Posts Tagged ‘Real World’

Free Wow Gold Guide – How To Make A Lot Of Gold

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

What if I told you that you can make a ton of gold in only a few minutes a day without all that usual instance grinding, daily questing or making items for sale with your profession.

Sounds hard to believe… and most sites will ask you for some sort of payment to receive their “ultimate gold making guide” blah blah blah. I’ve seen those guides and they tell you what you already know: go here, kill these mobs, use this skill to make this item to sell for this much… oh and something like “don’t list your items at a price just a bit lower than competitors in order to sell it”. I guess if you are the type that likes to follow the game word for word and do exactly what those guides tell you then you could go ahead and waste your money on one of them. Just like the leveling addon that supposedly tells you how to level in the shortest amount of time (do you really want to follow every step they tell you? what is the point of playing the game?!)

Anyway, my secret (if you call it a secret) is FREE and its 100% legitimate because you are not using anything but your brain and bargaining power which last time I checked were legal in the real world and the gaming world. Why do you ask I would give this away? 

No I am not rich in the game myself, in fact I am the opposite. The reason is simple: I am lazy and have retired my ways of easy gold making to focus on heroic instances, reputation rewards and PVP. This method only requires ONE thing of you, and that is to have a toon parked near the Auction House for quick access. Yes, this is an Auction House gold making Guide! How else do you expect to make thousands of gold VERY fast?! Duh! There are no hacks or cheats, nor would you want to participate in that sort of thing. Expecting to hear about Auctioneer and buying low selling high? Won’t happen, there is already a guide out there for that and if you wish to read that nonsense – go ahead. If there is such a thing as I am about to explain, then why isn’t everyone doing it? Answer: People by nature are 1. Lazy 2. Lazy 3. Scared to spend their precious gold that they gathered through hours of grinding whatever it is they like to grind…

Here it is, FREE gold making guide for World of Warcraft. Sustainable control over the market and all of its participants. Huh? What’s that you say? Let me give you a simple example: Before WoTLK “bandit” items were really popular among pvp participants who did not have their epic gear due to lack of play time. Even though bandit items were pretty common drops, people were still willing to purchase them from the Auction House for an average price of 7-15g per armor and 10-30g for a weapon. That is a lot of gold for a green item! Not to mention that YOU WOULD HAVE sold them for 30-50g per armor and 30-70g per weapon. How? By eliminating MOST of your competition – buying out their cheap items and re-listing them for more. Unfortunately this is not a cookie – cutter format you would like to see and it is here, at this point where we eliminate a lot of you slackers out there. Gone. Go read some other nonsense guide that tells you what you already know. For those of you who are sticking around, read on…

You might have a lot of questions or concerns at this point: “You idiot, green items are no longer popular with WoTLK since you can get all of your nice items from quests!” Or you might be thinking: “well, how the heck do I know what to buy and sell” or “what if I purchase all of the items that I wish to resell and some idiot decides to put his items (that he had sitting around in a bank) on the Auction House just a few gold cheaper after seeing my prices and realizing the potential”. Well, at least now I got you thinking and using your brain! Lets see, what do financial advisers tell your mom and dad about investing their money? “Play it safe, DIVERSIFY” This is very True. Just like the real world, in the world of WARCRAFT (no pun intended) a wise investor must diversify among different investments. Don’t just buy out one kind of an item. Don’t spend all of your money on some “hot” armor that you think will sell no matter what and leave yourself broke to see others place theirs for half the price. At this point you probably have even more questions…

Lets have a questions and answers session:

1. How do I make gold if I don’t have any to begin with?

Answer: Kill a few mobs, get something to work with even if its just a few silver. (I started with 5 silver and went to 5k in just my spare time pre-wotlk) Start applying the “buy low, sell high” principle until you have something substantial to work with. You can always focus on lower level items since a lot of higher levels buy them for their alts.

2. How do I know what the price limit is for an item?
Answer: You can get auctioneer if you feel like it and observe the price changes or if you are like me, just observe the auction house a few minutes a day to see how the prices fluctuate. Also, play around with prices, jack them way up to see what happens. (I have listed low level green items on many occasions for 300g + and actually sold them!)

