The Best Farming Spot

Day 10 of Nev's Goldmaking Challenge, half way through!

Do you farm materials? Why? Why not? & which ones, where?

Gathering Professions
I feel like day 10 is going to see a lot of gathering profession rants, and let me be the first to add my contribution to that pile.  Gathering Professions are, by far, hands down, without a doubt, the worst way to make gold in World of Warcraft.  Right now with the herb and ore prices sitting where they are on many servers, you're not making half the gold every hour that you could be with a crafting profession.

Gathering is for the people who don't want to learn how to properly maximize a crafting profession, or learn certain markets, even though doing so would be more lucrative in the long run.  A lot of people with dual gathering toons tend to not even use their professions to the max anyway.  If you go farm herbs/ore/leather for even 2.5 hrs a week, you could make more gold doing an Enchanting and Alchemy CD for 15 seconds every day.  That's not even considering all the other possibilities with those 2 (arbitrarily picked) professions.

The best argument that anyone can come up with to support gathering professions is the logical fallacy that "it's 100% profit".  It is true that you don't have to invest gold.  But this assumes that your time invested into farming is worth nothing.  Okay if you need start-up capital that's one thing, but if you have a few thousand gold, stop farming, put your time to good use!

Gatherers Anonymous
This is the fun part of this post, pointing out my own logical fallacy, and why I support it.

My name's Phat and I have a gathering toon.  Yes it's true, after all that ranting and raving, I have a Tauren Druid with Mining/Herbalism.  *Gasp* Phat how could you do that to us!?  I know, I know.  As someone with over a million gold, I enjoy certain luxuries in game, and this is actually one of them.  I did not buy a Grand Expedition Yak.  I have a gathering toon.  Could I be making more gold if I slapped another profession on them?  Yes, I barely even gather as is.  There are 2 reasons I keep my gathering toon, and only 1 is vaguely related to gold making:

1. Save gold making bars: Instead of paying a premium for bars, I can buy either ore or bars (whichever is slightly more cheaper) and have the ability to make bars myself using Mining.  
2. Easy mats for Leveling Professions: As a gold maker I tend to switch professions on my alts, and I just hate when the mats aren't in the AH to powerlevel from 1-600.  At that point I'm more than willing to go out and farm on my Druid.

So those are my excuses what are yours?

The Exception

While it's not traditional farming, the Tillers have given a great way of acquiring virtual wealth in World of Warcraft, and this is one type of farming that I can support.  It's the type with little time invested, and large rewards, seems like a sound investment to me.  Having a few toons exalted with the Tillers is a licence to print money, and even without max level, alts can still take advantage of their 4 plots at 85.  

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!
You can also subscribe to my livestream channel on twitch.tv to see when I'm streaming!

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review: 1/29

If you're interested, my 'Gold Total' page has been updated to reflect this week's total, along with an update of the graph.

This week, I'm going to be going over how much I spent, as well as break down my sales by the overall week, as it seemed to be of interest to some players, and since TSM_Accounting keeps track of summaries by faction, it will be separated by faction as well:

Alliance:

Horde:









Alliance Analysis
This week on my one Alliance alt I invested only about 1,600 gold, and made 19,000 g.  This alt is purely into markets such as transmog and twink gear, but since my Alli has been getting their Tailoring/Enchanting leveled (still not 80 yet so no max), I've been making some more gold with that, but it's not a major component of their arsenal yet.  Most of my sales were most likely of things that I had purchased prior to this week, so my investments don't really reflect my returns, and that's something I'd like to heavily emphasize.  On any given week I can invest 2k or I can invest 12k, and I can still make that 19k in this market because I have a stockpile of items I repost.  Over the long run buying increases my sales, but at least 90% of the time something I buy in a flipping market usually doesn't sell the same week I purchase it.  I'm on a small server, so for larger servers, of course, YMMV.

Horde Analysis
*The 'Last 30 days' and 'Total Gold Spent' is heavily influenced by the purchase of Invincible's Reins.
On the Horde side of things, it gets a little more interesting.   I spent 60k this week, this is mostly on Ore for Living Steel/Prospecting and Herbs for Milling, Flasks, Rare Gem transmutes, as well as 5-7k on rare 80-84 gear.  I made a 180k income in the past 7 days, including 4 Relic sales which are still selling for 15k+ on my server (I still have a few trinks left over, my first surplus approaching a DMF since MoP release).

Other than that it was a whole bunch of gem sales, enchants, glyphs, item enhancements, the usual spread. I've recently revived my TSM_Crafting (I was lazy for a while) and got items churning out left and right.  I dropped one of my 4 Xmute masters for an Elixir master, as it's currently beneficial to have one on my server, and hopefully will be even moreso come 5.2's new raids.

Transmog & Twink
This week I did something that was a long time in the making.  I had been selling all my 77-78 and 80-84 twink gear from my main posting toon (also my main), whose bags don't have a whole lot of space to begin with.  I made an executive decision to transfer the posting of all the twink gear over to my level 1 transmog seller.  I just switched the groups to him on TSM_Mailing and had the items all waiting in his box the next time I logged.  This adds a lot of items to this sellers inventory, but I usually AFK browse the internet as I empty mail on him, and logistically it just makes more sense.

