Sunday, July 28, 2013

TSM 2.0 Open Beta

If you listened to our TSM 2.0 episode of the Happy Hour Roundtable Podcast, you were among the first to know that TradeSkillMaster is entering TSM 2.0 Open Beta Testing!!

No, TSM 2.0 isn't release ready yet, but right now you can get your hands on the latest and greatest software that gold making has to offer over at http://stormspire.net/official-tradeskillmaster-development-forum/11388-tradeskillmaster-2-0-public-beta.html.


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you enjoy my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!

Friday, July 26, 2013

TSM 2.0 Announcement!

This Sunday, at 2pm pacific, 5pm eastern, GoblinRaset and I will be streaming a special TSM Episode of The Happy Hour Roundtable Podcast. We are going to be joined by the full TSM crew: Sapu, Bart, and Cryan for an exclusive TSM 2 interview, and just yesterday Sapu announced that he'll have a special announcement to make on our show:


We will be livestreaming the episode at www.twitch.tv/goblinraset at the times listed above.  Be sure to subscribe to GoblinRaset's channel if you want to be notified when we go live!  If you're not around when we stream, I will be posting the link to the podcast on my site as soon as it's up.


Additional TSM 2 Announcement
I also have my own personal announcement to make.  I'm going to (attempt to) make some TSM 2 guide videos.  I know there are already a lot of great TSM 2 posts out there that people who have put out, but I know that in the past people have really enjoyed using Faid's videos as a tool to learn TSM, and since she's not playing WoW (currently), I figured I'd give some video guides a shot.  I'm working on the outlines of the videos right now, and they're sure to be complete in a week or two, depending on how they turn out.  My goal is to do as minimal editing as possible, so one fluid take would be amazing, but I know that's not always possible, so we'll see what happens when I start recording, I'll be sure to keep you updated.

See you all Sunday afternoon on the stream!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you enjoy my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Posting Philosophy

Before I start with this post I just wanted to take some time to point to a recent post by Stede called Unprecedented.  In this article Stede advocates for stockpiling for 5.4, and if you're starting to think about 5.4 this is a great place to start.

Me personally, I won't be stockpiling persay.  My reasoning behind this is that I'm always stockpiling in excess when I can get good prices.  Just in time crafting is a terrible way to manage your mats, I'd rather have too many mats at a dirt cheap price, than not enough with high prices, makes sense right?  Right now for example I have 20 of each rare cut that I keep in stock, and I have 500+ stacks of Ghost Iron Ore waiting to be prospected.  The only time I'll really slow down on this will be at the tail end of the expansion.  Now back to your regularly scheduled post:

Gold Making Philosophy
I had the idea to write about this when GoblinRaset had been recently coming up with some crazy custom pricing schemes in TSM 2 to price Ghost Iron Ore, and I decided to give my mathematical perspective on what's my reasoning is here.  Now creating profitable thresholds and fallbacks in TSM is a necessary evil of playing the auction house, but in the end, I personally am not going to put as much thought into it as GoblinRaset did.

Why?  Simple.  When it comes down to it, TSM_Auctioning is really just making 1 decision for each item based on your threshold and fallback: "Do I undercut it by 1 copper or not?"  In the long run, no matter what your thresholds are, as long as they're profitable, you're going to end up posting the item 95% of the time or more.  This is why I don't think too much about my thresholds.  I pick some profitable numbers and run with them, because regardless, I'm just undercutting by 1 copper.

As time goes on, you're still going to make the same profits regardless, so why fuss.  Just one more thing in life that's not worth the worry!   Now I'm not saying that it is a bad thing to know your markets, quite the contrary, the better you know them the better it is for you.  I'm just saying don't sweat the small stuff in this case, it's really not worth the time.  That's my two cents.  Here's a TL;DR:



Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you enjoy my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Drunken Musings of Insane Gold Makers EPISODE 2!

GoblinRaset and I hit the bottle last night and recorded Episode 2 of The Drunken Musings of Insane Gold Makers.  Check out the episode here, it's a good one filled with excellent drunken ramblings.  You never know what kind of gold making secrets we'll divulge after we've hit the sauce, so check it out.  


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you enjoy my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Starting Over

No I haven't left my server, but realm has been pretty dead lately, and when WowProfitz said he was moving to one of the highest pop factions in the US a few weeks ago, I had always planned of rolling a toon over there, and this past Friday I finally got around to doing it.  My main goal is to make gold on this realm.  It's just a fun side project, my main realm is slow now, and I've decided to take a break from it (not a full break though, still doing post scans and basic maintenance).

