For me, and I feel comfortable saying anyone reading this, WoW is a pleasurable past time. Sure, sometimes we get annoyed or aggravated with technical issues, low drop rates, etc. but for the most part, the game is fun. We in the gold making community often speak of gold farmers in an offhand way. To be blunt, we take advantage of them by buying the things they farm and sell by turning them into other things that sell for more money. A co-worker linked me an article today that bothers me to no end.
Read that and think about it for a minute. How would your perspective of the game change if it was something you were *forced* to do after a long day of back and soul-breaking labor? Not to play for fun, but as a second job, where your physical well-being might very well depend on someone buying YOUR stacks of items in the AH instead of someone else's.
I always envisioned the stereotypical "Chinese gold farmer" as somebody who came to an office, logged into an account, farmed, sold, etc. then went home to their families. Just like any 9-5 job. The fact that there are people out there being forced to do this under the threat of physical violence makes me sick.
In a way, we're responsible for them. The fact that those of us in other countries enjoy this game so much that we're willing to pay real money for virtual money makes it possible for these people to be exploited in such a fashion.
I've read articles about WoW and other games having real life consequences often, as have all of you. Marriages have broken up, friendships have ended, people have been killed over 1's and 0's.
I used to look forward to tells from random gold farmers. I took it as an opportunity to sharpen my wit and insults. I've said things to gold farmers that my grandmother would be ashamed of me to hear. I looked at them as people who took advantage of other's misfortune. I'm sure some of them were deserving. I'm sure not every gold farmer out there is a prisoner facing a beating if he doesn't meet his quota. But, what if? What if that guy sending you the tell to buy gold is only doing it because he's desperate, because he's fearful for his life if he doesn't move another 10k today?
I'm not saying go out and buy gold. That just perpetuates the cycle. I'm saying, the people on the other end are just that - people. Next time you get one of those tells, don't assume they're a predator of hacked accounts. The account they're using is probably hacked, sure, but that dude might be in a world of hurt you will hopefully never understand. I know I'll treat them differently from now on, and I hope you will as well.
Edit: I've since posted twice on Blizz's general Forums regarding this issue and they have removed both posts. In addition, someone else had posted a similar post and they removed that as well. I'm frankly disgusted at their lack of a response. I know not many read my post, but those that do, get the word out. Post on your own blogs, post on your guild forums. Blizz has a moral responsibility to address this and instead they are sticking their head in the sand and pretending it doesn't exist.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
The long-awaited Shout Out Post
Quick update before I get to the shout outs: I hit 65k last night, and didn't get to check my mail this morning due to sleeping late and having to rush to get to work, but according to TUJ, I sold quite a few glyphs and some other assorted stuff so should be around 70k now. Today is May 23rd, I started my gold making venture on May 1st, which means in 22 days I have turned 3k into 70k liquid and about 60k worth of auctions. I'm not seeing the silly 5-6k gains from glyphs that a lot of bloggers are, but my typical day sees me bringing in 2-3k which I'm quite happy with.
Now to the shout outs! These folks are, in my opinion, the best of the best at relating information about making money. Their blogs are the ones that I actually READ instead of just skimming.
First up is Bangkok Bill over at Bangkok Bill's World of Goldcraft. BBWOG (which is really fun to say beebeewog, try it) is the first blog I read after Power Word: Gold every day. He has a ton of useful information and an actual sense of humor. A lot of bloggers try to force their humor and it comes off weird. You can tell Bangkok Bill is a genuinely funny person.
Next up is Khalior's Tentacular Junkpile. Khalior might not be one of the "elite" gold bloggers with a ton of traffic, and even recently said that his blog is mainly for him and his friends, but that said, he has some good info. I like his blog because it seems like he's in a similar situation to me: high population server with lots of AH competition. His post on Fandral might be the first "lore" I've ever read. I hope he does more stuff like that. I've never gotten into the story behind WoW, mainly because it has no impact on the game like it did in EQ, but that post was actually interesting.
Since Stokpile has retired his blog and there is no resident "grouch" in the blogging community, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Midas at WoWMidas will take his place. His posts are often tongue-in-cheek and blunt. Two things I hold in very high regard. Like Bangkok Bill, Midas is a genuinely funny person and it shows in his writing. Midas has a way of cutting through the hype and getting to the heart of a matter that I appreciate.
Last, but not least is Faid at Nerf Faids. Nerf Faids is actually the very first gold blog I found. Not sure how, but when I got the inkling of the idea of playing the AH game, I found her blog. From there I found Power Word: Gold, which of course led me to more blogs than I had time to read. I do try to peruse them all, but honestly I find a lot of them sorta...superfluous. As is to be expected, I guess, there is a lot of redundant information out there. We all basically do the same things, we just write about it in different ways. What sets these guys apart is their writing styles and the actual usefulness of their information.
Of course, I read the "big" blogs regularly too. You know all about those, though. JMTC, Cold's Gold Factory, Alto's, etc. In my opinion, the only advantage they have over the others is that they have more traffic. The same stuff is being said (often better in some cases) on smaller blogs with fewer viewers. Chances are, if your blog is on Flux's directory (and if it isn't, send him an email. If I can get listed, anybody can.) I read it. I'm not saying these guys are better than yours if I didn't mention you specifically, but these four plus PW:G are the ones that have helped me the most.
