Monday, November 25, 2013

The Results are In!

Quick note: due to the Thanksgiving Holiday (MURICA!!), I'm not going to be around either here, or on The Consortium, or any of the various other places I normally chat about gold making for the next week or so.  

The Results of the 2013 World of Warcraft Gold Survey by The Golden Crusade are out! The data is very interesting, and I always love reading through Eric's analysis.  Check out the full report, it's excellent and very detailed, but I'm going to summarize and give my thoughts on my favorite part of the results below.

EU Servers
EU Servers' average gold totals were ~200,000 gold higher than US averages!  Now I may just be trying to defend the US servers' gold making ability here, but keep in mind that the number surveyed that identified from the EU is about 1/3rd that that identified as playing on the US.  Perhaps a couple high data points skewed their average, but to me it seems like a non-negligible difference.  Way to go EU!

Top Gold Boosting Resources
Being a Wind Trader at The Consortium myself, I was glad to see that the users of this website were the highest above average, having a whopping 138% more gold than the average survey taker, with roughly 1 in 5 participants having used the forums.  Surprisingly to me, the number 2 gold boosting resource was Gold Making Podcasts!  Now at 7% respondents listening, this may just show a correlation between being active in the community and making tons of gold, as perhaps does the third most useful resource which came in with 3% using in regards to gold making, Twitter.

Of course last but not least I have to point out that readers of gold blogs had a whopping 81% over the average total amount of gold, and about the same 1 out of 5 ratio as The Consortium!

/flex

Also I'd be remiss to not point out that not only did users of paid gold guides make 43% less gold than the average, but they also made less gold than people who used no resources at all!  Even though it was a small pool of respondents and may not be statistically significant, it still gave me a good chuckle!

There is a LOT more data out from Xsinthis/Eric, and if you want to see the full report check it out at The Golden Crusade!

Alright, I hope you all have a great holiday if you're celebrating, and if not have a great week regardless.  If you're looking for some reading material, be sure to check out my favorite reads here.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Has Phat Gone Soft?

If you haven't subscribed to my new Subreddit, you're missing out on two new great gold making posts, one from Sapu, lead developer of TSM and a great podcast episode by Stede, be sure to check them out!  

Have I Gone Soft?
I found myself asking this question about a month ago, when I decided to cut the price of my Malevelent gear by over one half.  I could have kept gouging prices, but it was time to experiment.

Monopoly
In the crafted malevolent gear I basically had a monopoly.  There were a few other players in the sellers market, but it was mostly me picking prices and being undercut maybe once in a 24 hour period.  I'm on a very small server!  When the patch first came out and I made my malevolent TSM groups I thought to myself: "Why not price these as high as I can and see what I can get away with.  That number for me turned out to be 1250g, and let me tell you, I did get away with it.  In my mailbox after AH fees, that turns out to be a very nice pretty number, 1234g5s, and I can't say sales were terrible, but honestly they were slow:

Click to enlarge

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Finding Gold Making Information

If you haven't already check out my recent post of the new programs I've started recently.

First of all I'm going to take an aside to point out that this is my 200th all time post.  I just want to thank everyone who regularly reads my blog, and has stopped by to comment, or has commented on/thanked me for the TSM videos.  I really enjoy this community, and you all are a great part of what makes it thrive.  As far as the blog/videos, there's much more to come!  I'm planning on making some video guides to using the TSM App, and I'll keep you posted on the blog as to when they're coming out!  We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Finding Gold Making Information

Very often I come across people looking for advice that's been given ad nauseam in the past.  Questions like:
  • What's the optimal profession distribution for making gold?
  • Where's the best spot to farm Item X?
  • I have 5-10k gold, what's the best thing I can do?
  • How can I make more gold with Profession X?
  • etc.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

It's Business Time!


This post is a little housekeeping I've been putting off, but will probably benefit you to read regardless.