Day 1
So I rolled a Blood DK for quick queues, and got through the DK starter zone and to 60 on the first day.  I was really amazed by how quickly things sold on a high pop server.  I was selling my cloth I got from running dungeons, and it'd sell within the hour I posted it on a Friday night.  Something that I would probably need to repost multiple times on my main (low pop) server before a buyer came along.

Day 2
It was time to pick professions!  I initially decided to go with Enchanting/BS, because I thought Enchanting would be relatively easy to level with BS.  After looking at the markets, and thinking I might want a profession I can optimize before 90, I decided having a JC would be to my advantage, so I dropped BS in lieu of JC.  JC/Enchanting, the staple bread and butter of gold making.

After crafting the first ~100 levels of JC, I still didn't have enough mats to get enchanting to 75 so I started running SFK to get some greens/blues to disenchant (Enchanting 1-75 can be done solely by DEing items).  It was a pretty easy to mass pull the dungeon, I wasn't getting hit, even in the 60s, and I got a few stacks of Wool and Linen Cloth per run, so nice for some quick startup capital.

This was taking way too long, so I also transferred some battle pets from another server I was working on, where I don't really care about my gold total (was at about ~50k).  I was willing to take a loss on them as long as I had some capital on my main server.  I ended up transferring 2 level 25 pets, and they both sold, for a grand total of 10k!  Now I had some dough to level my professions!  I also leveled through dungeons to 65 (I had a slow weekend).

Day 3
With my new pile of money, it was time to start leveling my professions, and boy did I blow all that gold away as fast as I got it.  I rarely venture out on to new servers where I don't just focus on flipping, so leveling a crafting profession with limited gold did not come quick to me, in fact I blew it all.  Literally all 10k leveling my professions.  I have some surplus mats I'll be selling for gold, but I'm leveled up through Wrath now, and since my DK is at 68 that's as high as I can go until I grind out a few more levels.

Onward
Now I'm slowly leveling through BGs (taking the scenic route and enjoying it) while playing the AH.  I've exhausted my pet funds on my alt server for the time being, so finally to traditional gold making after selling a few more pets.

Last night someone in trade was selling a level 25 guild, so I quickly whispered and offered him literally all I had on hand, 10k gold.  He accepted, and this afternoon (literally just now) I've sold it for 25k!  150% returns on all my gold at once in < 24 hrs?  Can't beat that!

Below is the graph of my gold over time on the realm, as you can see I have not been able to curb my "I can spend whatever I want" habits I've acquired from having my millions on my main server, and I was constantly operating at close to 0 gold, tying most of my gold up in markets.  But this is what you should do, if you don't have your gold tied up in markets, it's just sitting there not making money.  Gotta spend money to make money!



Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Drunken Musings of Insane Gold Makers

Phat Podcast
In case you haven't heard, I've officially joined GoblinRaset as the co-host of the Happy Hour Roundtable Podcast, and we're regularly going to be recording a segment called "Drunken Musings of Insane Gold Makers".

We recorded the first episode a few days ago, check it out here.  I'll be posting them regularly on the site, and I'll be adding a button to the top bar when I get around to it.

Stede's Podcast
Stede, whose blog I mentioned in a recent post has also recorded his first podcast, the Late Nite With Stede Podcast.  I was lucky enough to be in the audience for the live recording, but you can check it out at that link, it was a great show!


Cheers,
Phat Lewts

If you enjoy my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Thursday, July 11, 2013

What Makes a Good Gold Maker

This post will be featured in Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival, now hosted by Selltacular on Copper to Gold.  Check out the other great posts on the 11th!

So this months question was written by Nev, and it's based off my previous rant about TGE, so how could I not participate?

What is your definition of a good gold maker?  How do you measure gold making success?

Good Gold Making

GoblinRaset and I addressed this question a bit in our podcast we recorded this week, which you can check out here!  You don't have to be a rocket scientist to make a whole lot of gold in WoW, but you do have to put in time to effectively master different markets, and experiment.  A good gold maker isn't satisfied when he has one method down, and repeats it over and over again, that's the same as farming.  A good gold maker explores other venues, and tries new things, and is willing to take risks to optimize his or her methods.

A great gold maker is never satisfied.  They've got their hands in every market and they still want to play with more niche ways of making gold.  The possibilities to make gold in WoW are seemingly endless (although they are indeed finite), and someone who always looks to comprehensively understand their markets is someone who's going to succeed in gold making.  They don't just follow, they lead.  People have this misconception that there's some big secret out there that we're all hiding, and we make our millions behind your back, but that's not the case.  I can say that everything I've ever done in WoW to make gold is somewhere on this blog, or on my comment history on The Consortium Forums or reddit.  I can't keep my mouth shut!

