Making Gold In WoW: Looking Back For Improvement

This gold making blog post is being written as an entry into the March WoW Gold Blogging Carnival over at Cold’s Gold Factory.  Each month at Cold’s Gold Factory, a variety of WoW gold bloggers contribute articles all written on a specific topic chosen by the gold blogging carnivals host.  Be sure head over and check out all of the other great entries in this month’s carnival.  This month’s carnival topic asks us:

Using your knowledge that you have gained from auction house experience:  If you were starting over as a gold maker, what is one thing you would do differently than the first time, and why?

How Would I Change The Ways I Made Gold In WoW?

The biggest and most obvious change that I would make is that I would have started using auction house add-ons much much earlier

Back when I first started blogging, I often would talk about how I used hardly any add-ons at all.  The main reason I was so adamant against using auction house add-ons was because I wanted to feel like I had a sense of accomplishing the gold making aspects of World of Warcraft completely on my own.  I did not need add-ons to do it for me.  I was doing all of the math, the cross references, the comparisons, the spreadsheets, and every single thing that an add-on does for you.  I have a brain and could think on my own.  I didn’t need some stupid add-on to tell me what to do.

I also felt that a heavy dependance on auction house add-ons was a crutch that players leaned on too heavily.  By not using add-ons, I was unhampered on patch days, when others were stuck scrambling to find work arounds for their add-ons.  While those players were lost, I was still able to plug away on my auction house routine.

My other fear was that a reliance on add-ons would lead to a weaker understanding of the auction house markets.  I still believe that to this day, but since I made it to the Wrath gold cap without any add-ons I had a pretty good understanding of how all of the markets rise & fall and interact with each other.  I still don’t think a player should jump right into ways to make gold on the auction house by using add-ons.  You should learn how the markets interact and how the ebb and flow prior to installing the auction house add-ons. 

Today I wish I would have started using the basic WoW auction house add-ons much earlier.  Not immediately, but once I had a good understanding of how the WoW auction house and WoW gold making systems worked together.  Auctioneer was a great tool that helped save me a lot of time once I finally started using it.  Then when I finally made the switch to the Auctionator / TradeSkillMaster combination I really started to save a ton of time.  Less time in the auction house, meant more time for actually playing the rest of the game.  Add-ons can decrease your time relisting, posting, crafting, researching, purchasing, comparing, farming, and barking. 

So don’t be afraid of using add-ons to help you make gold in WoW.  I do recommend getting a basic understanding of the auction house before installing auction house add-ons.  If you do, your overall gold making process will flow more smoothly, you will understand what the add-on is actually doing, and you will be able to go back to the old fashioned approach when your add-ons get broken after patches.

 

 

Auctionator Proves To Be Better Than Auctioneer For This World Of Warcraft Auction House Player

I was an avid Auctioneer user, up to patch 4.3, which left me with a broken addon making the Auction House rather useless to me. By Auctioneer not being up to speed with their add on, they gave me no choice but to seek another solution.

Auctionator Proves To Be Better Than Auctioneer For This World Of Warcraft Auction House Player

4.3 left me with a broken Auctioneer, but gave me the opportunity to expand my horizons by allowing me the opportunity to install Auctionator.

Within just a few moments after installing Auctionator, I was incredibly impressed – and slightly confused.

I visited the Auction House, and, logically, scanned the AH. Instead of the 20+ minutes Auctioneer took, I was done with the scan within seconds. What had I done wrong? Nothing. It’s simply a better system. (Time is money, friend!)

Auctionator Basic Setup

auctionator basic options Auctionator Proves To Be Better Than Auctioneer For This World Of Warcraft Auction House Player
Enable alt-key shortcut allows me to alt-click an item in my bag and have it automatically post to the AH.
The other options are pretty straight forward, but you can easily see they’re designed to save the user time.

Auctionator Tool Tips

auctionator tooltips Auctionator Proves To Be Better Than Auctioneer For This World Of Warcraft Auction House Player
Again, pretty straight forward tool tips. These will give you very good pricing information on the items you loot. I like to get the individual price first, and then the stack price when I hold down the shift key.

