CJ posted a comment on my blog about his (her?) problems with making gold:
I must say that my biggest problem with goldmaking thus far has been my complete inability to post and sell during prime raid times on my server. I play on a large, raiding-population heavy server, but Im also a raider myself. So every Tuesday-Thursday, I have to be told numerous times to hurry up and log on to my main healer so our 10man group can get going. And every Tuesday-Thursday, I can only sigh as thousands in gem and enchant sales just slip through my fingers. (The few times I manage to sit from raid I see HUGE profits.)
Though Ive gotten used to having gems precut and posted seconds before we have to start, I still havent found a way to ditch those pesky heroic modes to repost
First of all, I empathise with you here. I had to ditch raiding myself this year (5 months cold turkey and I still miss it) in order to spend time on this blog and to care for my children more often. My youngest son was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome yesterday and he takes a lot of time to care for. By the time the weekend comes, I’m desperate for a lie in. This then turns into a lie in/late lunch / housework session, and before I know it, it’s 5pm and I’ve completely missed the entire Saturday or Sunday rush, and my family are still asking for more attention.
So when I’m writing my reply to your worries, CJ, I’m also writing to myself, maybe typing it up will help it sink in better for me too, heh.
Time Managing
This week I’ve been away from the blog quite a lot. One of the things I was doing was writing my next mini guide, and one of the sections there is about Time Management. Sounds heavy, huh, but really its just time-organizing, or controlling what stuff you spend your time doing. It’s about making time your servant, rather than being a slave to time yourself.
When we don’t have the amount of time that we want, unfortunately many World of Warcraft players respond by taking time away from their other interests and activities. Do you remember your old hobbies that you don’t do any more? I used to paint watercolours (watercolor) and play bass guitar, and do neither of these now! Blizzard itself warns “remember to take all things in moderation, even World of Warcraft” on their loading screen tips. So I will join readers in feeling suitably chastised for playing too much world of warcraft. I better try and remember this one every day 🙂
The answer isn’t to play even more World of Warcraft. There is not much we can do to be able to play the AH whilst doing something else, like raiding. You could try accessing the remote AH over your mobile or website during the raid, but I think we both know that will not help you focus on your raid. And you don’t want someone else topping Recount! Trying to shove and fit everything in to a small time slot like this will just stress you out.
Our answer must be to make more efficient and effective use of what little time we do have, instead of yearning for that which we can’t have.
Practical Advice
Can you set a reminder to yourself to post the scrolls, gems, or whatever sells highest before raid time? That way, they are sat on the AH, working for you, whilst you are raiding. Â Set an alarm on your mobile cell phone if you are forgetful like me.
Use your down time to the best advantage. When sales are slow, use that time for the prospecting, gathering, or non-selling work. Did you do your dailies yet? Remembered to get your limited supply items this week? When was the last time you picked up your free gems from consortium in Nagrand (golden draenites are on my snatch list for selling to tailors making flying carpets), have you been to Tol Barad today? Did you mail everything across to the right alt? Is everything READY to sell once the hot-sales-time hits?
Keep looking on the bright side. You missed the raid time selling times, but you maybe got a load of points you can turn into BoE Boots that still sell for a lot of gold. And because you’re a raider, you have the knowledge about which gems (enchants/glyphs etc) sell to which classes, and which are the most sought after. Players don’t realise that this knowledge is valuable, until they start to forget it. I realised this when I dragged my warlock to 85 and discovered I had forgotten which stats were suitable for her spec … doh!
You still have all weekend to profit, and the other non raiding days, so join me in my attempt to take gold making in moderation, and more effectively.
Talking Points: Can you think of some more bonus points of raiding rather than working AH? Do you want to add any of your ideas for being more effective or efficient in your gold making, for CJ?
Image courtesy of DailyClipArt.net
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
Advertisements that sell
This post is about barking, i.e. advertising in trade (and OCCASIONAL yells) and includes some screenshots of my silly adverts, and tells you about Cold’s Mysterious Fortune Card guide, a guide that can teach you how to craft and sell mysterious fortune cards. Cold is famous for his funny barks: the way he advertises the cards on trade chat.
Here are some of his adverts:
Are You Sitting Half Naked In A Beanbag Chair Eating Cheetos? Well Buy Some [Mysterious Fortune Card]s off the AH Now You Won’t Get A Life, but You Could Win 5000 gold!
New Messages, New Players, New Winners! Grab Some [Mysterious Fortune Card]s off the Auction House. Tons of Fun…5k Jackpot possible from just 1 ticket.
Who’s Gonna Win the 5k Jackpot? [Mysterious Fortune Card]s Fully Stocked on AH. Are You Feelin’ Lucky, Punk? Your [Fortune Card] Awaits
Mysterious Fortune Cards in stock on the Auction House now! Your chance at winning the 5k Jackpot. If you win the [Insert Epic 5k Fortune Card Here] from one of MY CARDS, I will buy it back for 5.5 k gold – That’s a 10% PRIME BONUS!