Some gold bloggers try to protect some of their secrets, but I know that keeping secrets won't be helpful for long.  People are going to find out.  There's no method you can think of that hasn't been thought of, or won't be thought of eventually by someone else.  Like I said it's not revolutionary, but putting your all into learning and experimenting with new methods is what sets people like me ahead of the pack.  That comprehensive understanding of markets, knowing why they're doing what they do.

How do you measure gold making success?

There's no true way to analytically compare two gold makers, success is in the eye of the beholder.  I used to measure it by how much gold I'd make, or how much I was beating a competitor out of a market, or even by how many angry whispers I got when I logged my bank alt.   While these are indeed functions of your success as a gold maker, the true measure for me is sharing your success.

What I have personally enjoyed over the past few years was being able to share my experiences with others, and the community of people around that are willing and eager to discuss and learn from each other, and even help out those who are new.  A great example of this is WoWProfitz, who although he claims to be an amateur gold maker, has gotten the spark going on many an aspiring goblin.  It's all part of the learning process.  No two people make gold the exact same way, and part of developing your own strategy is to see what others do, and create your own hybrid of methods.  I think that the quote "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" really rings true here.  To me, I'd rather have 3 people message me saying I helped them make a million gold, than have the 3 million gold myself.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Old Faces, New Blogs

I just wanted to take the time today to point you to two new blogs that I think will be excellent gold making resources moving forward, and great blogs to add to your reading lists!  Both of these are written by two fellow Wind Traders of The Consortium Forums, veterans of WoW gold making, but who haven't been active on the blogging side of things.  Now they've taken to blogging to share their thoughts and information on WoW gold making.

Mithrildar's Theoretical Gold Farming










Mithrildar's blog, Theoretical Gold Farming has already has a great post about Crafted Epic Gear in 5.4.  You can expect this sort of insight and deep thinking from his future posts, including an upcoming post I recently got a sneak preview of, on the topic of "shuffling without a spreadsheet".  Be sure to check back for that post, I know a lot of you will appreciate it.


Website: Mithrildar.blogspot.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mithrildar


Late Night with Stede









Stede is no stranger to blogging, he is a long time gold maker who you might know from the Call to Auction Podcast.  He is starting up his own blog called Late Night with Stede which will include a short weekly 20-30 minute live podcast where he will be interacting with his audience.  His blog is bound to be a place for interesting and thoughtful discussion, and I would highly suggest adding his blog to your feeds, and participating in his podcast if you're around when he records it.  It will be a great opportunity to learn and discuss gold making in WoW.


Website: http://latenitewithstede.blogspot.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/StedeWoW

I'll be adding both these sites to my blogroll on the sidebar, so if you ever need the links, they'll be there.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Supplier's Demand

Recently I was lucky enough to have two suppliers who were chomping at the bit to farm me hundreds of stacks of herbs/ore every day.  Both farm herbs and ore, and both have been very active as of late.  Of course not being satisfied with this setup, and getting a little backed up with the ore/herbs (have literally bought over a thousand of stacks of herbs and ore from the two of them in the past 2 weeks) I decided it was time to haggle.

Initial Offer
I'm only going to cover my GIO haggling for now, herbs followed a similar pattern but with different pricing, too much to get into, but is based on Inscription yield rates.  I get all of my mats from suppliers via COD, and if we need to contact one another it is done via Mail.  I reached out Supplier1, the stronger of my 2 suppliers (the one who farms more often), and asked him for a discount.   I had been paying 60g/stack for GIO, and I flat out asked him if he could do 50g/stack because the market had gone down a bit since I had stopped buying from it (I'm on a Low Pop realm).  He gladly agreed.

Kicking it up a Notch
I then mailed my Supplier2 and told him that I had an offer from Supplier1 to give me ore at 50g/stack, and if they cannot beat that price I'd have to stop using them as a supplier.  Now I've honestly been using Supplier2 for a longer time, and had a feeling he might offer 45g, but I was really happy when he said he'd go to 40g.  The best price I could snag from the AH would probably be around 70g/stack on my server, so quite the deal, and I got Supplier1 to agree to the same level.  All was good with the world.

Of course this won't work in every situation, but the worst thing that can happen is they say no.  Always try to pay less, your bottom line will thank you.

Cloth Farmer Makes a Mistake
I enjoy posting screenshots of some silly conversations I've had with people in game, this one in particular is excellent for me, see if you can find his mistake.


Needless to say I took them.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you enjoy my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!

Don't Call it a Comeback

Okay. You can probably call it a comeback in this case. I've been gone a long time. So if you follow my Twitter you'll know I recent...