The icy art of making gold
 

Due to tips and tricks learned in the original thread, to be found here:
http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t18064-art_making_gold/
I managed to get some wealth thats still keeping me supplied, but is dwindling fast.
Refer to this thread, especially the starting posts, for some readup and general tips if you´re totally new to the AH Metagame. Since the thread was locked months ago (it was simply exhausted) I´d like to 'revive' the topic in this new thread. The expansion brought us plenty of new opportunities to earn the glittering stuff for all us mammoth-loving people out there.

To make a start, a quick skimming over the jewelcrafting profession turned up several green/blue recipes which could, if prizes stabilize enough, turn some profit in combination with enchanting. The recipes are all trainer learned and not hard to come by at all, as are the mats.
Rare:

• Earthshadow Ring - Spell - World of Warcraft
• Jade Ring of Slaying - Spell - World of Warcraft

Uncommon:

• Bloodstone Band - Spell - World of Warcraft
• Crystal Chalcedony Amulet - Spell - World of Warcraft
• Crystal Citrine Necklace - Spell - World of Warcraft[/url]
• Sun Rock Ring - Spell - World of Warcraft

In case of the uncommon items one single cobalt/saronite node has a good chance to turn up the mats you´ll need for one of these (well, 1 ore less actually). Every miner just swims in earths and shadows, so the ah price for non-miners should be fairly cheep.
When posting the dust on the ah, try and choose a number of dusts/stack that's not in overabundance. If there are 20 stacks á 20 dusts, posting 10 more won´t increase your chances of a sale. However if you post 5 stacks á 4 instead, chances are someone looking for just 4 dusts for his bracers will pay a higher price per item since he won´t need the excess dust just yet.

A small tip for those still leveling/farming: due to the immense requirement of frostweave cloth for tailoring the price of frostweave is worth a look. Depending on servers I´ve seen frostweavecloth stacks of 60 gold upwards. So instead of turning it into bandages and vendoring it, check the ah first.

This are just some basic tips of the top of my head. Surely more will emerge once the economy comes to its fullest.

Well I'll post an obvious one, titansteel transmutes. On my server they are sold for 25g the mats are worth around 200g and the titnasteel is reliably sold at 400 on the AH. This is basically a clone of the old nethercobra/cleft when the primals were BoP just on the xmute.

Currently, I am converting green Northrend items into dust and cosmic essences and reselling them for a profit. I've shared the trick with a friend since the supply exceeds my willingness to camp the AH, but it works reasonably well.

As with the comment about titansteel, find X where A + X results in price Y and Y > A + X + <work>. From what I can see on my local AH, creating Polar <X> nets one a reasonable profit, but the demand is very low and hence the risk is high. I am intending to use the Polar items anyway, so for me there's just an opportunity cost in keeping the mats around unassembled with one item of each on the AH every weekend.

If you have the time but not the resources, consider acting as a clearinghouse between buyer and seller. Ask people in smaller guilds if they wish to acquire item X which can be hard to attain (either because of resource scarcity or recipe scarcity) and check with friends and guildies if they can make it. Always give your supplier a cut of the profits and make sure that you don't swindle your buyers. This does require more time, but for items such as [Ring of Earthen Might] (a nifty ring for Druids until the new armor changes) that are never available on the AH (at least mine), the premium people will pay just to acquire the item can be quite substantial.

Keep tabs on the AH on two different Auctioneer profiles (swap WTF directory if necessary) in order to see what is cheap and expensive during weekdays and during the weekend.

Anyway, this is too longwinded and all the basics are already covered in the original thread. Buy low, sell high, transmute low cost parts into high priced end-product, and don't put all your money in one basket.

My guild has a tight network of profession leveling people, ie... everyone sends cloth to the tailor, skins to the Leatherworker, greens to the enchanter, herbs to the inscriptor, and alchemist etc.. What I have found with my main being an Herb/Enchanter is that I can give a couple of stack of weeds to my inscriptor, have him skill off of making vellum for me, where i skill up my enchants by enchanting blank paper (or anyone in the network). Essentially, if I can skill up my enchanting by never overwriting one (ie. wasting it). This is important for making gold because a lot of waste is done with this redoing the same crap over and over purely for the skill up. So far I'm up to 430 and I have spent 0gold on enchanting from 375. I also have been able to sell the item enhancements for varying prices to put back into the network (about 3k gold so far).