Ph.A.Q.
Lately I've been getting a lot of emails with questions, either broad or specific that I honestly can't keep up with at this point, so if you've sent me a mail and I've ignored it, much apologies.  What I'm going to be doing weekly (or even more often if time allows), is answering email questions in blog post form, basically to have some reference points to others with similar questions.  It is my goal to index these, so they can provide context to others looking for similar answers, or at least add some insight.  To send in submissions, email them to me with the subject line "Ph.A.Q." Also please notify me whether or not you'd like your name used in the post, and if so, what you'd like to go by. You can always find this at the link I've added to the toolbar above, at the Ph.A.Q tab above, where I'll be indexing the posts.

I started a program like this a while ago, and I got very few responses, and now that I've stopped it, it seems I've been getting even more emails than ever. Funny how these things tend to work. Anyway, if you have a burning question, or maybe something you've always wondered about or think I should cover, feel free to send it in. Just because I don't get to your submission the week you sent it doesn't mean I won't get to it!

Other Gold Making Readings
One of the more common requests that I get is other sources that I use for gold making material, what I read and/or find helpful.  To that extent, I've set up a subreddit where I'm going to post relevant and interesting blog posts, announcements, and threads that I personally find interesting and useful.  I digest a lot of this content daily, and I know that not everything is everyone's cup of tea, but what I'm going to try to do is simplify it so that you could theoretically subscribe to it via an RSS feed reader and get all the latest and greatest that Gold Making has to offer.  Sort of like the front page of TUJ, but just for things that I find interesting instead of all content from specific sources.

But Phat aren't there already 95 different WoW gold making subreddits?  Yes.  As you may know I very often frequent /r/woweconomy and /r/wowgoldmaking, but what I'm aiming to do is to aggregate content, providing links to readings that are interesting and more "mid-level to advanced" gold making.  What I mostly mean by this is that this subreddit won't be cluttered with questions about optimal profession spreads 5 times a day, but instead will have content that may be insightful or thought provoking to those not so fresh into gold making.  If you don't like it, no one is forcing you to subscribe.  I've set up flair for all the different posting sources, if your site is not on there yet don't worry, still working it out, but as is, there's already a lot of great content, and you should check it out!

Guest Posting
Since we're getting into a lull in this expansion, and I've been generally trending towards less and less posts every month, I'd like to take this time to open up my blog to guest posters.  If you are interested, send me an email with a relevant subject line, and we can discuss how/when you'd like to post.  I do expect all posts to be at least somehow related to gold making, and to be well written.  You don't necessarily need to have the same opinions or style of writing as me, but I do have some standards (they're not that high as you've read on this blog).  Again if you are interested, whether you're just starting up a blog, already have a gold blog, or don't ever want to start a blog at all but have something you think people would find interesting, don't hesitate to send a line.  This offer is up for the viable future, so if inspiration strikes feel free to contact me.  If you're starting a new blog, or have already started, guest posting is a great way to get your name out there, and get some initial reads of your content by relevant/interested readers.


Anyway, thanks everyone for reading through all the PSAs! Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Friday, November 8, 2013

Garrisons: Warlords of Draenor Gold Making

In case you live under a rock in terms of Blizzard news, Blizzcon is going on and they announced the new expansion: Warlords of Draenor.  Here's the cinematic teaser, the Warlords of Draenor Official Website as well as some info if you need to catch up.  The first major thing that I see that will have a major impact on gold making is Garrisons, for which Blizzard has already released a Garrison Mini-Guide.


"the Garrison will play a major role in your character’s Professions in this expansion—similar to how your farm was key... only on a much more epic scale." -Blizzard


Saturday, November 2, 2013

The World of Warcraft Gold Survey

Yes it's that time of year again ladies and gentlemen.  For those of you who don't know, Xsinthis of The Golden Crusade has been running a WoW Gold Survey for the past 2 years, and the 3rd yearly survey is up now for you all to partake in.  It's a really interesting study of the WoW gold making landscape, and it would really help if you could take some time to fill it out.  It takes less than 5 minutes, and the results will be very interesting this year.

You can find the 2013 survey here.

2011 Report

2012 Report



Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

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