Understanding Demand

If you want to make gold on the auction house, you need to understand both supply and demand, but I'll limit this post to demand. Demand is important because if it does not exist your item will not sell, even if it is the only item of its kind on the auction house. Someone must have a use for the items you plan on making a profit from. Demand originates from several sources.

One of the most profitable sources of demand is other players leveling their crafting professions. If an item is needed at a certain point while leveling a profession, you can be sure that there is a market for it. If you have the time, browsing www.wow-professions.com will inform you which recipes are worth camping to resell on the auction house (once the character is there, it only takes a few seconds to log in, check to see if the recipe is there, and log out... repeat and go to a new location when you have enough of that recipe), which items people will be willing to pay a lot of gold for because they need that item to continue leveling their profession, etc. You can add certain items to your snatch list (if you use auctioneer suite) to buy when prices are low and relist when the market is back to normal.

Items that enhance a player's character in some way will also have demand. BoE items, enchantments, the librams, shield spikes, weapon chains, armor kits, spellthreads, leg armor, belt buckles, cut gems, and the various temporary enhancements (including flasks, elixers, and potions) all fall into this category. Leveling characters will soon outgrow their current gear, so it seems that demand for these items is highest for twinks and max level characters, who tend to use items longer.

Demand also exists for items which help characters to complete achievements.

Where else does demand originate? Comments, people, comments!

Low Epic Gem Prices

Epic gem prices: I feel foolish for not putting two and two together before the patch, but I noticed lower prices after the patch was released and connected the effects to the cause. The honor double for all honorable kills implemented in 3.3.3 has been causing a drop in raw epic gem prices. I bought up a bunch of gems before I realized what was happening. At least I figured it out eventually. Due to the increased number of gems being created, raw epic gem prices are dropping from their previous level and will probably remain low for some time. The low prices of raw gems will cause the prices of cut gems to drop as well.

An Update

Right now I am in the midst of building myself a solid profession base, and have been spending my recent profits leveling my new crafting professions. Blacksmithing is now at 445, I haven't looked into what I can make at 450 or if it would be profitable to get those last 5 skill ups. (Maybe a blacksmith could comment.) I plan on dropping enchanting on my warlock eventually, as I would rather have that profession on the paladin I am leveling right now... the better to solo low level instances with (I can solo what I need to on my lock, I just think it would be faster and more fun to be able to pull half of a low level dungeon at once with a prot pally). I'll then take up tailoring with the lock. I keep hearing that bags are a good gold source, it's about time I stopped buying and started selling!

In other news, the engineering pets have started selling... and possibly as a result of me posting all 80 pets on patch day for 499 gold each, everyone's auctioneer seems to think that 300g is a deal. I'm not sure what other realms look like, but I've sold several of these pets for over 300g. I also got the yeti recipe, but haven't had time to make any yet.

Oh, and glyphs are back to normal :)

Bags Full Of Bombs

Well, here is a screenshot of all my pets taken shortly after I created them. None of them sold last night, it looked like I was undercut shortly after I logged off the auction house; then again, I might have priced the pets a bit... ambitiously. Hopefully demand will pick up some today. If prices go too low, I may end up storing the pets on an alt to sell at a later date. Maybe Blizzard should have added a cooldown when they made the pets BoE. I had hoped a few pets would sell overnight... oh well, such is life.

Someone Is Sitting On The Glyph Market

Well, I guess the title says it all. I had hoped it was just a fluke, but it's been a week since someone decided to lower glyph prices on my server. I have to admit, I am a bit disappointed... the glyph market on my server had been a thing of beauty, with ten or more glyphs for each class priced above 50 gold on a regular basis. Now I'm lucky if there is one glyph for each class at that price. Actually, I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. After all, the only reason glyphs sell for a high price at all is the sheer number of glyphs and how long it takes to learn them all. Anyone who has put in the time to learn all or most of the recipes can lower the price of glyphs to near the cost of mats, reducing the profits of all scribes and helping everyone else pay a lower price for their glyphs. I'm not angry about it... it actually gave me the push I needed to diversify my professions a bit.

I've been busy for the past week. I leveled blacksmithing on my mage all the way to when the recipes start using cobalt bars, and I now have eternium rods (and other enchanting rods) that I crafted myself on the auction house. I plan to start selling the tanking sets for tanks just hitting northrend and tanks just starting heroics. Also, of course, the belt buckles. I'm hoping that the eternals market dive bombs for a while after 3.3.3 hits, allowing me to stock up mats on the cheap. I wish they would make the skeleton keys not require blacksmithing to use.

I also opened a Thorium Lockbox and found Schematic: Lifelike Mechanical Toad. I still need to do the quest for the Tranquil Mechanical Yeti. I'm pretty happy about the toad.

Locating Characters - A Brief Tutorial

This post isn't about making gold. I'm writing it because a surprising number of people don't know how to do things like find a mage in their city (for a teleport), quickly locate an npc they know they are close to, or locate race/class combinations for holiday achievements. I'll keep it quick.

