tedv

This is only half true. In general, the greatest profit margin per hour is time spent crafting consumable goods and listing them on the auction house, such as gem cuts and enchanting scrolls. However, this market saturates itself very quickly. (Good time per hour, but doesn't last for many hours.) If you still want to trade more time for more money, it's possible that farming herbs and ore will be better gold per hour than doing dailies and buying the materials.

That said, it's likely the profit margin on one kind of gathering beats the other. Meaning you'll want to only farm ore, sell some of it, and use the cash to buy herbs to mill, or the other way around. However, what's most likely the case is that you'd rather just buy the ore AND the herbs from the auction house, and spend your time in game doing stuff that's more fun than farming.

 

lucilebluth

Darkmoon cards, especially nobles cards, sell for huge sums (2k+ for individual nobles cards)...This is probably partly because of the first faire of the xpac, but I think those prices will remain relatively high as time goes on. In BC, darkmoon decks were best in slot for a few classes early on; later, they were easily obtainable epics for alts.

I'm thinking it might be worth it to level inscription on an alt just to make cards (I already have an herber alt, so the cost of leveling wouldn't be too bad). I've found very little information so far about what it takes to make useful cards...have you guys had any experience with this?

 

Hoffski

Is it possible right now to make any decent money with enchanting or tailoring? I generally don't enjoy doing enchants for tips since to be honest most people are stupid and I can't stand dealing with them just to get a 5g tip after 30 minutes. Vellums with enchants just don't seem to sell at all and there isn't really a way to "farm" enchanting mats.

Tailoring seems to be really crappy this expansion as far as both profession perks and making money. The only way I could see myself making money with tailoring is if I spend all day gathering clams and waiting for siren's tears to repop on the vendor to craft some wisp cloaks to sell to people.

 

• Emolate

I'm making a tidy sum on bags and Ebonweave. Spellweave is half the price of Ebonweave though, go figure.

AKA: Sememe (Alliance Paladin: Eitrigg)

[W From] [Ollivan] we refer to that as "fail" in the community

 

bugsysegal

One of my guild mates makes 20 slot bags and sells them for 180-250 gold. If you want to level another profession mining is and will always be very profitable.

 

Kuthumii

Please read the post before commenting.

The person I quoted suggested using four professions to farm mats so you can craft one item to sell. You would get more gold and have spent less time if you just sold the farmed ore, herbs, ink, eternals.

He was suggesting going through a long process to end up with very little profit. I suggested just selling the raw materials rather than waste more time by changing the raw material to crafted and then to raw material and then to another crafted.

 

tedv

Repeat after me: It's a fee, not a tip.

When you enchant in person, you apply a service charge for the effort it took you to grind that skill and get that recipe. The surcharge needs to be proportionate to the amount of time to get the recipe, plus the time they make you wait. For example, if the enchant took you literally no time at all, 5g might be appropriate. But if you can farm 200g per hour and it takes on average 5 minutes for the customer to get everything, then they are costing you 200g * 5/60 = 33g by wasting your time. That's a total of 38g. So tell them 40g. Most people will laugh at you, which is what you want, because those are the people that would otherwise waste your time. A few people will pay 40g and it will have been worth it.

Also, I've had great success selling enchanting scrolls (sometimes at very high markups). Part of the problem is getting the server to look on the AH for enchanting scrolls, and the other part is finding a particular enchant that has low supply (and therefore high profit margins). If no one at all is selling enchants on the AH, then your best bet is to make maybe 5 scrolls for each enchant used by a wide variety of classes (eg. attack power, spell power, or stats) and keeping relisting them. Then announce in trade chat that there are scrolls in the auction house. After a week or so people will figure it out.

By the way, it's easy to farm enchanting mats. Buy them from the auction house using the profits from your sold scrolls.

Just because I disagreed with your post doesn't mean I didn't read it. That's because market prices can include market inefficiencies. For example, consider this situation.

Suppose Cobalt Ore sells for 20g per stack (1g per unit)
Suppose Infinite Dust sells for 80g per stack (4g per unit)
Suppose disenchanting [Reinforced Cobalt Helm] averages 3 infinite dust
Suppose Armor Vellum III costs 5g on the Auction House
Suppose [Scroll of Enchant Bracers - Striking] (6 dust and 1 vellum) sells for 50g

You can make [Reinforced Cobalt Helm] from 8 cobalt ore, for a cost of 8g. Disenchanting it gives dust worth 12g, a profit of 4g. With six dust and an extra 5g for the vellum (total cost 29g), he produces an item that sells for 50g. That's a 21g profit from the enchanting step and an 8g profit from the smithing/disenchanting step. He loses the opportunity cost of 16 ore (16g) and spends 5g on vellum for a total of 21g, but gains a total profit of 29g from all steps of vertical integration.

