He has the right idea, just the wrong implementation. The "good" foodbuff (+40stam+40x) area has so many markets to corner that, with a little foresight, you can pick a corner, and if you are quick on the AH (specifically underpriced Northern Spices), do quite well (at least in small volumes). 15g is probably a more reasonable price for spices, and harder to make a profit on, but if you can get them for say, 9g (as I did earlier tonight), and your chosen foodbuff sells for 25g+ *each*, you are making quite reasonable coin (you have to remember the opportunity cost of the meat too (which I initially forgot about since for me it sits in my bank having been fished days ago), but meat rarely goes for more than 5g each).

I think that this is likely to be a strong area for quite a while since food buffs are the type of thing that high-end guilds will easily use more of in a night of attempts than they can themselves farm. The biggest limit will be when the population on the whole realise the value of northern spices (and they hit 20g each).

Edit: This market may also fall apart when Fish Feasts start to become abundant.

I've actually tried to get in contact with the top guilds on my server. I did strike some deals with some of them, if only untill Fish Feasts become available and their guild chefs start making them. Two of the guilds have ordered ~200 Rhino Wyrmsteaks at a whoping 20g per. And I've also talked to other chefs to buy their spice for around 11g. Since my GF and myself are trying to limit our playtime in order to get a less sedintary lifestyle, This is really working for me. If this recipe continues to work like this I'll be able to afford both of us our epic flyiers which was really my whole purpose to begin with. Were both 68 right now, and, I have around 2k on me now, so by the time were at 77, I should have the 14k needed for us to get the fliers and epic fliers.

Note: My GF is a 68 priest with 390 Tailoring and 400 Enchanting

Side note, Saronite ore is going for 28g a stack on my server. Whats the required JC skill to break that down? I think my warriors skill is ~340. Time to buy en-mass and sell gems? Are any cuts worth more than the others? Would it be cost-prohibitave to level JC up to make certain niche cuts? Or did I miss the gravy train already?

I wouldn't count on the prices of Northern Spices remaining as high as they are for much longer. The reason is that people are going to start running out of recipes to purchase with cooking awards, and will be turning to spices instead. I've been doing the cooking daily every single day since about 3 days after launch, and I'm down to 6 recipes available to purchase. So, in 2-3 weeks, I'll have all of the recipes, and I can count on getting about 15-25 spices per day from the cooking daily as opposed to the 5 or so that I'm getting right now. Most people that are in the market for spices will be in a similar situation, and so supply will rise and prices will drop. Granted, demand will rise too due to the Fish Feasts, but I don't think that it will rise so much as to keep the prices of the Northern Spices constant.

350 for cobalt, 400 for saronite. Pretty much missed the gravy train. The key was to do the dailies and get cuts that others passed over or not many had. I have been making good money selling the uncut gems by prospecting below 25g a stack. People easily fool themselves they are saving money by buying the uncut gem and getting a buddy to cut it.

The gravy train was indeed getting rare cuts. I made 10,000 alone from being server first alliance Jewelcrafter with Sons of Hodir exalted. And this was purely buying Autumn's for 60-80g and selling them cut as 16crit for 130-140g.

However, now that others have caught up, and I have most of the patterns people are looking for, I'm aiming to sell Dragon's Eyes for 300g piece for a couple weeks, then scoop up the remaining patterns as the completionist I am.

Apart from that I agree that most players at the moment have so much money from dailies and post-80 questing that they are willing to buy foodbuffs with prices from crazyland. Anyone willing to sit on their arse for an hour or two just fishing will be handsomely rewarded with plenty of gold.

The income you can get from selling Dragon's Eyes is really staggering. You can basically round up 400-600g daily, and you're not likely to face severe undercutting as the only people who can buy those are jewelcrafters, and only jewelcrafters can use them.

The problem is that you'll miss out on the patterns. That said, if you have a sufficient amount of designs, you don't feel like a completionist or you simply aren't into making money with different cuts, then depending on your server prices, you might make more money just by selling Dragon's Eyes. It'll stop when the Titanium rings become useless though, but that's not bound to happen soon, atleast not in the immediate future.

It's not obvious? The reason there were spikes in previous seasons is that when the new season opened players were buying 2 or more pieces immediately on banked honor and arena points. These new pieces needed enchants and gems and such, which caused the spike. But season 5 is starting after an arena point reset, and all the good pieces require arena points, so there isn't a sudden flood of new PvP gear.

Season 6, assuming that Blizzard allows arena points to be saved across seasons, will probably be accompanied by a spike in enchanting mats and gems.

I didn't experience any increases in gem prices at all, but was certainly able to sell a greater quantity of gems than I would on an average day. Most of what I put up sold, although it never sold quickly. I had to monitor things fairly closely in order to consistently be the cheapest on the AH. Being able to get rid of 20+ Forest Emeralds at a decent price (~40g each) was also quite nice.

