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If you'd like to submit your own gold making Milestone Interview, instructions & more details are on my Milestone Interviews page. Any milestone is suitable - whether it be 100k or 10 million, we want to hear about YOUR story.
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Hey Nev,
My name is Jon and I live in Louisiana, USA. I play on the Galakrond–US server and I go by Zen in game as all of my toon names start with Zen, except my bank alts which are females with their own unique names.
The 20 Days of Gold Making Questions answered:
1. When did you start making gold & what triggered it?I started trying to make gold in mid-November 2011 after realizing that there were a number of expensive in game items I wanted to purchase from vendors or from others players on the AH. I didn’t have the gold to afford those items and didn’t want to spend all my game time grinding mobs for gold. There had to be a better way. After doing a lot of research and reading I created my 1st bank alt and with 2,500 gold I went to work.
2. If you set yourself a goal, what was your goal & at what point did you set it?I really didn’t have a set goal at the beginning other than to try make as much gold as I could and try not to spend any of it until I had enough to buy something big that I wanted. I think my first big purchase was the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth which cost 20,000 Gold at the time I bought it if I remember correctly.
3. What were the first techniques/tricks/tips you used when starting out?The first tips and tricks I used was to create a bank alt to use for all transactions and to keep my Gold Making gold separate from my Main toons questing and mob treasure gold (very important). I read a lot about bank alts and I am so convinced it is a must have for making gold that I wrote about how to make one and how to use one on my website. The other big tip would be to install auction house add-ons; another subject I address on my site.
4. Do you use a banker alt/guild? When did you start doing that & why? I created my bank alt in November 2011 as one of my first steps when I started to get serious about making gold
5. Do you keep the same banker alt or do you change them up occasionally? Why?I still have my original bank alt and she is still hard at work. I have subsequently created a number of other bank alts over the years to serve other gold making activities. I currently have 4 bank alts, 2 very active and 2 semi active.
6. Which market has made you the most gold over the years?I have primarily worked in two areas: Glyphs and flipping items on the AH, which has been mostly Transmog items since they introduced that feature to WoW. I’ve made a lot of gold flipping Transmog gear.
7. If you were starting over again (maybe on a new server perhaps), how would you start building some capital & what goal would you set yourself?If I was to start over on another server from scratch I’d do the same thing I did here except that I probably would try a different profession to use for making gold maybe jewel crafting instead of inscription. Although I wouldn’t look forward to leveling another toon to 90 and another profession to 600. Too time consuming.
8. Thinking back to day 2, did you ever reach your goal or are you still working towards it? If you reached it - have you set yourself a new one?After reaching my first goal, which you could probably say was buying that Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth, I wanted to make back all the gold I just spent on it (felt kinda guilty lol). When I earned it all back, I found something else that I wanted so I bought that, and then I worked to make that gold back. So it was earn and spend, earn and spend.
Once I had bought everything I wanted and made back all the gold I spent, I just keep making gold until one day I realized that I was close to 100,000 gold on hand, so that became my new goal. When I hit that goal it became 200K then 300K, and so on. My current Goal is 1,000,000 Gold and I am almost there!!!
9. What's your favorite niche market & why?I’ve only worked in two markets Glyphs and Flipping Items on the AH. Can’t really say which one I prefer more. I think I make more gold with Glyphs but it’s a tough market to compete in and very time consuming. I enjoy finding valuable items for sale cheap on the AH and selling them for big profits. More fun, less time and work involved. As I state on my website “you could call me a casual gold maker” lol.
10. Do you farm materials? Why? Why not? & which ones, where?I do not farm materials for my glyphs. I buy all my herbs off the AH and mill them into ink. I can still make a profit buying mats and thereby have more of my valuable game time to “play” not “work”. If I can’t make a profit on the glyph due to the cost of the mats, I don’t buy the mats and don’t make the glyph. Hopefully the laws of supply and demand with drive down the cost of the mats going unsold on the AH.