Auctionator Undercutting

auctionator undercutting Auctionator Proves To Be Better Than Auctioneer For This World Of Warcraft Auction House Player
FINALLY, a semi-decent way to logically undercut someone! These are the defaults it comes with. You’ll most likely want to tweak those settings out a bit for your server. I am so happy to have options in an undercut market place!

Sellling With Auctionator

In Auctionators Basic Options, my default tab is set to SELL, and my bags automatically open up. That means as soon as I interact with the Auction House NPC, I’m ready to go. Then I just Alt-Click on the item in my bag, and it’s posted up for me.
auctionator create multiple auctions Auctionator Proves To Be Better Than Auctioneer For This World Of Warcraft Auction House Player
I will point out that you need to tell Auctionator how many stacks of how many you’re going to sell. 2 stacks of 20, 4 of 10… your choice. It does tell you the max, but it can be hard to see, as it’s kind of greyed out under the option box. As soon as you make your choice, it will create the auctions you set.
auctionator creating 1 of 2 Auctionator Proves To Be Better Than Auctioneer For This World Of Warcraft Auction House Player

Buying With Auctionator

Sometimes, you gotta buy.. ok, a lot of the time… and, Auctionator makes it super easy. Shopping lists? Remembering what I searched for? REALLY? AWESOME
auctionator shopping list Auctionator Proves To Be Better Than Auctioneer For This World Of Warcraft Auction House Player
Small Eggs are a wonderful investment (and even better if you farm them!). People will toss a stack of 20 up for 20 gold, but when a seasonal even that requires Small Eggs comes up, they’ll easily sell for 40-50 gold… And, of course, Auctionator makes it easy to buy multiples!
auctionator multiple buys Auctionator Proves To Be Better Than Auctioneer For This World Of Warcraft Auction House Player

Auctionator Checks For Undercutters

While there are some other addons that do this for you, I like that this one is inside Auctionator. You scan, it tells you if you’re being undercut, and then lets you start cancelling your auctions.
auctionator undercut check Auctionator Proves To Be Better Than Auctioneer For This World Of Warcraft Auction House Player
Click the start cancelling button, and it does the work for you…
auctionator cancelled Auctionator Proves To Be Better Than Auctioneer For This World Of Warcraft Auction House Player
Then simply relist the items to undercut the person undercutting you – let the wars begin!
Coincidently, when I was screen shotting this stuff for this article…
auctionator a buyer has been found Auctionator Proves To Be Better Than Auctioneer For This World Of Warcraft Auction House Player
I managed to make a quick couple hundred gold! icon wink Auctionator Proves To Be Better Than Auctioneer For This World Of Warcraft Auction House Player

I also mentioned on Twitter that Auctionator pulled in an accidental 2K for me. It’s true. While I was toying around with the features to decide if I wanted to stay with Auctionator or wait around for the other guys to figure things out, I found over 2K gold worth of stuff I had lying around, over priced, or poorly listed. With just the help of the tool tips and the scans, I was able to turn 2K in less than 30 minutes, all by accident.

Why Auctionator Proves To Be Better Than Auctioneer For This World Of Warcraft Auction House Player

    Speed Of Auction House Scanning
    More Fluid Options For Selling
    Better Undercutting Scanning
    Tool Tips With Options!
    Shopping Lists!
    Designed To Sell And Make You Gold!

It’s my honest opinion that Auctionator was extremely well thought out, and that with just a few moments of tinkering, the average player could be easily on their way to making gold in the Auction House.

I installed Auctionator using the Curse Addon Manager. It was painless, and I highly recommend it as the tool for the World of Warcraft Auction House
~Rewt

5 Ways to Make Gold on a Low Level Bank Alt

auctioneer lady 5 Ways to Make Gold on a Low Level Bank AltAlmost every gold blog going has suggested a low level bank alt for newbie goldmakers – it’s a basic necessity when you first start out on your gold making journey. I’d also say it’s a necessity when you first start playing the game or when you want to start fresh on a new server. Having the ability to just mail everything saleable to one alt & then list it at the AH later saves so much time while questing & you maximise your profits instead of vendoring or just deleting stuff to make space!

Now I always feel the need to level my banker a little – probably because I really enjoy those first lowbie zones but also (especially on a new server) because it raises a little cash to start the ball rolling. But my banker doesn’t just sit in Stormwind, oh no – she has work to do as part of my gold making routine. I thought I’d list just a few of the things my bankers do for me & how your banker can work a little harder for you too.