Why you should advertise in trade
“Another strategy is to bark the prices up. This is easy if you have a macro set up to bark in trade. By now you know that Fortune Cards don’t sell much unless you are barking. Sure you can get some residual sales or return buyers picking up more off the auction house, but if you are wanting to move large volumes of cards, you simply must be barking in trade chat.” Cold, of Cold’s Gold Factory
I agree completely with what Cold says here. When I am not barking, advertising in trade chat, then my cards will sell one or two at a time for 8g each. When I’m advertising, I sell scores of them at up to 20g each. That’s a gold profit due to advertising.
Other fun advertisers are The Tipped Copper
Scooby Doo solves [Mysterious Forune Card] Mysteries all the time! and so could you, simply buy, flip, and solve the mystery. You could win [Fortune Card]!
If you’re interested in making a small fortune by adding Mysterious Fortune Cards to your sales, take a look at Cold’s mysterious fortune card Mastery, and see if his guide is right for you.
Advertising other items
On my RP server, I became “Famous On the Internet” over trade chat for my funny adverts for gems. Â I always made sure I included my name in the advert, so that players looked for my own gems in the AH. Â Making your buyer laugh grabs their attention in the gentlest and most entertaining way, and reminds your buyer to pick up whichever item you’re selling. Â Here are some of my own fun or silly adverts:
Does your guild master want to fill the socket in your pants? Â Quick, buy one of my gems from AH!
Does your gf say you need more stamina? Solid Ocean Sapphire on AH now.
Ladies, looking for more penetration? Stormy Ocean Sapphire on AH
WTS Deepholm Oil (check the tooltip) if you need a little extra personal help (note, this advert makes me a lot more sales than you think!)
(Using my character “February”, around Christmastime) Forget the January Sales, the February Sales are even better! Gems flasks and scrolls in AH now
What you’re doing with these type of adverts is building awareness of your ‘brand’ and raising your profile in a way that makes potential buyers see you more as a mate than as a random seller. Players prefer to buy from mates or familiar names. Just look at the branding success of any big name sellers in your supermarket. Heinz, Coke, Oreos. These guys can price their items higher than the competition and still make more sales.
Talking Points: Do you have any funny adverts that you use in trade chat? Have you tried Cold’s Mysterious Fortune Card Guide? Do you need a little extra penetration in your pants? Ahem, forget that last question on second thoughts!
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
Dumb Mistakes in the AH that you can profit from.
Apart from rare or limited availability items, would you ever buy anything from an auction house at a higher price than you could buy at a vendor? Probably not, if you’re astute enough to be reading this blog. However, there are is a huge market out there for items that players will buy either from laziness, poor judgement or plain stupidity. (edit/update: I’m thinking specifically about local npcs vendoring unlimited items in capital cities right next to the auction houses)
Buying limited supply items, such as the white kitten from Lil’ Timmy in Stormwind, to use a well known example, is called flipping when these items are resold at a profit in the Auction House. Reselling common supply items for a profit in the Auction House doesn’t have a standard name. So I’m going to call it Christmas Comes Early, heh.
From the Blacksmith Vendor: Coal, Weak flux, Mining Pick, Blacksmith Hammer
From the Inscription Supplier: Vanishing Powder, Dust of Disappearance, Parchments
From the Enchanting Vendor: Enchanting Vellums, Copper Rod
From the Cooking Supplies: Mild Spices, Simple Flour
From Innkeepers: Milk, especially around seasonal events that require milk in the cooking achievements (children’s week, winter’s veil)
From Alchemist Vendors: Crystal Vial
From Leatherworking Suppliers: Skinning Knife
From Engineering Supply Vendors: Engineer’s Ink
From Vendors near Stormwind: Cats from the Crazy Cat Lazy in Elwynn.
From Vendors in Orgrimmar: Snakes from the patrolling Snake Vendor
I still regularly sell inscription dusts and jewelcrafter’s settings for considerable profit. Whilst the amount earned per sale is low, the percentage of profits is always enough to make me smile every time an auction sells, and over a week this free gold can really add up. So next time you are at a professions vendor, compare the prices of their wares with the selling prices on the AH.
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
Heya, I’ve missed blogging the last few days! With my game time run out, I haven’t been playing Warcraft. I’ve used the time to work on my next mini guide, which is now half way complete. Definitely a lot of research there, phew. I’m about to log in to world of warcraft for the first time this week, and it’s going to present me with several situations:
All my auctions will have sold or expired. I’ll need to look at which to repost to the Auction House, and for how much, and which items to send on to my stable of alts.
Changes in server economy. Item prices go up and down, and I usually keep a rough idea of the most important prices to me in my head. For example, the most expensive gems, or which items are very underpriced. I may have made mental notes about which gaps in the market I can use to my advantage by crafting and selling the items that are missing or priced lower than expected. It will be a good idea to recan, slowly, the entire AH, using Auctioneer addon
Pleasant surprises: I’m expecting approx 20,000g worth of sales to have completed, which is a normal one-day amount, but I may get a pleasant surprise with some of my more expensive items selling. Without me peddling my items on AH so hard, perhaps some other prices will have bounced up, and are ripe for the picking.
Heroic pugs will have reset, so I will have to work hard to get my weekly amount of gold, emblems, symbols, points or whatever the hell they’re called in this patch!