How was your week in WoW, did you make any awesome sales or purchases?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!
You can also subscribe to my livestream channel on twitch.tv to see when I'm streaming!

Long Live the Lich King!

Today I'll be posting on the topic of Day 9 of Nev's Goldmaking Challenge.  Nev recently released a post with everyone currently participating, and there are a lot of interesting responses from the community, check 'em out!

What's your favorite niche market & why?

WotLK Epic Gems
This may not have been the answer some people were expecting.  I really love the twink markets out there, but I've made so much gold making Wrath Epic gems, and it's constantly been a great market for me since Wrath itself!  I actually did a post about it in May of 2011, when I was first starting this blog, I found it kind of interesting to look back at it, check it out here.  While my methodology in that post is a little outdated, the overall theme still rings true.  Today though I use a relatively simple Dealfinding list to find great deals on epic gems, and (of course) post them using TSM.

Dealfinding List
Below is the Dealfinding List I use for these epics, I have the prices set to 150g for the epics and 30g for the Frozen Orbs that I use to make Icy Prism (which no longer has a daily CD).  I don't have Eye of Zul on my dealfinding list because it doesn't sell particularly well for me.

d1@36931/1499999,36919/1499999,36928/1499999,36925/1499999,36922/1499999,43102/300000@

Cuts
If you don't have the cuts yet, start doing the Dalaran JC dailies.  The only way to get cuts is from Timothy Jones who is both the seller of the cuts (4 dailies each), as well as the NPC that offers the daily quest.

I find that the Cardinal Ruby and Majestic Zircon sell the fastest for me.  In general for Cardinal Rubies I cut Brilliant unless I have a huge supply in which case I'll start on Bold and Delicate.  Majestic Zircon's I always cut pure stamina (Solid).  For the other cuts my best sellers are Mystic for King's Amber, Willful for Ametrine (or any primary + resil), and Purified Dreadstones.  This is one of the great secondary markets for any profession, and is by far my favorite out there.

What's your favorite niche market out there?  If you wrote your post on this already, feel free to link it in the comments!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!
You can also subscribe to my livestream channel on twitch.tv to see when I'm streaming!

8 Days a Week

Today I'll be posting on the topic of Day 8 of Nev's Goldmaking Challenge.  Nev recently released a post with everyone currently participating in the 20 Days on her blog, and there are a lot of interesting responses from the community, so be sure to check them out!

Thinking back to day 2, did you ever reach your goal or are you still working towards it? If you reached it - have you set yourself a new one?


Well on day 2 I mentioned that I usually set weekly goals instead of overall goals, but the one that I'm really pushing for now that I've dropped 750k is 2 million.  Recently I've fine tuned my TSM to push out more crafted items to make more gold each week, and I'm liking the results so far.  There has been a lack of herbs on the AH for a price worth crafting at, so I'm still a bit behind on the glyphs, but otherwise I'm right where I want to be.

Secondary Goals
I've been making gold on a 2nd server on and off for the past few months, and it was on a DK that had max mining and herbalism to get some capital quick.  Since then I've just been dabbling in transmog and twink gear every time I remember to log the character, but I've decided to take it slightly more serious.  I'm currently in the middle of leveling professions on that alt, 2 with daily CDs, hopefully to make gold a little bit faster.  I like having the alt because it gives me an option of profit on my main realm by buying pets on one and selling on another.  My main server is really small so there are no 25 battle pets on the AH other than the ones that I sell, so it's nice.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!
You can also subscribe to my livestream channel on twitch.tv to see when I'm streaming!

On the 7th Day...

Today I'll be posting on the topic of Day 7 of Nev's Goldmaking Challenge.  Nev recently released a post with everyone currently participating in the 20 Days on her blog.  Lots of interesting responses from around the gold making community, so be sure to check them out!

Day 7: If you were starting over again (maybe on a new server perhaps), how would you start building some capital & what goal would you set yourself?

Assumptions
For this question I'm going to assume that I am starting over on a new account, on a new realm, with no alts on other realms.  Starting from absolute scratch, as if I were to start an account on the EU servers.

Starting Out
Starting out I would level a toon that can tank or heal (let's say Tauren Druid) with gathering professions, and join a level 25 guild.  I always choose Herbalism and Mining when doing this.  They both have high turnover rates, and give you XP, and are probably the most profitable way to level (besides RAFing).  I would keep an eye on the AH for good deals such as transmog and twink gear, and be willing to sell at a lower rate than normal.  Say there's something I normally would sell for 750g, but I can buy it for 6g.  Starting from scratch I'd be more than happy to sell it for 200-300g, to build some capitol for more flips.  As I got more gold I'd resume following my standard pricing methodology, of course every server is different and this may have to be adjusted.

