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!!

The Stormspire Challenge

Wow.  Just realizing I haven't posted in over 2 weeks now.  This isn't where I make my obligatory I've needed a break from WoW or I've been playing Diablo 3 post, I have been playing WoW.

In fact I've started up on a new server to partake in the Great Stormspire Scavenger Hunt.  It's a competition among some gold makers where the objective is to get as many items off a list of rare/expensive items as possible, to score points.  If you are interested in how the scoring will take place, you can read more about it on the site.

How I'm doing it.
I'm not going to divulge too much information, but I figured a basic outline could benefit my readers.  I started off with a DK with mining/herbalism.  Yes.  I chose gathering professions.  It's very hard to powerlevel a crafting profession when your goal is to buy expensive things the second they come available.  I did not however use these professions at all the first week of the competition, but I was able to make a truck load of gold.  During the first full week, the Darkmoon Faire was available, and those of you who know about the gold making potential of the Darkmoon Faire know I was fishing the pools of wreckage like a boss.  Doing this I managed to net about 1,000g per hour, when I had no competition fishing.

I'd also like to note that I chose the Horde for my DK, because according to realmpop, horde has a slightly larger base on the server chosen for this contest, although the split is about even.  I'm currently collecting items, but I haven't been sending them in for scoring yet, I like the element of surprise.  I'm considering farming a few of them due to lack of availability on the AH, and the time constraints of this contest.  The Sunwell patterns in particular seem rare on this server and make up a large portion of the contest.  There are about 32 patterns and each has a .2% chance of dropping off a mob, so its an ESTIMATED (that's right internet!) drop rate of about 6.4%, more realistically 6.2055%, modeled as a binomial random variable with a 99.8% chance of failure.

Flipping
Once I had my initial pool of gold, I started flipping items on the auction house.  Doing this I used theunderminejournal's deals page to find some cheap things to flip.  In particular I was able to buy 20 Brilliant Inferno Rubies for a 60g per bid, and resell at 90g, which is nice because they sell almost instantly.  I was also able to win 2 Brilliant Inferno Rubies for a less than 1g bid.  The AH was basically giving me gold.  By no means am I expecting this to be the norm, but I was able to find some good deals, and it's something to look into.

That's going to be all for now but if you have any questions as to my method or something I may have skimmed over feel free to ask them in the comments and I'll address them ASAP.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Wand Mogging List for Mists of Pandaria!

As promised in my previous post, I've made a list of wands that would make for good transmog come MoP.  The reason I think wands will be a great thing to stockpile for Mists is because they will become a main weapon for caster's in MoP, and no one is using them for transmog right now.  

Theresa's Booklight

Torch of Austen

Gwyneth's Runed Dragonwand

This list includes all unique looking BoE wands that could be sold on the AH for mogging, come MoP when wands are going to become caster's main weapons.  I also only included items that are currently able to be transmogged, ie. they have some sort of primary or secondary stat on them, assuming the mogging rules won't change come MoP.  

Wand of Allistarj

Wasteland Wand

This is by no means a guide to mogging wands, but a guide to buying BoE mogging wands to resell in the future.  Without further ado, here are your lists, in both TSM and Auctionator formats:

Auctionator

***Mogging Wands

Wand of Allistarj

Wand of Arcane Potency

Torch of Austen

Antenna of Invigoration

Crystalized Ebony Wand

Wasteland Wand

Gwyneth's Runed Dragonwand

Incessant Torch

Nightmare Ender

Torchlight Wand

Wand of Dark Worship

Cyu's Ornate Wand

Theresa's Booklight

TradeSkillMaster

s1@13065,18338,37824,59460,13004,66920,55823,21801,35652,36665,67104,50472,25283$@

Wand of Arcane Potency

I chose all of the wands based on unique models, but the price point you are willing to buy at should be based on your perception of how well it will sell in Mists.  IMO these will be a great inflation buster as well as stockpiling investment.  Just a side note to those interested:  Although Crystalized Ebony Wand and Wasteland Wand share the same model as many other BoE wands, I chose them for this list because they are the only BoE models that are black.  Hope you enjoyed the list!  

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review: Week Ending 5/3

This week in WoW has been a very interesting one for me to look back on.  Especially on the gold making front.

Transmog
If you've been reading my recent Weekly Reviews you'll know I've been considering dropping transmog until MoP.  This idea was once again squashed.  This week I made over 14k profit in transmog items, Horde side alone.  Big ticket items like a 5k shield carried this profiting, as well as partial to full sets selling at once.  This just means to me it's worth about 5k gold every time I posted last week, so I will continue throwing things up.  My toon that I use ONLY for transmog, and have not given any gold other than 3k to start out is now up to 125k gold.  Not too shabby!

For the...Alliance?
If you follow me on twitter you probably know that I am very Horde based.  That being said I have 9 Horde characters on my main server, and 1 Alliance.  My Alliance character is only level 37, but this week I managed to make about half of my Overall Server Change (15k) on my Alliance toon.  I am only using 2 markets for this toon: level 77-78 Twink gear, and transmog gear.  Being that I don't have any competition Alliance side, as my server is pretty Horde dominated helps, but I am very impressed with my Alli toon, and will be continuing my little side project with her.

