Nemantopia

As long as its a seller's market, this is a good idea. I've both made some amazing profit and been badly burned by buying out undercutters.

Make SURE the demand matches what you're trying to do, and back in TBC [before Northrend formal announcements] I did this with Mights [just to resell for profit], scanned Primals and shards regularly, and very much bought out lower specialty cloth sellers regularly to resell as long as the margin was 10g or so. Based on how high demand is, you might even be able to relist all of the items immediately, but usually it's best to keep a bag in your bank that is 'daily or weekend AH list bag', where you meter undercut items back into the market at the going rate. And, you'll have to accept that sometimes the going rate goes down as other sellers join the market / demand goes down / supply goes up. As long as you have enough buffer gold and patience, you can make a fair net profit this way, and since it depends completely on luck about undercut listings and when you bother to check, it's not exactly a 'trade secret' to keep.

The caveat: make sure the margin is still there. Sometimes a new glut of what looks like people undercutting you can indicate a market shift: another crafter is to the point where they're cutting into the market, those buyers that were so eager for your goods earlier have had their needs met, or what-not. If this is the case, you'll likely be at a loss for buying out these since you'll need to relist them at roughly the same cost AND relist your own as such.

 

Balog

Can any JC's or Alchemist's comment on the profitability of their professions compared to BC? I'd imagine the daily recipe system for JC and Potion Sickness might end up hurting their margin quite a bit, but I'm interested in people's actual experiences.

 

Bloo Driver

I can comment about JC, but I'll be up front about the fact that Blackhand is a very large server with alot of people who are more than happy to ruin the economy with obscene undercuts, selling way too many of the same item, and engaging in some pretty bitter price wars.

With that in mind, JC has been relatively stable in the fact that in general you can turn a decent profit off of buying ore and uncut gems and selling the cuts. Trying to compare it to BC is somewhat difficult because we're looking at two entirely different situations when it comes to gem pattern availability, but on the whole it still seems like one of the more profitable professions. I have a 435 inscriber, my girlfriend is a maxed alchemist, and we have several blacksmiths, engineers, and enchanters in the guild and none of them have seemed to indicate that they're making as much cash as my gemcutter. Then again, most of them aren't really willing to deal with the shifting, writhing face of evil that is the Blackhand Alliance auction house.

 

Nerull

In the start when there was 1-2 cutters for a specific gem it was very profitable *evil grin* though now JC is getting more and more ruined.

It doesnt really help when some good money making tips with JC are posted on the boards everywhere now as well, mats have risen about 200-300% within 24 hours after it has been posted here... I guess the best tactic is to find some good way of making recipes NOT listed here

Anyway, if you want JC you better do it fast as the recipes are obtainable to everyone who can kill 3 level 70 mobs each ( i.e. ANY retarded person can get it if they have the patience to do it 3 days in a row ) , so its hardly surprising more and more gems are being competed for on fullscale trade war.

Epics with sockets barely dropping in heroics doesnt really help either, but luckily naxx 10 is easy enough that soon the first wave of alts of the progressed guilds / casual players going to raid first time in wotlk will probably get into it -> more gems to sell.

The most important thing about JC is to check for gems that are not listed in large quantity and then making your run for it. If you keep undercutting then its going to bring the gem down in long term as the supply of ore is ridiculous atm ( much larger than the need for the gems in any way ).

 

Darian_TruBlade

In fact, anyone with a level 70 JC alt can do this fairly simply. All they need is a port to Dalaran, a stack of each gem from the AH and they're pretty much good to go. I've begun to make it a habit after I do my dailies on my main to do the JC daily on my alt (skilling up mining at the same time). While the markets are moving quickly to be less than outright exploitable, you're likely to be able to take in healthy margins for a month or two.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Fondren

JC is not nearly as profitable as it was at the beginning of BC.

The market today more or less resembles the market a few months ago. Every rare recipe has three or four producers who are willing to undercut each other viciously in order to move their product. Pretty soon we'll have even more competitors and profit margins between uncut blues and cut blues will shrink to almost nothing.