So, to the four of you (five counting Flux) have my thanks and appreciation for making it easy for me to start my way down the road of WoW riches!
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
On Time Management and Gold Making
At about 1am this morning, I got a tell from a guildie stating "I'm going to have to enroll you in AH Rehab." PG has also recently expressed a concern over the amount of time I'm spending on AH related stuff. I hadn't really thought about it as I was enjoying what I was doing. For the first time in a long time, the game outside of raid zones was fun for me. As I mentioned in my first post, I'm the raid leader for our guild of friends and family. Until I started my gold making venture, it was pretty rare for me to log on outside of raid times. If the mood struck me to run a heroic, I'd log in and run one or two, but I spent way less time in game. Once I started the gold making venture, my in game time skyrocketed. The vast majority of that time is on my AH toon, who is not guilded. When I did log over to one of my guilded toons, I was busy prospecting, cutting gems, making belt buckles, milling, making glyphs, fortune cards, etc. I guess from my guild's perspective I am less social despite being in game more.
Part of the problem is that I am extremely inefficient in my crafting processes. I recognized this early on because I was switching toons three or four times to get stuff done because I would forget Random_Mat_01, switch back to AH guy to buy it, send it to crafter, etc. I've gotten a lot better in that aspect and even developed a routine where I get everything done on one toon at a time. My restocking process doesn't take nearly as long now as it did before, but can still be improved upon. I'm going to look into using TSM for jewel crafting but I'm not sure how much more efficient I can be there. I use Panda to prospect and mill, and crafting gems with ATSW is already pretty smooth. I queue everything I'm going to make and then just hit "Process Queue". I'm not sure if TSM has a "craft all" option that would make it even smoother but its something I'll look into.
The biggest part of the problem is that I'm doing things on a day to day basis. I cut enough gems, craft enough belt buckles, etc to last the day. The glyphs are an exception because they move so slowly. I'm going to try to set aside a block of time on one of my days off to craft enough stuff to last a whole week and see if that helps. I'm liquid enough now that I can invest in the mats to make 100 belt buckles instead of 10. Assuming my luck with carnelians and inferno rubies holds, I can prospect a few hundred stacks of ore and have enough cut gems on hand instead of crafting a new batch each day or every other day.
I'm also going to stop the cycle of cancel/repost whenever I get undercut. I'm going to check for under cuts before signing off each night and that's it. I have enough auctions up that getting undercut on a few isn't going to kill me. Out of roughly 600 auctions, I get undercut on perhaps 200 throughout the day. Those other 400 will bring in enough if they sell that its not worth stressing over and taking the time to constantly cancel/repost. I had kind of already started this, as I was just checking my frequent selling gems throughout the day to make sure I was the cheapest. Given that most of my competition seems to be sporadic at best, having merchandise on the AH constantly should still give me plenty of sales.
What I've realized is that while playing the mini-game of WoW Fortune Builder, I was missing out a lot in the rest of the game. There were times when friends were asking me to PVP (which, thanks to my shaman I am now addicted to) and I would say I couldn't because I had to do AH stuff. I started the AH game to make the rest of the game more fun and ended up not playing the rest of the game. That stops today. To the few of you who read my blog: Take a look around and see what you're missing when you're busy searching for a great flip or crafting 1000 doodads. If you just play for the AH, great, more power to you. But remember, the gold is just a mechanism to increase the fun you have in the rest of the game.
Part of the problem is that I am extremely inefficient in my crafting processes. I recognized this early on because I was switching toons three or four times to get stuff done because I would forget Random_Mat_01, switch back to AH guy to buy it, send it to crafter, etc. I've gotten a lot better in that aspect and even developed a routine where I get everything done on one toon at a time. My restocking process doesn't take nearly as long now as it did before, but can still be improved upon. I'm going to look into using TSM for jewel crafting but I'm not sure how much more efficient I can be there. I use Panda to prospect and mill, and crafting gems with ATSW is already pretty smooth. I queue everything I'm going to make and then just hit "Process Queue". I'm not sure if TSM has a "craft all" option that would make it even smoother but its something I'll look into.
The biggest part of the problem is that I'm doing things on a day to day basis. I cut enough gems, craft enough belt buckles, etc to last the day. The glyphs are an exception because they move so slowly. I'm going to try to set aside a block of time on one of my days off to craft enough stuff to last a whole week and see if that helps. I'm liquid enough now that I can invest in the mats to make 100 belt buckles instead of 10. Assuming my luck with carnelians and inferno rubies holds, I can prospect a few hundred stacks of ore and have enough cut gems on hand instead of crafting a new batch each day or every other day.
I'm also going to stop the cycle of cancel/repost whenever I get undercut. I'm going to check for under cuts before signing off each night and that's it. I have enough auctions up that getting undercut on a few isn't going to kill me. Out of roughly 600 auctions, I get undercut on perhaps 200 throughout the day. Those other 400 will bring in enough if they sell that its not worth stressing over and taking the time to constantly cancel/repost. I had kind of already started this, as I was just checking my frequent selling gems throughout the day to make sure I was the cheapest. Given that most of my competition seems to be sporadic at best, having merchandise on the AH constantly should still give me plenty of sales.
