Sales Update - Catching Up

Gone Fishing - Pre-Cata Screenshot

Since reaching my target, I've barely touched the AH so this post is by way of catching up with what random bits & pieces I have been selling as I try to clear the decks a little for my next target. I guess you could say I've 'Gone Fishing' for a while but the gold fever is in my blood & to be honest, the game just doesn't feel the same without that target looming. Yes, I'm playing my alts, levelling, PvP'ing a little, doing those darn Molten Front dailies etc but it all feels rather like aimless wandering so I've decided to go for the 2 million target!

I've also stopped taking a note of my gold balance over the last few weeks so there'll be no maths in this post to work out profits! Most of what I've been selling was leftovers from when I hit goldcap or random bits I've picked up whilst playing my alts so I'm rather pleased to see 23k in sales, although that is the total for 12days not 1 week!

I did craft some Ebonsteel Belt Buckles - I have 8k Elementium Ore leftover & probably around 500 Volatile Earths so the buckles seemed a good idea as the price had risen a little since last time I looked at this market.

I also prospected maybe 2000 elementium ore to restock on some colours of rare gems - the prices were just too tempting for me not to spend a little time on it. I've had almost 2 weeks off & my husband has almost finished his Inscription researches so for this next phase of my journey, I will not be doing very much business in the Glyph market - I'll let him have that one :)

Going forward, I was trying to think of a different way of getting to 2 million but I'll definitely be using Jewelcrafting - between the rings/necks to disenchant & the cut rare gems, it's too good a profession not to use. I hope I can finally get my head around Enchanting scrolls - having dipped a toe in the water for the Patch 4.2 rush, it doesn't seem quite so intimidating now.

I also have 2 free profession slots on a lvl 71 hunter - she was my original miner/JC but she was left abandoned a long while ago & has been superseded. I don't have a high level Engineer & my current low level Engineer is not an alt I actually like (as strange as that sounds) so my hunter seems like a perfect candidate to take over there. I only have 1 Alchemist at the moment so I guess that decides her second profession too :)

I'm going to continue these weekly 'what's been selling' posts - more out of curiosity myself than for any great gold making message but seeing what I sell can spark ideas for you to take & run with so I hope you'll bear with me.

I also have my first post going live over at Goldgrub's Goblin Academy tomorrow - it's quite nerve-wracking for some reason but exciting too - so pop the date in your diary & come visit me :)

Did Ya Miss Me?

© Nev 2005, Keeping Watch for Opportunities

I've been rather lax this last week or two - hardly any gold making going on & I've been so busy levelling alts with friends & guildies that I didn't even realise how long it had been since I posted here! I think I must have needed the break & with the loss of all my sales data & TSM settings, it made it quite easy to just walk away for a few days.

So I don't have much to report on the gold making front, I've been rather busy spending it actually! But I do have rather exciting news (for me, anyways) - Cold has invited me to become a regular writer over at Goldgrub's Goblin Academy & with some nervous excitement & trepidation, I've accepted the Wednesday posting slot. I hope I can do myself proud over there but rest assured, I will still be writing here too. There's definitely some overlap between the two blogs so if you're a regular reader here who's just starting out on your gold making journey, I'd definitely recommend having a peek over there too.

I've always tried to write for the new to middle level of gold making experience. I don't usually comment on the very latest happenings (patches etc) because I'm not that experienced in those areas myself & some of the wonderful blogs in my long list over there ==> do the high end stuff so much better than I can.

I'm hoping that by writing for the very newest goldmakers over at Goldgrub's, I can focus more on the middle levels here. That's not to say I won't be wandering into very new goldmaker or very experienced goldmaker territory here, just that those 2 vastly different groups have such different needs, that it's difficult to cover everything for everyone.

As for this blog - where do I go next or what shall I do next? Now that I've reached my goal, I've got my thinking cap on for what my next target should be. I will probably go for 2 million or maybe more but I'm pretty certain I don't want to glyph all the way! I've got a few ideas bubbling away in the back of my mind but for now, I'm just enjoying the rest of Azeroth outside the Bank & Auction House. Posts may be a little sporadic here until my ideas gel into a strategy but if you've been reading a while, you're probably used to sporadic anyway :-P

As always, feel free to make suggestions/ask questions, either in comments or by email & if you have any ideas you want me to test, just let me know.