I got control of 100 + items in the same category and then some airhead put up his 10 items for half my price, what do I do?
Answer: Be patient. Just like the stock market, prices go up and down. Someone decides to mess with you, let them. Either their items will sell fast so that yours can start selling as well, or they will keep lowering the prices after they realize that nobody is buying them. On the bright side: if their items sell fast, well its time for yours to sell as well. If theirs keep dropping in price because nobody wants them (due to a slow economic period) all the better! Buy their items once they reach that “reasonable” price!

A slow economic period? What are you talking about?
Just like the real world, believe it or not, the virtual world within WoW is very similar. Your chances of selling items are greater when the server has more people on (duh!) There will be times when it seems your item has fallen out of the “hot” category and is no longer desired, but in reality its just a slow time when nobody is spending their PRECIOUS gold or simply less people are playing at any given time. This is why I stress the importance of diversifying your goods. Have something other than armor to sell, find weapons, gem stones, quest items, epic items, whatever it is that seems to be the hot ticket item on your server. While one item seems very slow on sales, another might be pulling you up while the slow one recovers.

How do I know what’s “hot” on my server?
Answer: Observe the auction house, see what sells fast. You can also ask around! Ask your guildies what they have sold. Observe the auction house item quantities and prices. If an item is going for a lot but there are only a few competitors, chances are that item is really good or someone is pulling the same trick you are. Play the game, CHECK THE STATS. If the item looks like something that You would want for one of your characters, chances are its good to sell! Other things to keep in mind: Consumables (everyone needs them just like the real food we buy irl). Ore, cloth, gems, hard to get quest items, specialty items with bonuses to trade skills, EPIC items, especially good greens for leveling. – think of the bandit items I mentioned earlier. My server has good sales for Titansteel, Abyss Crystals, any kind of cloth, ore, bars and level 80 epics. Possibilities are endless you just need to keep an eye on things that seem to sell well. This is why this guide focuses on making gold in your off-time when you are just logging in for a few minutes to replace your items on the AH or to collect the gold!

All of this sounds wonderful, but I simply don’t have any gold because I’m level 5!

Answer: Good for you, I made most of my fortune on a level 3 character who I happened to run to Stormwind from the newbie zone. Like I said, start small, move onto bigger things. Nobody becomes a millionaire in real life without first taking some smaller steps (unless they are a genius and I am certainly not one). There are some very rich people in WoW but they didn’t get there over night, in fact they probably worked their butts off to be where they are. I made over 5k + all sorts of high level enchants for my future characters on a level 3 who could barely kill anything. Now think of a level 80 and the potential there. The more gold you can get to play around with, the bigger toys you can buy!

Why won’t you just tell me what to buy and what to sell, step by step??
Answer: Every server is different, each has its own economies. Server populations vary greatly and some items are not in demand as others depending on the age of the server and progression of its population. If everyone in your server (impossible) has done Heroic Naxxramas, do you really think you will make any gold selling +5 agility gems? I doubt it.

If you are reading all of this and are thinking “well this is just too much work” IT IS NOT! I used to log on my AH parked alt every day twice a day and make over 600g a day in just a few minutes of running to my mailbox and back to the auction house. You are not supposed to sit there parked all day, that is why I encourage people to PLAY their characters and do this in your downtimes. So you ran all heroics for the day, so you got 2k gold in one day, why not turn that 2k into 10? Most people are afraid to spend their hard earned money and there is nothing wrong with that. However, it takes money to make money. A little knowledge goes a long way in WoW and real life itself. How do you think retailers do what they do? How do you think online business are booming? People buy things all the time! However, in order to have products to offer, you must spend some of your own cash (unless you know of a loan officer in wow, please let me know!)

This is a very simple strategy and works all of the time if you make sure to diversify in items. You don’t have to spread your cash, you could focus on a single category of items. Remember: the narrower your focus is, the higher the risk (the more spread out your product line is – the lower the risk) just like a typical real life investment.

Don’t Just sit there! Go try it out! Auctioneer is great for beginners to get acquainted with their auction house. As long as you are buying and selling, you are safe in the game. Market manipulation is a whole other story that can get you insanely rich and banned most likely but that is not the topic of this article. If you wish to make gold, try this strategy and you won’t be disappointed.

