Part 1

In about a couple of months playing wow, this is the story of how I made:
A. About 160,000 gold
B. Had 50-80,000 worth of goods (depending how I’d sell it)

I started out with nothing and I was never interested in the AH. I don’t have a degree in business but I’ve read a lot of books in my life. If I continued on my path for about 2-3 months, I guarantee I’d reach the gold cap limit of the game, 250,000 gold. (might be different now)

I quit the game because I was extremely addicted to accumulating gold, and I let it interfere with my real life. I was such a voracious reader of countless of posts here, yet this is my 1st time posting. I’ve never exposed everything I’ve done on how to make money to anyone in the game till now. Naturally I feared people will use my strategy against me. But since I’m not playing anymore, my fear is now non-existent.

I’m not a good writer so I hope my story can still entertain and enlighten. I feel the need to share some of my wonderful money making experience, to show what’s possible and to also relive the experience somehow, so please bear with me…

1. How did I make my first 400 gold?
My burning desire for gold came as an accident. My deep passion for clothes gave birth to it. My boyfriend at the time introduced me to wow. And if not for the beautiful dresses in it, I wouldn’t have gotten hooked And so during Valentines, I just kept collecting those black dresses. Then I began seeing on trade channel that quite a number of people were looking for dresses and were willing to pay about 400 gold. When I sold my first dress for about 400 gold, my addiction for wow gold began. That’s an investment of 0 gold from me—All profit. (less some time & keyboard labor from running around a lot)

2. How did I make my first 1000 gold?
Making my first 1000 gold was just from grinding my character and selling all the items I got from instances and such.

3. What changed my fortune radically?
I suddenly came across elitist jerks. I read the forum on how to make gold. I was so excited I couldn’t stop reading. By the time I stopped, I was on page 30 of the thread. My mind was spinning. Was what I read really true? Is it really that easy to make money? 5000 gold seemed like a lot to me then. Yet people were talking about making 10,000 in a couple of weeks. I couldn’t believe it. What have I got to lose right? Since I couldn’t perceive myself as making 10,000 yet, I started out with a smaller goal of 5,000. I told myself that once I made 5,000 I won’t do what most players do and get a mount. I will use the first 5,000 to invest more. And when I have 10,000, then I will buy my mount.

4. What was the very 1st thing I did after reading elitistjerks?
I’ve been convinced that I must switch my herbalism profession to jewelcrafting. But I was maxed on herbalism and alchemy. So it was so painful to throw away herbalism. But I decided to take the risk. With about 1,000 gold at this time, it was quite a task leveling my JC. I used a guide online which showed u the cheapest way to powerlevel ur profession. It wasn’t that bad till 300. Then I had to do prospecting which I was so unfamiliar with and it felt like such a waste of money at the time when I didn’t have much. And then I had a couple of higher level JCs trying to tell me it’s not worth it. But I couldn’t be dissuaded from making money with JC. Because I’ve read the money that can be made from it from elitisjerks and I was determined.

8. How did I make my first 10,000 gold?
I would say that his phase was all about improving the system and volume volume volume. I improved my aggressive under-cutting system till I was a shark. Hehe.

Developing My Friends.
First thing when I did when I logged in was press “O.” I checked which of the big JC chiefs were online. It gave me an idea of who probably already undercut me. But I was more conscious of those big JC chiefs who weren’t online yet. Because once they come online that meant they would undercut me. So I’d have to balance my time between now and when they logged in. Before I would post 2 gems at a time per gem cut. But because the cycle (which I created) became so vicious and costly, I now started posting 1 gem per cut at a time. Then when a big JC would log online I made sure I waited 10 minutes for them to post their gems, then undercut them after. I had every big time JC on my friends list and they consisted 65% of my friends list. My alts don’t have all the names of my friends I play with, but they have all the names of the big JC chiefs. I was obsessed with competing with them that I had them on all my watchlists. I hope they’re not reading this now. But if so, oh well, it’s not like they didn’t know. Hehe.

Developing the Pulse.
At first it seems unnatural but later you begin to be so close with the AH that it feels like you know it’s pulse. You know when it breathes and when it coughs. I became very aware of the times of the day and the days of the week when demand was high and when demand was low. There were days when u bought ore where it was so much cheaper.