The question remains of whether it's more time efficient to buy the ore directly from the auction house or farm it yourself. But this is a very plausible example situation where vertical integration provides a net profit over selling the materials at each step. I'll note that situations like this are rare, but they do occur. Normally the situation is that it's most cost effective to let someone else do the farming for you, and just buy the materials directly from the auction house, post-process them, and relist.

 

Kuthumii

I am about done farming the mats for the 22slot bags. Once I find a Tailor that can make them, I plan on having four made at 15g per bag. Of course I know most people don't tip/pay when someone crafts something for them.

The 20 slot bags sell fairly well, my friend sells five to ten a day. Plus, as with JC, you can always craft something and have it DE'd then sell the enchanting mats. Those sell nicely right now.

 

Hoffski

Yeah I thought about crafting something from tailoring just to disenchant, but I just haven't found any tailoring item that is worth it. Pretty much all the high level tailoring recipes require imbued bolts, so your spending dust to get less dust back when you disenchant. The mid to high level greens that don't require imbued bolts require 8-10 regular bolts, which is 2-3 stacks of frostweave cloth. Frostweave cloth sells for at least 20g on the AH a stack, so you're losing money turning it into anything pretty much. I just don't understand why they made tailoring such garbage at level 80.

I'll try puting some really popular enchants like +50 spellpower to weapon on vellums and see if I can make some profit off that.

 

Kuthumii

That is what I was trying to point out, you seemed to have missed it.

Can you understand that I was simply pointing out that farming the mats, then crafting an item, then DE'n that item, then crafting another item would not be as profitable as simply just selling the original mats because of the time difference involved. Example:

Under his suggestion you'd farm up the mats to make a [Helm]x2. Then farm up the mats to make [Vellum]. Then you would craft [Helm]x2, then DE them, in turn you use [Dust]x6 and [Vellum] to make [Great Vellum], that nets you a profit of 29g.

When you could have just farmed up the a few stacks of ore, or a few stacks or herbs in that time period and made the same, if not more gold.

That is ALL I was pointing out and you even agreed with that in one of your posts.

Edit; I am not going to spam this thread with an argument.

 

tedv

I'm actually suggesting that these are two separate profit sources, but both of them might be profitable. From my original post:

In other words, he should use enough mats to saturate the production profit regardless of whether those materials are obtained from the auction house or by farming. And additionally, if he wants more money, he should farm those materials as well.

 

Krazen

You do? Ebonweave certainly has a positive cash flow, but the 90 frostweave and 12 dust for bags far exceeds the selling price of a 20 slot bag on Bonechewer.

 

• Emolate

I get a lot of dust from having things DE'ed and the cloth drop skill means I gather quite a bit. The dust is "free" and if I buy the cloth I can still make 20-30 gold on the bags.

It isn't "rolling around naked in piles of money" good but it's a couple of dailies worth in my idle time.

AKA: Sememe (Alliance Paladin: Eitrigg)

[W From] [Ollivan] we refer to that as "fail" in the community

 

Grungo

The dust isn't free, by any means. You're ignoring the opportunity cost you incur by using the dust instead of selling. If the cost of the mats > the cost of the finished good, don't craft it, regardless of whether you bought the mats or farmed them yourself. Just sell the mats.

 

Darian_TruBlade

It's unfortunate that the situation is as you describe on your server, but we'll need more than your or my anecdotes to establish a median or average. I say this because my situation is, in fact, equal and opposite. There are no Inks of the Sea on my server/faction's AH and no Azure Pigments either save for the ones that I placed there. The vellum and glyph markets are poorly represented, with common glyphs like Stormstrike often missing.

I would guess, though it could be a mistake, that the typical situation is centered between what the two of us have experienced.

Nevertheless I've been responding not because I thought one could use vellums and glyphs to make the kinds of huge profits the savvy entrepreneurs can make with a profession, but because I object to the assertion that they can't turn a consistent or healthy profit. At the present time they can't on your server, but markets at the onset of an expansion are exceedingly volatile. Six months from now the situation may be very different.

"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]

 

Ambika

delete this please

 

Ambika

Earthen Ring horde side here.

Glyphs are a dime a dozen. You can get nearly anything you want on there, the amount of inscribers are disgustingly high. Our guild bank has 2 tabs full of crafted glyphs free for anyone to take, alts included. They actively encourage people to take them and do whatever they want with them. Glyphs of all types are available. The higher end ones cost money to get, but the mats aren't that bad and with an herbalist and an inscriber I can melt down the herbs, forward them to a guildy, they make them, and send me back a glpyh.

Ink of the Sea is 90g/ink. It's high, audaciously high. You can't buy it and use it and make a profit. This is due to the darkmoon faire cards and 2 players who are soaking up every single one to make cards and sell back for astromonmical pries, let alone the folks who want to skill up and are too lazy to farm herbs.


Titansteel is still going for 300G/bar. We've had a guildy sell 2 mechanohogs for 20k/each. Those are going for insane sums still.