First, either buy a Shadow Crystal Focusing Lens from the auction house or buy a Shadow Crystal and have a jewelcrafter make the lens for you. Each lens has 40 charges, which should last you a good long time. I keep one of these in my bags on all of my characters, in case I need to locate an npc or a character who isn't in my party.

If you are looking for a mage, instead of asking in the trade channel, open the social window (the exclamation mark in a white speech bubble right next to your quest log, default button "O") and click on the "who" tab or type "/who" in your chat window and press enter.

The black bar just above the "Refresh", "Add Friend", and "Group Invite" buttons is actually a text imput field. Click that black bar and type in the city you are in and the word mage (for example, "ironforge mage"). Press enter or click "Refresh" and you will see a list of all mages in that city.

Next, you will create a macro to target the mage. Either click the yellow speech bubble on the upper left of your chat window and click "macro", or type "/macro" into your chat window and press enter. Under the general macros tab, press "new". Name your macro and select an icon (I named mine "Target"). In the box underneath the line "Enter Macro Commands:", type "/target [mage name]". In the future, you will only need to open the macro menu, click your target macro, and edit the name.

Attach the macro to a hotkey (by dragging your macro icon from the Create Macros window to an open spot on your action bar which has a key bound to it) and run around the city pressing that key. If you can't find the mage, he/she might have left the city, so press refresh on your Who List to make sure they are still nearby. Once you have your mage targeted, use your Shadow Crystal Focusing Lens to point you directly to them (the target macro has a slightly larger range than the focusing lens, so you might have to run around a bit to find a place close enough for the lens to work.)

The same trick works to find an npc you know is close, and you don't need to use the who list. Just edit your target macro to target the npc, and click the hotkey. Once the npc is targeted, use your Shadow Crystal Focusing Lens to point you in the right direction.

For holiday race/class combonations, type the race and class into the text field of the Who List (for example, "dwarf paladin"). I prefer to complete the holiday race/class achievements in Dalaran, there's no pvp there and it's a small area, so I can find the characters quickly. To look for opposite faction race/class combonations, create a level one alt of the opposite faction, use their Who List to find the character you are looking for in Dalaran, edit your target macro (only works if you made the macro under the "General Macros" tab), logout (I ran my level one to an inn to save the 20 second logout timer), login to the character you are doing the achievement on, and run around Dalaran pressing that hotkey like a crazy person. Laser pointers for the win!

Gold From Blacksmithing - No Professions Needed!

When I was leveling enchanting, I needed an Eternium Rod. The same is true of all leveling enchanters. Silver Rods and Gold Rods are taught by the blacksmith trainers, so nearly every blacksmith has the recipe. The Eternium Rod recipe, though, can only be learned using Plans: Eternium Rod, which is a rare spawn on either Mari Stonehand for Alliance or Rohok for Horde. For this reason, few blacksmiths have the recipe and there is not as much competition on the auction house for Eternium Rods. The plans sell for 12 gold, and if someone else bought them recently, you might end up having to log off and play another character, checking back periodically (For this reason, rare spawns are best camped with a character you don't want to be playing).

Eternium Ore is generally very cheap, so what I did was buy the plans, and enough ore to make 10 Eternium Rods (depending on your bag space situation, you may want to buy enough ore to make many more rods... if you aren't a blacksmith, you will have to repurchase the plans and find another blacksmith when you run out of rods to sell.) Then just advertise in trade chat, "Looking for a character with [both] high level [mining and] blacksmithing, tipping [whatever you think is a fair tip], pst." (If you have a miner or eternium bars are cheap on your auction house, you only need the other player to be a blacksmith.) Meet the miner/blacksmith at an anvil, ask them if they can make Eternium Rods (if they can't, give them the plans you bought earlier), give them the ore and ask them to make you 10 (or more, if you like) Eternium Rods. Of course, check the auction house to find the price of eternium rods before you do this, but on my server I was able to sell the rods for 50 to 100 gold each, posting one at a time and selling about one a day, with little competition, and without needing to have mining or blacksmithing as a profession!

Pet Bombling and Lil' Smoky

Here is the link for the PTR patch notes. According to the notes, the day patch 3.3.3 hits live servers, "The Pet Bombling and Lil' Smoky non-combat pets are no longer Bind-on-Pickup."

I want my share of gold from the pet collectors, so I leveled my death knight's engineering skill yesterday. I also stopped by Gnomeregan to pick up the schematics. Gnomeregan can be found just outside of Ironforge, and is easily soloable by a level 60 death knight. You may need to run the instance multiple times before both schematics drop for you (it took me two runs). The Pet Bombling schematic drops from the end boss, and the Lil' Smoky schematic drops from these mobs. Note that the schematics are bind on pickup and that you must have engineering as one of your professions for them to drop. It's worth mentioning that though the pets require engineering skill of 200 to craft, one of their ingredients, Fused Wiring, can only be learned at skill level 275. Engineers might be able to make some gold selling Fused Wiring. The people buying will be mostly pet collectors looking to buy the mats so they can bypass market price and get their pets for the cost of a tip, and maybe a few engineers who only leveled to 200. Fused Wiring is easy to make in bulk though, so expect high prices until people catch on, and then a crash. Jewelcrafters might be able to sell Delicate Copper Wire, while miners should be stocking up on Mithril, Truesilver, Iron, and Gold to sell after the patch.  Because it wasn't very expensive on my server, I bought up all the gold on the auction house... gyrochronatoms shouldn't be easy for my competitors to make unless they planned ahead like me.  I bought all the cheap truesilver too.

