footloop

This is similar to what I've been doing. Every time I'm in the AH I'll do a search for the 'decent' northrend major glyphs I can make, and if there aren't any listed I'll make two or three and put them up. Setting them at ~60-70g moves them fairly quickly, anything higher and people seem to avoid them. The problem is that people keep throwing up ten of a single glyph, and people thinking they can win an undercutting war with a product that is essentially free to make.

As an example, the first person on my server to discover glyph of blocking was selling it for ~150g. I'm sure he managed to sell a couple, but he made about twenty of them and threw them all up at the same time, so I'm sure people would keep checking back to see if they were cheaper rather than thinking "Oh man that's the last one I'd better buy it out before it's gone". A day later, another person discovered it. And again, instead of making a couple, listing it for reasonable amounts, and sharing the profits, he decided to undercut the other guy by 50+ gold. Long story short they ended up trying to undercut each other until the glyphs were selling for <10g, and they both had dozens listed. Two days later I discovered blocking myself. I figured I wouldn't make any gold off of it, but when I checked the ah it turns out they hadn't bothered keeping them listed because the profits had dropped so low. For a couple days I would put them up for ~70g three or four at a time, and I sold 30 or 40 of them before the other two with the glyph noticed and crashed the market again.

 

Shakes

The glyph thing seems to vary wildly from server to server. Maybe it's related to how many hardcore respeccers your server has who always need new glyphs? I'll be damned if I can sell a glyph of any description for much over 1g on my server, it seems everyone tanked the market by switching to inscription and they're still trying to sell off their excess stuff left over from leveling the profession. It certainly seems like a "check your server's economy before even trying" profession.

One thing I'm noticing is that raw ores and herbs are selling for about the same a stack as the outland versions were in BC. This is despite the fact that everything around drops more gold now, quests give more gold in rewards, and items sell for more. Surely eventually the prices have to inflate?

For alchemy, elixirs and flasks seem pretty profitable now that everyone is starting to raid but the recipes aren't known to every man and his dog yet. Certainly a lot more so than they were in BC, where you really could only make a profit on procs. Right now if you're lucky enough to have discovered a good elixir you can sell it for double what the mats cost. Flasks are also quite expensive compared to the mats, alchemists are marking them up 50%+ and selling them.

 

Dappa

Tailoring isn't so bad the first few months when your recipes still are rare.

I made alot of gold by selling [Deathchill Cloak], either by making them myself and selling it on AH, or by charging a fee to craft it (200g usually).
Another item which I'm making money on is [Brilliant Spellthread]. There doesnt seem to be alot of crafters for this yet because most tailors choose other factions to grind before Argent Crusade.

 

Mideci

My guess is any of you with glyphs now selling at >10g are simply on low-mid pop servers or those without meaningful raiding corps. And before you tell me "no, I'm not and I'm still cleaning up on inscription" I'll just respond to that. You're simply on servers without meaningful inscriber populations. At this point, on a mature, mid-high pop server, every glpyh is discovered and they are all down to 10g or less. And no one buys several. They buy one. This isn't a route to prosperity. It's not like jewelcrafting. It's not like old alchemy. It's not like a gathering profession.

I dispute there are many useful glyphs. I do Northrend Inscription Research daily. In the month since release I have gotten perhaps 5 glyphs anyone would ever use and 25 no one would be caught dead with. Each day I waste a Snowfall ink with a market value of 100-120g on said research. That gold will never be recouped. Now, I don't care. I have enough gold to make a "recipe complete" inscriber.

And, yes, I'm quite sure the diligent inscriber can catch the out of stock minors and refresh them and if you account properly for the opportunity cost of the herbs -- i.e. you could be selling the herbs not making glyphs -- I'm sure you can make gold selling glyphs every day.

On our mature mid-high pop server -- one with lots of inscribers -- the margins are already small enough that profit per glyph is anywhere from 0g to about a max of 10g. Even on good glyphs. Once everything is discovered by 20-30 people instead of 3-5, it's only going to get worse, not better. And all 300 of them can make vellums. And all of them have access to a now endless supply of Ink of the Sea that's cheaper than they can make from milling due to Darkmoon.