Once I got to 80 I'd drop Mining and Herbalism for Alchemy and JC.  I'd store the wow-professions.com minimal mats from my farming, and get to the point where I could do my daily CDs.  Of course I would get Transmute Mastery to go with my JC.  Now if I was focusing purely on making gold, and not really enjoyment of the game starting over, I'd start leveling a Death Knight.  Free level 55 means less time spent leveling to max my second set of professions.  From there I'd get to 80 and take up two more crafting professions depending on the market on that server.

From there it would be the standard more alts -> more professions.  I might consider leveling at least 1 if not both to 90 for the Tillers rep farm.  One at a time would probably be best, but I prefer to level while rested.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!
You can also subscribe to my livestream channel on twitch.tv to see when I'm streaming!

Day 6: Old (Jewel) Crafty

Today I'll be posting on the topic of Day 6 of Nev's Goldmaking Challenge.  Nev recently released a post with everyone currently participating in the 20 Days on her blog.  Lots of interesting responses from around the gold making community, so be sure to check them out!

Which market has made you the most gold over the years?

Gems!
Quite simply stated I would have to say Jewelcrafting.  Right now unfortunately it doesn't have the goldmaking prowess that it did in Wrath and Cataclysm, but it's still one of the top gold making professions around.

In WotLK, having a Jewelcrafter was your ticket to print money.  Back then I sold mostly 2 different types of gem, Red and Blue.  Red would be the base stats, and Blue would be Stamina.  It was a simple life.  Tanks all stacked Stam and DPS and healers, for the most part gemmed red (except for the occasional hit  or spirit point somewhere).  These gems sold fast, and they sold often.  Undercutters? Of course, but no big problem there.

Moving on to Cataclysm, the market changed.  Gems stats were redone, and Mastery was added to the game, adding a whole new dimension for gemming, but for the most part preferences stayed the same.  Diversification rose, but not a whole lot.  I was even able to keep on selling WotLK gems and making a solid profit because of the twink market.  The JC market seemed relatively stable.  Then came MoP.

In MoP the general populous don't honestly know what they should be gemming.  I think it took a good month for most players to even realize that you now get double the secondary stats compared to primary, and that it actually raises a thought question for their gemming strategy.  I still have people buying red gems the most which by most accounts of the matter, should not be the case.  PvP power actually helped the sales of my purple and green gems, so for that I am thankful.  Not all new stat changes are bad!  Transmuting gems just wasn't an option early on when Golden Lotus was expensive, but now it is viable, and things are settling out.  5.2 will be our first patch where gems will be selling to fresh raiders with Golden Lotus at reasonable prices, so it will be interesting to see what happens to the market to the days after it's release.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!
You can also subscribe to my livestream channel on twitch.tv to see when I'm streaming!

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 1/22

If you didn't read it yet, also check out my latest post for Nev's 20 Day Goldmaking Challenge: Day 5: Alternating Alts.

This week I managed to bring in ~88k as I started ramping up my gold making in a way that I haven't for a few months.

(Tillers) Farming on Alts
Taking the ~3 minutes a day that it takes to tend to your non-90 alt's Tillers farm can be quite profitable, especially if you're going to be logging them for their profession CDs anyway.  This week I managed to find a way to optimize my farming: the ilevel 450 BoA Weapons.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with them, there are lootable items spread throughout Pandaria that will give you ilvl 450 weapons that are BoA, as well as one neck that's BoA.  They are usable by level 86+, and I recently decked out all my alts with them, because they are some of the highest damage output weapons available at lvl 86, which is great for my vermin killing alts that maintain a Tiller's farm.  They're also great for leveling as more dps means more XP/hour.  A great way to level quickly, or optimize your time spent on your alts!


Return of (Actually) Crafting
For at least the entire month of January, if not longer, I've been really lax on replenishing my crafting supplies, and have ran out of many profitable items, such as gems, enchanting scrolls, engineering pets, and the like.  This week I began restocking my supplies.  This started with Jewelcrafting.  I had run out of most of my MoP cuts, as well as all of my Wrath cuts (very popular for twinks).  So I had a lot of work to do!  I was able to get Saronite ore relatively cheap, and when my Living Steel Transmute wasn't profitable as I'd like I used my Wrath Epic Gem Transmute.  Right now I'm still not fully stocked up, but I'm getting there!  I still haven't touched my enchanter because I don't have a lot of the end game rep patterns because my Enchanter is sadly still 85.  Quite honestly I wouldn't even be grinding the rep if he was.

Glyphs Are Weird on My Server...
So I'd say on 90%+ of servers, glyphs are either not worth crafting, or hard to compete with undercutting, but I'm having no such bad luck on my Low Population server.  I do get undercut out the wahzoo, but it seems that for right now at least, I'm the sole poster of at least 30 different glyphs (the 2 major posters dropped out about a month ago on my server).  This means mucho gold for me because I have this market cornered, and can basically ask for any price that I want.  I know with this will come competition though, because when people start having to pay hundreds for glyphs for their alts, they'll try to get in on the money train themselves.