What I've realized is that while playing the mini-game of WoW Fortune Builder, I was missing out a lot in the rest of the game. There were times when friends were asking me to PVP (which, thanks to my shaman I am now addicted to) and I would say I couldn't because I had to do AH stuff. I started the AH game to make the rest of the game more fun and ended up not playing the rest of the game. That stops today. To the few of you who read my blog: Take a look around and see what you're missing when you're busy searching for a great flip or crafting 1000 doodads. If you just play for the AH, great, more power to you. But remember, the gold is just a mechanism to increase the fun you have in the rest of the game.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Where to start, where to start?
So I know I promised a shout out post, and it will happen eventually, I promise. So much is going on though that it keeps getting pushed back. It seems like every night I make a new "discovery" about the gold market. I hit 50k last night, twice actually. Just barely eked over, then bought some ore and herbs, then a lot of stuff sold and put me solidly over. Until later. But I'll get to that later.
Big thanks to all the bloggers who reported the removal of the cool down on Icy Prism (link to Cold's Gold Factory, others might have broken the news but I'm at work and can't find those posts now... If you broke it and actually read this, I apologize. Let me know and I'll add a link, not that it will increase your traffic much. :)) I sold two +10 stat nightmare tears for 800g buyout already, and have sold quite a few of the blue quality gems for 20-50g. The two nightmare tears more than paid for the orbs and green gems I bought from the AH so its already pure profit. Hopefully I can mange to keep finding orbs for 5-10g. I'm the only person selling Wrath gems at the moment so the market is all mine.
Jewel crafting continues to be my big money maker. For some reason I'm the only person selling Brilliant Inferno Rubies and have managed to sell 10-15 at 150g each. Normally the price hovers around 100g with a lot of competition. Not sure what's going on there, but I hope it keeps up. Now if my competition for delicates would go away...
Thanks to Fluxdada (again, what would I do without you?) and Foo, I had a pretty major breakthrough in glyphs last night. Thanks to Flux's most recent post about TSM and some advice from Foo, I finally got TSM up and running on both my scribe and my AH mule. A profitable glyph scan showed that there were a good 20 profitable glyphs that I wasn't making. Stockpiling three of each of these was going to cost me, though. I moved 5k from my banker to my scribe and let TSM do its magic in the AH to supply me with what I needed to make them. Ended up spending about 2k on mats, but I now have a nice little pile of profitable glyphs with less competition than the leveling glyphs. Less competition is good, since it means fewer cancels/reposts. I'm religiously doing my minor and northrend researches to learn more glyphs and the stupid daily thing to earn points. I'm up to 514. Thinking about dumping some gold into mats for the relics to get the last 10 points so I can make the big darkmoon cards, but the relics don't sell very well on my server so I will probably end up with a big loss there but might be able to hand the results out as presents to leveling guildies or something if they don't sell.
Speaking of Darkmoon cards, I did my nightly scan of cards/decks last night and found all the cards to make a Volcano deck for a reasonable price. Picked the cards up for under 6k and have the deck up for 9500. Expect that to sell pretty quickly since the card had been going for 10-12k a couple of weeks ago with the Faire going on. If it doesn't, I can always hold on to it until the next Faire and get a bit more out of it, or worst case my PVP Shaman has a new trinket.
Also took a tip from Mageshadow and tried out Elixir of Giant Growth. There were no deviate fish on the AH so I flew over to the Barrens to fish some and tried to buy some from the folks leveling there, but apparently none of them were fishing. The only response I got to my offer to buy them in bulk was some barely readable insults. I amused myself by trolling the trolls while I fished up two stacks, which took me about 30 minutes. With some clever ads, I managed to sell a few at 15g each. I'll probably play around with the price for a bit and see how well they sell. Not sure I want to subject myself to Barrens chat often enough to keep them up steadily, might just add deviate fish to my snatch list and put them up when I have the mats available without farming.
All in all, its looking good. I've gone from 30k and stagnant to 45k liquid (on my banker alone) with a good 40k in auctions. My next goal is 100k, and I think when I get there I'll treat PG (and myself by proxy) to a vial of the sands!
Big thanks to all the bloggers who reported the removal of the cool down on Icy Prism (link to Cold's Gold Factory, others might have broken the news but I'm at work and can't find those posts now... If you broke it and actually read this, I apologize. Let me know and I'll add a link, not that it will increase your traffic much. :)) I sold two +10 stat nightmare tears for 800g buyout already, and have sold quite a few of the blue quality gems for 20-50g. The two nightmare tears more than paid for the orbs and green gems I bought from the AH so its already pure profit. Hopefully I can mange to keep finding orbs for 5-10g. I'm the only person selling Wrath gems at the moment so the market is all mine.
Jewel crafting continues to be my big money maker. For some reason I'm the only person selling Brilliant Inferno Rubies and have managed to sell 10-15 at 150g each. Normally the price hovers around 100g with a lot of competition. Not sure what's going on there, but I hope it keeps up. Now if my competition for delicates would go away...