If you want to argue that on your server with few inscribers you can make gold, fine. On lighter pop, lower sophistication servers, you can sit in the AH all day and just buy out most categories and mark them up. No one can come in and fix that with a fresh supply of whatever. I mean, the suggestion of keeping a list and hitting the AH pre-raid was helpful. It'd have been more helpful with a top 10 list. But the notion that inscription is a profitable profession or is headed toward being one? It's just not true. It's a "buy something very rarely and don't pay much for it" profession. People need virtually no glyphs, don't upgrade them with gear changes, won't be changing them when they respec with dual spec, etc. etc. And honestly, for a lot of specs, there are barely 3 good glyphs in the game right now. If that.

 

Nemantopia

For Inscription and Tailoring, I knew going into them they were not going to be cash markets. Beyond selling specialty-weaves and threads for pants, there's not much there, and I did NOT get lucky with Inscription. At all. Now that I'm starting to get useful/raid majors from Northrend research (after loads of carp. yes, CARP) they're already covered on the market. So I'm doing what I did in TBC...it's not exactly a 'steady gold stream', but at least it's something: Charge a flat fee based on an item's AH value and/or opportunity cost to be crafted, and charge AH prices when my mats are used. I could probably move more stock by offering slighlty under AH prices, but then I'd run out of materials at this point. Things that are low-level/for alts I typically only charge a few silver over the cost to mail the item back if the mats are mailed to me...i'm in my mailbox regularly, I'm not losing time doing this and I build a client base. For things that are TBC-rare/epic and most of Northrend's non flooded items, I just charge based on what I feel I can get away with. A lot of people have guildies or friends they can get to craft something for free, so I charge less here just to get the business. People who are more casual or just non-guild types [or just haven't managed to befriend a tailor/inscriber] I may go as high as 10% an item's AH value depending on what it is. Add a flat '1g for me to travel to your city, 5g if you want a portal after business' fee, and I do about as much reliable business as I can. This model can work for most professions, it's just a matter of what the market will bear (the fact that I feel obligated to say that is sad).

Heck, I used to have mining, it was a money maker, but I dropped it for inscription. Now I have a gathering alt to get me herbs I need and ore to sell, so it's not like I sold my soul for underpowered professions.

 

Aditu

Flasks are the money maker for Alchemy and the general rule I try to follow is buying mats slowly over the week when they are cheap, and keeping the AH flush with flasks of every type on raid nights.

The best time to post flasks is about an hour before raid, as most of the undercutters would already have posted though if you maintain a decent price, you can let them sit overnight.

The key to profiting here though, is when you buy mats. I've found that buying them at night cuts heavily into my profits while buying them during the day and on weekends nets me a huge gain.

 

Volrath50

On that note, I found by far the best selling time for gems is, unsurprisingly, before, during and right after typical raid times. As I'm in a raid during that time, I make sure to heavily stock the AH with gems before raids. I usually put up about 12 or more 19 Spellpower gems for about 200g each, and that stock is usually depleted by the time I get out of Naxx.

Interestingly, the next biggest gem selling time, I find, is early in the morning, around 6-8 AM. I figure this is people who went to bed right after a raid, woke up the next morning, and wanted to gem out their new purples before going to work.

Using this method, I just finished buying my Tundra Mammoth, after starting WotLK with almost no gold. Grinding Kirin Tor rep can be incredibly profitable for an active Jewelcrafter.

"As surely as I live forever, when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgement, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me."

 

Shot

Inscription has turned into a slow steady money maker for me. It's not big any more, but it can easily keep me from worrying about cash.

I'm on Magtheridon, EU. High pop server, the highest end raiding guilds. Horde side is huge. When wrath was released I went out, picked some herbs, and leveled my inscription so I could get the major inscription research. I was pretty unlucky with my research, the only major glyph I got soon was Chain Heal, and there was already a seller on the AH for that. Still, I managed to shift quite a few of those for 150g each. I've noticed that inscription suffers a lot from crazy stupid undercutters. These days I'll do my research, then just look at all of the major researched glyphs I can make and check supply on the AH. If any of them are listed for a low of 35g, i'll craft 2 and undercut by 20s. This is fine, and I probably make 200g a day without more than 2 minutes of effort. The problem arises when some of these glyphs (for no particular reason) are listed by someone at 1g. The other day I had glyphs of Bestial Wrath up, and I was the only seller - so I listed them a little higher than normal at 60g. Someone came along and dumped 20 of them on the AH for 4g each, destroying it.