Not A Happy Bunny! A Cautionary Tale

© Nev 2008 - Not a Happy Bunny

I'm going slightly off topic in that todays' post is not really about making gold but it is important for all you hard working goldmakers out there, especially if you have a large goal (1 million gold etc) & want to get your name in lights over at WarcraftEcon.

As you may know if you read my blog post earlier this week, I hit my target of 1 million gold & was all set to start writing my Warcraftecon interview. One of the things I really wanted to do was to analyse the MySales data for the last 5 months or so, however, when I finally sat down & went looking for the mysales.lua file, it had only 15 entries in it, covering about 16hrs of sales. After a few minutes of panic, I realised that my PC had crashed the night before (18hrs ago) & I can only assume that somehow, my file was lost forever.

I know most of my gold has come from glyphs but also a lot came from rare cut gems & a lot from miscellaneous stuff like Chocolate Cookies, Greater Eternal Essences & pvp crafted items. Unfortunately, I have no idea whatsoever of percentages so my interview is going to be very light on hard facts :-(

So I thought I would pop a link here to an excellent post over at the Consortium forums, written by Stede. It's mainly about tidying up your data so you can read/analyse it more easily but I would suggest that you copy your data file to your desktop regularly, even if you don't want to analyse it that often.

Just for easy access, the pathway to your MySales.lua file is as follows if you followed the normal/standard installation procedure for WoW.

C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\your account name\SavedVariables\mysales.lua

COPY this file to somewhere safe on your system, don't move it - that will mess everything up!

You don't have to do anything with it unless you want to but by copying it regularly, you won't lose all those sales details that you've been working so hard at & it will be there when you need it.

Then you won't end up with a face like my little friend up there!

An Ideal Alt? Hmmm, Decisions, Decisions

This is my submission for Cold's Gold Blogging carnival this month, the subject of which is Ideal Alts. Now Cold did a fairly comprehensive series of posts on this subject & my first choice was in there so it's taken me a while but I think I've found one he didn't cover! The rep grinding rogue :-D

To be fair, this probably isn't the most effective alt for gold making but rather in speeding up & reducing the costs of reputation grinds (thereby saving money & you get back to the AH quicker!) lol.

Ok, so my thoughts processes are like this - human for the racial which gives +10% reputation gains & rogue for their ability to stealth & pick pocket. I know druids can stealth & I did consider them but it's the pick pocket ability that swung my decision (more on this later).

As for professions - well, seeing as most of the Burning Crusade factions have dungeon grinding as a way of gaining reputation, I think Enchanting is a must have especially if your rogue is high level & going to solo these dungeons regularly - disenchant everything & either sell the mats or use them for scrolls if more profitable.

For a second profession, there are definite arguments for going with skinning as leather & hide is always a good seller at almost all the various levels however, my second choice would be Tailoring. Why tailoring - because there is always a lot of cloth dropping in dungeons & you can use it to craft items for skill ups then disenchant those same items for enchanting mats.

The second bonus for tailoring is the Northern Cloth Scavenging ability which means that when you grind through the Northrend dungeons, you'll be picking up a shedload of frostweave. At the current time, frostweave cloth sells for about the same if not slightly more than Embersilk Cloth so good money to be made there too.

So why does the pick pocket ability of the rogue make this the perfect choice? Well one of the reputations for the Insane in the Membrane achievement is the Ravenholdt one - the only way to advance this rep to exalted is by handing in Heavy Junkboxes. Why pay a rogue to do this for you when you can do it yourself on your very own stealthy killing machine?

The beauty of the stealth ability is that if you don't have time to kill everything in the dungeon, you can stealth past all except the ones you want, in most cases, the bosses but sometimes it's not the boss that gives you the rep items. You can also stealth past everything to collect the Sanguine Hibiscus in The Underbog for Sporregar rep.

From a gold making point of view, you should pick pocket everything then kill it - the gold in the junk/lockboxes isn't huge but it all adds up by the time you finish all these reps. You can also get some nice items - at 85, every rogues' dream weapons drop only from pickpocketed chests (krol decapitator & spinerender) albeit at very low drop rate.