Thanks to Fluxdada (again, what would I do without you?) and Foo, I had a pretty major breakthrough in glyphs last night. Thanks to Flux's most recent post about TSM and some advice from Foo, I finally got TSM up and running on both my scribe and my AH mule. A profitable glyph scan showed that there were a good 20 profitable glyphs that I wasn't making. Stockpiling three of each of these was going to cost me, though. I moved 5k from my banker to my scribe and let TSM do its magic in the AH to supply me with what I needed to make them. Ended up spending about 2k on mats, but I now have a nice little pile of profitable glyphs with less competition than the leveling glyphs. Less competition is good, since it means fewer cancels/reposts. I'm religiously doing my minor and northrend researches to learn more glyphs and the stupid daily thing to earn points. I'm up to 514. Thinking about dumping some gold into mats for the relics to get the last 10 points so I can make the big darkmoon cards, but the relics don't sell very well on my server so I will probably end up with a big loss there but might be able to hand the results out as presents to leveling guildies or something if they don't sell.
Speaking of Darkmoon cards, I did my nightly scan of cards/decks last night and found all the cards to make a Volcano deck for a reasonable price. Picked the cards up for under 6k and have the deck up for 9500. Expect that to sell pretty quickly since the card had been going for 10-12k a couple of weeks ago with the Faire going on. If it doesn't, I can always hold on to it until the next Faire and get a bit more out of it, or worst case my PVP Shaman has a new trinket.
Also took a tip from Mageshadow and tried out Elixir of Giant Growth. There were no deviate fish on the AH so I flew over to the Barrens to fish some and tried to buy some from the folks leveling there, but apparently none of them were fishing. The only response I got to my offer to buy them in bulk was some barely readable insults. I amused myself by trolling the trolls while I fished up two stacks, which took me about 30 minutes. With some clever ads, I managed to sell a few at 15g each. I'll probably play around with the price for a bit and see how well they sell. Not sure I want to subject myself to Barrens chat often enough to keep them up steadily, might just add deviate fish to my snatch list and put them up when I have the mats available without farming.
All in all, its looking good. I've gone from 30k and stagnant to 45k liquid (on my banker alone) with a good 40k in auctions. My next goal is 100k, and I think when I get there I'll treat PG (and myself by proxy) to a vial of the sands!
Sunday, May 15, 2011
New Shuffle Option
Well, maybe new. I dunno if anybody else has covered it, anyway.
Quick question: What's the best chest enchant? Chances are, most of you said peerless stats. Which is true, but also viewed by a lot of players as expensive. Which makes 15 stats very attractive to both players and goblins. Players feel like they're getting "more for their money" since on my server, scrolls of peerless stats go for around 2k and mighty stats goes for a little over 100. Its very attractive to goblins because the mats to make this scroll are a whopping 2 lesser celestial essence. You know, the ones we get tons of from DE'ing the rings, etc? Yeah, those. They sell for about 15g on my server. So by turning a few into scrolls and putting them up, you're basically turning 30g (plus a bit for vellums) into 100g or more, depending on your server.
Quick question: What's the best chest enchant? Chances are, most of you said peerless stats. Which is true, but also viewed by a lot of players as expensive. Which makes 15 stats very attractive to both players and goblins. Players feel like they're getting "more for their money" since on my server, scrolls of peerless stats go for around 2k and mighty stats goes for a little over 100. Its very attractive to goblins because the mats to make this scroll are a whopping 2 lesser celestial essence. You know, the ones we get tons of from DE'ing the rings, etc? Yeah, those. They sell for about 15g on my server. So by turning a few into scrolls and putting them up, you're basically turning 30g (plus a bit for vellums) into 100g or more, depending on your server.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Vendor Flip Tip
I have to admit, this really isn't a "vendor" flip for me, but it might start being one. Some enterprising goblin decided it would be a good idea to purchase the BC era limited supply blacksmithing patterns:
Adamantite Cleaver
Adamantite Dagger
Adamantite Maul
Adamantite Rapier
Adamantite Rod
Now, this goblin probably thinks he's clever because he's buying them from the vendor and auctioning them. For 10g. He's loving the fact that every one he puts up sells quickly and he's making 5g each. What he probably doesn't realize is that its ME buying them and reposting them for 50-60g. And selling every one of them on a server that it is ridiculously difficult to move "old" recipes on. I'm not sure if I want to disillusion him and start buying them direct from the vendor myself, or continue to make him happy by letting him do the grunt work for me. I'll probably just keep buying them as he puts them up because its a PITA to get to anywhere these things are sold without bugging PG to port me around.
Even if you're not lucky enough to have someone doing the grunt work for you, pick some of these up if you're near Shatt for whatever reason.
Adamantite Cleaver
Adamantite Dagger
Adamantite Maul
Adamantite Rapier
Adamantite Rod
Now, this goblin probably thinks he's clever because he's buying them from the vendor and auctioning them. For 10g. He's loving the fact that every one he puts up sells quickly and he's making 5g each. What he probably doesn't realize is that its ME buying them and reposting them for 50-60g. And selling every one of them on a server that it is ridiculously difficult to move "old" recipes on. I'm not sure if I want to disillusion him and start buying them direct from the vendor myself, or continue to make him happy by letting him do the grunt work for me. I'll probably just keep buying them as he puts them up because its a PITA to get to anywhere these things are sold without bugging PG to port me around.
