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!!

Phats' Weekly Lewt Review 12/28

Hey Everyone!

Hope you all are having a great and relaxing holiday!  Today as always I'm going to bring you my latest gold making escapades in the past week, in hope of helping you, and/or letting me vent a bit (you'll see below).

Tailoring
Tailoring has been really good for me the past few weeks.  I am still burning my daily CD, and selling both the crafted PvP sets and the Imperial Silk crafted (ilvl 476) gear.  Both at an amazing profit.  I actually can't keep the Imperial Silk crafted gear on the AH long enough to replenish it with my daily cooldown, which is nice!  I'm tending to craft only the gloves now, as both gloves and robes sell for about the same on my server, and gloves take 2 less cooldowns.  If I work up 6 cloths before I sell a pair of gloves though, I will make the robes.  As for the PvP gear, for some simple calculations I figure each PvP piece takes about one stack of Windwool (ie. 4 bolts) on average.  This means that for anywhere from 20-40g I can craft one piece of PvP gear.  That means Selling it from 150-350g is well worth my time!  I'm also crafting Netherweave Bags while AFK because the profit margins are strangely high on my server right now.

Alchemy/Farming
As I mentioned a few weeks ago when 5.1 dropped, I started planting Enigma Seeds.  I'm now using them to make flasks with the rest of the herbs that come up, since my 90 is an alchemist.  Just adds a little bit of value to my Lotus, but well worth it, as they both sell just as quickly for me.  Also, I've been using a spreadsheet to calculate my minimum Living Steel method (since TUJ doesn't account for procs from transmuting).  It's going well, but my profit margin is only about 100g on any given day, with procs taken into consideration.  With 4 alchemists, this means 400g/day so I can't complain for what little work I do to get it.

Burned at the BMAH
So recently I saw a Battered Hilt on the Black Market Auction House.  The starting bid was 15k and I know I can probably get anywhere from 25-30k on my server for such an item, and I figured if it didn't sell, I could use it myself, I've always wanted to do that quest line.  I won the bid at 15k and got the item, only to see that I had purchased the Alliance only version on my Horde character.  So I almost instantly opened up a ticket with a GM.  I got my response within 48 hrs, and I was not very pleased with it. They said 2 things: 1) They would not change the item to the Horde version and 2) They would not refund me the gold I payed for the item.  Bummer.  So I'm out 15k, it's my own fault but I figured they'd at least swap it for the Horde version, but what can you do.  Lesson learned, watch out for faction specific items on the BMAH.

That's about all for this week, it's been a lot of sales I figure because the college and high school kids have off this week through New Year's, and I've gotten a noticeable increase in sales, which is always welcome.  I will try to do another post some time before 2013, but I'm not sure that I will have the time.  In any case, I hope you all have a Happy New Year!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

How to be a Great Transmog Salesman Part 2

This is a follow up to my previous 2 posts, How to be a Great Transmog Salesman Part 1, and it's recent Addendum, a shorter way to do it.  Now that we've gone through the various ways of purchasing these items, I'm going to go through some methods that I use to sell the items.

Handy Dandy Transmog Seller
I highly suggest for anyone who is going to get serious about transmog to make a level 1 bank mule solely for transmog.  This way your bags are free of any other potential clutter.  My character also has a guild bank for himself to store anything I have more than 3 of.  He has all 26 slot bags (28 aren't worth it yet).  With the backpack that's 120 slots.  150 would of course be preferable because mail comes in 50's, but not an option  right now.

I also find that attempting to be as anonymous as possible is the way to go with this as well.  If guildies find out you're the guy selling all the xmog gear they want, they're going to want you to cut them a deal.  All the time.  Trust me I've been down that road, and minus RealID (which you still can't appear invisible on), don't advertise yourself as being that lvl 1 transmog guy.

The 48-Hour Auction
For Transmog gear, I always set my TSM groups to be on 48 hours.  This way you only have to repost unsold items every 2 days.  You may get undercut, but with the amount of items you have on the AH, you won't particularly care.  I tend to scan at least once per day to find any good deals, but more than that on occasion.  If you're using the TSM Application, it has the option to notify you of Deals if you're using one of the dealfinding lists.  I don't want to go in length on that topic right now, but may in a future post.