Developing My Lifeblood.
There were sellers you made bargains with and they become ur repeat suppliers. I had this one supplier that in the beginning, I used to buy about 6 stacks of ore from. (1 stack = 20 pcs of adamantite ore). The more time went by and the more money I had, the more ore I bought. On weekdays I may buy 20 stacks of ore per day. (Later this increased to about 60-100 stacks per weekday). On weekdays, I’d buy as much as 56 stacks of ore. At about 20gold per stack, that’d amount to about 1,120 gold. When my money increased, so did my purchases. I made sure to work, create and horde supplies when the weekend approaches. The demand is high then and I can put a premium price on my products because there are so many last minute buyers.

Some days, I bought about 150 stacks of ore from my suppliers, then even bought all the stacks available on the AH. I’ll explain that later. I hated buying “at value” from the AH. I always liked to buy from direct sellers because u can discount with them, they may be in a hurry to sell, or they need money now. And because I can buy in bulk and pay in cash, I get deals no one else could get. Cash was king and I had tons of it.

I felt that some of my suppliers were chinese farmers and wondered why they worked so hard farming when I made 300% more money from their raw materials, with half the running around labor. But I wasn’t going to complain.

I’d have some occassional small time suppliers who’d mail me a couple of stacks of ore at a time at a pre-determined price. I just told them, keep sending me as much ore as u want and I’d buy them all. They’re my friends and as much as I can buy and help friends, I did.

When I saw a repeat name at the AH selling their ore at a good low price, I would immediately contact them via in game mail. I would then contract with them to sell me all their ore from now on, for the same price they posted on the AH. In this way, I pay a good price. And I ask them not to post on the ah anymore because they lose the percentage from the AH cut and by selling to me directly they have more profit. I always pay on time so I always had ore coming. You must be good to your suppliers because they are your blessings. When your chinese farmers decide to take a day off and you have no huge ore reserve, you are in big trouble. Till your cluster of suppliers send you ore via mail. And then you’re saved.

Developing Insomnia.
One of the ways to outlast the big JC chiefs was to stay on longer in the game. Yeah. Sucks for those that didn’t have time or for those that had a busy life. At this time in my life, I had no life. Wow became my life and I maximized every minute of it by accumulating gold. So I stayed up till the wee hours in the morning. I made sure I was there when people got out of work or school, because of high demand activity. So I was firmly planted in Orgrimmar. I was a busy bee running between the AH and the mailbox. I would not leave my post for instancing, questing or the like. Then when things died down around 11pm, I would sometimes check out the AH for new toys or dresses I could buy. Maybe I would instance or just fly around. I didn’t spend too much. I was happier seeing the gold in the bank. Then around midnight I’d be prospecting ore for the next day. Doing transmutes. Reading to learn more money making skills from elitistjerks. Wait for other big JC competitors to login so I can wait for them to post then undercut them. At one point our competition got so heavy that I decided not to sleep for 1 day and a half just to make sure I don’t lose the lunch time sale. (this is the time I usually missed because I slept late and woke up late). And my JC competitor teased me that’s when they were able to sell, when I was asleep. So I stayed up all day from time to time. Yes, sometimes I also thought I was losing my mind too.

Burning.
I’ve been a level 70 for awhile now and my gear has a lot of sockets for gems to put in them. I make the best gems in the game. At this point I believe I have every single JC design out ther available already. Yet when my guild member checked up on me one day, they were shocked. I had 10,000 gold and so much inventory and yet I was still wearing the garbage lower class gems on myself! I also didn’t spend on high enchants. What’s going on? Funny thing was, I felt proud that I knew how to spend wisely. But I didn’t want to save for saving sake. I wanted to be smart about finances so that I can reach a point where I can burn money and it wouldn’t matter. Because I did want to burn money. At this point, burning money now would still hurt me. Remember I still had a mount to buy? So my 10,000 would be reduced to 5,000. I held tight on myself at this time. At a later time I will share exactly how I burned shitloads of cash. =)

The Promised Epic.
Speaking of mount, I knew I made a promise to buy my mount at 10k gold. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t get myself to go buy a mount that would reduce my fortune into half. I’ve worked too smart and hard for it. The thought hurt me. And what would I need an epic mount for me? I was never anywhere but in orgrimmar anyway. I didn’t go out to farm. I employed farmers. Why would I need increased speed? I never do the dailies. My dailies consisted of scanning the prices in the AH. So I postponed my promise that I will really get the epic mount once I reach 15,000 gold.