If you really want to make the most gold out of this alt & haven't yet levelled one - consider stopping your XP at 80 - you can get the faction tabards & use the dungeon finder to run Northrend dungeons (in cata greens of course!) for the rep & for all those lovely Wrath enchanting mats & cloth. For the truly serious achievement chaser, there are also various mounts available in these dungeons & for purchase from Quartermasters once you are exalted. Don't forget the Argent Tournament either - money, pets & mounts from the dailies as well as rep & titles.

Unfortunately my own rep chaser isn't my rogue, tailor or enchanter & my rogue isn't human, tailor or enchanter so I kinda messed up there! lol

What's Been Selling This Week & Big News!

© Nev 2003, King of the Jungle

Well, it's been a good week for me - lots of sales & very little spending as I shifted many of the bits & pieces that I stockpiled in the week or two before patch 4.2 hit last week. Sales income of 67.2k & liquid gold increase of 68.7k meant that my spending was a negative 1000g! That surprised me a lot as I sat down to write this post but halfway through, I finally remembered that I sold some low level Darkmoon decks for 1000g via trade chat & I vendored about 10 stacks of Zephyrite, neither of which would show up in the MySales data!

This was the first full week of post patch sales & I find it interesting that none of my glyphs have made it to the top page. I guess the sheer volume & variety of cut gem sales has moved them down to the second page this week. Even my infamous Chocolate Cookies didn't make the first page, mainly due to my husband pinching my market! lol

So what did sell? Well, Ebonsteel Belt Buckles from my lowly lvl 75 warrior Blacksmith were a nice surprise when I finally got around to listing them - they kinda got lost in the mail & then the competition was really fierce so I played the waiting game & made a mini-killing when I managed to be the only one listing for a couple of hours one evening!

The scrolls for cloak enchants have continued to be good sellers although competition has increased towards the end of the week. Greater celestial essence prices have rocketed to 150g whilst the downward pressure on the final scrolls has also increased so I've backed off for now.

A new-ish item for me to sell is the two epic spellthreads from my tailor. As I mentioned last week, I'd let my dreamcloth cooldown pass me by so I didn't have very much dreamcloth available at all. Four spellthreads sold this week & that pretty much finished my supplies so I really must make sure to make my dreamcloth each week - it's easy money & really doesn't take long to do, especially as I have a fair few volatiles in stock.

On patch day, I checked the new JC pvp recipes & there was already major competition on the AH by the time I logged in so I made the 3 pvp inscription relics - finally managed to sell 2 of them this week although the prices are dropping rapidly so I probably won't make anymore for a while at least.

I think that pretty much covers this week & this will be the last 'what's been selling' post for the foreseeable future. Yup, the big news today is that I finally made the 1 million gold cap!

It feels like it's been a very long journey to this final goal but in reality, I started Cataclysm with 50k so 95% on my journey has taken place in almost exactly 7 months. The last 200k or so has really felt like a grind but I just couldn't stop when I was soooo close! I'm going to take a break from the compulsive, must relist auctions type of gold making that I've been doing but don't worry, I'm not going to stop blogging.

It's time to take my girlies through some Cata heroics & try to actually 'get good' on a least one character rather than ok-ish on four. I've said before that I'm nibbling at my Loremaster achievement as well as the Exalted one so I think now is the time to get those projects moving again. Yes, I'm swapping one compulsion for another but hey, isn't that what WoW is about?

Why a photo of a pensive lion, you may be wondering. Well, he's called the King of the Jungle & that's kind of how I felt when I hit the cap. Hugs & kisses from hubby & a few tears of joy & relief from me (yeah, I'm soppy) but at the same time a huge sort of 'what now?' feeling.

