Opioid

My take on the "dumb girl strategy:"

Disclaimer: You might think I am insensitive and if you do, or if you are interested in more straightforward ways of making your money, I don't have any problem with that and you might want to skip this. I do not think these things are true of female WOW players and it should not be held as my personal view; in fact, I learned the wisdom of it back on Mannoroth Alliance learning from a female priest in our end-game raiding guild who was very much more adept at imaginary money management than I. If you want to learn a new trick, read on:

The auction house is nice and a fruitful tool but it lacks a certain personal edge. You can see what you're getting for how much and who is selling it. This brings up a problem: peoples' personal feelings. Its sometimes too easy to get a reputation as a monopolizer on a server, and people get angry about someone with epics and a great deal of money skimming money off of the populace. I learned a lot from a Chinese fellow on Mannoroth named Aorum, who basically controlled the entire epic market on the AH in the Blackwing days and had a personal fortune of 137K gold, but never using his main.

Some people, especially the perpetually broke, are loathe to use the auction house as it hurts their pocketbook and can seem overwhelming like economic voodoo. Learning to use trade chat is a good way to tap this market of skimpers and savers.

Play into peoples' worst stereotypes. Create an elf healer. Give her a feminine sounding moniker (don't be too obnoxious or obtrusive here, obviously Bootypally is retarded, but something with a bit more tact and naivety will take you far.) Get her to a low level, 20s, 30s, and give her a mishmash of quest rewards and BOE stuff, about half badly itemized (wear a few cloth pieces on a druid or something, don't run around town naked and dancing on the mailbox obviously)

Now you are ready to sock it to the /trade channel. Sell odd varieties of things and try to skim a reasonable amount. You won't be able to deal tons of high-level stuff and stay convincing, but the occasional Black Temple gem as "a thing you got from your BF for raiding instead of going out with you" just adds to the flavor.

Sell some low risk things under value, to create the impression you don't know the worth of what you have. This opens up the enemies flank to when you skim things off the real money makers you are looking to get rid of.

You neutralize many of your the average complainers avenues against you. If someone says you're charging too much, act embarrassed that you don't know what you should have asked for... no one can beat up on the dumb girl without harming themselves just as much (or, in the case of me being called a slut in trade chat, a sympathetic buyer messaging you afterwards and what I can only assume was pity-purchasing the herbs I had, which were far below a 70.) In turn, a good deal of people looking to scam you will feel bad for picking on a broke lowbie just playing for fun.

If you do a convincing job, you'll notice that people really do treat you different. I never had people message me after a trade was complete, sometimes days later, when I was quite obviously acting macho. With my dumb girl alts, it happens a nauseating amount... but now and then I can still sometimes end up with something worth disenchanting or selling for a little small talk. No ones gonna give you an epic mount, the horror stories are cliche and internet legend at this point, but like I said every little bit helps. As an EJ poster you might think flagrant sexist attitudes and weak lonely nerds are fewer and more far between, or greatly exaggerated for comic effect... well I can say you've never been /me squeezes %t's ass! waiting for the zeppellin between Undercity and Orgrimmar, or had people actually respond to "throw in an extra gold if you /kiss."

For the time I kept track during a particularly obsessive period over a year ago, my margins for odd jobs/trades were 22-30% higher for the volume going through my dumb girl alt than on my gathering profession normal alt, and its not like the commodities were dramatically different. I admit fully that the economic part of WOW gets me every time and keeps me hooked, I recommend trying the psychological game to people with similar tastes.