My Tiers
Yesterday, in Part 1, I noted that I set up 4 tiers for my transmog sales, I'm going to simplify them by refering  to them as follows:

Low Level: 499g Threshold/749g Fallback
Mid Level: 749g Threshold/1249g Fallback
High Level: 4499g Threshold/4999g Fallback
Extremely Rare: 17999g Fallback

Now you could honestly buy everything below 50g, and put it all in the Low Level Group and make gold, but putting better looking pieces in pricier groups helps make you more profit!  I'd say a majority of my pieces actually do fall into the Low Level group, but there are a few sets (more than this but I'm going to give you some highlights) that I throw into the higher groups, as follows.  Mouse over the set name to look at the set!

Mid Level
My mid level items consist of gear from the following sets (among others):
Blood Knight, Bloodfist, Bloodscale, Captain's, Darkcrest, and Imbued Plate
Note that some of these Chest and Pants I will bump up to the 5k, as they really are the core pieces for the set.

High Level
Arachnidian Robes, Hibernal Robe, Venomshroud Silk Robes, Buccaneer's Set, Hyperion Set (Chest/Legs in Extremely Rare), Silver-Thread Robe, Soulkeeper, Speedsteel Rapier, and my favorite Anvilmar Hammer

Extremely Rare
Exalted Plate, Robes of Insight, Jade Plate

Of course different people have different lists, but these are roughly how I group mine together.  Get a feel for your own server.  My server is Low Pop so I usually have a monopoly on any of the High Level or higher sets, so I can price them how I want.  In a higher pop setting you may want to reduce your prices to remain profitable.  Try out different things, and see what works for you.

Barking
Rarely I will talk about my transmog gear on my main.  Just to get some free advertising.  Say something like (and link the item) "Anvilmar Hammer for 5,000g!?  What a rip off!".  Now you may be thinking Phat, why slander your beautiful self in such a way?  I'll tell you why.  This one is on the principle "any publicity is good publicity".  I can't tell you how many sales I've made off of posting unique items to trade in this way.  A lot of players don't know they exist, even if it doesn't sell that day, you've planted a seed!

That's all for now, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below!


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Remote AH: No Smartphone? No Problem!

This is a post written for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival for September 2012, check it out on the 11th for other great posts on this topic!

This month's topic is "The Remote Auction House - Tips, Tricks, Strategies, Love or Hate It?"

When the Remote AH first came out for free I balked at it because I didn't have a smartphone.  Now though, there are some great uses I've found for it on my web browser.

Why it's useful
Now you may be thinking "why would I want to use RMAH on my computer, since I have WoW on my computer?" and that's a great question to ask.  Maybe Phat has gone off the deep end, but perhaps not. My favorite use for this new tool is to buy and sell items on different realms, while playing on my main realm. Now I don't know if it's intended or not, but even if you're logged in to your account on realm X, you can log into the Remote Auction House on the same account, on realm Y. Great time passer if you're mass crafting in the background, especially if you have a side project as I do.  For reference if you aren't a regular reader, I have a DK on an alternate (high pop) server making gold to buy expensive mounts/pets for my main characters on a (low pop) server.  It also allows you to snatch great deals while you're not at a computer with WoW loaded on it, I'll outline how I use it with different AH monitoring sites below.

Using WoWuction to Find Deals
Since you have no addons using the remote AH, you have to utilize some of our favorite tools to find great deals.  One new thing that was recently added was the "Bargain Hunter".  I really enjoy using this tool, and I'll outline how to do it below.

1. Go to wowuction.com and choose your realm/faction.

2. Click Reports, then Bargain Hunter

Once you do, you'll get a list like this:

Click Image to Enlarge

Now search through this list and find a deal you most like.  Aaaah it seems Darkcrest Gauntlets (one of my favorite selling xmog sets) are only 25g!  Great!

3. Go to the Remote AH and find your item!  [Horde] [Alliance] (if you're logged in these links will take you directly there)

It's pretty straightforward.

4. Relist next time you're on WoW.

I don't like using this to relist the items (especially xmog) because it's SOOOooooo much faster to do it with TSM when logged it.  This will get you some great deals to relist next time you're on too.

Maybe You Prefer TUJ!
I prefer to use both!  As I already went over most of the relevant steps above, I'm going to shorten this section.

1. Go to theunderminejournal.com and find your server/faction

2. Click Great Deals, then go to Current Deals List

3. Check out all the great deals that result from this, my 2 favorite subsections are below:

The bids section can be EXTREMELY useful using the remote AH.  Sometimes bids on items are listed WAY lower than they should be, and since the Remote AH lets you both Bid or Buyout, and you're not going to be seeing the items until you log in anyway.  This is just my method, I'm sure if you have a phone you can add to the potency of all this.  What's your personal take on the Remote Auction House?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

1,000,000 Gold on a Low/Med Population Server

Follow me on twitter @PhatLewtsGold!