The Great Stormspire Scavenger Hunt
This week I am starting to participate in The Great Stormspire Scavenger Hunt.  Basically they're having a competition to see who can get the most items on the list by the middle of June, which will most likely involve both leveling and lots of gold making!  It's going to be a fun endeavor, I've already rolled a DK and look forward to updating you guys throughout the upcoming weeks.


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

My Mists Stockpile

Hey guys,

A lot of gold bloggers recently have been going over stockpiling for MoP, and while I'm not really full fledged into stockpiling mode right now, I figured I'd go over what I currently am looking for and what I'll be looking for in the future.

Pets
As you can see I have a decent amount of pets.  With the new pet battle (Pokémon) system coming out, pets are going to be a commodity in HIGH DEMAND in MoP.  People will want rare pets that not many others have.  To this tune I have been snatching up Argent Tournament pets that are below half my average server price, as well as Elementium Geodes.  The Argent Tournament Pets are pretty few and far between as is, not to mention that near the release of MoP, very few people will be acquiring more of them (if any) because they are exploring new content.  The Elementium Geodes are less than a 1% drop right now, and considering that Elementium Ore won't be farmed NEARLY as much, I'm buying these up at around 200-300g and putting them in storage for safe keeping!

Swift Lovebird
I bought these during the Love is in the Air event in WoW hoping to resell a few months down the road.  Not sure what will happen with these, but I have them.

Don Gonzales' Shiny Shield

You may remember this shield from my post Auctionating Mogging Shields.  This is a very rare drop in Cataclysm.  Although it shares it's model with a 15% drop from Naxx 10, I think it will be a good seller in MoP regardless.  The reason I am going to hold on to these to sell until MoP is that even though they're rare now, they'll be EVEN RARER once people stop doing Cataclysm content as regularly.  When doing my mogging shields search on the AH I will buy this up at 500g or below and I'm looking to sell it in the 5k+ Bracket once Mists comes out.  A great inflation buster IMO.


Mogging Wands
As you may or may not know, in MoP caster's main weapons will be wands.  Right now I'm buying up a couple of models that I think look really cool.

The first pictured is the Torch of Austen.  I like this particular model because it looks like a torch as the name implies. I think that once casters have wands as their main weapon the wand transmog market is going to explode, and this is a great already existing BoE wand to get.

The second one I have pictured is Gwyneth's Runed Dragonwand.  Although you can't see it from my screenshot, the head of the dragon has flames coming out of it.  This wand SCREAMS MoP transmog.


I'm very interested in putting a list together of some viable transmog BoE wands, as they will be a new hot market in Mists, and who wouldn't like have control of it from the get go?


So I hope I provided at least just a little insight to my stockpiling, hope it helped you get some ideas, I will be posting more in the future on what else I'm stockpiling, and hopefully a wand mogging list!

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!!

Weekly Lewt Review Week Ending 4/23

Had a busy week this week so the Weekly Review is a bit late, apologies.


Transmog
Last time I posted about my transmog sales declining, after the post, on my first 48 hour reposting, between reposting and buying new transmog gear, I made only 315 g profit.  Over the week I made around 7k in profit, but it's just not what it used to be on my server.  I'm still peddling all the gear that I did originally and I've acquired some more-rare pieces like a few Jade pieces.  Just nothing is selling.

Coasting
I haven't been posting much recently because over the past few weeks I've been in coasting mode in WoW gold making.  I am literally just reposting what I already have and stocking only some essential items.  I'm still making around 20k in profit per week, which for some would be amazing, but I usually average 75k/week in full production.  I'm spending 30-45 minutes a day at the AH and doing some PvP with guildies to end the expansion.  I'm already really excited about the prospect of gold making in Mists of Pandaria, and it's going to be a fun ride.

My New Side Hobby
I've been peddling Mysterious Fortune Cards (MFCs) since Cold first came out with his strategy and it's a really fun thing to do if you're looking for a new market.  Basically you craft these on your Scribe, make a macro to get people interested and they sell like hotcakes.  Pairing this gold making activity with iSold which makes a cash register-esque "Cha-Ching" every time you make a sale just makes it all that much more sweet when you sell 20 in a row.  I made about 6 stacks of 200 about 2 weeks ago, And I've sold 4 out of the 6 stacks, and probably could have polished them all of if I wasn't being lazy about it.

Yes these cards lose money for the buyers, otherwise you wouldn't sell them, but the more people that that point that out in trade, the  better your business is, so dont worry about the "negative press" it's actually a good thing.   If you're interested in MFCs check out these posts on Colds blog for more in depth information.  I'm finding that at the end of the expansion cycle I'm able to get a decent amount of these out to players looking for something to do in game.  A player who had only bought 3 cards whispered me and said "If I lose money I want my gold back" I replied "Over my dead body!".  A few seconds later (presumably after flipping the cards) he whispered back saying "Ya I didn't win, but that was fun, thanks a lot man".  There are still some out there that have not tried this method yet, and the quotes on the cards are great entertainment even for a loss.

Anyway that ends my rant on MFCs.  If it's not your thing you don't have to do it, but with herb prices so low, they're cheap to make {(Whiptail Price / 6)+.5} and sell for a decent profit on most servers.


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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