Welcome to the big time, Chief.
At this point when I had every single recipe, I finally allowed myself to realize that, Hey I’m one of them big JC chiefs too now! And wait, is it possible that I might be one of the biggest if not the biggest? Because I noticed that none of the other JCs had EVERY single design—but me.

Diversification #1: JC Designs.
If JC gems were my first pot of gold, JC designs were my 2nd pot of gold. My discovery of this didn’t come from elitisjerks. Rather it came from time and experience.Being that I was in Org all the time, I heard every offer people were selling. And at this point I was seeing a number of JC designs being sold. I knew the price they went for like the back of my hand, as I paid dearly for most of them. I was a master at knowing their values. So whenever someone found a design and posted that they wanted to sell it.. Guess who was the first to make them an offer? Me. I would make a really low offer. Then gradually increas till what’s reasonable yet still a good discount. Most of the time people don’t know their value. Most of the time people just want to sell fast. I just happen to have the resources to transfer to them. So I end up with a small number of designs. They’re quite rare to come across.

The Birth of My Dearly Beloved.
This is when I got the idea to create an alt to sell it for me so I won’t offend the original seller (I loved this alt so much and it will be obvious why later). So I’d post the design I bought with an alt at a ridiculously jacked up price. And the shit would sell. It was like love at first sight. I was hooked! I scoured the AH for these designs which go for 600-1300 gold. And I would come across these designs for 100-200-400 gold from sellers on trade channel. And at extremely lucky days, some people would post JC designs at the AH, for 50 gold to even once I got one for 15 gold! I thought I was in love but then my luck ran out. No, I wasn’t discovered by competitors. And no, they didn’t do the same to me.

The Death of My Newfound Discovery.
What happened was I noticed up and coming JCs or even the big JC chiefs who didn’t have some designs, buy the design I auctioned at an expensive price…. And suddenly I’d have more competition on that cut of gem. Darn it. Because elimination of competition as much I can came first, I had to go for plan B. I knew I paid good money for these designs and now I’m stuck with them. Hording them because of my greed. And yet, I was chained to my own prison cell because when I found out that more designs were for sale.. I was possessed to buy them… AT VALUE. I don’t like buying at value. I only like to buy below value. Yet here I was, clicking the “buy auction” tab on these JC designs that were costing me a good 600-800 gold. Yes I even bought a design that cost 1000 gold. Not so prudent for someone who won’t spend 60 gold jewelry on themselves huh? So what was I to do with these damn recipes?

The Birth of the Other.
“Within every tragedy lies a blessing in disguise.” My challenge was that I didn’t want competition on gems where I was selling them. So I can’t sell my recipes on the AH. But what if I could sell it somewhere where I wouldn’t have competition? Somewhere else. What if I sell them not on the Horde AH, but on the Alliance AH? Because I haven’t been selling my gems there anyway. This was the beginning of my relations with the other side. This was when I decided to create a couple of alts to handle my newfound business in the Alliance Auctions. Little did I know what dealing with the Alliance AH had in store for me. But for now, I was a happy camper. My precious gold in buying those expensive recipes weren’t wasted! Yes!

Banned? really? I want the rest of the story!

Interesting story indeed, but little help if at all to making money.

Nice story about the history of making gold as a JC. Everybody who moved quickly after Wrath's release benefitted from strong demand and light competition. But that situation has changed on most servers.

We need to be looking towards future opportunities, not the past.

I would recommend the original TBC 'art of making gold' thread as a true source of tactical information and strategy, the wotlk version is pretty dumbed down and mostly just a poorly re-hashed port of the original: Art of Making Gold. Read the whole thing for important lessons in basic strategy, market timing, and historic price shifts for important materials such as gems, enchanting mats, armor kits etc.