Once you have obtained your schematics, you'll want to gather enough materials to craft lots of pets. It seems that the bottleneck as far as the ingredients is going to be Heart of Fire for the Pet Bombling and Core of Earth for Lil' Smoky. Even if you aren't an engineer, you may find it worth your while to stock up on these before the patch. I'm guessing the prices will skyrocket shortly after patch day. Your first stop should be the auction house, where you should hopefully be able to pick up a few of these for cheap. After that, you'll have to either ask in the trade channel or farm them yourself. A good place to farm Heart of Fire is from the flame type monsters which can be found all around the center of Un'Goro Crater. If nobody else is there, the flame monsters should respawn faster than you can kill them, so no downtime. Core of Earth can be farmed from Desert Rumblers in the far northwest corner of Silithus. There arent enough Desert Rumblers to be able to farm without downtime, but the respawn rate is decent and it's the best place I've found. Be warned, the drop rate for both Heart of Fire and Core of Earth is about 5%, so you should expect to kill about 20 monsters for each drop.

A final note, any pets created before the patch will be soulbound to the character who crafts them, and there is no way of knowing if existing pets will unbind on patch day. It's possible that only pets which are crafted after the patch will be bind on equip. With this in mind, I strongly recommend that engineers hoping to cash in on this change to their profession gather the needed materials before patch day, and wait until the patch hits before actually crafting the pets.

Bag Space

I've read about scribes who use multiple alts to create glyph auctions due the vast quantity of ghyphs available ingame (four 32 slot inscription bags plus the backpack is not enough to hold one of each glyph.) I find that to be unnecessary; my approach is to craft only glyphs whose market value is currently greater than 10 gold, and to only craft one of each glyph. When the price of a glyph I have already made drops below 10 gold, I will continue to list the glyph for 1 copper less than the competition, but when that glyph sells, I will not create a replacement until the market value rises above 10 gold. That way, I can use the auction house as my storage, and handle my glyph auctions with just one character.

I find that a glyph costs around 3 gold to make, so to ensure that I would always make a profit, I started out by not selling glyphs that had dropped below three gold. However, I quickly discovered that my bags filled with worthless glyphs which had at one time been above 10 gold. It got in the way of emptying the mailbox, as I would often have less than 50 open bag spaces available. Gradually, I lowered the threshold (usually when my bags were full, so Quick Auctions would list more of those underpriced glyphs to get them out of my bags). One day, it dawned on me: I don't care if I lose three gold on a glyph. I'm in this market for the glyphs that cost three gold to make and sell for ten, even twenty times that much. When I make a glyph, I'm betting that it will sell before the market price drops below 3 gold, and most of the time, that bet pays off. When it doesn't, it's just the cost of doing business. I'll sell it for what I can get, and I won't craft another until the price goes back up. When I realized that I value my bag space more than the glyphs that were cluttering those bags, I dropped my glyph threshold to 1 copper. That's right, no threshold. Since then, my bags have been free and unfettered. On the subject of bag space and the absence of a threshold, I think Cosmo Kramer said it best: "Oh, it be so. I'm out there, Jerry, an' I'm lllovin' every minute of it!!!"

Just What We Need, Another Gold Blog!

Thank you for visiting my brand new WoW gold blog. First, I'd like to thank the existing bloggers who inspired me both to attempt to reach the gold cap and to start my own blog: Markco, Gevlon, Tella, and BigJimm & Zekta Chan. If you're interested in learning ways to make more gold in less time, with less effort, I highly recommend you click each of the above links and take a long look at what these sites have to offer... they've put a lot of effort into their blogs and it shows.

I recently read these posts by BigJimm and Markco, respectively. The author of the first post writes about how difficult it is to write a gold blog, when basically every good gold making idea has already been covered in Markco's blog or in his forums. Markco responded to that article with a post on his own blog, encouraging BigJimm and all WoW gold bloggers to keep blogging, and to set our sights high, not worrying about if it has been said before or not, but mainly just to keep blogging and to have fun doing it. (I paraphrased slightly, but that's the gist).

I've been thinking about starting a WoW gold blog for several weeks, but I hadn't gotten around to it, partially due to exactly what BigJimm was writing about in his post. I am pretty good at making gold in World of Warcraft, but many of my methods were adapted from the blogs I linked in the first paragraph; I was worried I wouldn't be able to find topics to write about that hadn't already been discussed to death.

Enter Markco's post. The part that hit me strongest was where he wrote, "Perhaps you, the person reading this load of hot air I call a post, are going to be the next big wow blogger." I think that bit of encouragement from a blogger whose site has taught me so much gave me the push I needed to go and figure out how to create a blog (it was easier than I thought).