11. Most of us use TSM, Auctioneer and/or Auctionator in combo with Postal - are there any other lesser known gold making addons you use?The only add-ons I know are the big ones that I'm sure every gold maker has on their computer already, an auction house add-on and trade skill master for sure.
12. What was your biggest 'oops' moment?The biggest oops I’ve made actually occurred over the period of couple of weeks before I caught it and it had to do with a change I made to the settings in Trade Skill Master. I had my add-on set to not post glyphs on the AH if they will not make a certain level of profit from the sale, which is fine except that I had also told the add on to always undercut one of my competitors because he/she was trying to control the market. So for about two weeks I was losing gold on every glyph I made and sold because they were being posted and sold for less than what it was costing me to make them. I was selling more than the competitor I was automatically undercutting but I was losing gold instead of making it. A huge waste of time and energy.
13. What was your biggest 'Yay!' moment?My biggest Yay! was making over 12,000 gold in just two nights from selling Transmog gear for which I might have paid 200 gold on the AH for, if that.
14. How much of your playtime is devoted to gold making? Do you raid/pvp/pet battle too or is the AH your main playtime?I estimate I only spend about 20 to 25% of my game time doing gold making chores so about 1 hour for every 4 or 5 hours I’m in game, however I do spend additional time working the AH to make gold buying and selling items when I am not logged on WoW through the use of AH tracking websites and WoW’s Mobile AH application.
15. Professions - do you have all of them, some or none? Which is your favorite for goldmaking?I can only speak about Inscription which is an excellent gold making profession because it is the only source of glyphs and every toon in the game needs them. A few downsides are that it’s a competitive market and creating and posting glyphs is time consuming.
16. Flipping! Do you flip stuff regularly or sometimes? Big ticket items or smaller high volume stuff?Flipping items or what I call “working the AH” to me is a lot of fun, but it can be a difficult endeavor and will take time to learn your particular servers AH and the buying and selling habits of the people on your realm. Knowing what items are really worth (the average price of what they have sold for in the past on your AH) is critical to your success in profiting from flipping. A lot of it is trial and error but as long as you’re not buying something for more than its worth and selling it for less than it is worth you might make a profit. I love buying something for 15 gold and selling it the next night for 700. Big profit!
17. Pets - Did you used to do the Vendor pet sales? How have pet battles changed things for you?Never really looked closely at the vendor pet / battle pet market, but there are a few people working that market on my server.
18. What is the most important bit of advice you could give to a new gold maker? (not a game newbie though, just a newbie gold maker)My advice for a new guild maker is detailed on my website but in short I’d say
- make a bank alt to handle your gold making transactions,
- get an AH add-on so you know what stuff is really worth on your realm and to help post auctions.
- Vendor all your grays, put everything else on the AH that you don’t want or need before you log off for the night.
- Level a gathering and crafting profession so that you can spend a little time farming mats to sell or creating items to sell on the AH for profit.
- Earn and keep more gold then you spend!
Start off small and slow. Set a reasonable, attainable short term goal and when you reach it, set another reasonable, attainable short term goal. Rise and repeat. Research and read and learn all you can about how other people are making gold and see if you can put that knowledge or techniques to work for you. There are a lot of resources on the internet.
- Be patient, it takes a lot of time and effort to get rich.
19. Have you bought yourself anything really expensive as a reward for earning all that gold? Or do you have a self-present in mind for when you reach your goal?When I reach 1 Million Gold, I’m going to buy all the hard-to-get mounts that come up on the Black Market AH from time to time. There’s a Green Protodrake on there right now for 20,000 gold that I really want and it takes great restraint on my part not to buy it right now. The only thing stopping me is that it will set me that much back from reaching my goal and I am so close.
20. Lets spread some blog love - which are your 'must read' or 'go to' gold blogs or even other places you go for information & reading matter? Blogs you should read: Auction House Addict, Kuja’s Gold Mine (I have a few old posts on Kuja’s Forum), Phat Lewts’ Gold Blog, and WTB Gold to name a few.
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Thank you Jon for submitting your gold making story & for taking the time to type it all out! I hope you reach your Million very soon and have fun all the way there as well!
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