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  I originally made my Alliance Priest to see how I could do with the resale market on the Alliance side of my server.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!!

The New 77-80 Market: 80-84 MoP Gear

As predicted, there is a new era of twink gear out that is equivalent to Cataclysm's 77-80 market (which is still alive and kicking).  Keep in mind that now is not a great time to sell, it's a great time to buy.  Lots of this will be on AH's for relatively cheap, but now is not necessarily the best time to post these, except leather (for monks).  Keep in mind that if you start posting at high prices will result in people undercutting you, ruining the potentially endless flow of great deals for the greens(and blues) on the AH.

Search Terms!
If you're using TSM, there is only one search that you need to do:

80/84/i364

These searches look for all items available to those in the range 80-84 with ilvl 364 and higher.  This will include all weapons and armor that came out in MoP available to this bracket.  There are 80-82 blues that are super OP, so keep an eye out for those, they're ilvl 409-425!

If you're using Auctionator you have to do 2 searches

***MoP Twinks
Armor/80/84/i364
Weapon/80/84/i364

And that's it!  You may want to go through this gear and hand pick the ones with the best stats, but at the current prices I'm seeing, if it doesn't sell, you can DE it for a profit!  Now is a great time to stock up on this to sell it throughout the expansion.  Even with a little gold you can make a decent investment, and expect high returns once a majority of the characters are at max level and not questing in the 85-86 zones that drop these!  Welcome to the new era of twink gear!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

MoP in 2 Months!

So it's officially official that MoP will be released in 2 MONTHS.

I must say I am VERY surprised it is coming out so soon, but for gold making, there couldn't be better news!  When news of Mists coming out so very soon hits the public, people will be flocking back to the game to level alts and prepare their characters for the new expansion, so look forward to increased population on all servers in the upcoming 2 months leading up to MoP.  I'm going to go over some things I'll be looking out for in the coming month.

Cata Twink Gear
The 77-80 market is not going to be replaced by anything in MoP.  There will most likely be a substantial decrease in the amount of this gear available to buy and resell, but I wouldn't worry about dumping it all the moment you log on today.  It's still a viable market come MoP, levelers will always want to buy gear, no matter how much the gold making community and advice givers in general advise against it.

Now on the other hand, if you have been dipping into the 83-84 Cata gear market, there should be a RED FLAG coming up.  SELL, SELL, SELL!!  Cut your prices in this market, still sell at profit, but you want to dump all this stuff as fast as possible.  In the same way Cataclysm created the 77-80 Twink market, Mists of Pandaria is creating an 83-84 Twink Market.  Here is a list of all the items that are 83-84 BoE added in MoP and (some are) worlds better than whats available as an epic at level 85 right now.  Keep this gear in mind when you start leveling your 85s on September 25th!

Inscription
There's been a lot of rumors floating around about inscription recently.   Going back to the Cata pre-expansion patch, we saw that you were no longer able to trade inks until the release of Cata.  Been stockpiling Blackfallow?  Start trading them in!  If you haven't been stockpiling now is the time to start, it is almost too late to ensure a great distribution, but you don't want to miss out on (what could possibly be) Glyphmas 2.0.  Make sure you keep up to date on all the OFFICIAL changes that will be made (what glyphs will be changing over, which ones are being left in the dust, what inks you'll need etc.).  If you're hardcore into inscription and you want to keep up to date on all the official changes and nuances, I'm not your man.  Make sure you follow Croda's blog marketsforgold, his main focus is glyphs, and glyphs are my least favorite market.

Stockpiling
Again, getting late on this but there are still ways to start stockpiling now.

Pets are a great way to stockpile, especially the Elementium Geode as I had suggested in previous stockpiling posts.  I plan on coming out with a post based entirely on stocking up on pets for Mists, so I'm not going to delve into it too much, but for more of a read check out Cold's post Get Out While You Still Can!

Cataclysm mats are another great thing to stockpile.  With the influx of players, raw mats on the AH should at least increase in volume, if not decrease in price as well.  For selling a few months into Mists, raw mats are a great thing to stockpile long term, especially Hypnotic Dust, as it will be needed to level Enchanting more than Cata Essences.  