1. Limited Supply Vendor Recipes & Pets

I pretty much covered this in last week’s post re the RecipeProfit addon but for my banker – she just does a run around Ironforge with an occasional side trip to Darnassus or Exodar to purchase any recipes/patterns/plans etc that are available from various vendors.

For the pets, I have found the Moth Eggs from Exodar are my best sellers with the White Kitten available in Stormwind from Lil Timmy selling for the highest price. Unfortunately Timmy is on a 3hour spawn timer so getting a regular supply of White Kittens is difficult.

2. Flipping items on the AH – Buy Low, Sell Higher

Using Auctioneer or Auctionator, you can often find some really good deals – I tend to stick with trade items like cloth or low level gems (malachite/star ruby/aquamarine  especially). I tend to stay away from armor & weapons purely because prices can vary so much, they can take a while to resell & the AH deposit fees are usually quite high. One or two relists & you could easily wipe out any profits.

3. Cooking

Yes, cooking! If you base your alt in one of the capital cities that has cooking dailies, you can do the cooking daily to get XP & some cash & spend your Chef’s Awards on the bag of Imported Supplies. Once opened, it will give you Cocoa Beans – usually 2 stacks which you can sell on the AH. Check the price of Chocolate Cookies on your server & price your Cocoa Beans just below – that way, the Cookie Makers will be able to buy your beans & still make some profits.

Obviously, if you’ve levelled your banker much higher then you can also look on the AH for meat & fish to cook up into buff foods – watch the prices for a few days before jumping in though – I find buff food prices to be very erratic on my server.

4. Inscription

This one isn’t for everybody as it does require some ‘nursing’ to get the best returns. I did a post on my own blog back at the beginning of July with a level 10 bank alt glypher – I won’t try to re-write the post here but basically, if you can get really cheap herbs on your server, you can probably make a nice profit on glyphs & Darkmoon Faire Decks.

5. Tailoring/Enchanting

Why these two professions in particular? Well I’m aiming this at people who are still levelling new characters through the lowest zones – you will pick up shedloads of linen cloth & wool cloth & although you could just sell it on the AH, I have often found that prices for a stack are ridiculously low due to the almost unlimited supply. It also doesn’t matter what professions you have on your levelling alts – they will pick up cloth anyway. However, when you use this cheap linen to make into something using your tailoring (for example, Brown Linen Pants) , you can then disenchant it & sell the enchanting materials for a much higher price.

You can also search the AH for armor & re-sort the listing to show by lowest bid price – anything below say 50silver may be worth bidding on to be disenchanted. I’ve been doing exactly this on my main server – my budget is a little higher as I have maxed my enchanting & I am looking for materials across the whole range but I am still making some nice profits. Not huge profits admittedly but that’s not actually the aim for me – I’m trying to get the Guild Achievement!

I’m sure there are loads of other ways to make gold with a low level banker – what’s your favorite method of maximising your bank alt?

Til next week

Nev

Another Fab Addon for Goldmaking

Last week, I posted about my favourite profession addons so when I was mulling over ideas for this week, I thought I should let you know about a little addon that I love & use regularly. It’s called RecipeProfit for Gathermate2 & if you use Gathermate already then you just download the extra bit. I use Gatherer so I had to download Gathermate & RecipeProfit but I haven’t found that they clash at all.

recipeProfit Another Fab Addon for GoldmakingThis little addon adds pink circles to your minimap whenever you are in range of a vendor that sells recipes/plans/patterns etc. If you hover your mouse over the pink circle, it will give you a tooltip, telling you the NPC’s name & what recipes they sell.

So why do I love this addon so much? Well, not only am I a goldmaker, I’m also an alt addict so I almost always have alts out & about questing in random zones across Azeroth. I do have a pretty good memory but this addon allows me to find those out of the way vendors & the recipes they sell usually sell for some pretty good prices on the AH.

A quick run around the Great Forge centre of Ironforge with this addon active will astound you – there are so many vendor bought recipes there! For some starter cash or just for your banker to make a quick shopping dash, it’s perfect. If you are out & about doing some archeology, chasing Elders or putting out bonfires for the seasonal achievements, you will be able to pick up those random, awkward to get to recipes too.

