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!!

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!!