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Horde | Alliance Leveling Starter guide for Making Gold

If you’ve played WoW at all you know you need loads of gold to get ahead. Whether its buying armor, leveling your professions, keeping stocked up with potions and elixirs or just buying a Mammoth mount, you want as much gold as you can get with as little work as possible.

The primary way most people start making WoW gold is through their professions (gathering or crafting) but that a completely separate topic. This article lays out some strategy for your “bank alt” – the character that never quests or fights but just runs between the Auction House (AH) and the mailbox.

This list is also unrelated to what version or patch you are playing. These are Auction House principles you can use to make gold in any market.

A couple of points to remember:

The current price on your server is different than my server, so, if you’re reading a web page that says the Signet of Edward the Odd is selling for 2000g, that doesn’t mean a thing to you unless that page is talking about your server. In other words, anything on the web telling you what an item is worth is wrong. Any prices I give here are using numbers from my server and are for example only. If I make 20g every time I convert a stack of Borean Leather into pieces of Heavy Borean it because stacks are about 7g and pieces sell for about 9g. Your prices will be different but your percentage markups should be similar. Many ideas will scale up or down well but some will not – you need to know your market. So the tip above for converting Borean leather may also work well for you using Knothide leather – but you need to check your AH to verify this. Nothing works all the time. Markets (real world or in tWoW) have frequent variations in how one thing relates to another (any commodity traders out there?).  When something stops working for you, try something else, but don’t forget to come back to the first thing after a while. Ready to get started? Here we go….. Tip 1: Get Auctioneer now!

I’m not selling it, I didn’t write it and, if you can find another tool to do the same things then go ahead and use it, but the information you get is so important, I don’t know how I’d go back to playing without it. I use Curse Gaming to keep my addons current but you can also get it from the Auctioneer site.

Having market prices, AH fees, and price trends in my tool tips is soooo useful. Also Auctioneer will give you a better auction window with one-click bid/buy actions and a lot more.

Once you have Auctioneer running, get in the habit of running a full AH scan when ever you have a few free minutes. Over time, you will build up a database of your server’s prices and always have the current value of an item available to you.

Then look at the Aucioneer Tutorials. I know I don’t use 75% of the features but I couldn’t live without the things I do.

Tip 2: Live within your means – then be a big spender.

If you’re playing the AH with only a little gold, then take smaller bites. Most of my examples here are for characters with at least a few hundred gold to play with but, no matter how little you have, the principles are the same. If you have 3gold on your character then making 30silver is pretty useful (that’s 10% of your bank!). Eventually you’ll have the 10s and 100s and 1000s of gold you need to play in the bigger markets.

Having said that, once you’ve made a nice chunk of gold, then get out of the kiddie pool and come swim with the big fish. I see players on my server who are selling stacks of Abyss Crystals (1500g) along with stacks of Light Leather (2g). I’m not against making money anywhere you can but its a waste of time managing a bunch of 1-2g deals when you are capable of making 2-300g deals all day long.

Tip 3:  Turning This into That

There are some items that convert from X number of one thing into Y of another either by simply clicking on them (Essences) or through some profession (Leathers). Make your own list as you go. I’ll use Eternal Earth/Crystallized Earth as an example. 1 Eternal Earth = 10 Crystallized Earth. Now go to your AH and look at the prices of each. You would expect that if Eternal Earth sells for 10g, that Crystallized Earth would sell for 1g. That would make sense. However the AH is run by people and people don’t always make sense. So you might find that Eternals sell for 10g but Crystallized are selling for 60s. Souns like a good time to buy the Crystallized Earths, convert them and then put them back on the AH for maybe 9g. That’s a 3g (50%!) profit just for going to the mailbox and back.

Tip 4:  Be a Thief

Or at least feel like one when you basically steal an item for a ridiculously low price. Two days ago someone listed two(2) Ace of Nobles for about 160g. I hit the Buy button so fast I almost broke my finger. I sold both of them for 950g each!