Actually Leveling
So I've been moving around my glyphs on my alts for easier posting (for more detail see this post), and I wanted some Inscription bags.  This of course was troublesome for me because there are only 2 professions I don't have maxed out on my server, Leatherworking and Skinning, and of course I'd need at least decently high Leatherworking to make some good bags.  So I've re-started leveling my hunter who was at 300 LW/Skinning (lvl 56) whom I'll need to get to 65 to get the 32 slot inscription bags.  The reason I'm actually leveling skinning is because people tend to gauge the prices on leather because I'm on a small server and they can control the market.  This of course is just a personal goal, I could just get the bags crafted by a LW, but I'd also like the "all 10 professions maxed" achievement some day.  We'll see if my hunter can keep me interested, but for now he is.

So, that was my week in WoW gold making, how did your week go, and what sold well for you?


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!
You can also subscribe to my livestream channel on twitch.tv to see when I'm streaming!

Alternating Alts: Day 5

Today I return from my long weekend off with Day 5 of Nev's Goldmaking Challenge.  Nev recently released a post with everyone currently participating in the 20 Days on her blog.  Lots of interesting responses from around the gold making community, so be sure to check them out!

Today the prompt is Do you keep the same banker alt or do you change them up occasionally? Why?

Mainly Mains
My main posting toon is always the character I'm currently focused on in game, and right now it's my 90 mage.  I play end game on my mage, and 9 times out of 10 I would log this character even if I wasn't going to make gold that day (which never actually happens).  Once in a while (and I feel like it will be soon) I get the bug to either tank or heal, and I just have TSM Mailing forward my mail to that alt.  It's just easier for me to keep track of my auctions on a toon I spend time on.

Current Endeavors
Right now I am doing a bit of an experiment with my alts, and I'm liking it very much.  What I'm trying to do is spread out my glyphs, so that each of 3 alts can fit all the glyphs they are posting in their bags, so emptying the mail is something I can AFK through.  I was previously only posting glyphs from my glyph crafter himself, but this became laborious as I just hate sitting and running back and forth between the mailbox and bank.  It was made worse by the fact that I had to keep 3 classes worth of glyphs in a guild bank, and this method got old really fast.  I now have them across 2 alts, and just need some Inscription bags to get my 3rd alt running (this is the one time I really wish I had the only crafting profession I don't have maxed - Leatherworking).  Setting it up this way will just save me some time actually interacting with the game, as I can be here writing a post while emptying my glyph mail, not having to run to the banker and back every 5 seconds.  It will be a glorious day!

How about you, do you ever switch your posting alts around?  If so why?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!
You can also subscribe to my livestream channel on twitch.tv to see when I'm streaming!

Bank Alt (Day 4)

On the 4th day of Nev's 20 Days Gold Making she asks:
"Do you use a banker alt/guild? When did you start doing that & why?"

Yes and Yes!
My answer is yes to both questions.  I didn't have one until 4.3 and transmog being released though.  Previously I just set up my posting toon to be whatever my main was at the time (normally switches between warlock, DK, priest, and mage).  This makes it easy to post between doing things, and logging different characters to post things that aren't too troublesome for your main to post is annoying, and less likely to happen.   I still employ this method for the most part (except for glyphs + xmog), but when 4.3 came I knew I needed to change how I did things.

Reason's Got Nothing to Do With It...
When I first started doing transmog it wasn't too bad, but as my supply grew, my low number of empty bag slots on my main became more of a nuisance, and I wanted a toon that could keep tons of bag slots open, and have a guild bank for extra storage.  On top of that, if you ever played a toon that you post transmog on, you'll know that you start getting whispers about cutting people deals, and how much of a piece of garbage you are for posting gear for so expensive etc, etc.  So that's when my bank toon was born.  Using TSM Mailing it was easy to send all my xmog gear over to him and set him up for buying and selling gear.  I crafted him 4 26-slot bags, so right now he has 120 slots to shuffle gear from the mailbox to the Auction house.  Ideally I'd like 150 total, but I don't think that Blizzard will be accommodating this sort of behavior any time in the near future for xmog sellers.  Of course I've pimped him out, I think I've posted his picture on my blog before, but here it is again!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Day 3 Technique, Technique, Technique!

Day 3 of Nev's 20 Days of WoW Goldmaking Challenge asks "What were the first techniques/tricks/tips you used when starting out?"

Maximizing Alts
As mentioned in my first post of the Challenge, I learned from the start how to maximize my alts.  It's almost instinctive, but you know that the more time you spend making gold on a single character, the less productive your time spent becomes.  I always prioritize the most lucrative rituals first (cooldowns/Tiller's farm), then move on to general crafting from there (cut gems, enchanting scrolls, etc.).

Beyond this I post glyphs (when I do actually post them) from different characters so I can quickly exchange them in their respective banks for quick posting.  I used to store them in a guild bank but addons have very big problems now with moving things in and out of guild banks fast, so I've switched to two alts.