Even if you're not lucky enough to have someone doing the grunt work for you, pick some of these up if you're near Shatt for whatever reason.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Gold Update: What's Working and What Doesn't Seem To Be
Meant to post yesterday, but Blogger was down all day. I seem to have bogged down a bit in my gold growth. Haven't lost ground, but haven't gained as much as previous nights. Gems are still selling really well, despite stiff competition. I still sell 8-10 Brilliant and Delicate Inferno rubies a night, and 3-5 of my other cuts. I've decided to keep JC on my Shaman, he will be picking up profitable cuts while I save JC tokens on the rogue to buy the new PVP rings, necklaces etc when they come out. If they're trained, which I doubt, then I'll buy the Elementium Moebius Band, etc. No one seems to sell those consistently on my server so there might be some money to be made, despite the high overhead involved.
Glyphs continue to be a big disappointment. I've sold maybe 3-4 more, bringing my grand total to 10 total sold. I attempted to side step the guys selling Mysterious Fortune Cards by turning mine into Fortune Cookies. I figured, the same card, plus a food buff is surely worth the same price or a little more, right? Tried selling them at 12g compared to the 10g the cards go for, and I sold a few here and there but definitely did not see the return that I see from just the cards. Despite aggressive selling in /2, I still reposted the 100 or so I made twice and they came down again last night. I gave them all to PG to use as food buffs on her 17 alts. She tried to pay me for them, but we compromised and agreed that if she gets the 5k card she can pay me for mats. I put another 50-60 cards up for just under 9g, and I think they all sold last night. I've got a lot of competition in this area, but the one advantage I have is that I seem to be up later than the primary contender so I get the overnight sales for 8-9g each, while he gets all the daily sales of 10g. I'm ok with that since I'm making 6-7g per card at least.
Obsidium Skeleton Keys are still selling sporadically. When I'm doing the flip thing, or restocking/reposting, I'll throw a few ads out and see 2-3 sell at a time. I'm ok with them taking awhile because I only make them when Obsidium Ore is stupid cheap (ie under 1g50s per, which is rarely on our server. They usually go for well over 2g per.) so I don't have much overhead in them.
Speaking of reposting, I'm starting to think I repost too often. I'm eating a lot of deposits because my morning routine is checking for undercuts, cancelling everything and reposting and new, lower prices. On my days off, I do this same thing probably 3-4 times a day. I should either change my auction time to 12 hours to lower my deposits, or just leave them up for the full 48 and count on the fact that I'm pricing everything as close to the market value as I can reasonably do. Theoretically, they should still sell, just after the cheaper stuff sells. The only problem is if there's a constant influx of cheaper stuff, mine will never get to be the cheapest. I'm trying to time posting at times when raids are letting out and people will have new items to gem, etc. and it definitely works. Last night I sold 12 red gems within minutes of posting them and had to restock. Of course by the time I ran to the bank and back to put more up, I had been undercut on both Delicates and Brilliants. I put my new stock up for less than the undercutter so I had gems up at two price points.
Flipping is still going well, despite few opportunities. I know the conventional wisdom is to not flip anything over 20% but due to the few opportunities I have to do so, I've expanded that to under 40% within reason. I take into account how many have sold, the usefulness of the item, etc. before deciding to flip anything over 30%. Its working out fairly well, just last night I sold a necklace I picked up for 250g for 1200g. I probably sell 3-5 items a week that way so its a small but steady portion of my income.
One mistake I made this week was overvaluing an item. I bought valor boots off of a guy in trade for 5k, and had him get the cloth healer ones and put them up for 12k because TUJ showed two selling for that. It also showed one selling for 5k. I know squat about clothies, and I should have known better, but I was looking at that 7k profit and drooling. I got undercut shortly after putting them up and so it began, the price slowly dwindled down and down and down until I had to either post them for less than I paid, or just hold on to them and hope the price went back up. I actually managed to almost break even on them after selling them in trade. Lesson learned: Don't buy stuff to flip unless I know it will sell. The evidence was in front of me, only three pairs had sold according to TUJ, it was a risk and one I shouldn't have taken. That said, I did take that lesson and buy a pair of plate ones for 3k and flip them for 5k.
All in all, the elementium shuffle is still my bread and butter. Thanks to PG working her magic on the crafted JC stuff and turning my carnelians into Inferno Rubies, the gold is still rolling in. I just need to watch spending so I can grow a bit faster.
Glyphs continue to be a big disappointment. I've sold maybe 3-4 more, bringing my grand total to 10 total sold. I attempted to side step the guys selling Mysterious Fortune Cards by turning mine into Fortune Cookies. I figured, the same card, plus a food buff is surely worth the same price or a little more, right? Tried selling them at 12g compared to the 10g the cards go for, and I sold a few here and there but definitely did not see the return that I see from just the cards. Despite aggressive selling in /2, I still reposted the 100 or so I made twice and they came down again last night. I gave them all to PG to use as food buffs on her 17 alts. She tried to pay me for them, but we compromised and agreed that if she gets the 5k card she can pay me for mats. I put another 50-60 cards up for just under 9g, and I think they all sold last night. I've got a lot of competition in this area, but the one advantage I have is that I seem to be up later than the primary contender so I get the overnight sales for 8-9g each, while he gets all the daily sales of 10g. I'm ok with that since I'm making 6-7g per card at least.