Finally made it to 1,000,000 gold this past Thursday!  On December 9th I hit half a million, so in 47 days I managed to make 500k, or about 10,500g per day profit on a server that is Low pop during the week and Medium on weekends.  For those who are curious I'm going to post some of my data taken from TSM for my favorite gold making strategies.


1) Jewelcrafting


Spent

Item	Gold Spent
Elementium Ore	320,156
Obsidium Ore	37,051
Pyrite Ore	33,301
Total Spent:	390,508

Gold Earned on Cut Gems (Sums of Rare Cuts)

Item	Gold Made
Inferno Ruby	585,408
Ember Topaz	93,296
Demonseye	64,942
Amberjewel	27,367
Ocean Sapphire	17,046
Dream Emerald	16,785
Total Earned:	804,844

This alone puts my profit from JC over 400k gold, more than doubling my original investment in the ore.  Now, this data is only for the cut gems that I sold, not to mention the rings/necklaces I made with the common gems and Disenchanted for enchanting scrolls/raw enchanting mats.  JC is my favorite, can you tell? 

2) Cata Twink Gear

Armor Type	Gold Earned	Gold Spent	Profit
Lvl 77 Cloth	13,375	4,476	8,599
Lvl 77 Leather	13,052	7,325	5,727
Lvl 77 Mail	11,495	5,658	5,837
Lvl 77 Plate	13,703	6,768	6,935
Lvl 77 Ring/Neck	4,796	1,813	2,983
Lvl 77 Weapon	15,576	6,342	8,984
Lvl 78 Assorted	9,322	7,660	1,662
TOTALS	81,319	40,042	41,277

The reason I've included this is because, like the initial cut gems, it has basically doubled my investment.  The only difference is that this method literally takes seconds per day, compared to the enormous amounts of time jewelcrafting takes to prospect and cut.  

NOTE: The "Gold Spent" column also reflects gold I have spent on items that haven't sold yet.  

3) Mogging

Love it or hate it, mogging has become a great source of quick income for many gold makers, and I'm no exception.  Unlike most moggers I prefer crafting and selling items on the AH, although when I have no work to do for JC you can find me at the AH looking through models.  Here is my data for crafted and resales.

Type of Mogging	Profit	Number in Category
Resales:	13,784	28
Crafted	7,786	3
Total:	21,570	----

The three items that I am able to resell that I craft are below with their average profit per item.  The links are to posts about them by me, or in the case of the axe, Power Word: Gold:

• Icy Cloak: 2195g Profit per sale
• Big Voodoo Robe: 1402g Profit per sale
• Huge Thorium Axe : 688g Profit per sale

A lot of the responses I got from my Icy Cloak post was that there's another cloak that's purchasable from vendors in Shattrath for 300ish Justice Points.  I've sold 2 of these cloaks on a small server, and what I have to say to that is don't assume that all players have the same resources that you do, or know how to utilize them properly.  

4) Misc. Sales

Some other sales data that I think is worth noting:

Wrath Epic Gems

Gem and Cut	Number Sold	Gold Made	Average Gold/Sale
Brilliant Cardinal Ruby	110	22,288	202.6
Solid Majestic Zircon	61	12,870	211
Mystic King's Amber	96	21,535	224.3
Reckless Ametrine	23	4,563	198.4
Willful Ametrine	13	3,130	240.8
Purified Dreadstone	4	763	190.4
Total:	307	65,149g	212.2

Easily the most profitable use for Justice Points when the gear is too cheap, will also buy @100g raw to cut.

Transmutes

Volatile Life Avg Price Bought Per: 5.24g

Volatile Air Avg Sale Price: 17.59g

Profit per "Living Element" Transmute: 185.25g (procs not included)

Volatile Air Sold: 3,690

Total for Living Elements: 45,571g (Didn't include procs)

Avg Price of Volatile Air x10: 162.5g

Avg Price of Volatile Water x10: 118.8g

Avg Price of Volatile Fire x10: 47.99g

Avg Price of Pyrium Bar x3: 36.65g

Avg Cost to make Truegold: 365.94

Cost after factoring in x1.2 proc: 304.95

Avg Truegold Sale Price: 606.34

Avg Profit per Truegold: 301.39

Truegold crafted: 55

Total Truegold Profit: 16,576g 

The reason I tended to do Living Elements more even though Truegold was more profitable, there was a point in the expansion where someone who seemed to have been stockpiling Truegold decided to sell about 150 for under 400g each, which would have drastically reduced my profit margin.  