So, my suggestion: if you are and enchanter, Enchanting Scrolls is a fantastic way of never wasting mats, and thus always making gold with everything you do. Also, the new herbs are selling really well since a lot of people are picking up inscription. I made over 10k gold on the week inscription came out by selling kingsblood and goldthorn I found in Scarlet Monestary Graveyard. So, really a lot of get rich quick schemes can happen by taking advantage of new additions to the game, and never wasting your gold.

delete

This thread is destined to simply be the old one but with Northrend mats. Hell, forget destined, it already is. That thread wasn't exhausted of selling opportunities, it was exhausted of ideas. Basic concepts of making gold.

I'll go ahead and point out that converting Ink into Vellums for people doing this is good money. And converting leather into heavy leather is still great. And, shockingly enough, cut gems sell for more than uncut ones.

Edit: That was probably overly hostile. I just dun like it when people highlight common sense. As far as Northrend specific things, buying the 6 token recipes from Jewelcrafting turn in seems a remarkably bad investment of what could be 6 dragon's eyes. Not exactly money making, but worth pointing out.

One large fundamental change with LK is there is no "daily hub" equivalent to IQD, and the level 80 dailies are only giving 13g23s, which is a fairly small increase over the level 70 dailies. This means we aren't likely to see another inflation explosion in prices, in fact the early demand and prices created by people sitting on stockpiles of cash is already beginning to subside and I believe the average player is going to discover that their gold supply stays somewhat stationary or even drops.

The cost of raiding has diminished as well, [Frost Lotus] is far more common than [Fel Lotus] ever was, and as a result the cost of flasks is lower. The item requirements for flasks seem somewhat less severe as well. Add to that the fact that min/maxing is hardly required for T7 and potion sickness removed that market entirely, and the only real potential raid expense is probably [Northern Spices] for food. Even those can be obtained by every level 70 alt who can get a port to Dalaran.

The net effect is people have both less means and need to spend time earning gold simply for the sake of doing so. Thus until we see a "must have" gold sink equivalent to epic flying (the Mammoth, rink, and motorcycle are hardly needed), people will more likely turn to leveling alts instead of making gold.

It's pretty difficult not to make gold as it is until you've cleared out all the quests in northrend anyhow. I think there's about 4k gold in Icecrown and Stormpeaks alone as far as questing goes. This makes leveling alts even more worthwhile and it's no longer much of a question whether to give the alt epic flight or not because it pretty much pays for itself. I don't know many people who've been 80 for a couple weeks and haven't got the 10,000 gold from questing achievement.

This is why hedge funds hate it when someone figures out their strategy. Not only does it "crowd the trade" by piling more people into the ineffeciency, it encourages people to "trade against you" by taking a position designed to exploit what you are doing - or just flat overpower you for the effect you tanking a trade will have on the asset.

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One obvious thing would be to be fairly liquid. Rich and impatient 70's drove prices through the roof for everything on Lich King launch. Once that demand weakens (more people get the skills to provide X, more people get their X, people only get one death knight each), prices could drop 50% or more on a dime. Speculating on a price rise would be idiotic, similar to buying tech stocks in 1999 or real estate in 2005 or commodities in 2007.

The economy will eventually settle into its old cyclical nature.

Getting Armor/Weapon Vellum IIIs before skilling up your Enchanting is definitely worth it. Even if you spend a little bit on the Vellums, you can keep them to hit your own gear later or even AH them. I've been able to recoup a lot of the cost of skilling up this way.

(1)Just like with TBC, there's a threshold where disenchanting greens and blues is worth more than either vendor or AH sales. I keep an eye out for especially cheap Northrend greens and save most of mine currently until my enchanter buddy logs on so I can have him turn it into dust and essences for me. Turns out Imbued Frostweave is lame-expensive right now with Enchanters leveling and in high demand and the cost of Frostweave.

Speaking of which, keep your Frostweave. I'm pretty sure that no matter what server you're on, you can find someone willing to pay a good premium for it, trade well for it, or in your guild to get a benefit that can spill over to you.

(2+3) Is good advice beyond the obvious. Buy low, sell high, niche market, etc., but if you can find any group of people to supply while others are too lazy to do so it can be a good premium by buying at the weekday price, then selling to your niche at weekend price [low-average] with a small premium.

(4) Always true, and it's amazing how many people only seem to learn this by reading this thread and its predecessor xD As Terp said, it's common sense, but I've got to counter with 'we wouldn't gripe about it being common sense if it were actually common'. I'm amazed at how many people in game [guildies, friends, random tells, w/e] just seem clueless to the basics, much less concepts like buying materials to make something that sells for more than that cost and NOT doing the opposite.