I think the main issue with gems is that the supply for Saronite Ore usually exceeds the demand for gems. It does on my server at least. While the demand for gems today may have gone up drastically, it still wasn't enough to cause a shortage as I suspect many JCers were sitting on healthy stockpiles of rare gems. If there was a shortage of gems, you would see Saronite Ore start going up and that didn't happen at all on my server.

As far as enchanting mats go, infinite dust had crashed to <5g each over the last weekend on my server and it bounced back up to ~7g each. Essences faired a little better. They were at ~27g each over the weekend, and spiked up to ~40g each today, with most selling for ~35g.

It felt like there weren't huge profits to be reaped, but that it was a good day for shifting excess stockpiles of gems.

I imagine it's because of a lack of banked arena points going into the start of this season. The only things available for people to buy in the first week are the honor-only pieces. IE, the blue set, and the off-set pieces (even these require arena rating, if not points). There's a subset of players who are confident that they're going to be upgrading these pieces relatively soon, and may not feel the need to get the best enchants on them. I'd argue that this subset overlaps heavily with those who would normally pay premium prices for the best enchants.

The blue sets, which are available to anyone with banked honor, are uninspiring. A lot of people are going to be using their Naxx epics over these, despite the lack of "pvp stats."

Edit: beaten to the punch.

I've made some nice pocket from the Wintergrasp Gem Cuts (X/Resi) since the start of S5. I've managed to sell quite alot of [Empowered Monarch Topaz] & [Lucent Monarch Topaz] for 180g each. I haven't managed to touch the Meta market yet, but there's no doubt in my mind that it's going to explode over the coming weeks as people pick up their S5 Epic Helms.

I was able to turn quite a decent profit yesterday on Forest Emeralds, buying for as low as 13g and selling cut as [Steady Forest Emerald] for 40g. Predictably, the margin on this has been squeezed quite a bit already with the price of Emeralds slowly climbing while cut gems get cheaper. That said, I think this cut, together with the pure resiilience gem if you can find cheap Autumn's Glow, might be one to watch at the weekend when people who can only play then start getting their first PvP items and the rest of us get down to serious honor grinding.

I did notice an increase in the price of gems and the availability/price of Saronite Ore but it wasn't especially significant and is quite hard to pin solely on the new PvP season as Wednesday is my server's primary raid day. Again, watch this space at the weekend when demand will most likely spike.

There are quite a few options here, most of which boil down to anticipating market demand and having a stock ready. Regardless of profession, the idea is to get an alt to that level with the key creation profession...alchemy for either building a potion stock or transmute cooldowns/chances, tailoring for specialty weave [I really advise using a 77 with cold weather flight, since Ebonweave is a top-seller], blacksmithing for titansteel, the JC option you mentioned, and anything else [I don't know enough about LW to know].

As a tailor, I follow my cooldowns, including spellweave, in anticipation of recipes to come and the already current demand for Ebon and Moon. This kind of slow build-up is a big difference in succeeding at making money in production professions.

Situational awareness and adaptability are key survival traits in any business. However, if you want to create a good 'cash cow' then look for slow, steady income with cost efficiencies.

Lots of people in Wow look for opportunities to sell high, but there are also lots of overlooked ways to improve margins through cost efficiency. TRANSLATION: cut out the middle man whenever possible.

The classic example of this is the mining -> jewelcrafting -> disenchanting cycle.

Have plan for ALL of your raw materials.

Mine and prospect your own ore. Also, keep an eye out for ore selling for below market costs on the AH. Try and set up direct deals with miners so you can buy their ore without the Auction House.

Use everything. Waste kills profit.

I made it an early priority to have a profitable cut for all of the rare gem types. Most of these get cut and listed immediately. The exception is forest emeralds. I'm stockpiling these since they won't sell well until the PvP market warms up some. If a cut stops selling then I look at the market and upgrade to a new pattern.

On my server choncolancy is dirt cheap, so that gets turned into jewelery for DE. Red and purple uncommon gems get cut since they sell. The rest get sold in stacks of 20 or 5.

Your server will probably vary. There is no magic bullet. The key here is to find something that works for you while cutting out the middle man.

I recently turned JC and recouped my training money through selling Dragon's Eyes (400-500g for a daily quest? I'll take it.)

However, as I read through this thread, it seems like the true gem was/is in cutting rare cuts and selling them on the AH. I really find it hard to believe that people would be willing to spend more than a 20g difference between a cut gem and a uncut version. Perhaps it's just my frugal nature, but even for convenience and speed, I wouldn't be spending more than twice the going rate for JC tips just to get my gem early. I suppose that it would be possible to "corner" the market for a short while, but even on a low-population server like Malorne, there are enough JCs that I know or in guild, making these cuts not all that rare.