Obsidium Skeleton Keys are still selling sporadically. When I'm doing the flip thing, or restocking/reposting, I'll throw a few ads out and see 2-3 sell at a time. I'm ok with them taking awhile because I only make them when Obsidium Ore is stupid cheap (ie under 1g50s per, which is rarely on our server. They usually go for well over 2g per.) so I don't have much overhead in them.
Speaking of reposting, I'm starting to think I repost too often. I'm eating a lot of deposits because my morning routine is checking for undercuts, cancelling everything and reposting and new, lower prices. On my days off, I do this same thing probably 3-4 times a day. I should either change my auction time to 12 hours to lower my deposits, or just leave them up for the full 48 and count on the fact that I'm pricing everything as close to the market value as I can reasonably do. Theoretically, they should still sell, just after the cheaper stuff sells. The only problem is if there's a constant influx of cheaper stuff, mine will never get to be the cheapest. I'm trying to time posting at times when raids are letting out and people will have new items to gem, etc. and it definitely works. Last night I sold 12 red gems within minutes of posting them and had to restock. Of course by the time I ran to the bank and back to put more up, I had been undercut on both Delicates and Brilliants. I put my new stock up for less than the undercutter so I had gems up at two price points.
Flipping is still going well, despite few opportunities. I know the conventional wisdom is to not flip anything over 20% but due to the few opportunities I have to do so, I've expanded that to under 40% within reason. I take into account how many have sold, the usefulness of the item, etc. before deciding to flip anything over 30%. Its working out fairly well, just last night I sold a necklace I picked up for 250g for 1200g. I probably sell 3-5 items a week that way so its a small but steady portion of my income.
One mistake I made this week was overvaluing an item. I bought valor boots off of a guy in trade for 5k, and had him get the cloth healer ones and put them up for 12k because TUJ showed two selling for that. It also showed one selling for 5k. I know squat about clothies, and I should have known better, but I was looking at that 7k profit and drooling. I got undercut shortly after putting them up and so it began, the price slowly dwindled down and down and down until I had to either post them for less than I paid, or just hold on to them and hope the price went back up. I actually managed to almost break even on them after selling them in trade. Lesson learned: Don't buy stuff to flip unless I know it will sell. The evidence was in front of me, only three pairs had sold according to TUJ, it was a risk and one I shouldn't have taken. That said, I did take that lesson and buy a pair of plate ones for 3k and flip them for 5k.
All in all, the elementium shuffle is still my bread and butter. Thanks to PG working her magic on the crafted JC stuff and turning my carnelians into Inferno Rubies, the gold is still rolling in. I just need to watch spending so I can grow a bit faster.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Quick tip
Got Inscription to 504 tonight. That last stretch is a real bear. I really want to be able to make the Darkmoon cards, but not sure I want to sink the gold into the mats for the relics for skill ups. The glyph market on my server is strange. I fully expected to be raking in the cash by now, but I've sold a total of three glyphs. I'm on what I think is one of the original servers, and there doesn't appear to be a lot of folks leveling that need glyphs. Maybe it'll pick up, not sure. Admittedly I've been in the glyph market for two whole days, so perhaps I should take Kathroman's advice and Just Wait. I did make a nice little pile on the mysterious fortune cards though. Think I'll keep making those as long as herb prices hold where they are.
Now to the tip: Obsidium Skeleton Keys. I had made a few of these when skilling up BS on my rogue and forgot about them. Then figured I would try to sell them and to my surprise, after a few clever barks, they sold like hotcakes. Unfortunately, the price of obsidium ore/bars has been prohibitive to them recently for me, but it dropped enough tonight that I put up a few more for 20g each. Two folded obsidium makes two keys, so that's eight ore per key. I picked up the ore for roughly 1g 50s each, which means eight cost me 12g. If the keys sell at 20g, that's 8g profit per key. Not too shabby, hopefully ore stays that low, as I'm currently the only person on my server making them.
Some of the ads I've used to sell them are: (I should note that my ads get a bit cheeky at times, I have quite a following in /2 on my server to see what I'll come up with, but that's a post for another time.)
"Tired of looking for a rogue to open that lockbox that you just KNOW has a purple in it? Why wait?! Head to your local AH and pick up some Obsidium Skeleton Keys! No BS skill required!"
"Screw rogues and their lock picks! Your local AH is now stocked with Obsidium Skeleton Keys for all of your lockbox opening needs! No BS skill required!" (This one is usually followed by "Just kidding rogues, I love you all! Buy my stuff!")
And one of my personal favorites that due to a whisper I received I know led directly to the sale of ten keys:
"Can't find a rogue to open those lockboxes clogging up your bags? Head to the AH and buy Obsidium Skeleton Keys now! No BS skill required! To use them anyway, selling them requires some BS skills...."
Oh look, second post!
I know I promised a shout out post, but since this blog is primarily about my gold making experience, I thought I should start with what I did last night.
