About a month ago, my fellow gold maker, Phat Lewts made an interesting, slightly ranty post about an addon called Total Gold Earned and I have to say, I fully agree with his point of view. Reading that post triggered an idea for my own post but knowing that Selltacular at Copper to Gold had recently taken over Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival, I realised my post idea might be a good one for the Carnival so I emailed Selltacular & held off writing this post.
What is your definition of a good gold maker? How do you measure gold making success?
First let me add my comments to Phat's original post - he talked about how easy it was to inflate your Total Gold Earned figure as it only adds up the total of items you sell in the Auction House. It takes no account of any tradechat transactions or any done via trades with friends or via mail so it also underestimates on that side.
The other area where this little addon falls down is that it can only look at your current stable of alts - my total gold earned looked abysmal to me until I remembered that I hit gold cap during early Cataclysm & have since deleted that banker alt (and she wasn't my first deleted banker either)! So this addon doesn't & can't take that into account and I won't be publicising my totals anytime soon, that's for sure!
So how would I measure success?
If you measure success by how much liquid gold someone has (available gold value in bags & banks), then you are almost missing the point! If I have 1 million gold just sitting in my bags for months on end, I'm not a good gold maker anymore - I've either stopped gold making & just enjoying being rich or I've been playing WoW for a long time and haven't spent anything! Even the worst gold maker can accumulate a tidy amount of gold as long as they aren't losing on every sale - all it takes is time & not spending on expensive items.
So does having a large amount of gold & a huge list of active auctions make you a good gold maker? Nope! I'd say you're on your way though - you do need to have your fingers in many pies & have lots of stuff to sell BUT it needs to be the right stuff!
Does having a high 'total gold earned' value in your game statistics make you a good gold maker? Nope! I think Phat already covered that one!
To be honest? I'm really not sure how I would measure success - there are so many factors involved & so many personalities in this gold making community that there are countless ways to try to define 'success' - personally I go by gut instinct - if I like the way a person writes/talks about gold making, if I know that some of their techniques/methods are ones I use myself then, to be honest, I really don't care how much gold they actually have or how much they are actually making! I'll try their techniques for myself or use them to form the basis for my own experimenting with markets.
What is my definition of a good gold maker?
Using your brain & being curious about new markets is a great asset to any gold maker - addons are great but if you just follow a guide & use it on automatic, you will make expensive mistakes! Using your brain is not just about working out crafting costs before setting your selling prices either. It's a way of thinking, of being keen to learn and being quick to take advantage of new stuff coming out, spotting trends and knowing how the markets work on your server.
A good gold maker is also patient - there's no point rushing to sell something and dropping your prices to sell 'bargains' when with a little patience, you could sell it for full price. Being first to capitalise on a new market or to resurrect an old one is not the same as rushing to sell stuff. We've all seen the amateur sellers in trade chat - dropping their prices quickly in a desperate attempt to sell it now!
In my mind, a good gold maker is also organised - lots of professions leveled and working together to maximise profits, having buy lists of raw materials, ready to grab anything & everything that falls in their pre-set price ranges and making best use of their in-game gold making time. Sitting at the Auction House, farming or crafting all day & making lots of gold that way doesn't make you a good gold maker, just an inefficient one with lots of time to waste!
Am I a good gold maker?
Honestly, I don't think so! I do use my brain & I am patient but I am really unorganised. I do have all professions except Engineering but I don't always make best use of them these days. I actually enjoy faffing around, crafting a bit here & a bit there, scanning the auction house manually and just absorbing prices & spotting trends but I wasn't always like this.
This is a bad habit I've got into since I started playing solo so much and since I hit that magical but anti-climactic 1 million gold. Yes, I've got lazy and you can tell by my lack of blog posts but I also know I can ramp it up whenever I feel like it. I hope I feel like it soon - my blog is nagging at me for some attention!
****************
Check out some of my Squidoo lenses!
Image © AcrylicArtist under Creative Commons licence
I track the gold per day, seven days and 30 days through TSM. I try to keep that increasing - focusing on the 30 day number to smooth out peaks and troughs.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm an all right gold maker as I've got the 30 day number over 200k and have kept it there for several months. Its closer to 250k now. When i started making 4k a month through bags made me feel like a god compared to my guilies (early in Cata) then I realised through Phat's. Jim's and Cold's sites that i was really really wrong.
I could do more - I don't exploit my capital properly, and right now I'm really only making money from Glyphs - all my other markets have collapsed or just creep along. Since hitting 1m a month ago, I too have taken the foot off the gas. I'm down to 650k too as I've indulged in pet buying - which is why i started making gold to begin with. I wanted to be able to afford Darkmoon Rabbit (which was 100k at the time) and trading card pets too. I'm at 514 pets now so that target is being met - and that makes me happy with my gold making.
So the measure has to be one that you are happy with. I track my gold per day in a number of ways (if a little flawed) and I can feed my shopping habit. I'm happy with my performance, don't brag about it - I know i should be able to do more, but don't feel the need to right now. So by my measure I do alright.
Bones
To me, a good gold maker is one that is efficient and innovative. He/she needs to develop a plan after researching the profitability of a particular technique.
ReplyDeleteAnyone can carbon copy one of the "gold guru" methods and camp the Auction House to turn a profit. What an incredibly boring way to spend your time online.