WANDS!
The wand slot will be removed in 5.0.4, and wands will be made a "main hand" caster weapon, with stats to match.  I wrote a post that you can find here about the best BoE wands to stockpile for this.  Again with the influx of players for Mists, you may start to find more of these wands on the AH, and should add them to your overall mogging searches.

This is just a small slice of the pie, but hopefully some big topics that you can start (or already are) hitting on.
What is your biggest goal to get done before the MoP release in 2 months?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Instant Gratification

Today I'd like to touch on the topic of instant gratification in gold making.  Recently I've been getting a lot of questions asking what people should do in certain scenarios and 99.9% of the time I recommend adding 77 twink gear and daily transmog searches to their profession arsenal, and most people don't want to take the time to repost the stuff when the auctions expire.

Fun Facts
Yes, transmog gear and twink gear don't sell as quickly as raw materials you can farm, or cut gems for example, BUT they sell at a way higher profit margin when they do sell, and they take very little time invested if you use TSM.  Instead of spending hours maximizing your JC profit by doing the shuffle, you can do a quick scan of the AH, maybe spend 15 minutes accruing new supplies, and be on your merry way.

The one thing you have to know about this Cataclysm Twink gear is that although you may sell 1-2 items in patches, but when there's a new 77 who is fully aware of it, he's gonna splurge on all that you have:

This sales picture is from one day, the red buyer is all the same guy, a 77 priest who wants to get the best gear that gold can buy.  I made 4,000g from this one character alone, and spent at most 2,000g on the gear originally.  Did I have to repost it a couple times?  Sure.  Is it going to sell in the long run?  Yes.  I always buy at (at most) half what I'm going to sell it for.  Even if someone is already in your market, and you can only pick up a few pieces, you will benefit from the other pieces on the AH.  People don't want one piece of this gear, it will make very little difference.  They want full sets, or as much as they can get, and your piece is (hopefully) included in that.

How I suggest doing it
If you have the space, make a level one toon dedicated solely to posting these types of auctions.  Get him/her some nice bags, preferably with 100 or more total slots (two full mail empties).  Post all of your auctions on 48 hour windows, and have another toon do the buying and send all the items to this toon.  Log your posting toon religiously every 2 days to repost your auctions.

You don't have to spend much time at all on this toon, just the reposting time, and it REALLY doesn't take that long if you know how to setup TSM.  This also avoids you being hated on your server for selling transmog gear at such high prices.  Doing a once daily search and once every other day posting with this stuff will get you a ton of gold.  I've been doing it this way on my own server and on the Alliance side I've made over 50k gold, and horde side I've made over 150k gold from this method alone .  I know it seems like a lot of work and that it wont pay off in the long run, but once you have a decent supply going (150+ items) you will be making sales every time you post, and it will become well worth it.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts


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

My Favorite Cataclysmic Market

This post is for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival which will go live on May 11th, but I know I'll forget until the 12th if I don't come out with it now so here goes :-P.  I'll try to keep reminders up on my site so you can read all the other great posts when they come out.

This month's carnival asks: "What Was A Niche Market That You Were Suprised To Find Or That You Did Better Than Expected In During Cataclysm?"

Two markets that I really loved that were introduced in Cataclysm were Transmogrification and Mysterious Fortune Cards.  They are very interesting markets and fun to play with.  By far though, my favorite new market was the "Cataclysm Twink Market" brought on by overly powerful  level 77+ gear being introduced to low level cataclysm zones (80-81).

Why it's a Great Market
The reason why it's a great market to focus on is two-fold.  First and foremost, everyone wants the best gear for their character.  If you've done PvP in 75-79 bracket you'll know that without it, you're going to have a bad time.  The stats are more than double that available on even the best LK gear in the area, and gives a big boost to any character using it (even in PvE).


Second, the gear is not obtainable AT level 77.  Period.  You can't quest in Hyjal until 80, and you can't ENTER Cata dungeons until 78, and even at 78 you'd need to be carried because you cannot queue for randoms yet.  At 77 characters have no way of getting these greens other than randomly grinding mobs on an alt and hoping that their armor and stat type drop.  Not very fun or productive.  That's where I step in.