Alright that's it for now, thanks for reading until the end, not all my data, but the interesting bit of it.  Look out for more gold making posts as I ease down on game time after hitting my milestone.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Busy Tuesdays

Aaaaah Tuesdays.  Another chance to cap out on Valor and Conquest Points.  Another chance to run raids and get more gear.  Another chance to make Tons of WoW gold!!

Tuesday is the first day of the WoW week, and it's when there is a spike in demand for all the goods that are crafted by major gold makers.  If you're like me, you also are in the rush of people trying to cap out on Valor or Conquest and are doing Raid Finder to finish your tier and get 384.  What to do to make a profitable Tuesday?  I'm going to share my ideas on the topic.

Craft in Advance
If you usually have two stacks of Greater Cosmic Essence to post from your posting toon on any given (regular) day, make it three.  If you anticipate selling 25 Brilliant Inferno Rubies, craft 35.  Be ready for any fluctuations.  You want to play your "main", and you should!  If you prepare ahead so you don't have to jump alts to craft things because you won't run out!

Make your "Main" Your Poster
If you play a character and run dungeons or do 2v2 arena, you could be posting auctions in between.  Now too much posting is a bad thing, but if you can post once an hour without having to switch toons while doing a dungeon or PvP grind, why not?  If you organize any character appropriately they can be a posting toon!  I switch "mains" a lot so my posting toon gets changed at least once every few months.  If you're playing that character the most, they should be your posting toon, it's pure logic!  If you use TSM you dont even need to change a thing, it can't tell if you're posting from your mages bags or your rogues bags.

Doing these 2 simple steps can get you posting more frequently, which leads to more sales and more gold!  Happy Tuesday everyone!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Half a Million (How to Level Alts)

FINALLY!  I finally hit half a million gold.  It wasn't because I couldn't have earned it before now, but I'm a chronic spender!  Every time one of my alts dinged 85 (and I now have 6) I had to get them the latest gear (even though I now regularly play 2).  Repair mounts?  "Had" to have them!  Dalaran Rings, etc.

Did I put a lot of gold into my alts?  Yes.  Did they end up paying for themselves?  ...mostly.  Either way, today I'm going to focus on my theory of leveling alts.

How to Make Gold Using Alts.
This is my key method to making tons of gold leveling alts.  Some may disagree, some may have suggestions to tweak or better use my general method, but this is what I do, and I will provide an argument for why, and how to better it.

Farm.  Yup I said it, Farm.  Get Herbalism and Mining on your alt from the first profession NPCs that you see, and get out there and farm (don't forget a Mining Pick).

Yes, I know, farming at max level isn't the most effective way of making gold, but due to these professions rewarding XP just for doing them, it's the best way of making gold while leveling!

**Note: If you are interested in having a max level mine/herbalist farmer Horde side, I suggest rolling a Tauren Druid.  Taurens have a passive racial Cultivation that allows them to gather herbs faster than other races, and Druid Flight Form at lvl 60+ is an instant cast and you don't have to leave it to Herbalize.  It's the most efficient Mining/Herbalism combo in the game, if you care.  (If you roll Alliance, a druid in general is still the fastest because of the reasons listed)

Why This Method Works:


This is the most cost effective way to level your toon.  If you're going to level an alt, why not have it work for you?  Mining and Herbalism are the 2 professions that will grant you XP solely for doing them.   My advice now is to sell the raw materials and start making gold for this toon.  You can farm sitting in a queue, and farming gets you around the same XP as grinding quests, but makes you A LOT more gold!

If you are interested in finding the best places to level your herb/mining or just professions in general I suggest using wow-professions.

The 75 Conundrum
Once you hit 75 you have the ability to max your professions, which leaves you two options.  Learn Illustrious Grand Master Mining/Herbalism OR use the gold your toon earned to max out serious gold making professions (with no farming) like Alchemy or JC.  My personal goal is to have a character that, through leveling, pays to max out their really good gold making professions.  The one argument I can think of for holding out to 85 to drop herbalism/mining is that you can continue to get XP using your professions if you stick to mining/herbalism.

If you choose to continue leveling past 75 using Herbalism/Mining you can start in Mount Hyjal.  You're going to have to grind a bit here, but there are a lot of nodes that don't have nearby NPC's.  Once you hit 500 Herbalism and 475 Mining, go to The Violet Citadel in Dalaran and take the portal to The Caverns of Time.  Once there, fly south one zone and start farming in Uldum.  A little dangerous in the 70's, but there are plenty of nodes not near NPC's and these nodes will reward TONS of XP.

Have fun leveling your toons!

Phat Lewts