Unfortunately I lost my MySales data a while ago so I can’t tell you which of the recipes I have sold most of. I do know that the Tuxedo JacketShirt & Pants patterns sell well on my server although strangely the Dress Shoes don’t seem to. Another example is the Recipe: Philosopher’s Stone, cost 80 silvers & I sold one just this week for 94 gold!

I’m not suggesting you go travelling just to get these recipes to sell but rather look at them as additional money making oppotunites when that little pink circle pops up on your mini map.

Happy Hunting

Nev

xx

 

Fab Profession Addons

malygos circles Fab Profession Addons

Getting started with professions can leave you going round in circles (just like the Malygos fight for me). Some professions (especially Engineering) have numerous crafted components that you need to make before you can craft the final item you wanted in the first place! The standard craft UI (User Interface) is very simple to use but it doesn’t have a crafting queue or any way of making life easier.

 Advanced Trade Skill Window (ATSW)

That’s where the following two addons come in handy. The first one I use on all my alts for every craft is Advanced Trade Skill Window, ATSW for short (screenie below). I’ve purposely picked my Engineering alt to show you this nifty addon & how it simplifies things for multi component items. Below, you can see I’ve decided to make 5 Mechanical Squirrel Boxes which needs 4 components – 2 of which are also crafted by engineers. ATSW has automatically added the basic crafted components to the craft queue so I don’t have to manually work out how many copper bars I need to make the copper modulator, the handful of copper bolts & the mechanical squirrel box.

ATSWscreenie Fab Profession Addons

My next move would be to close this window down, go to my bank & use this addon to get all the basic materials out of the bank for me (this setting is in the Options tab, top right of the window). No more hunting various bags for all the bits, just 1 or 2 clicks & it gets them for you. Next move to the anvil & start crafting. How easy is that?

You can sort the various items by categories (default), by name (very handy when you know the name but not the category) or by difficulty level (more on that in a minute). There’s a manual search bar & a drop down menu for the various categories which I use mostly on my enchanter when looking for, say glove enchants.

Lil’ Sparkys Workshop

The second addon I want to tell you about today is Lil’ Sparkeys Workshop. This addon works with ATSW & basically uses your Auctioneer scans (you have been doing them regularly, haven’t you?) to calculate costs & profits for each craftable item. You can see an extra column of figures in the screenshot below – that’s the Lil Sparkey’s results and if you hover over one of the results figures, you get the little pop out window shown at the bottom right, which gives you the breakdowns.

lilsparkeys Fab Profession Addons

You can also see that I have sorted the craftables by difficulty for this screen shot. When I first started playing, I took skinning & leatherworking & levelled both gradually as I was questing & levelling my character. I wish I had known about these 2 addons then! I would have made the most profitable items that could give skill ups rather than the item which used the least mats.

auctioneer tooltip Fab Profession AddonsThese days when I level a profession, I use the Lil Sparkeys profit figures as a guide to which of the skill up recipes to make. In the above screenie, you can see there is a huge profit to be made on the Gnomish Net-O-Matic Projector but if you look at the item details, Auctioneer has only seen 2 of them & this item is only useable by Engineers so I wouldn’t be counting my chickens on this one. (screen shot of Item data given by Auctioneer, not for the Net-O-Matic but you get the idea!)

Whilst the Unstable Trigger is only showing as 4g 81s profit & it’s a green skill up (less chance of a skill point), if my aim is to maximise profits whilst levelling then that is the obvious choice. Sometimes it’s lots of little profits to get to the same place in the end. Don’t be blinded by those big numbers, engage your brain & think about what your addons are showing you.

Hope this helps icon smile Fab Profession Addons Have fun, get rich icon smile Fab Profession Addons

PS You can click on the screenshots to get larger, easily readable versions.

PPS I originally posted this on my blog but it fits so well here too, Cold said I could bring it over icon razz Fab Profession Addons

Flipping on the World of Warcraft Auction House

Flipping on the World of Warcraft Auction House

limited 300x300 Flipping on the World of Warcraft Auction House

People Don't Like Limits

When listening to some of the Podcasts the contributors to GoldGrubs have, you’ll often hear them discussing “flipping” things on the World of Warcraft Auction House. Flipping simply means to buy something at one price, and sell it for a higher price without modifying that item. In this article, I’m going to give a quick over-view on two ways to “flip” items.