Which is fine with me. I don't mind working in volume - especially when I don't have to spend 1k or 2K gold for a decent recipe.

Vertical integration is the key: Mine and prospect your own ore. Buy ore from the AH only when prices dip below market average. Maintain inventory in order to take advantage of market fluctuations.

You should have a variety of recipes for each rare gem type. Each day check the auction house and provide whatever cuts are most in demand.

The days of making 20G to 50G profit on a single gem are gone. This is a different market with lower barriers to entry for each product. But if you run an efficient shop with little waste then you'll have a nice, steady income with less risk and fewer hassles.

Right now the most profitable profession combination seems to be Enchanter/Inscription.

The auction house is my favorite form of PvP.

 

◊ Bekah

If you were making all of your money in TBC with mana pots, then it might affect your outcome. I made a decent income (probably 30-40g a day with very minimal effort in TBC- could have been closer to 100 if I'd gamed the market with more pots) just crafting for procs and selling raid staple pots/elixirs. It won't make you instantly rich in the way the JC/Ench can if all the cards line up, but it's a much less volatile market and it's hard to get burned on if you have a stable raiding population. Even if the price dips, it can be counted on to always bounce back to the price of mats because of the popularity.

I'm still trying to find the sweet spot elixirs that tend to sell for mats or slightly more- and which have a built in profit margin from procs. Don't fight to undercut- that's a battle that everyone loses. If you have a hard time moving your merchandise at mats+ bank it for a week and find a new elixir/pot. I like to have 2-3 backups that are slower sellers. If they're slow enough of a sale there might not be anyone specifically stocking the market and you can get a day or two of higher prices before people stop buying or other players jump on the "new" moneymaker and flood that market. Usually people get bored with listing a couple stacks a day and the price fluctuations are usually from people temporarily over saturating the market. Once they realize that they can't make money by flooding the market- they usually drop out of the market within a couple of days and the price rebounds to normal.

I made thousands of gold off draenic wisdom in TBC. All the healers wanted it. It never sold for more than 2-3g over mats for a stack of 20, but I got procs to push up the profit on a stack.

I bought mats for 2-3 stacks, made them all- refilled my personal 20 stack for raiding with the procs and stacked up the extra procs until I had a nice multiple of 5. I put up 2-3 stacks every night plus whatever proc 5stacks I had and collected my 20-30g profit over mats the next afternoon. Sometimes I pushed the shadow power elixir- much more profitable when it sold, but such a slow mover that it wasn't worth following religiously. Sometimes flasks were worth it. It all depended on the market. Knowing the market is key.

It's working out well enough in wrath. I'm still finding the good elixirs but I make enough to pay for my enchants and gems. Nothing liek 40k gold off a ring pattern, but it suits well enough.

 

Akeldema

When it comes to herbs are you better off Selling the raw herbs or milling them into pigments then selling.
The pigments seem to be worth a lot more.
But there would be more buyers for herbs, Alchemists and inscribers.

 

Gozul

As an inscriber, i'm a bit worried about the "double glyph panel" that Blizzard hinted about.

My only hope (as a moneymaker through Inscription ) was that a demand on glyphs would be constant as soon as season 5 would hit due to multiple respec of talents and therefore of glyphs.

 

klüger

You must have been delusional if you thought that people would have to buy new glyphs each time they respecced. Honestly there is no way around it. Stock up for season5 and have your stuff available some days before launch. (And lots of it)

 

klüger

And the fact that in general peoples consumption of potions/flasks should exceed their consumption of inscriptions.

 

Valerys

Certain metagems that are useful to a wide variety of dps classes and specs sell like hot cakes, due to so many people wanting them. Also most Scarlet Ruby cuts are quite in demand, especially Runed which requires exalted Kirin Tor (not many JCers have that yet).

 

Darian_TruBlade

The most profitable jewelcrafters don't rely on constant demand to make money. They pay attention to what's selling, what isn't, what's overloading and what's missing. Even when there is constant demand, supply is not necessarily constant.