My brother quit playing recently and had a lonely 85 shaman on his account. I felt sorry for the big lug so I took him in, made him a goblin, and made him my own. He had a 485 JC skill and a whopping 112 alchemy. I thought about raising the alchemy to have a second xmute available, but then I remembered allll those gold bloggers talking about the gold mine that is inscription. So, I took the leap. I dropped his pathetic alchemy, picked up inscription and started skilling up.
Now for the first shout out, I managed to go from 0 to roughly 350 skill in about an hour and a half last night, due mainly to my wonderful girlfriend. Allow you me to introduce you to my packrat girlfriend, from now on: PG. PG has also been playing since vanilla. She, however, has never had the same money issues I have. Whereas I think "OOooo, I want that BoE, but I can't afford it", PG thinks "Hey, I can make that!" She has every tradeskill at max levels, some of them more than once. She has two fully opened guild banks packed to the brim (until last night) with every tradeskill mat you can think of. She never walks past a mining node, herb, unskinned mob, etc. Her guild banks would make gold farmers go weak in the knees. If she ever decided she wanted to own the server, she probably has the stock to make it happen. I'm just glad she's not decided to put her considerable resources and intellect into play in the AH market.
So, thanks to PG supplying me with a VAST amount of herbs to get a leg up, I cut a big dent into the price of skilling inscription thus far. I sent him 2k to get started and when I quit I had about 1300 left. I had to buy a few herbs here and there to get over the hump to the next ink. As I was skilling up, I took profit into consideration and whenever possible made the more profitable glyph if it was a comparable chance at skill up. I didn't have time to do the math this morning, but I'm 100% confident that once the glyphs sell, I will have MADE money raising inscription. That's a first for me. Normally, when I decide I want to raise a tradeskill it means sinking a ton of time, money, and PG's mats into it at a loss. This time, I sank a little time, a little money, and a lot of PG's mats into it but stand to make a killing. Once I get liquid enough, she definitely has a present heading her way.
While posting the glyphs I had made, I came to the realization that there is apparently no one controlling the glyph market on my server. I would go to post a glyph, and see the undercut price as 1g something, and think "WTF?" Looking at the current auctions, there would be 2-3 for 300g each, then 5-6 for 3g or less. Using TUJ, I found the median price for them, bought the cheap ones, and put them plus the ones I had made back up for median price. It'll take some doing, but I think I can regulate and control the glyph market once I get all or most of the glyphs. Can you say CHA-CHING?!?
At this point, some of you might be thinking "Wow he talks a lot." I should have mentioned in the first post, I'm quite the loquacious bastard in text. Don't worry, I'm winding up.
Now, for another shout out. Big thanks to Fluxdada at Power Word: Gold. Not only is his blog the one that convinced me that I CAN make money, its given me a lot of the early tips I used to build my bankroll, and his directory of gold blogs is an amazing resource. I'll write more about some of the others later, but Fluxdada has been instrumental in my early success in game, as well as helping me set up my blog. If you're reading this, chances are you came here from there, but on the off chance you found me from somewhere else, check him out!
My brother quit playing recently and had a lonely 85 shaman on his account. I felt sorry for the big lug so I took him in, made him a goblin, and made him my own. He had a 485 JC skill and a whopping 112 alchemy. I thought about raising the alchemy to have a second xmute available, but then I remembered allll those gold bloggers talking about the gold mine that is inscription. So, I took the leap. I dropped his pathetic alchemy, picked up inscription and started skilling up.
Now for the first shout out, I managed to go from 0 to roughly 350 skill in about an hour and a half last night, due mainly to my wonderful girlfriend. Allow you me to introduce you to my packrat girlfriend, from now on: PG. PG has also been playing since vanilla. She, however, has never had the same money issues I have. Whereas I think "OOooo, I want that BoE, but I can't afford it", PG thinks "Hey, I can make that!" She has every tradeskill at max levels, some of them more than once. She has two fully opened guild banks packed to the brim (until last night) with every tradeskill mat you can think of. She never walks past a mining node, herb, unskinned mob, etc. Her guild banks would make gold farmers go weak in the knees. If she ever decided she wanted to own the server, she probably has the stock to make it happen. I'm just glad she's not decided to put her considerable resources and intellect into play in the AH market.
So, thanks to PG supplying me with a VAST amount of herbs to get a leg up, I cut a big dent into the price of skilling inscription thus far. I sent him 2k to get started and when I quit I had about 1300 left. I had to buy a few herbs here and there to get over the hump to the next ink. As I was skilling up, I took profit into consideration and whenever possible made the more profitable glyph if it was a comparable chance at skill up. I didn't have time to do the math this morning, but I'm 100% confident that once the glyphs sell, I will have MADE money raising inscription. That's a first for me. Normally, when I decide I want to raise a tradeskill it means sinking a ton of time, money, and PG's mats into it at a loss. This time, I sank a little time, a little money, and a lot of PG's mats into it but stand to make a killing. Once I get liquid enough, she definitely has a present heading her way.