There are a few widely known tricks and tips out there already that I won't go into, but have proven very profitable so far. After spending 17k power levelling professions and buying a few of the more expensive Dalaran toys at launch, I've already made that back, plus some.

Mining seems to be rediculous, although I don't have personal experience, Ore is still selling high and fast, and the respawn rate on nodes has been reported to be somewhat silly.

Jewelcrafting is interesting right now. There are several reputation cuts that go for far more than token purchased recipes. It seems like, on my server at least, there's a movement from green gems to blue in the last few days - green gems prices have been falling pretty rapidly, while blue's have been inflating. That makes sense as people pick up better gear, and I'll suspect it'll continue to pick up pace in the next couple of weeks - the pretty huge profits that have been made on green gems so far will diminsh pretty quickly in my opinion. That leaves us back in the TBC era of a ton of them floating around with very little use.

As for the above comments on Vellum, in theory I'd agree - however I don't think I know anyone who's been able to shift enchants through the auction house. I also levelled some points on Vellums, but ended up giving them away after not being able to sell them. Unfortunatly I think it's too little, too late for AH-able enchants, everyone's far too used to enchanting in person by now. Especially considering the pretty rediculous material requirements of most of the high level enchants - the lack of use for Dream Shards quite confuses me this time around.

I have a couple of friends who seem to be doing decently selling vellum'd enchants. However I can't see many people trying to AH the high-end enchants, simply because it requires a significant investment from the enchanter into a product that isn't guaranteed to sell quickly. And even if it does sell, you're unlikely to make significantly more gold than if you had done it the 'old fashioned' way. For the mid-range cheaper enchants (ie non-weapon enchants) I would not be surprised to see scrolls selling fairly well.

Since the release of the expansion I've racked up approximately 40K gold in a span of under 2 weeks (I spent the first week levelling to 80, and the gold from questing was trivial).

I am a JC; however instead of selling Dragon's Eyes or crafting epic/rare quailty jewellery I opted to collect as many patterns as possible. Due to the nature of how patterns are acquired these days (at the opportunity cost of epic JC only gems, epic rings/necklace patterns, or simply dragon's eye turn-ins for a neat daily profit), very few JCs had the foresight to learn these patterns. Initially (during week 1 and early week 2) rare gems were simply too expensive, and not many people had obtained gear that's worth gemming so extravagantly, so green gems were selling very hot. If you don't have a lot of gold to start off with the Green market is still pretty attractive (on my server they're selling for 5-15g each). Sooner or later, you'll find that profits from green gems are no longer worth your effort (i.e. when you have a nice selection of rare cuts, and start trading in quantities of thousands of gold on a daily basis). When you reach this point you should stop trading green gems for two reasons: 1) You can use your limited time on more profitable operations. 2) Green gems have a small, albeit direct, impact on the Blue gem market.

For now, I will discuss only the Blue (the goldmine, literally!) gem market.

Why is JC such a profitable market?

To answer this question, simply put yourself in the shoes of an average player. You just won a shiny piece of epic gear that is better than anything you've seen in WoW. Or you just received your first piece of T7. They have some empty sockets that's blatantly annoying you, and you want them filled ASAP. You check the AH, and thank God, there's two +19 Spell Damage gems there. 250g each! Expensive? Yes. But putting two of those will enhance my spell damage by 38, which is a MASSIVE boost, and I cannot wait until tomorrow, I want my gear to be up to date, TODAY! And 500g isn't much anyway, I can just do dailies for a few days and ta-da! So, buy out 2 x Runed Scarlet Ruby for an insane price of 500g...

The JC that sold those just made an exponential rate of return. This is how JCs get rich. We feed off people's impatience and eagerness to min-max their gear (and for this, thank 'hardcore' community that put so much pressure on the idea of min-maxing gear with enchants and gems =D).

Where does the profit come from?

Profit comes from twofolds. One: prospecting (market value of the gems you get from prospecting minus the amount spent on ores) - this involves luck, very appropriately compared to Gambling. And two: Cutting (market value of cut gem minus market value of uncut gem) - the secret is not to spam trade channel with your cuts hoping for a generous tip, but rather, put the cut gem on AH at a premium price.

If you have a lotta time on your hands, you might even add a third dimension: gather the ores yourself (on an alt or otherwise). But this is labour, and a real entrepreneur never gets his hand dirty on that kind of job =). But, during offpeak hours, the AH is inactive and the ores are abundant, it is probably what you can do to totally maximise your gold-making experience.