To oversimplify it's 30-40g per stack of herbs average (excluding lichbloom, 100-200g) on my server, which is 7-10g per milling, which is 6-8g per glyph (including parchment). Glyphs are extremely cheap to list, so even if it takes a week or two to sell a glyph for 10-15g I've still made a small profit over what I would have received for just selling the herbs. But the truth is if I also put up my herbs for 30-40g I'd be increasing supply and the demand isn't high enough for me to consistently get that price. That also doesn't account for Icy Pigment I could use for research or Darkmoon cards.

It certainly isn't simple to make money of inscription, but I wouldn't call respeccing the last hope of doing so.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Kuthumii

As a JC, I made a killing on green gems for the first week. It has dropped off since then. I got a few rare patterns drop for me while I was questing and made a killing on those until more people got them. Though I was mad because the gems were selling for 150g+ and were selling all five a day. I log on and it looks like a few more people got the pattern and they set the price at 50g each. Of course all the gems move..........I just can't figure out why some idiot would undercut that much when his gems will sell as there were only about five or six people selling them.

Now I am using the JC tokens to get rare patterns I know are in high demand and am still making a decent profit. I usually farm up nine stacks of ore and prospect it and cut and sell.

Meta gems are where I make a killing now. Cutting the right ones that multiply classes use is highly profitable.

 

Enova

Inscription's largest money maker in the long run will not be glyphs. You could, of course, have a steady supply of the really good glyphs available on the AH around the start and end of seasons, and even during dead times, but the problem is people won't change the spells they use unless some major content patch comes out and changes the balance.

Gear, however, is a lot less permanent. Vellums will be in very high demand pretty much forever. Aside from the immense convenience of having an enchant ready in a single bag space for that piece of gear you know you're going to buy after the raid, or for as soon as you've reached your rating, there's also a huge opportunity of actually exploiting people leveling enchanting. They will do it anyway; vellums give them the opportunity to make some profit out of it rather than giving away enchants. It also gives the inscriber the opportunity to tap into their profit, if you like.

Come to think of it, the dual talent system will actually benefit the market for vellums, as it now encourages people who never preoccupied about off specs because of the involved costs to actively gather and improve their gear for off specs.

Guilty as charged ^

 

Mideci

The problem with vellums is that every inscriber can make all of them. That makes them a commodity and unlikely to yield much margin long term.

 

Darian_TruBlade

If you're looking for 200% margins on your crafting you're out of luck. The days of being able to corner a market and sleep your way to success are effectively over unless your server is extremely low pop/lazy. Plenty of people are going to make a fair profit off vellums and glyphs regardless.

It's not as though every scribe on your server is going to be loading up the AH with vellums. Most people don't take their professions to the AH, most who do only do so occasionally, and the few who make a living off of it will be your primary competition. If all of you forgo glyphs and dump all your resources into vellums you deserve the market crash you're engineering.

Competition isn't bad, it's just more difficult than offering a unique product no one else has.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

• frmorrison

I am a transmute spec and I at first didn't have any good transmutes. Now I have Water to Fire (about 30g profit each) and it has a one day cooldown.

It is random though, and my first transmute discovery was Some good Eternal to Earth (worthless), and it took me 6 transmutes (24 days with 4 day cooldown) before I got a good one.


I am also a Scribe, which is decent if you list glyphs when others are not listing the same one (so you can charge a larger price). Armor scroll sells well, but not the weapon one.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Finkum

Er what? Only the Skyflare/Earthsiege transmutes have no cooldown. All the Eternal A -> Eternal B transmutes have the standard 20 hour cooldown (unless that one is bugged - so far I've got ~5 varieties, the most profitable being Shadow -> Life, but not that particular one as yet).

 

bdew

I'm not sure if it's a bug or intended (or just onyxia deep breathing more) but i got multiple WotLK transmutes discovered from making elixirs. It happened twice when i made a transmute then started making elixirs and got multiple discoveries from them, sometimes even back to back.