I don't usually talk about my photos here but before anyone asks, yes, I really was that close - no telephoto lens & the only crop was the sides to make it square. No, he's not tame but there is a glass wall between us, in case you were curious :D

Inscription - Hope For Lowbie Glyphers

© Nev 2008 Every scribes best friend

About 3 weeks ago, I decided to take another look at the glyph market on my lowbie AH Alt's server. For those of you who don't know, I started this blog with a new alt on a new server, levelled her to lvl 10 & took up inscription. The idea was to see how much gold I could make in 30 days via inscription & AH flipping. I got to about 6500g before I realised that it didn''t really make for good blogs posts, day after day so I abandoned her in SW & started blogging about other gold making stuff. (If you're interested, you can read those posts by using AH Alt from the tag cloud in the side bar)

I did a post about giving away my cash as I never intended going back & thought it might help someone else getting started. I got 1 whisper so he had 5k & I popped a bit in the guild bank to say thank you for not kicking me out even though I hadn't been online for months or really contributed to the guild levelling! That left me with 936g to start my latest little escapade.

My lowbie glypher is maxed at skill level 150 until I get her to level 20 (probably next year sometime!) so at this time, she can make glyphs using midnight ink, lion's ink & jadefire ink as well as the Rogues Deck ( from Hunter's ink) & the Swords Deck (from Dawnstar ink). I've also been doing my Minor Glyph Research for the last 3 weeks so I do have some of the discovered glyphs too.

I ran a TSM AH scan for just the inscription market & looked at what glyphs to make. I was horrified to see that none of the glyphs I could make were selling above 20g each. However, TSM was telling me that due to low herb/ink prices, there was still some profit to be made so I thought 'sod it' & decided to make 1 of every glyph I could. I made my craft list & went shopping for herbs to mill. That first day I spent 480g on herbs but as the midnight ink prices were down at less than 1g each, I could make an awful lot of glyphs for that 480g!

Over the next week or so, I logged in maybe 3 times a day - 9am, 4pm & 10pm-ish to cancel & relist as well as to restock but after the first week, I got a bit more casual & only logged in maybe once or twice a day & to be honest, not every day either! 

The screenshot above shows that over the last 17 days of MySales data, I sold 6264g worth of glyphs at around 12-15g each. MySales is configured to show 1 month so in effect, this whole story is about the last 17 days or so. For a level 10 Glyphing alt, I think that's pretty good going.

This screenshot shows the total number of sales & income per glyph but this is only the top page. As you can see, there were one or two glyphs with slightly higher prices but most stayed in the 10-15g range. By only buying herbs when TSM told me the ink prices were 1-2g or less, I knew that even at 10g, I would be making a small profit.

My opening balance was 936g, I received 6264g in sales & my closing balance was 4548g so overall I spent 2652g on herbs, parchments & listing fees, leaving me a profit of 3612g.

As a by-product of all this low end glyphing, I also have shedloads of Hunter's Ink & Dawnstar Ink which I have yet to make into the lowbie Darkmoon decks. I also currently have around 90 glyphs still waiting to sell but I'm not going to make any more glyphs so those will just add to the profit figures for this little escapade.

Now, before anybody jumps on this and says I was lucky with the herb prices, yes, possibly I was. My main server rarely has any ink price below 4g but at the same time, the actual glyph prices are much higher even at this low end of the market. This experiment server has 1 or 2 players posting walls of glyphs at 15-20g across the board but I was still able to make a profit on a lvl 10 alt played very casually.

Regular readers will know from my weekly sales reports that glyphs have been my main source of income for the last 6 months or more & that top end glyph prices on my server are over 200g & even 350g on occasions. I've had many comments about being lucky with my glyph prices but I think this shows that even at the very bottom end of the glyph market & with horrible bottom end glyph prices, there is still profit to be made & hope for anyone just starting out with inscription.

Anyone Fancy A Lowbie Gold Challenge?

© Nev 2009 Standing Out

Just a quick post today to let you guys know that I'm doing a little experiment (yes, another one!) and thought some of you might like to try it yourselves. I've started a little alt on a fresh server & I'm going to see how much gold I can make with a maximum of 4 hours played time.

For the moment, I've only levelled her to lvl 5 in order to get a few silvers for my first auction fees so I haven't quite decided what angle I'm going to try. I may start a little army of alts & try different things once this one is done.

So you wanna join me? The rules I've made for myself are pretty basic

• no DK's allowed (not everyone can make one yet)
• no other alts already on the server
• no help from any friends on new server
• no heirlooms
• maximum of 4 hours played time
• any race/class/profession combo allowed (except DK!)