Methodology
Many people like the broader spectrum of this level range of gear, mostly 77-80 or 77-81.  I prefer 77 and 78.  My reasoning is again twofold.  People will want the twinked out gear as soon as they can get it, ie at level 77.  Second, even a level 78 or 79 can benefit from the 77 greens, if there is not the armor type/stats they want on the AH.  On the other hand a 77 can't use a piece of 79 gear because there's not what they need on the AH.  Also, at level 78 you can attain some blue pieces of gear, only 5 that are BoE, but they're deadly.  Agility daggers, an agility staff, and strength pants are my best sellers.

I use Auctionator to do searches, mainly:
Armor/77/77/i272
Weapon/77/77/i272
Weapon/78/78/i308
Armor/78/78/i308

From there I buy any armor or weapons that would be remotely useful to players.  One thing to avoid like the plague is agility plate.  For a full list of things to avoid check out PW:G's post, about items to avoid when flipping twink gear.  In general for the 77 gear I'll buy anything 250g or under, and I sell for 499g99s99c.  For the 78 rare gear I buy anything under 500g and sell for 999g99s99c.  Over the long run I've had the same return as Jewelcrafting, as seen in my 1,000,000 gold post.

There is already on the beta sets for a similar market being added (83-84) and I hope it does just as well come Mists of Pandaria.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review: Week Ending 4/16

Let's start out with the "bad news" of the week

Transmog Woes
This week I was barely able to make a profit off transmog, and twice after collecting and reposting 48 hour auctions I was posting for a loss (ie. posting cost > what I made in 48 hrs).  I expect transmog to be a strong market when the player boom associated with Pandas comes along, so I may start sending the mogging gear between my 2 not played alts on my server to start posting again in MoP.  Definitely going to give it another week though to see if it was just a dryspell or my server's mogging market going down.

Now on to the good news...

Inferno Rubies Sold Off
If you've been reading my blog a while, a few weeks back i was able to buy something like 600 inferno rubies for 100g a pop.  At this point I have sold all but a few of them at an average of about 170g (after AH tax).  The profit margin wasn't as great as prospecting, but I personally enjoyed having the break from prospecting and it gave me some time to focus on other things, as noted below.

Alliance Side Project
On my server I have 9 Horde characters and 1 Alliance character.  Using the neutral AH I transfered my character Alliance side 300g and the pattern for Icy Cloak.  Using the 300g and mostly investing in 77 Twink Gear as well as some "prime" transmog gear, I am now over 10k gold on a level 33.  Not too shabby.  The character now has maxed Tailoring/Enchanting that a level 33 can have (75 more levels at 35 soon to come though), and over 10k in her pocket.  Not crafting anything now other than the Icy Cloak, just reinvesting in Mogging/Twink Gear.  I enjoy leveling the character with BoAs from the Horde side, mostly in BGs.  Being a healer in BGs, especially at that bracket in the 10 and 15 man BGs can really be the difference between a win and a loss.

Mysterious Fortune Cards
Since I had a lot of free time Horde side from not prospecting, I decided to focus in on a market I hadn't played for a while - Mysterious Fortune Cards.  MFC's are one of the easiest ways to make gold with a scribe, but you need be willing to make macros and advertise them in trade.  I've been able to sell a few stacks of these while doing other things on my computer (such as writing this blog).  I just play windowed and tab back and hit my macros every few minutes and continue on as usual.  I'm still working on the 600 Whiptail that I bought for 15g/stack 4 weeks ago, not sure I can ever get through it all.  This price puts my cards somewhere around 3.5g to make, and I'm selling them for 12g a piece, so nice returns.

In all I'm enjoying using some alternative methods to make gold this week than I normally use, and it's a nice break from the usual.  I probably won't get back to prospecting for at least another week or two, so I'm going to continue using alternative methods and working on acquiring more gold, as per usual.  If you have any ideas/suggestions feel free to leave them in the comments, and I might just try em out this week!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like this post check out my twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!

Converted TSM Lists

If you enjoy my blog, follow me on twitter @PhatLewtsGold for more gold making tips!

Hey guys,

Today I'm brining you some TSM lists from previous posts that I've done in the past.  Earlier this week I read Faid's post from Clockwork Riot, Importable TSM Mog Lists v2.0 and decided to let go of my tunnel vision on using Auctionator only for gear searches.  I really loved using her lists compared to the Auctionator lists, and I've decided to revamp some of my previous Auctionator lists to be importable to TSM.