Darkmoon cards on my realm aren't easy to craft if you don't go out and farm the mats. I'm lazy, so despite having my herbing maxxed I still haven't levelled my druid past 74, hence can't fly around easily. I buy my herbs from the AH for 25g a stack, but won't pay more than 40g for eternal life. Given these prices, if I sell a darkmoon card for 300g i'm doing just fine (taking the huge number of ink of the sea I end up with from milling for icy pigment into account). Undeath, Chaos and Prisms cards seem to go anwhere from 100g to 300g. Nobles seem to be averaging at 1500g. There just aren't enough eternal life on the AH at reasonable prices to make things worthwhile.

 

• frmorrison

The issue with Scribes is to level to 400 (to get shoulder enchants) you have to make between 15-20 of whatever your first glyph discovery is if you want the better enchant now (which our generation is like).

Therefore some people just list a lot all at once, just to get rid of their materials.

You have the right idea, find out whats low and then list a few at the AH. Slow and steady is a scribe's income gain.

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

 

Dralmoo

The point with inscription is that the production cost of a glyph you already know is zero, effectively. The guy undercutting you probably isn't really losing money,so long as he covers the cost of his vendor mats. The Ink of the Sea effectively costs nothing because it's a byproduct of people milling for Snowfall Ink, which they would still do even if it produced zero extra azure pigment.

Similarly, when s5 starts and people suddenly want PvP glyphs, anyone unprepared can just come along at any time and produce any popular glyphs in huge quantities for 10g. So any money to be made there is short lived.

and regarding being able to sell good glyphs here and there for 50g, this will only get worse as demand overall goes down, and more inscribers can produce. Eventually every glyph worth having will always be up there for 5-10g, listed by someone.

 

Plea

Another craft&disenchant, and probably a lot people know this already, but it's worth sharing:

Blacksmiths level from 375 to 415 with [Reinforced Cobalt Chestpiece], and it turns grey at 425. That's 50 levels of crafting, about 80-90 crafts. After it turned grey I found out that I earned gold by leveling blacksmithing. It turns out the recipe requires 4 cobalt bars and the item vendors for 7.5g. So if you buy the cobalt at 30-35g a stack as usual, you make profit by vendoring your craft. Disenchant it and it's over 50g profit from 1 stack of cobalt.

 

Esajin

Just because this rings a bell: the most simple gold you could make on the first month was to buy cobalt ore, smelt it, and sell cobalt bars for a bit less than double price. People were simply not aware that Cobalt Ore smelts into Cobalt Bars at a 1:1 ratio. Reinforced Cobalt stuff only cost 4 cobalt ores

What I did though was buy cobalt ore, smelt it, craft reinforced chestpieces, disenchant it, and sell the dust & essence. I went ballistic on it though, and people realized something was fishy, but too late. I made ~10k gold over a single week-end with only like 1 hour of crafting and a bootstrap of 300g, and as a result, infinite dust prices were halved and cobalt ore prices logically doubled. I stocked up on cheap ore at the right time though, so I'm still making a 100% margin over each dust that I sell, still undercutting the horribly devaluated market by 20% - I just do it one auction at a time to make it last and ensure the reduction of my stock, instead of 120-150 auctions like I used to.

The reason why I choosed to strike that hard was that someone on my server was bound to do it first, and I choosed it to be me, because it gave me more control and awareness of when to stop.

I'm sorry for all the people that I ruined in the process.

Edit: ah, I'm not the only one apparently!

 

Octaviann

On my server, at least for a while, I saw that several of the Eternals were actually going for less than the price of one of their associated crystallized forms. Thus, one could probably check the prices of both Eternals and stacks of 10 crystallized and buy whichever is cheaper, convert it to the other, and sell for a profit.

 

Daylis

As i'm a LW, i've started buying borean leather for ~10g a stack and making [Arctic Boots] (ofc, any item with 8 leather works) and DEing it for a profit. You make 2.5boots per stack and depending on your dust and essences prices (DE evaluation on stormscale = 10g per item) there's a reasonable profit.