Absorption
Now more than ever I am involved in the gold making community, but when I first started out I was quite the lurker.  Reading blogs like Cold's Gold Factory and, dare I say it, Just My Two Copper helped me keep up to date on all the latrest trends.  I also really enjoyed reading the interviews of gold capped players on warcraftecon (which I'm sad to say seems to be down right now, not sure if this is permanent).  Those interviews were really cool because some of the players were people that you would not otherwise hear from regarding gold making.  Reading about how everyone else was making gold helped me diversify my strategy, as well as help pick professions for alts.  If it weren't for gold makers talking about how profitable the shuffle was in the beginning of Cataclysm, I would haven't even noticed the green gems were vendoring for 9 gold each, so the baseline was 54 g a stack for the first few months.  So read this blog, read other blogs (see blogroll), and participate in forums and on reddit, and learn all there is to know about gold making!


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 1/15

So it's the third Tuesday of 2013, and I'm writing my third Weekly Review of 2013.  My streak is going good so far, and I hope that at the very least it will continue through the winter!

Invincible Messing Up My Numbers
Of course this week my gold totals took a HUGE hit, plummeting down 750k because I purchased Invincible's Reins.  I wrote a post about it, and if you want to check that out, read it here!  This is by far the biggest hit to my gold total of all time.  Previously I've sank 150k gold into TCG mounts to flip, and made it back (and then some).  My gold total this week started at 1,838,647 g, so minus the 750k we can call it 1,088,647g.  I ended the week with 1,156,139 g, so I'm up 67,492, which is pretty good!

DMF Profits
Of course a bulk of my profits this week came from selling DMF cards I crafted, but I was trying to put a few too many decks together, and didn't end up selling my remaining cards until Thursday, getting last minute buyers (which wasn't all bad).  I prefer getting Trinkets to cards because on my server at least it's more profitable.  Some specific cards may be worth it, but my server is small and this path is still the way to go for me.  Below is a snapshot of my DMF sales for those interested, click the picture to enlarge.  I have about 5-7 decks on top of this, so a lot more profit to come from the DMF during the off weeks.

Transmog Woes
Nine times out of ten my transmog is one of my best sellers for the week and my time spent running between the mailbox and auctioneer is worth it, but this week was not one of those weeks.  That's the kind of market that transmog is though, it's very volatile and you can sell 2 items one week and make 10k, and the next week sell 12 items and make 5k.  This week I did neither, it was an overall loss for transmog (my posting prices are about 1k/48 hr posting).  I've been considering just posting the higher tier stuff for a while, but even now, the task of weeding out all the non wanted items seems like an epic chore, that I don't want to undertake right now.  In general the transmog market on my server is still kicking.

Livestreaming!
Recently I have been toying with the idea of livestreaming, maybe for an hour or so a day, so people can get some additional insight into my gold making scheme, or just see how unproductively I'm able to do things and still make a ton of gold :-P.  If you want to follow my channel to see when I'm streaming check it out here.  I will also be announcing when I go live via my twitter.  I'm thinking by tomorrow (Wednesday) I'll have everything worked out and ready to start test streaming, so come and see!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Goooooooaaaaaaaaaalls!!! (Day 2)

Today I'm continuing with Nev's WoW Goldmaking Challenge, to see all my posts for this, click here. Today we answer the question

"If you set yourself a goal, what was your goal & at what point did you set it?"

Admirable Goals
In general I don't set goals for the distant future ie. "gain 1 million gold by April 23rd".  For me that's too far out to concentrate on, and it means I can slack right now, assuming I can pick up the slack later (I'm a procrastinator).  So what I do is set weekly goals.  I try to make them realistic and base them on my play time (if I won't be able to play 2 days in a week, I set it lower than a week I can log in for at least an hour each day).  In general, and for this week for example my goal was 60k gold.  I knew it was the Faire and I'd probably make more than that, but I did not bet on Invincible's Reins coming up on the BMAH.  That being said I'm not going to take that into account as far as me achieving my goals.  If I still earned 60k this week after taking that into account, then I'll have met my goals.

In my opinion there are two types of goals that are the best for achieving gold making results, the first being the type I mentioned, and the second being a goal of time invested in gold making per day.  The more time you put into making gold in WoW, the more gold you'll make, and your gold per hour goes down for every hour per day you play, so a goal of 1 hour per day, or even a half hour per day is a reasonable goal for most people to make gold while enjoying the game and life.

Above all if you're going to set goals, set goals that are reasonable for you to obtain.  Don't go over the top. Push yourself, but don't be unreasonable.  Now the question is on you.  What kind of goals do you set for yourself, or what goals are you currently working on?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Phat Lewts': Origins (Day 1)

This is a post for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival, check it out for other great responses!

I'm sure you all are familiar with Nev from the blog Auction House Addict.  Yesterday she released an idea akin to the "20 days of WoW" where bloggers would write responses to 20 prompts about WoW, but with a creative spin for us gold makers, "20 Days of WoW Goldmaking", and I am going to take part, because I think they are good prompts that will provide an introspective look into my gold making.  I am going to be doing this along with my normal posts on any given day, so you won't be missing out on anything else because of this.

Without further ado: Day 1 - When did you start gold making & what triggered it?