If you want to learn how to import these lists, go to the link above to Clockwork Riot!!


Shield Mogging List
My original post/list for Auctionator Mogging Shields can be found at the post Auctionating Mogging Shields.

As per the suggestion from Theruling, I've added the 3 shields he suggested to the original list!  The importable TSM list is below.

Shield Mogging

s1@13082,13083,14942,15352,66895,36452,4068,15891,15892,4069,1204,12997,9974,1169,14954,14973,15648,31292,14825,45450,2040,14800,14780,7496,36447,7465,1168,10078,10362,14930,15592,36448,31200,10365,14964,25073,14902,25076,10367,4444,25079,25080,25081,25082,13079,14812,15494,9899,14947,1203$@

Rare Chest Mogs

Last but not least, my rare chest list from my post Rare Chest Mogging Lists, you may want to remove a few of these based on the size of your server, and the quality of my original choices, I chose not to.  

Rare Chests

s1@31136,31578,44697,2800,14536,9434,31152,7759,31155,13123,44666,44668,31285,31286,17050,1488,31168,31295,31170,9508,31172,1717,37770,13110,2292,37587,12988,37780,9406,1716,31282,10328,31562,37792,31297,10583,37672,37800,31127,12542,51958,37745,13067,3416,3019,31156,31174,7728$@

Cata Twink Gear
In my original post Expanding on the Cataclysm Twink Market, I posted the lists I use to search for level 77+ Cataclysm twink gear.  My fastest turnover group, the level 77 ilevel 272 weapons and armor, I've condensed into one importable 77 twink list below.  I price all of these at 500g each, so buy accordingly, read the original post for more details.

77 Twink Gear

A few simple TSM searches will cover everything on my original Auctionator lists:

77/77/i272
78/78/i308

Enjoy the lists!   Best used with the addon Mogit to see the models of the transmog gear!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Expanding on the Cataclysm Twink Market

For more gold making tips, follow me on twitter @PhatLewtsGold!

A while back I posted a few twinking searches for level 77 twinks.  The idea here is that at level 77 you can get your hands on some ridiculously OP Cataclysm BoEs and melt faces in BGs till you ding 80 and move up to the 80-84 bracket.  Since many mains will have hit the point in the expansion where they "can't get better", we may see an influx of alts coming in that will buy this stuff up like candy.

Today I'm going to expand on my original list, and suggest some pricing points which I believe will work on almost any server.  I have done this across 3 servers ranging from Low-High Population, so this has a lot of potential for any server.  That being said, this method is really dependent on the prices that this gear is already going for on your server.  So here is the Auctionator list that I use for looking for Cata Twink Gear:

***Cata Twink Gear
Armor/77/77/i272/
Weapon/77/77/i272/
Armor/78/78/i300
Weapon/78/78/i300

What do these searches do?

• Armor/77/77/i272/ and Weapon/77/77/i272/
• These searches look for items usable by only level 77's of minimum ilevel 272
• This is your bread and butter of this market.  These weapons provide the longest term usage over the 77-79 range where cataclysm armor is available to newbies.  
• This is the fastest of the turnover rates.  
• NEVER buy anything called Dreadmaul _________ of the Tiger.  This is plate gear with agility and hit as stats DON'T DO IT!
• Pricing - I price these at 499g99s99c across the board, I only buy at 250g or less.

• Armor/78/78/i300 and Armor/78/78/i300 
• These 2 searches will look for a select few items.  These items are of rare quality and are usable by level 78s and up.  These are the only Cata level 77-79 Rare BoE items.
• Depending on your server there may be an overabundance of these, or none at all.
• The best selling item in this group for me across 3 servers hands down is Alpheus Legguards.
• Pricing - I price these at 999g99s99c across the board.  I tend to buy at prices up to 750g when there is only one on the AH (but in general I would suggest no more than 300-400g). 

This isn't a get rich quick scheme.  If you have gold laying around that you don't have invested in anything, this is a great investment!  I have used it to make tens of thousands of gold on servers I rarely play on, and see this as a GREAT way to build your capital through high returns!  If you're interested in seeing a breakdown of my personal returns from this method check out my recent post.  I find this method to have very little time invested for the great return you get, and it's an amazing asset to add to one's gold arsenal.  

Cheers, 

Phat Lewts