Gene Maryushenko

The author is a regular contributor to WoW Death Knight and Death Knight Builds
which focuses on information regarding the Death Knight class.

Gold In Wow

Thursday, February 25th, 2010


Here\’s some good ideas for making a lot of gold in wow. And, like everywhere else, and in the World of Warcraft Gold makes the world go round.

Make Good use of the Auction House

This is the oldest formula known to man: buy low, sell high

The Auction House Agent

Roll up an Auction House agent. The agent is just a character you have that you use only for Auction House operations. This character checks the mail, mails off wow gold, and places bids. Of course, make sure this character is on the same server with your main character.

Specialize

Identify a product you want to work with and figure out what the average buyout price is. Bid on Short and Medium auctions for as little as you can. Buyout other auctions for significantly less than your Buyout. Bid on goods usually sold singly that are stacked for a super discount.

A good product example is Black Pearls. These normally sell singly for one gold (or better) apiece. Watch for a stack of them to go on sale at a nice discount. Break up the stack, sell them singly, and you\’ll come out several gold ahead.

Market Trends

Learn to keep up with market price trends. You\’ll know what to sell when. It helps to specialize in a few items, to become familiar with their ups and downs. If you employ this technique successfully, you\’ll have enough cash on hand for your mount before you reach level 40.

Level Up for Profit

It can start paying off with the goods you\’ll loot as a level 40 and on up. Once you hit 55 and up the Auction House becomes very lucrative.

Troll the Auction House

Here\’s an old trick that real-world pawnshop speculators use. Using the Auction House agent we described earlier, constantly troll the Auction House looking for blue/purple items that are underpriced. (If you\’re a lower level, get a friend or a guildmate to loan you the gold to cover this.) Buy any such items, now resell them for a more appropriate buy out price. Be willing to wait for them to sell, and to run them through the Auction House again. Do this as a living, and you\’ll be sending your main character all the world of warcraft gold she needs.

Some General Auction House Tips

Always set a buyout price. Many people want something NOW.

If you\’re reselling stuff you bought cheap, set the minimum bid to just a bit more than you bought the item for, guaranteeing some small profit. Don\’t set a minimum bid to an exact amount. Make it something point something. People may believe a bid is placed move on the buyout price, or set a high bid.

Profitable Stuff to do at Levels 30 and Up

For some great drops, grind the level 30+ snapjaws. At Hillsbrad, Tarren Mill, there\’s a river running to the east. There\’s a couple dozen or so snapjaws spawned there at a time, in the river and along the riverbank. See how many you can grind in thirty minutes.

Here\’s the deal about snapjaws. They quite often drop loot worth one silver each (meat and scales). They also drop the occasional green item. But better than these are “Speckled Shell Fragments”. Speckled Shell Fragments can be sold for 9 silver! Work hard enough, and you can make up to five gold in wow in an hour.

Profitable Stuff to do at Levels 55 and Up

30 to 50 gold in wow an hour? You can do it. In the eastern Plaguelands are three types of Plaguebats, and they are most lucrative for grinding. They drop pelts, eyes, fangs and ears (sometimes in multiples) that are worth up to 2 gold each. They drop green items as well.

Fishing for Fun and Profit

Remember through all these tips that the economy on each server is a bit different. That means you\’ll never be able to fully predict any prices.

Deviate fish, cooked up and stacked to 20, can sell for 15-25 gold on an auction house buyout. That\’s 50 silver and better per unit. If your cooking skill isn\’t high enough, store the deviates in the bank until you get that skill up.

Professions

Mining and skinning offer fast wow gold payouts. With mining at high levels you can get arcanites crystals that can sell for 20 to 25 gold.

Skinning is a great way to salvage something from those kills that don\’t drop anything. Skinning is easy to level up, making it quicker for you to get to those higher level gathers.

Seb Branson

Visit our site for more great information about learning how to play warcraft using a warcraft guide where you’ll find all the making Gold In Wow information you’ll need to change the way you play forever.

8 Best Auction House Secrets for World of Warcraft

Monday, February 8th, 2010


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.

Davey Mars

Davey Mars, founder of the Horde Leveling Alliance (hordelevelingalliance.com) brings you the best tips on leveling, questing and making gold. We want your feedback. Join us.