Wrath & Desperation.
That's the one word answer for each of the two questions.  This is a cautionary tale.  I've been going back and forth as to if I should ever tell this story on my blog, because it might have a bit of a negative reception in the community, but with the 20 days going on, it seems like the best time to tell it.  So it was in Wrath of the Lich King, and I was the Guild Master of a semi-serious guild.  We were doing ICC when it happened, not pushing heroic progression or anything, just 10 man regs.  I was making gold, but just to sustain my raiding.  I always had more gold than most of the people in my guild, but never put serious time into it.  This is where things all went sour.  At the time I was in college, and being a "poor" college student my budget didn't have the $15 a month I needed to put into WoW.  This is when I had my brilliant idea, that my WoW habit should pay for itself, and I looked into selling gold online.

My Income Method
At this time, for those of you that remember, Primordial Saronite was at it's peak.  Since I had an army of 80 alts, I was able to get a ton of it every week.  I used my Emblems of Frost from all my characters to buy these every week and resell (among other standard things, JC, Tailoring, BS, etc.).  I made a lot of gold, and at the time I could get over $1 per thousand gold.  Disclaimer: NEVER EVER EVER DO THIS.  Unless of course you want to feel the wrath of the ban hammer!  So I found a website to sell my gold, and set up a shady transaction.  It was one of the scummiest feeling things I ever did in game.  I met a level 1 in Booty Bay and traded them 40k gold.  It was like a WoW drug deal.  I felt terrible, but they actually payed me (which I had initially doubted), and I could play WoW for 2 more months.    This happened a grand total of two more times before the inevitable happened.

Short Notice
In the back of my head this whole time, I knew I'd get caught.  I always just thought I'd get a 72 hour ban, and a final warning type of thing, and then I would stop. But when I got that email, my heart sank.  Account Canceled.  I just stared at the words for a while, reading the email telling me that I couldn't get my account back.  Ever.  Now yes I had been naive, but putting all that time into developing and maintaining a raiding guild.  My roommate at the time played WoW so I used his account to tell my guildmates what happened.  They were all shocked that I didn't tell them initially and said they would have helped me out if I had asked.  I'm not that kind of person, and that was neither here nor there, because at that point I had lost something I had invested months of /played time in, and I was really discouraged.

Bittersweet Return
After my guildies heard what happened, and GM had been passed to one of my Raiding Officers, I was pretty content walking away from the game at that point.  But a few members of my guild pitched in, and bought me Vanilla through Wrath, and one even RAFed me so we could get to 80 as fast as possible on my account, and it was by far the most touching gesture I've ever received as a WoW player.  I started an Orc Warlock (my previous main) and started the grind once again.  Below is a picture of my low level warlock compared to my ICC geared Lock, taken shortly after all this transpired.  The take away for me was making gold is fun, but trying to sell it to support playing it was a fool's errand.  From then on I had the gold making bug, and worked harder than ever to be on top of my game.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

How to Not Make Gold

Followers of my Twitter will already know, but two days ago I bought Invincible's Reins off of the Black Market Auction House.  It was a very strange experience for me parting with as much gold as I did, and I felt like it was worth writing about.

The Setup
My main, and toon that posts everything but transmog is a level 90 Mage.  Since I can teleport anywhere else I need to go, I have my mage's hearth set to the Tavern in the Mists so I can keep an eye on the Black Market Auction House.  Until today only two items that had sparked my interest on my servers BMAH were a Drake mount from Cata that I wouldn't have farmed, and a Brawler's Guild invitation.  Additionally I bought some patterns early in the expansion to flip, bought both for 20k each, sold one for 30k, and the other ended up selling months later for 15k (not the best investment).  In general, I was in a "I want to see how much gold I can get on this server" state of mind, and wasn't spending much.  Then Thursday morning when I checked the BMAH I saw Invincible's Reins.

I knew that an epic showdown would follow by some of the server's top gold makers, and I wanted to get involved.  I was sitting at 1,838,647 g, according to my Tuesday logging of it, so I had gold to burn.  I made the initial 20k bid on the Reins, and went about my gold making routine on my alts.  A hour or two later, the price had rocketed to 150k.

The Battle
From then on I decided not to be involved in driving the price up until the end of the auction.  No use wasting gold right?  Too bad I lost this mentality somewhere along the line.  A few minutes after midnight the auction went from long to medium, which meant the auction would expire shortly after 2am, my time.  Being tired is not a great condition to make rational decisions.  The price was sitting around 300k, and from what I could tell there were 3 active bidders still in the running (including myself), one other Horde (my faction), and an Alliance character.  With under 2 hrs left it was time to test the waters.  I placed a bid making it 320k, then walked away for a while.  Then the notification came while I was in a dungeon that I had been outbid. When I got back to the BMAH the mount was sitting at 400k.  Okay, he's not playing around.  The Hordie noticed me and told me he's almost exhausted his funds, and that he was making one last bid, making the price 420k.  The Alli went with another agressive bid, and rose it to 500k.  The Horde character told me he was out, and wished me good luck.  And then there were two.