 

muddy

As a JC'er thought I'd throw a note in here. I was desperate for my epic flying when I hit 77 so I checked the ah and sure enough there were no dragon's eye uncut gems.
I bet that there were enough JC'ers with cash who didn't want to blow their tokens on gems so I bought 8 and put them up one at a time on the AH for 500g and in less than a week had my built up enough to cover the rest of the 6200g for epic & cold weather flying & mount.
Now this was a short term win for me, but long term bust as I'm now behind and have to save up tokens again for the epic ring & necklace patterns.
In hind sight I'd still do it, epic flying is utterly fantastic
If your not pressed to be "the" JC'er on your server sell the gems and make bank.
Just my 2 copper.

 

Mideci

You're missing my point. There is an infinite supply of cheap Ink of the Sea on the AH from the Darkmoon Card crazies. The parchment is free. Vellums are not a profit source period. They are a commodity with an unlimited number of producers and an unlimited supply of raw materials. This isn't about 200% margins, it's about margins period. Unless you know something I don't, it will take 3-4 people who fail to account for AH fees on each realm to drive these to zero or negative margin, as most alchemy materials went in TBC eventually. And even if people are sophisticated enough to do so, there is no profit in vellums. Now? Maybe. Long term? Not any chance.

And glyphs? Not really. No. People won't be replacing those, especially not with dual spec. And the undercutters seem dumber in inscription than in other professions. Molten Armor was my first discovery. It went out at 150g no problem. First undercutter came in at 90g. Then 50g. Then 20g. Now it's 10g. The cost to make it is 3g. The market is not big. If you think that's a profit, fine. But you can't sell more than 2-3 per day and it's barely worth the hassle. In the time to craft and AH the stuff, I can go find a titanium node or transmute an eternal earth to air.

My inscriber has cleared 2000g or so. And, it's over. From here, she gets crumbs. Unless she happens to sit on a glyph that few have and is valuable and can make a few hundred more. But on my sophisticated, older server, vellum profits already have gone to nearly nothing. And everyone is undercutting everyone else. And should the Ink of the Sea supply dry up and require me to roll my own, well, unless vellum prices return to 20g for weapon vellum -- which seems unlikely -- the margins will actually get worse.

Besides, making 1-2g at a time, selling something in quantity 3-6 per day is hardly an art of making gold tip, it seems. Unless you can move scores at those margins, you are really wasting your time. And you're certainly entitled. But you can also clear out a category of potions and just mark them up to make that kind of gold. Without the profession. Or shards (no listing fee).

 

Har

I feel your pain, however there's always money to be made by staking out a vertical market. If you can't make money with one ability of one trade skill, gang up with some guildies who have things like enchanting, something that can make greens out of mats, herbalism, and mining, and then turn raw mats into a final good like armor enchants. The only question is whether you can find a value chain that's worth the time for you.

Might I suggest herbing in northrend, milling the herbs to make vellum, mining in northrend, using the ores, primals, and jems to craft greens to DE, and then using the mats to enchant your vellum?

 

bugsysegal

I am currently Jc and alchemist on my 70 warrior, my rogue main is herb and a miner. I found out that instead of selling the eternal earth and eternal shadows on the ah was to make the two level 77 jc rings. Have those dis enchanted, and wait until the average time people get done with raids on your server and place the mats in the ah. As for alchemy you can make a good amount of gold by selling flasks. On my server potions often sell for less than what you can get by just selling the herbs. For example a flask of endless rage sells for 65g on my server, but 3 fire leaf ( [Fire Leaf] ) will go for 15g a piece.

A good tactic to use as a jc is to add all your rival jc's on your server to your friends list. When they log off, go to the auction house and put up a few auctions. I put up 2-3 of each gem I have available to cut up on the ah. If you add to much and get undercut by your rivals you tend to lose gold instead of making it.

 

Kuthumii

His point is, you can do far less work and make the same if not more gold than doing what you are suggesting. You suggested using four professions to make a profit off one item. That is at least two characters.

You could make the same or more gold by simply selling the herb, ore, gems, or ink (? milling herbs gives what? Never bothered with Inscription) over wasting a ton of time farming them, then crafting. You are wasting time and thus gold by doing what you suggest.