 

Balino

If I heard correctly, the Arena Season 5 will begin in a few days. Would it be a good idea to stock up on pvp glyphs, gems, etc and post loads the night before it goes live?

 

Volrath50

The Runed Scarlet Ruby (19 Spellpower) pattern from Kirin Tor exalted, as has been mentioned, is disgustingly profitable, at least on my server. Kirin Tor was the first rep I grinded to exalted, for the tank gloves. (Which, with my luck, I replaced about 45 minutes after I got exalted with a heroic drop.) I incidentally ended up with the ruby pattern. However, much to both my dismay and joy, I appear to be the only JCer posting them on the Lightninghoof Horde Auction House. Although I could probably make more, I post them for 199g, which seems reasonable, and sells very well.

While the 25-30k gold I've made is nice, it's starting to get annoying being the almost the only person keeping the server's spellcasters gemmed up. If the AH runs out of my runed rubies, I start getting hit with whispers to cut some, and trade chat starts being filled up with people wanting 19 Spellpower Rubies cut.

I'm really wondering why no one else seems to be even attempting to post any rubies against me. All other gems I can cut have about 4 or 5 JCers posting them, but I'm alone in the Runed Scarlet Ruby business. Does no one grind Kirin Tor rep?

EDIT: Interestingly, I think I've actually crashed the gem market for almost every other gem. I've bought a few cuts from the daily token lady, and watched in horror as their price crashed from as much as 350g to as little as 35g. Mostly because I'll buy all the saronite ore on the AH, prospect it for rubies, and post all the gems I get on the AH. I make a profit off the rubies alone, so I keep undercutting and spamming the AH with as many as 20 of a certain gem, as all I really care about are the rubies.

"As surely as I live forever, when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgement, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me."

 

Dynalisia

So why did you not pace yourself on the other gems? Is the itch of sitting on a pile of merchandise so terrible that you feel the need to go ahead and fabricate for yourself the exact thing that makes sitting on a pile of merchandise feel bad? (e.g. untapped income potential, I suppose)

Edit: On rereading, I figured this post might come accross as berative or something, but I'm actually wondering why you did this. Is there some reason that made this work out well for you in the end despite your initial horror?

 

Volrath50

Eh, I pretty much knew what I was doing, I'm just lazy and don't want to deal with a stockpile of gems somewhere. Really, in my quest for rubies, all the other gems are just extras I get from prospecting. I certainly wasn't worried about losing money from the extra gems, I just needed to get rid of them, and I didn't feel like taking the time to pace and/or send to alts. Besides, if I didn't dump huge amounts of non-rubies, I'd just end up with stockpies of hundreds and hundreds of blue gems on an alt somewhere. The rubies already sell almost as fast as I can prospect them.

I actually wasn't really horrified with the crash of my flooded gems, because I make way more on rubies. Though I suppose the other people who were profiting from them might not have enjoyed being collateral damage in my ruby search.

"As surely as I live forever, when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgement, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me."

 

Russta

Thanks to being Human and hitting 80 in four days, I was able to get exalted with Sons of Ohdear very quickly which I then used to hold the market with Smooth Autumn's Glow. Sadly, people are now exalted and have muscled in but from purely buying the uncut gem, cutting it and putting it back up for 200g, I was able to make 8k gold from them alone. I guess one thing I should be thankful for is that the people who are now undercutting me didn't completely ruin the market doing it.

 

Warr

I've taken a similar track with prospecting and JC in the expansion and I can tell you that if you are able to buy stacks upon stacks of cheap ore to prospect and cut and can turn a profit on it, it is in your best interest to sell as much as possible, as quickly as possible. To do this, you undercut competitors ruthlessly, just to make sure your gems sell. It doesn't matter if you are getting 10 or 25 gold less per gem, as long as it is profit and out of your inventory, then you have room to by more ore and repeat the process.

The only thing that should be moderating how much ore you buy and fast you do this is how fast you can sell because unsold gems = no profit and you don't want to carry too much unsold inventory. There's not a lot to gain by trying to draw out the process over a period of time because the market can only go down as more JCs get in on the action and get the harder-to-find designs. The new alternatives to getting gems (new Brilliant Glass, emblem-bought gems) also have a lot of potential to affect the market negatively, so you need to get yours while the getting is good.