The Grand Finish
There were now under 30 minutes left, and we had already reached half a million.  My next move was to push it to 520k.  Of course slightly thereafter he pushed it to 600k.  Feeling around for this guy's stop point was proving fruitless, and I decided it was my turn to do some pushing.  From 600k I jacked the price up to 750k, and then went around to all my alts, to send myself gold cap.  I had 1.8 mill to begin with, so I had just enough left that if this guy decided to make a last minute move, I could have cap on my character and not have to run back to the bank to beat him (unless of course he capped it out).  The whole thing was fruitless.  After I upped the price to 750k, he disappeared, and I sat next to the Auctioneer as time ran out.  It was then that it hit me.  I just spent almost half of my entire stockpile of gold.  The feeling was unsettling.  I hadn't been at this low of a point (~1.1 million) in over a year.  I started freaking out, almost hoping that I would be outbid, so I could keep my enormous pile of gold, but the auction expired with my bid at 750k, and I had a brand new mount.  I thought I would feel buyer's remorse in an extreme way, but I don't.  Whether I got it in ICC or not, my mount is one of the most badass available in game, the steed of Arthas Menethil himself, resurrected by the Lich King.  I miss my gold, but I very much enjoy my new mount.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 1/8

So it's Tuesday, which means it's time for Phat's Weekly Lewt Review!

Updated Gold Total Tab!
If you click the 'Gold Total' tab above, you will see I've added a graph as well as a table on my current gold total, and it's growth over the past.  I decided that I wanted to see a graph of my gold growth over time, and since I made it I figured I'd share it with those of you who are interested.  The table below it includes changes between updates (some are longer than others), as well as a neat little graph to see my gold growth.  I'm going to update this one weekly from now on, so hopefully the graph becomes more informative over time.  If you look, you'll notice I made 48.6k this week, or about 7k per day.  Check it out it's pretty interesting!

Transmog Sales

What you see here is a snapshot of all my transmog sales for the week.  Since my transmog sellr also sells Hypnotic Dust, Frostweave, and Valentine's mounts, you'll also see some of that!  (I'm too lazy to edit them out).  Basically 10 pieces sold this week with an average sell price of around 1k, so it was a good week for transmog for me.  The Soulkeeper I usually keep in a group that's at 5k, but I lowered to 2.5k this week to experiment, and I was almost disappointed when it sold for that, so I bumped it back up.  Still made a great profit, but I like getting the huge chunk of change from those who really want the item!

83-84 Gear
The 83-84 gear bracket has been amazing for me recently.  I sold over 20 items this week alone!  I price them at 500g, and buy at 100g or under, so conservatively I made at least 8k in profits from this method alone.  The key is reposting and keeping your downtime to a minimum.  Your items need to be on the Auction House when that one character makes that impulse purchase, and then you'll be raking in the gold!

77-78 gear is doing really well for me too, but it's a LOT slower than the 83-84 market, and less available to purchase to flip.  Still well worth it though!

Darkmoon
Of course with the DMF beginning this past Sunday, I was investing a copious amount of gold in cards/herbs/etc.  I've assembled  6 decks this Faire (aiming for 7) and what's left of my superfluous cards I'm selling as individuals now.  I've been working on leveling alts, but I keep forgetting to get the 10% buff from the Faire ride, even though I'm more than aware that it is in town this week.

Back Into Glyphs
In the middle of the past week I got back into glyphs!  I had been using one alt to post glyphs, but withdrawing glyphs from my guild bank in bulk was slow, so I split them between my Scribe as well as a level 50 hunter.  So far it's not going too bad, making anywhere from 500-2500g/day depending on how much I repost.  I had made all the glyphs before the supposed "Glyphmas 2.0" and I literally still have at least 10 of each.  Yikes.  Instead of having em sit in my bank rotting I decided to start posting again.  I actually now have quite a few recipes I've never crafted because of research, and I'm considering crafting them, but definitely not until the Faire is over.  We'll see if my affinity for glyphs lasts long this time around, I usually get sick of the constant reposting cycle quite quickly, although a lot of the competition I originally have seem to have disappeared from the market.

Other than that I've just been making the basics, crafted PvP gear, Rare JC rings/necks, cut gems, Living Steel, Flasks, etc.  Also I'm starting to work on some profession guides.  If all works out well they should be out by the end of the month, just in time for 5.2 to render them obsolete!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Milestone: Alliance Alt Hits 100k

So today I hit 2 very important milestones on my Alliance alt, level 70, and 100k gold!

Background
I've written about this alt before, but a quick summary for those who did not see those posts (they're few and far between).  On my main server I have 10 Horde characters and 1 Alliance character.  I originally made my Alliance Priest to see how I could do with the resale market on the Alliance side of my server.  For some quick (albeit expensive) start up capitol I bought an heirloom cape on the Horde side, and vendored it on the Alliance side (before cagable pets).  If you did the math I started with 300g, and now have 100k at level 70.  For a part time alt, it's not half bad!  I figure that sharing some info with you as to how I did it might help you with your repertoire, so here goes!