Now, time to input this game card, wish me luck.
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
Winterspring cubs. Buy these in Winterspring for 50g and resell in the Auction House. Prices were around 150g for sales, but have now dipped around 80g ish, so it depends on your luck and your patience.
Armani Hex Sticks. These drop from ZA. If you already have Mojo, the Zul Aman BOP mini pet or if you are not a pet collector, then you can sell your BoE hex sticks on the AH. Â They sell best after barking them up a little and explaining to cataclysm new players what they do and what they can make. (warcraft pets link to Mojo)
Gordok Ogre Suits I made mine from stored Ogre Tanin (from dire maul north) plus rugged leather and bolts of runecloth. If you don’t have the pattern from before Cataclysm, you can make a Gordek Ogre Suit by taking the Ogre Tanin back to Knot Thimblejack in Dire Maul. I sold mine for 100g, and I was happy with that price, however my buyer is trying to resell them for 1,000g or so, so it’s something you could take a risk on.
Leatherworking leg armor and belts have sold well, with the chaos orbs adding considerable value to the raw mats.
Pristine Hide If you’re not a leatherworker, you can still try trading 10 heavy savage leather for 1 pristine hide at the leather tradesman/vendor in Twilight Highlands. With an example price of 10 heavy savage leather at 35g each, you can buy for 350g, and trade for one pristine hide and sell for 440g. (Vaguely middling figures plucked from the undermine journal as an illustration.)
The Gem Rush of 4.1 is settling down and you can expect prices to slowly drop off to pre-patch prices after the first week rush of players wanting to try Zul Aman and Zul Gurub, and needing new gems for their new gear. Items that are still selling well are Inferno Rubies and Shadowspirit Diamond cuts.
Farming Twilight Highlands is quite profitable at the moment with so many players in “buying mode”, splurging large amounts of gold on enhancements to help them experience the latest patch. Check your ore and herb prices before you go! My personal opinion on farming is that it’s something to do if you’re utterly bored, or if you happen to be passing by whilst completing a quest.
Savory Deviate Delight continues to sell well. If you have reset your hearthstone to Dalaran, like me, then it’s easy to pick up the WOTLK fishing daily, which often gives raw deviate fish as a reward.
Crusader Enchant Formulas selling high on your server? Respond to the new enchanters by driving up the costs of the mats. Righteous orbs are relatively cheap (compared to some other mats) to buy out and create a trade blockade in the auction house.
Rares from your Snatch List are more likely to show up on busy server days like weekends and patch days. Keep an eye on the Auction House for sellers with less knowledge than you.
Beware of buying “cheaper than usual” scrolls of enchants in this patch. The costs of materials are driving down the value of these scrolls and we have not seen the lowest bottom value for Maelstrom Crystals yet.
Selling Zul Aman Battle Bear runs can be a big gold earner if you have a decently geared and experienced group of guild mates willing to work with you and share the profits.
Limited Supply items are still available for the budding gold entrepreneur. Try the “old world” vendors from the opposite continent to your capital city. Horde, search out limited supply items from Eastern Kingdoms, Undercity. Alliance try Darnassus and Kalimdor for unusual limited supply items. Two of my favourite spots are Booty Bay and Netherstorm.
Cooking quests with your alt gives your alt +cooking skill, +gold, +guild rep and +faction rep. Use the cooking token to buy cocoa beans in the Imported Supplies bag. Cook chocolate cookies and sell for 50-100g per stack.
Maelstrom Crystals prices have dropped hard but enchanting lanterns/lamps have not fallen quite as far yet. You can still make a profit with these.
Fathom Eel are fishable in Tol Barad peninsula. Pick some up if you pass a school whilst doing your dailies. They sell well both raw and cooked.
Battered Hilt prices are rising, up to twice the pre-Cataclysm selling prices. And Pit of Saron trash (and bosses if you’re feeling brave!) are soloable. It’s an interesting way to make a cool 20k. Naturally, you should send all the green drops to your enchanter for disenchanting into mats which are also rising in price. Â Icecrown is easy to reach from Dalaran. You did reset your hearth to Dalaran, didn’t you?
Violet Hold is also soloable for greenies if you’re hanging around Dalaran twiddling your thumbs.
Wintergrasp is also nearby if you want to farm ore to use for the icy prism which lost its cooldown. Check the prices of enchanting mats and ore, and you may find the saronite shuffle is viable again!
Engineering pets are down in price, but whelplings and hatchlings of all colours seem to be selling very well. Check out my Pet Shop miniguide for a full list of pets from vendors. I sell Calico Cats at 225g.
Khorium Ore spawns nicely on Sunwell Isle, which is always empty and rich for your pickings.
Shirts are also selling well this week. Players seem to be treating their characters to new gear in every slot. Sell Red Lumberjack shirts for 200g if you can get the interest.
Solid Sky Sapphire sell high on AH. Also golden draenite, which you should sell in stacks of 4 to tailors wanting to make their flying carpet mounts.
I seem to have rambled on for a bit. Hope these tips help start you off on some ideas!
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
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Come for the gold tips, stay for the friends.
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.