World of Warcraft Auction House Flip #1 – The Limited Quantity Item

Some vendors sell items in limited quantities. Those items will have the number the vendor has available next to the item, in a yellow/gold number. While it’s not a “sure thing”, usually the limited quantity items can be bought for their low price, and be sold on the Auction House for a very nice profit.

My Bank Alt, Phatwallet, has several “runs” he goes on for Limited Quantity Items to flip. One of my favorites goes like this:

(Starting out in Ironforge, sorry Hordes!)

1. Go visit the Tailor by the great forge. Second floor, bald gnome in a tuxedo.
Buy the patterns for Tuxedo Shirt (45 silver), Tuxedo Jacket (50 silver), and Tuxedo Pants (45 Silver). Each easily sells for 15-20 gold on my server.

2. Leave the tailor by jumping off the outside ledge on the right (there isn’t even a guard rail on this side!) and head straight for the staircase to the leatherworkers next door. Here I pick up the pattern for a Heavy Leather Ball, for 20 silver. It sells for about 15 gold on my server.

3. Hearth to Dalaran, Port to Stormwind, and pick up some Kingsblood (1 silver 20 copper) on my way to the AH. On a bad day, it sells for about 2 gold, but can spike to 10 gold.

There are some other things I pick up along this “run”, but they aren’t limited items (such as toys in Dalaran, etc, but that’s for a different Article).

Overall, I keep my total investment on these “runs” to under 10 gold, and easily have a return on my investment of about 80 to 100 gold.

World of Warcraft Auction House Flip #2 – The Relist

This strategy requires time to be spent at the Auctioneer, scanning through available Auctions, and it relys on an up-to-date pricelist.

Addons such as Auctioneer are quite useful in finding items that have been listed under market value, and making it quite easy to buy them out for relisting. Daily scanning is highly suggested.

Often times, people will list things on the World of Warcraft Auction House without really knowing what they’re doing. The thought process is “I didn’t pay any gold for this item, so anything I make off of it is pure profit.”. They toss the item up on the Auction House for 5 gold, when the fair market value for that item may be several times that.

Depending on the item, you may want to immediately relist it, or buy it, and hold on to it for a while (which may disqualify it from a “flip” and throw it into an “investment” – again, another article for another time).

The process is straight forward: Buy the underpriced item at 5 gold, run to the mailbox, grab it, run back to the Auction House and relist it for it’s current market value of, for example, 25 gold. When it sells, you make gold.

The only way to really know if the item is underpriced is to have a working knowledge of your servers economy. Using addons like Auctioneer will help you learn that bit of info, but it’s important to know a good deal when you see it as well.

As a user of the Remote Auction House, I need to know the market value of items to know if something is underpriced and ready to flip. Yes, the Remote Auction House will list similar items and their listing price, but that isn’t always enough information to make a decision with. Knowledge is power (and gold) in this case.

What are some of your favorite “flips”? Share them here!

Get Access To Trade Chat Everywhere!

As Cold pointed out in one of his earlier posts here at Goldgrub’s Trade Chat is a great tool for making gold. Unfortunately it suffers from one major drawback – you can only access it in the major cities. This means that whenever you are out  questing, grinding rep, engaging in PVP, exploring, etc. you are missing out on any deals being offered in Trade Chat.

What if I told you that there was a way to have Trade Chat wherever you went? No matter where you were in Azeroth or the Outlands you could see any deals being offered and thus make more gold. Well there is a way. With the addon Trade Forwarder you can see what people are saying in Trade Chat where ever you are.

All it requires is that someone else using the addon is currently in one of the major cities where Trade Chat is normally available. Trade Forwarder will then send you any messages in Trade Chat in whisper form. If you find that not enough people are using it on your realm simply recommend it to your guild members. If you, or any of your guild mates, have trouble installing it simply head over to Alto’s Addon Installation Instructions to get easy to follow details on how to install it.

Once you and a few other people on your real have it installed you will never have to miss out on a deal again. And that means more gold for you.

Trade Forwarder1 1024x544 Get Access To Trade Chat Everywhere!

Have fun making gold!

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