While posting the glyphs I had made, I came to the realization that there is apparently no one controlling the glyph market on my server. I would go to post a glyph, and see the undercut price as 1g something, and think "WTF?" Looking at the current auctions, there would be 2-3 for 300g each, then 5-6 for 3g or less. Using TUJ, I found the median price for them, bought the cheap ones, and put them plus the ones I had made back up for median price. It'll take some doing, but I think I can regulate and control the glyph market once I get all or most of the glyphs. Can you say CHA-CHING?!?
At this point, some of you might be thinking "Wow he talks a lot." I should have mentioned in the first post, I'm quite the loquacious bastard in text. Don't worry, I'm winding up.
Now, for another shout out. Big thanks to Fluxdada at Power Word: Gold. Not only is his blog the one that convinced me that I CAN make money, its given me a lot of the early tips I used to build my bankroll, and his directory of gold blogs is an amazing resource. I'll write more about some of the others later, but Fluxdada has been instrumental in my early success in game, as well as helping me set up my blog. If you're reading this, chances are you came here from there, but on the off chance you found me from somewhere else, check him out!
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Welcome to the Well Dressed Orc
Hey, how's it goin?
So what's goin on here? Well, I've decided that writing a blog may help me focus my efforts on conquering the WoW economy. A little background info is in order, I suppose.
I've played WoW since vanilla, with the exception of BC. I skipped pretty much that whole expansion due to burn out and real life. I came back shortly before the Wrath launch and have been active since then. I consider myself a casual player, with hardcore tendencies. If it weren't for my dear friends and family in my guild, I would probably be in one of the hardcore raiding guilds. As it is, I content myself with leading raids for our merry band of misfits and am quite happy doing so. I've done it all, topped dps meters, been the hero tank, and the go-to healer. Currently my main is a bear tank, with my beloved combat rogue getting as much playtime as I can squeeze in, and I'm beginning to love pvp on my resto shaman.
The one thing I've never been in WoW is rich. I've gotten by, always had enough to pay repair bills, buy flasks, buff food, etc. But I've never been able to spring for the sweet BoE's I saw in /2 and on the AH, and my enchants are always just a little worse than they could be because I have to settle for what's affordable instead of what's BiS. I recently decided to do something about that. Enter Well Dressed Orc, stage right.
At the time my experiment started (about two weeks ago) my druid was 85 and had max herbalism/alchemy, my rogue was 85 with almost max JC/BS, and my pally was 82 with max mining and maybe 460 engineering. They all had roughly 2k gold on them. I took 1k from each and funded a new AH toon. I looked around on the 'net and found a ton of useful information to help me get started. I'll do another post later with resources and shout outs, this is already getting to be a wall o text. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and my AH toon is sitting on roughly 25k gold plus roughly 200 active auctions.
Along the way I've made some mistakes, some discoveries, some enemies, and some new friends. This blog will, hopefully, be an ongoing diary of my journey to WoW riches and I'll try to impart some wisdom, tips and levity to others seeking to do the same.
Coming soon:
Shout outs to the members of the gold blogging community who have helped thus far!
Review of Alto's Gold Guide
Tips and tricks that helped me turn 3k into 20k
Mistakes that kept me from turning 3k into 30k or more
Tools and references for the WoW millionaire in the making
And more!
So what's goin on here? Well, I've decided that writing a blog may help me focus my efforts on conquering the WoW economy. A little background info is in order, I suppose.
I've played WoW since vanilla, with the exception of BC. I skipped pretty much that whole expansion due to burn out and real life. I came back shortly before the Wrath launch and have been active since then. I consider myself a casual player, with hardcore tendencies. If it weren't for my dear friends and family in my guild, I would probably be in one of the hardcore raiding guilds. As it is, I content myself with leading raids for our merry band of misfits and am quite happy doing so. I've done it all, topped dps meters, been the hero tank, and the go-to healer. Currently my main is a bear tank, with my beloved combat rogue getting as much playtime as I can squeeze in, and I'm beginning to love pvp on my resto shaman.
The one thing I've never been in WoW is rich. I've gotten by, always had enough to pay repair bills, buy flasks, buff food, etc. But I've never been able to spring for the sweet BoE's I saw in /2 and on the AH, and my enchants are always just a little worse than they could be because I have to settle for what's affordable instead of what's BiS. I recently decided to do something about that. Enter Well Dressed Orc, stage right.
At the time my experiment started (about two weeks ago) my druid was 85 and had max herbalism/alchemy, my rogue was 85 with almost max JC/BS, and my pally was 82 with max mining and maybe 460 engineering. They all had roughly 2k gold on them. I took 1k from each and funded a new AH toon. I looked around on the 'net and found a ton of useful information to help me get started. I'll do another post later with resources and shout outs, this is already getting to be a wall o text. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and my AH toon is sitting on roughly 25k gold plus roughly 200 active auctions.
Along the way I've made some mistakes, some discoveries, some enemies, and some new friends. This blog will, hopefully, be an ongoing diary of my journey to WoW riches and I'll try to impart some wisdom, tips and levity to others seeking to do the same.
Coming soon:
Shout outs to the members of the gold blogging community who have helped thus far!
Review of Alto's Gold Guide
Tips and tricks that helped me turn 3k into 20k
Mistakes that kept me from turning 3k into 30k or more
Tools and references for the WoW millionaire in the making
And more!
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