I figured the main rush of 4.2 is pretty much over & as I'm not setting a deadline, 4 hours across a week or so is not that much. It will also give any budding goldmakers out there a chance to test themselves against the more experienced & perhaps remind some of the more experienced goldmakers of some of the little tricks they've forgotten.

If you fancy it, just go ahead & do it then at 4hrs played time (do /played if you're not sure on the timer) do a screen shot with the played time showing in chat & your bags open so we can see your gold total. Find somewhere to host the screenshot & pop the link in a comment here.

I'll try & get mine done by Friday this week & post an update here to give you something to aim for (ha! as if I'm gonna win, lol)

So let's see who stands out from the crowd with this one :)

What's Been Selling This Week?

© Nev 2007 Eagle Eye

Well, it was a quiet week to start with, watching my AH with Eagle Eyes, just snapping up those few last deals before Patch 4.2 hit here in the UK on Wednesday. I spent Tuesday evening in The Consortium IRC chat room - watching as 4.2 unrolled on the US servers & 'screams' of delight & horror scrolled past rapidly on my screen. Many of the EU peeps were asking questions depending on what they had stockpiled, I guess but it was great fun & I picked up a hint here & there, ready for the next day.

Sales at the beginning of the week were slow & I was all excited for the patch to hit. It's the first really major patch since I started seriously making gold so I only had other peoples' stories to go by. Sales of 58k looks good this week but I actually spent quite a lot (17k) on ores & volatiles where the prices were just too good to ignore so my cash increase for the week was 41k.

Most of the items that made it to the top of the Mysales screenshot are a result of Patch sales. If you're a regular reader, you know I tend to make most of my gold with glyphs & cut rare gems. However, one of the tips I picked up from the Consortium guys was cloak enchants - off I went to check prices & see what stocks I had & promply realised no-one was covering the +50 critical strike enchant for the cloak. I started my price at around 250g per scroll but soon raised it to 325g as the supply of Greater Celestial Essences dried up & GCE prices shot up to 140g each!

I've also managed to sell a few of the Enchant Cloak - Protection scrolls for around 375g and the Cloak - Greater Intellect around the 475g mark. Not so many of those due to competition & the fact that the +50 crit only takes 2 GCE's whereas the Gtr Int takes 4. I also made a few of the Enchant Chest - Mighty Stats but competition was fierce so I've just stayed with the cloak enchants for now.

The only glyph to make the top page this week is, of course, the brand new shaman Glyph of Unleashed Lightning. I was the first to list on Wednesday morning & quickly sold 5 at 575g each, unfortunately competition arrived rapidly & by Friday morning, they were down to 95g each.

Whilst my scribe was the first toon I logged to get the glyph & the new relic recipes, she's also my JC so off I went to grab the new PVP rings & necklace recipes/patterns. I trotted round to the AH only to find that all of the JC items were already listed by multiple players - but none of the relics were so I listed just 1 of each.

I think most gold bloggers were forecasting/expecting inferno rubies to sell fast & high priced but even today (Monday) the prices on my server are struggling to get up to 120g, which is where they were just 2 or 3 weeks ago. Demonseye & Ember Topaz's on the other hand have shot up in price & even some of the Amberjewel cuts have hit 60g+.

I haven't been stockpiling dreamcloth on my tailor but I kinda regret that now! The epic spellthreads have been selling quite well with the few bits I did have but my tailor is badly neglected so now this is where I pay my price! Going forward, I now know to watch the spellthread markets & I guess the leg armour markets for my also neglected Leatherworker.

I did make a few pieces of the new Bloodthirsty PvP armour in both Leatherworking & my Blacksmith but none have sold so far. I guess they will start to move this week when the new season starts but if not, I have a rogue who can use the leather items & either my pally or DK can use the plate ones!

Besides all this Patch 4.2 stuff, good old Chocolate Cookies & Greater Eternal Essences once again make the top page of results. I now have some competition in the cookie market but I've slapped him (my husband) & told him he's got to wait until I get my cap! Hopefully another week of sales like the last few days & I may have to start writing my WarcraftEcon interview.

PS I use the Mysales addon for the screenshots, really easy to use & configure using just /ms window or /ms config commands.