Flipping Out
This project has been a long time in the making, I started it in Cataclysm, and was working on it on and off.  Basically if I ever finished my gold making rotation Horde side, I'd play this toon.  If I were starting today, I would have just sold a caged pet for starting capitol if I were to do it today, and if you ever start on a new server with no high level alts, I'd suggest you do the same.  The first thing I did was join a level 25 guild.  Trying to do this without guild perks is just silly.  Looking back on my sales, some of the first flips that I made gold off of were in the 77-78 Twink market, which I still sell in now.  In the beginning I had a sale once every 2-3 days, then more often as my inventory increased.  Once I had a decent pile of gold I got into the transmog market, and that's when things really took off.  Below are 2 screenshots of some of my top sales.

Top Resales (Click to Enlarge)

Top Sales (Click to Enlarge)

Business is Booming!
As Cataclysm started coming to an end, I started leveling this toon.  As I leveled, I leveled the traditional Tailoring/Enchanting for my clothie.  Once I had high enough Tailoring, I got a friend to transfer the Icy Cloak pattern to me from the Horde side.  If you are a tailor and you haven't checked out this recipe yet, you should.  Read about it here.  For the TL;DR it's a horde only recipe, and a sweet transmog cloak.  I was able to sell two of these within the first week that I had the pattern for 5k each!!

I noticed something though on my alli priest transmog seller that I did not get on my level 1 transmog banker.  Lots of players whispering things like "why is all your @#$^ing gear so expensive on the AH!?".  Now I'm not going to accuse the scum of the Alliance of being less scrupulous of their Horde counterparts, but I had my fair share of "polite conversations" with some Allies during this experiment.  I chalk it up to actually being on the character for more than a few minutes every 2 days.  As an aside, generally if someone whispers me and doesn't use their first whisper to insult/attack me or my mother, I will be more than willing to cut them a deal.

Mountain of Gear
At this point I have something like 300 pieces of transmog and twink gear (my server is small!) that I cycle every 2 days.  On top of that I'm crafting Netherweave Bags as I just got through BC, and realized that there was about a 3-4x markup on the bags, and up to a 10x markup if I can get cloth cheap enough!  My next goal will be 80 and some maxed MoP professions.  As of now though, my priest only gets maybe 30 minutes of leveling on any given week, so that is going to be in the distant future.

I'm also playing around on another server, and making some decent progress just buying and reselling twink/transmog gear.  That character I only log maybe once or twice a week, but I've accrued about 75k, which I'm slowly investing in lvl 25 pets to move to my main server.  Kinda fun, no thinking involved.  So how about you?  Have you conducted any gold making experiments?  If so how did they turn out?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 1/3/2013

So my Weekly Review is falling a bit late this week because of the holidays, but I really want to make it a weekly event, so I'm going to go for it anyway.

Jewelcrafting

This week was particularly good in Jewelcrafting for me, I have made a ton of cut gem sales, but the bulk of my profit came from the sale of 3 of the 450 ilvl JC necks/rings.  It was actually all 3 opportune sales where someone decided they needed the gear at that time, and bought at above market prices (lots of fluctuation on my small server).  They sold at ridiculous profit margins, something to the tune of 10-15x mats, which is always a bonus.  If you haven't already I highly suggest visiting Mai the Jade Shaper and getting the JC patterns from her.  They add so much value and diversity to your Jewelcrafting arsenal, and give you something to do with all those Serpent's Eye you've been getting from prospecting.

Inscription
I was reminded by a guildie that the Darkmoon Faire was coming soon (Sunday, get on it!), and that I regrettably had to work through some milling that I had been putting off for quite some time.  I've actually been buying up cards this week, and most likely will keep buying up cheap ones until the Faire starts.  On some servers (and for some specific cards) prices are better for selling individually, but right now I could buy the parts of a Tiger Deck for about 8k less than the selling price of it's Relic.  So stocking up on the cheap cards, may end up with a few too many of a certain card, but I'm thinking I'll more than make up for it selling the relics sometime in January.

Transmog

This week I made about 4k in transmog sales, which isn't too bad considering I only posted once (with 48 hr auctions I am able be posting about 3.5 times/week).  It was honestly a bit less than I was expecting with a lot of students off this week and playing WoW, but honestly I didn't post during high volume times (weekend), so it's a pretty decent haul.

Blog Survey
If you haven't taken it yet, I have a survey I'm using to improve and decide what new features to add to my blog.  It will only take about 5 minutes at most, and I will be using all input to decide where I go with my blog in 2013.  Whether you're a new reader, or someone who has been reading over a year, I'd love to hear what you have to say!   You can access the survey at this link.  To those of you who already have, or are about to, thank you so much for your time taking the survey, I really appreciate all the constructive feedback I've received so far!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Phat's Yearly Review!

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope you all had a great holiday!

As 2012 has ended, and a new year begins, I want to ask my readers for some feedback to help decide where this blog goes in 2013.  I created a 5 question survey, and I would really appreciate if you took the time to take it.  There are a few free response questions, and those are the most important to me as far as determining where the blog will go in 2013.  Thank you in advance for responding to this survey, and I look forward to many new posts and gold making strategies in the new year!

Click Here to take Phat's Yearly Review Survey


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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