What kind of patterns should I get first?

This is really a prisoner's dilemma. You can cooperate with fellow JC sharks (in which case both of you will make decent profit), but of course there is an incentive to cheat and make even more profit. If you're in a reasonably sized server you can never achieve the optimal (that is, dib into a particular cut that no one bothers go get for more than a few days). Your best bet is to do some research into the general mechanics of each class, and get an idea of which gems are popular amongst the most number of classes and will lead to a respectable level of demand. I won't make a list of which gems are "best" because that kind of discussion is still in a controversial stage, and subject mainly to popular opinion only and not accepted yet by the wider community. A good way to find out is try and gauge the level of demand for their green version counterparts, as they are a fairly accurate indicator of the demand for blue gems (Sometimes this is not always the case, as it is a general consensus that players who gem their gear in uncommon gems are non-raiders and hence do not represent the customer base for the rare gems, who mostly are the raiding community).


What prices do I set, and when should I be trading?

I will assume for now that your supplies of gems are unlimited (i.e. you have enough gold to buy enough ores every day to meet the demands for all the cuts you have. This is a realistic assumption for a majority of power traders).

Like consumables/enchants, the gem market are the most active before and after the peak raiding hours. On most servers, this is 6pm - 2am server time. You want to make sure that you have gems on the market during this time. Put a large quantity of gems on the AH at this time - if you know the demand curve well (trust me, after a couple of weeks of trading, you'll get an idea of how many gems you will generally sell at one particular price), you can put a different price tag on your gem to really maximise your profit. Otherwise, just set your price to the lowest on the market at the time.

During non-peak hours, customers are extremely limited. You want to win over those customers. How do you do that? UNDERCUTTING. I cannot stress how important this is - during day time and the early wee hours of the morning, check the AH OFTEN (especially your most prominent cuts) and if you see your gems being undercut, do NOT hesistate to cancel your auction and undercut again. Every gem sold during this time is a victory to you. Again, I remind you that my assumption is you have an unlimited supply of gems (as you can always buy more ores to prospect with the gold you make), so every gem sold at above the cost of supplies = profit for you.


Are meta cuts worth it?

Yes. This is where you make small number of cuts at big margins. Very easy profit. Make sure you have at least one cut for each of the meta. Personally, I have the Eternal/Austere for Earthsiege, and Ember for Skyflare. But the Eternal/Austere market got stale as people used it to level their JC and flooded the market. Ember sells very well. Uncut Skyflares sell for around 70g on my server during peak hours), and I can generally sell 5-10 Ember Skyflare Diamonds for 130-180g on a given day (granted, I check and undercut AH every couple of hrs of so, in between heroic runs). This is about 500g a day, for doing virtually no work (don't even need to prospect!)

Some general tips (taking them for face value at your own risk: these may not be applicable at time of reading!)

- Sarontie ores are generally cheaper in the mornings of your server time. Ore farmers do their job at night during off-peak hours and are very keen to unload their supplies ASAP the next morning).

- Buy out cheap raw gems. This will decrease the likelihood of a customer buying raw gems and finding a cutter, and hence will pay a lot more for your cut gem =).

- Undercut is good, until you start to make a loss. Set a realistic baseline for all your gems, and undercut slowly until you reach that baseline.

- Never advertise your profession in trade. The less others know about your cuts, the more profit you will make. Remember, you will NEVER get rich by sitting in org cutting gems for people for 10, 20, or even 50g a pop. It is simply not worth being a mobile JC service.


Finally, I'd just like to remind people that arena is coming out on the 16th. Start whoring those gems guys ;)

Regarding selling enchants on vellums. I had fantastic success doing this in the weeks following 3.0. In TBC, there were several highly desirable enchants that were only available through BoP instance drops or exalted with notoriously difficult rep grinds. My best sellers being Agi on gloves, Dexterity and Fortitude on boots. Crusader and Savagery (particularly with the huge demand created by Ret Pala respecs and Titan Grip warriors). Savagery made me insane amounts of money with the rock bottom prices of void crystals, I could pump out scrolls for 40g and sell for 200g!

Now the problem with enchanting in WotLK, is that all the rare recipes are readily available via the vendor for shards which we are practically swimming in (currently purchasable from the AH at 8g). Given time, every enchanter will have all the recipes meaning there will be no exclusivity. I just can't see much profit being made this way unless more enchants are added later on. For now, I reckon enchanting scrolls will be mainly used to recoup the cost of levelling.