too).

I mentioned before in a previous post that dailys were an excellent way to make gold.
Well, I still do them (on occasion, if I need any cash) these days 25 dailys takes me 2 hours/character @ roughly 300 gold it's comparable to gathering professions.

"Saving" Gold is also more valuable than "Making" Gold, in a market where Gold will only fluctuate so much minimizing repair bills or bills for consumables and such are another great way to find yourself better off, as well as not wasting gold on comedy items..

At any given time the three most valuable markets will always be:
Herbalism (as a rule this is the most stable and therefore easiest to exploit with a large amount of capital).
Jewelcrafting (this is perhaps the biggest fluctuating market - especially if your server doesn't have the vendor, it stabilises a BIT with it up but not much).
and Enchanting (sits between Herbalism and Jewelcrafting).

Typically speaking they're in the order mentioned for market value though JC often peaks well above Herbalism during season starts and often approaches it's value at server maint (new arena gear ahoy + farm content for raiding guilds at the start of the week).


To quote someone you may never have heard of :P
"Everything is worth what it's purchaser will pay for it." - Very important for wow markets, having personal experience with both the Manno and the Outland markets, there is a practical ability to corner, monopolise and dictate prices on pretty much every and any given market.
It's also worth it to note that the Chinese Gold Farmers will sell items direct if you can talk to them.
If you can, they will often sell cheaper than on the AH for Ores and Herbs, which you can then put up for further profit.



Edit:
Oh right.
A little word of warning, if you do become hyper-successful at this, and it can be enjoyable to do, some of our guildies have made +50k/week now (season starts), and have been given warnings/temp bans.

You're not allowed to completely rule the AH apparently.
"Then, to hide their frailty, they hurt those who are kind.
I whisper farewell to this ugly world and dance nimbly with brilliant wings of red."

PostPosted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 3:22 am

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Ozone
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Heya QD!

Agree with ya, and am working many of those angles myself, though still in a learning curve. Thanks for the feedback!

In regards to the guide:
I put it together as a beginner's guide for those who don't have a 70 and are rolling (soz old D&D terminology sticks) their first character. Chances are they won't have a guild initially (and they may well get into a guild of jerks, unwilling to help till the 'noob' proves themself). Note the link is a wiki and not SSX specific.
So, that's the sense it was written in - a first tooner (levels 1-20 or so) needing to build up some cash with no experience or guild. I offered my advice on the best way to do it (imho). By the time they outgrow their alts abilities, they should have enough of a grasp of the game (and advice from guildies, if they found a guild) to compensate.

ALSO, ALSO, ALSO!
As an AH player, I'm MAJOR interested in the SSX that are making 50k+ per week and the strategy and timings they're using! SSX members being banned due to too much profit is EPIC!
Can you please summarize the strategy and let me know who's doing this so I can fire off a PM to them (I know a lot of SSX don't post often). I'm willing to do the write up and post it here for the rest of the WoW SSX to share, no worries!
"Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" George Bush, Jan. 11, 2000

PostPosted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 5:02 pm

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Unless you got an EU account it might be hard to fire of a PM. If I acutally work at getting cash I can pull in about 30k a week with a full week of raiding (5 hours a night 4 days a week). Provided the raiding is not progression or is progression and I have all of my consumables farmed up and ready to go and repair bill covered. Of course dailies is def part of that, the rest i get from selling off things i got while doing the dailies and selling my JC and enchanting skills. Now raid kills gives a lot more cash I can acutally make out with 100g or so on a night of raiding depending on how fast we go. This is probably playing about 4 hours or so a day on top of the raiding. Basically once you get to 70 gold just kinda of flood in so I usually put it on the bad burner. If I really want to I can buy epic fliers for every single one of my 70's with plenty to spare. But as qd said saving is more of a key than getting. repairing on progression raids generally can go to about 200g a night and thats if i dont have to respec back and forth like i usually do.
Babydolly Frost Mage 70
Pocky Protection Pally 70

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PostPosted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 1:32 am

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QuantumDelta
Posts: 1051
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2004 5:51 pm
Location: Bristol, England.
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It's really about cornering a valuable market and it'll be different on every server.

Our server has an insane number of guilds throughout the Sunwell -> SSC range, so flasks sell like hotcakes, the guy that plays our AH the most basically pushed everyone (and I do mean *everyone*) out of the supreme power market and just abuses that, the mats are somewhat cheap (very, compared to pure death - the alternative (@10 less spell dmg sup power is a bargin)), and sells it at a 'reasonable' price, the price is not insanely high but he sells in such bulk that he gets loads of throughput, and with an elixir master (my warlock >_>) doing the crafting for him he gets even more bang for his buck.

The other two tend to abuse Jewelcrafting (rare designs from MH/BT pre-sunwell (they're now vendor buyable at exalted with SSO) + gem abuse.

It also helps that our guild has access to a few horde accounts so we can buy low and sell high across factions (*Bannable afaik but blizz never bothers with it :P).

If Hearts of Darkness sell for 100 on horde but 400 on alliance you're quids in, but you take a gamble on high value single mat items like that, rather than something you KNOW will sell, like a fel lotus/flask/elixir stack/mana pots/crimson spinels/lionseyes/shadowsong ame's/greater planar/large pris/arcane dust.

The point though is the control of it's price and availability.
Some markets are easier to corner than others too (enchanting is really, REALLY hard these days on outland since heroics are breezey for a server that's 60%+ in T5+ gear = LOTS of voids/lps/dust on the AH, planar is about the only market you have a chance in and even that requires a huge initial capital to take over and hard, hard work to maintain).

Bulk is your main weapon when trying to capture a market, combined with especially since you can abuse the AH by flooding the front couple pages with your own stacks, not many people bother looking beyond that.
"Then, to hide their frailty, they hurt those who are kind.
I whisper farewell to this ugly world and dance nimbly with brilliant wings of red."

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