Is the money primarily made through selling an extreme number of these cuts, in hopes of making gold with smaller profit margins? Or perhaps am I just completely out of touch with the average consumer?

Like everybody else was saying, the big money maker was getting on a cut early before anybody else. Personally I was one of the first on my server with both the runed and smooth cuts and made a killing selling cut gems on the AH because i didn't do cuts for anybody but guildies. If you wanted a runed or smooth cut you had to buy them on the AH. I was buying Autum's Glow for 50-55g and selling a smooth cut for 140+ and they moved fast. Sadly most of that market has dried up as more and more JCs get their hands on the good cuts.

Can anyone tell me on the PTR - How many ink of the sea do you need to create 1 snowfall ink? I want to stock up as many as possible to create cards and just want to get an idea of how much each card will end up costing me.

Thanks for a totally unproductive post that contributes nothing to this thread. Can we please stop posting about ways to make gold that don't exist and start posting more about potential avenues for income?

I started off as JC/Mining so I made a ton of gold off that as you can imagine. This week I decided to drop Mining and skill up BS for some sockets. I'm making a fair and steady profit off Blacksmithing now.

Tempered Saronite. Belt, breastplate, legs, and helm all sell for nearly double what it costs to make on my server. They sell fast, too.

I've already covered the cost it took me to level Blacksmithing (about 4,000 gold) in the few days I've been able to make Tempered Saronite.

I probably didn't write out my request.

AFAIK you can convert ink of the sea into Snowfall ink at a vendor in the next patch / on the current PTR. Just after some confirmation/number.

You can trade 10 Inks of the Sea for one Snowfall Ink from a vendor in Dalaran on the PTR. You can also trade Inks of the Sea for the lower level inks. Ivory Ink, Moonglow Ink, Midnight Ink, Lion's Ink, Jadefire Ink, Celestial Ink, Shimmerin Ink and Etheral Ink are available for one Ink of the Sea each.

Jewelcrafting for the long term.

I sell 3-4 each of every color rare gem every day. My cost of materials is pretty low since I prospect my own ore and buy from the AH only when prices are low. So I'm making about 20G to 30G profit after AH cut on 10 to 15 gems every weekday. On weekends quantities are up but margins are down. Green gems and eternals for D/E add another 75G daily. That's 375G daily for less than 30 minutes work. Some days are better than others, but this is an average.

Meta cuts are high margin but income is erratic due to competition. I suggest you keep an inventory of uncut gems and list them only when supply and demand are in your favor.

For some reason, there isn't much of a market for Dragon's Eyes on my server. So most of my income comes from cut rare gems.

Be The Wal-Mart of Jewelcrafters.

I pay a lot less than most people do for their gems, since I prospect my own gems or buy when the market is low.

Suppose you get a new piece of gear on Tuesday night. You buy a Sky Sapphire off the AH during peak hours for 60G and then tip 10G for the cut. Since I buy bulk ore cheap for prospecting that Sky Sapphire costs me an average of 40G. I cut them and list them a few at a time at 70G. So I am making 28.5G per cut after AH fee whereas the other guy is making 10G.

Sometimes I can pick up a bunch of raw materials for a song. Weekends are especially good when the price of green, blue, purple and orange gems can drop 40% to 60%. I think this is caused when casual weekend JCs prospect more ore than they can sell and then dump the uncut gems at a loss.

Don't wrestle with pigs.

The goal here is to sell a few of each cut at a solid margin, rather than a lot of any particular cut. If some idiot dumps 20 Bold Scarlet Rubies on the market then ignore him and focus on a different cut. Or sell your uncut gems. Or sit on your inventory. Eventually he'll lose interest and go QQ on the professions forums about how it's impossible to make gold with professions.

This is not unique to WOTLK, since the same techniques supported my tanking habit through BC. They worked on both Magtheridon Horde side (a high pop PvP server) and Fizzcrank Alliance (a low/med pop PvE server opened with the WOTLK launch). I expect the margins to tighten up eventually, especially in enchanting mats, but otherwise this should be a solid long-term strategy.

I haven't posted this particular gold maker for the last couple months due to not wanting to crash my market but now that the demand has died down, I'll share:

[Schematic: Lifelike Mechanical Toad]
[Lifelike Mechanical Toad]

Thorium widgets can get bought on the cheap on the AH (engy power levelers dump them on the AH regularly for ~1g per). Living essence and gold bar/gold powercores is not expensive. Rugged leather is probably the most expensive part per unit but all in all total costs should be under 20G (and usually under 10G).

AH price depends on demand but preWotlK I was getting ~150G per and I'm currently still milking it for ~90G per.

It was a very profitable niche for the last 3 months which occured totally by chance after the schematic dropped during some late night Azuregos farming.