JC: The first few days I bought ore at an obscene price (200G/stack) to level up my JC at a furious pace. I then sold my raw gems at 300G/stack after I had skilled them up. I sold DE'd ring mats for outrageous prices, blue gems that were worthless for 200G and crafted gems for 50-100G each. After a week, people got wise and my market shattered.

In the end the whole process during the first week of the expansion cost me about 1000G out of pocket expenses to level JC.


All in all, I mostly use JC for the guild to make stuff. All the ore gets shipped to my alts for engineering and blacksmithing. Once they are done I'll go back and see where the market it. I charge guldies 10G/gem+cut on the fly for any gear they want done now. I find this is very reasonable as they are dripping in cash and I say "If you have the gem it's free, if I have to provide the gem it will cost as this just goes into the fund to replace gems" . I usually have a 20/stack of all 5 gems on me at all times.

 

Darian_TruBlade

I can see Ink of the Sea prices going up because of lazy players, but I would think zealous players going after the Darkmoon cards would lower prices. Milling gives 4-6 times as much Azure Pigment as Icy Pigment, but the cards require twice as much Snowfall Ink as Ink of the Sea. That's a very large surplus unless I'm overlooking something obvious.

"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]

 

Har

This point is really about vertical integration. If you and your friends can gather and craft, will you make more money from your efforts by acting independently, each only catering to one part of the chain between raw mats and finished goods, or by cooperating and trying to get involved in as many of the stages as possible? The example I gave was probably not the best- it is rather more complicated than it needs to be. The point was to illustrate a vertically integrated value chain.

Not every link in the chain will be profitable- if the money from selling your herbs and ore on the AH is more than the cost of buying greens to DE, buying the enchanting mats themselves, or buying inks, then don't include gathering in your chain. Pick the steps that you can make money on (or save money with), and focus on those.

Gathering for money is something that most players already do, so if you have a gathering skill, a vertical can help you make more from the raw materials you produce.

The general point is that the more steps between raw material and finished good you can make money from, the more likely you are to make a larger profit over time. Even if inscription is not making someone money on a particular faction/server, you can try to use it to create a vertical value chain that will make money.

 

Bula

I can only imagine that person you quoted meant Snowfall Ink is going for 90g/each. Ink of the Sea are going for less then 40g per stack of 20 on Gorgonnash and as common as it is I can't see it being much more then no matter what server you are on. Personally I'm sitting on an entire 18 slot bag in my bank full of 20 stack of Ink of the Sea. I can't do anything with it besides make vellum's and glyphs to hopefully sell on the AH. There is a lot of it posted on the AH but I usually see the same stacks sold by the same people so I don't think the market is too big for it.

 

Dralmoo

It seems to me the problem with the Glyph market is that there are simply too many useful glyphs. Most professions make a relatively small number of useful items. With glyphs, even discounting the bad ones, I have maybe 50 discoverable glyphs that are "useful", but demand is not consistent at all. AH prices are not a great way to gauge demand because there are always people like the idiot who keeps listing his Glyph of Mind Control for 90g.

The glyphs that are the most powerful are not necessarily the best sellers, because people recognize their strength and the supply is very high (for example Frostfire will have dozens on the AH, each person undercutting the next). What works best for me is seeing which of the good glyphs have a low supply on the AH at a given time,and selling those in small volume, but this is pretty time consuming.

I haven't found vellums or completed scrolls to be good sellers either, I think most people are too accustomed to getting their own mats and finding an enchanter, rather than looking on the AH. Moreso now that every enchanter has any recipe that anyone actually wants with almost no effort.

 

Ambika

perhaps it's the Snowfall ink that's outrageous. It's the one that is the BLUE item recipe than the green one. I remember searching all over for the blue one and it was extremely expensive. Sorry for the confusion.

 

Cyberbob

What are Alchemy's big earners this time round?

Everyones raving about JC, Mining, Inscription, but there's not enough love for the potion addicts.

 

• Feist-Mok

One that works in the short term, is blacksmithing crafted frost resist gear. On my server, Eternal Fires and Waters, along with Saronite Bars, have crashed low enough that the plate pieces cost about 100g to make and reliably disenchant into Abyss Crystals, which are still selling for 200g.

 

Vazu

I have a sheet of paper on my desk with the glyphs that I know sell best. It has stuff like Steady Shot, Vigor, etc etc. on it. What I do is sit down every night before we raid, and I search the AH for each of them and see what's out of stock. Then, if I'm bored after the raid I'll do a slightly more in depth look at some of the hot selling minors like Blurred Speed or Pestilence. It is a little more time consuming, but the profession gets a bad rap for not being AS good as Jewelcrafting for profit. I've made well over 10k gold since Wrath was released on glyphs. If you're a detail oriented person and you are constantly doing your Northrend Research every day, it's been a very good money maker.