The reason I saw them and could jump on them was because I have a habit of scanning high ticket items and use Auctioneer to display percentages on all my screens.(That’s percentage of current market value) It even uses different colors when things are below a certain percentage of the expected price.

The reason I knew I could make a profit is that one of my specialties right now is the Level 80 cards and decks (Chaos, Nobles, Undeath and Prisms) [Be careful with the Darkmoon Cards - when a new set comes out the old ones tend to lose most of their value.]

Tip 5:  Be a specialist

There are thousands of items on the World of Warcraft auction house – you can’t know them all. Pick some areas you can specialize in and know them very well, rather than trying to keep everything in your head. Pick a few areas where you can reasonable stay current on prices without resorting to having to keep a notebook with you – it’s still a game, don’t forget to have fun.

Currently, my Bank Alt (a level 60 Warrior I got bored playing) stays current on

* Titanium Shield Spikes and Weapon Chains
* Borean and Heavy Borean leather and Heavy Borean Armor Kits
* Eternal Belt Buckles
* Level 80 Epic weapons and armor
* Darkmoon Level 80 cards/decks
* Eternal/Crystallized Fire
* ..and whatever looks good at the moment

Not a huge list is it? But I know my markets like the back of myhand which means I can hit the AH, do a few searches and get out quick and play my pains.

Is this list right for you? Probably not. I made some of my choices based on the recent market AND my professions. Between my Bank Alt any my Main I have maxed out Skinning, Leatherworking, Blacksmithing and Enchanting, so the first 3 items in the list are things I use along with my professions.

I can promise one thing — whatever works today isn’t guearanteed to work in the future. Be flexible and do your research.

Tip 6:  Fees ain’t Free

Just know that the AH charges a fee everytime you list an item. It’s usually small but certain items are quite expensive. I remember trying to sell something for about 100g that I paid 70g for and I relisted it at least 5 times at 5g per auction. Because I misunderstood the market at that time I eventually sold it for something like 65g and I turned a 5g loss into a 35g loss.

Pay attention.

Tip 7: Be a Hoarder, but not too much

Eternal Belt Buckles fluctuate on my server between 20 and 45g. When they are low I buy every one I can, knowing that I’ll double my money when the market swings back the other way.

But you have to be careful. When WotLK came out, Titanium bars were selling for almost 40g each. I made a ton of gold for about a week. Then, as the server matured and more Blacksmiths got the pattern and more Miners went looking, the price plummeted to as low as 4g, though it now is roughly 10. I got stuck with a lot of over priced metal because I wasn’t paying attention. That’s another reason to specialize in just a few things – you’ll be able to sense a shift faster in something you’re extremely familiar with.

A nice tip if you’re hoarding leather, minerals or anything else that goes in a “special” bag is that specialty bags (mining sacks, etc.) will fit in your bank’s bag slots, so I have the biggest Enchanting and Leather bags I can find in mine.

Tip 8:  Pounce on patches

Change is chaotic. Be ready. Read patch notes carefully. When something new hits the game, everyone wants it, nobody knows what it’s worth and a few people make a ton of money. Let it be you. If this appeals to you, become a student of the PTR (Public Test Realms) where new stuff is tested pre-release.

Bonus Tip:  Stupid is a Choice

You’ve probably seen the constant undercutting that goes on the AH. Someone posts something for 30g, the next guy says 29, the next one 28 and so on, each hoping their item will sell first. Undercutting can be a valid strategy but too many players will let pride get in the way of logic. I see Scrolls of Enchant Whatever selling for less than the cost of the materials to make them all the time. Don’t get sucked down. Know your minimum price and stick to it (unless you’re sure the market has shifted.) 80% of the time, you can sit on the item for two weeks and the price will be back up.

When you see it happening, become a buyer. Nobody can sustain selling at a loss for long and eventually your items will return to a “normal” range.  When other people get stupid, you get busy.

What do you think?

I think these strategies will help you start understanding the AH better and help you learn to make money no matter what is currently going on. I’d like to hear your results. If you have comments or some ideas of your own, stop by The Horde Leveling Alliance and let me know your results.