One area of improvement I would recommend on Saavuorii's approach would be to not ignore some of the other colors. Orange and yellow cuts still command relatively high prices on my server and there's a wide enough variety of desirable ones that there's almost as much profit potential there as well.

 

Volrath50

Yeah, I still make a decent profit on orange and yellow. The +defense one sells pretty consistently for 40-50g, and the orange gems, well, I can't figure out what's going on with them. The demand for certain orange gems fluctuates massively, and almost without any real reason I can see. An orange gem I that sells very fast for 100g one day will simply not move for 30g the next. I really can't figure out what to do with orange gems, so I frequently sell the raw gems, unless a certain cut appears to be the flavor of the day. Green gems, oddly enough, have ended up as one of my better non-rubies. The 8 Defense 12 Stamina gem sells consistently for 40g, which is much better than the near worthless raw 10g gem.

I wonder where all the missing gems cuts are, though? Did blizzard simply overlook them, or are they going to add them on, say Ulduar rep? Obviously we have no idea, but I do wish I didn't have to use parry gems because there are no dodge gems.

"As surely as I live forever, when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgement, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me."

 

Duravi

What ratio of eternal earth price to cosmic essence/infinite dust prices would those of you deing stoneguard bands stop buying eternal earths at?

 

Malthes

What I've done is:

1) Pick a minimum price for raw enchanting mats. Say, 6g per dust, 20g per larger essence, 15g per dream shard, 100g per abyssal. These should be prices that raw mats in the AH stay comfortably above (if not, you have a problem).

2) Assume green armor DEs to 2 ID, green weapons to 1 GCE, blues to one DS, and purples to one AC.

3) If the price of the materials is less than the output, buy it.

Where this strategy has fallen down is in leveling enchanting, I still need to do actual enchants and so am listing vellums on the AH, which are hard to find a profitable price point for, because of the perceived cost/value.

For example, I listed [Scroll of Enchant Boots - Greater Spirit] for 200g. My cost was, at most, 182g (with a 10g vellum), so a nice, low, profit. The cost of raw mats on my server is somewhere around 300g. I get interest when I announce that it's available, but it still sits unsold, and has been listed twice. People say things like "I can get mats for WAY cheaper than that" but I'm not exactly sure how they are doing it, if they are not an enchanter.

Once I get to 450 enchanting, I'm definitely using this strategy to unload mats only.

 

Randyll

When season one started everybody except warriors went crazy about stamina gems. After that people started socketing offensive, i.e. not resilience / stamina related, gems and that carried until the end of S4. On beta the premade characters were packed with stamina and resilience gems, which was probably due to Blizzard wanting people playing with high resilience chraracters so that arena's were somewhat balanced at time. Will be

That said, what will be the new trend in PvP socketing? With the addition of hybrid gems such as strength and resilience, it'll probably be the new black in the start, however as people near the cap without much of a problem in future seasons it'll lean towards offensive gems again.

 

Mixe

JC is seeming to be VERY strong for gold right now. I made 12k+ off JC so far. I'm pretty sure I was server 2nd with 450 JC. I had a brilliant idea of instead of levelling 2nd day of release, I'd go mine. And so I did and had NO competition at all. This way I sold loads of Gems and made a fortune. However, people who were 80 starting to home in on what I was doing so as I was stuck at 75, many others were 80 getting the faction/daily recipes.

A few things which seem to sell extremely well on my server:

[Bright Scarlet Ruby] - 100g+ everytime. The only other Scarlet Ruby Gem worth making alongside this is [Runed Scarlet Ruby].

[Regal Twilight Opal] - another 100g+ everytime. Very popular with tanks also.

The Orange Monarch Topaz Gems are quite interesting. As a poster said above, they sometimes are REALLY popular, then sometimes not so popular. The ones I can usually sell for 100g~ is [Deadly Monarch Topaz] [Glimmering Monarch Topaz] and [Pristine Monarch Topaz].

Another way I've made gold is buying the individual Nobles cards and selling the whole deck on the AH for double the money I bought it for. This isn't guarenteed to work and really depends on how cheap the cards are on your server.