Saturday Celebrations - Vorkenlys, Earthen Ring-US

This week we have a slightly different format interview with  Vorkenlys, A friend & follower of mine from Twitter. After a random conversation, I persuaded her to submit her story so here it is!

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. Don't be shy! You've seen what others are sending in over the last 9 weeks so come on - tell us how you've been doing it! Don't make me persuade you too! lol

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Recently, I reached two hundred thousand gold. For me, this was a significant milestone as before I never had more than five or ten thousand at a time. Then I hear of WowProfitz! He had recently achieved his goal of reaching a million and when I read his blog , the whole process seemed pretty straightforward and very possible. No camping the Auction House for hours a day, nothing very complicated at all in fact. And so I wondered, could I do it?

The easiest place to get started seemed to be flipping greens. My timing was excellent as he had just posted his Lighthouse Project and walked someone through the process of starting up with very little capital, using Tradeskill Master. Now, TSM is one of the hardest World of Warcraft add-ons to learn. It's been worth it but until I encountered Profitz, I'd failed at it. His step-by-step process, while admittedly pedantic, was perfect for me. And so the green flipping began.

At that point, I started doing research - blogs, videos, podcasts. I'd try something new every time but most of the time, I dropped the attempt after a few days as I came to realize, I want to make a million gold - I don't want to spend all my gaming time doing it. Flipping MoP greens and transmog gear can easily take me an hour or more a day all by themselves as 1400 auctions or more do not repost by themselves.

And that's the best advice I can give newcomers to the idea of being rich in World of Warcraft - don't let making gold suck out the enjoyment from the rest of the game. In addition to having over two hundred thousand right now, I run dungeons with guildmates, help people level, fish for raid food, gather herbs for flasks and am an assistant officer (we call the rank "Mentor") in my guild on the subject of roleplaying.

I belong to an awesome group on Earthen Ring called the Tamarack Order and since ER is an RP server, that activity actually chews up a considerable amount of time each week. I'm the dwarven Captain Vorkenlys Seacrafter, in charge of the Theramore Sailing Ship Sunspring, an ocean-going cargo ship - which is perfect for my lust for gold! I cannot stress often enough - if gold-making feels like a job, you are doing it wrong and don't let anyone tell you differently.

I'm fairly casual bout it, I only average about five to seven thousand gold a day but compared to the average player, that's a huge bank balance injection each day! It's slow but very steady and since I set this goal in June of 2013, I've progressed every day. I estimate I'll finally arrive in Spring of 2014 which won't be the fastest millionaire run but unlike most people I play the game with, it will still be a million in my greedy little dwarf hands!

Other than WowProfitz, three of the best people I've learned from on this journey are our host, Nev and the creator of the best Tradeskill Master 2 tutorials out there, Phat Lewt. The last is Evline's forums. While Elvine herself seems to have moved on to Final Fantasy Online, the posters on the forums are an amazing resource for ideas.

Links:

http://ahaddict.blogspot.com/http://www.phatlewtsgold.net/http://wowprofitz.com/http://www.elvinelol.com/forums

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A great big Gratz to Vorkenlys for reaching her 200k Milestone although I expect it's nearer 300k by now! I'm always really happy to hear that my random writings here have helped someone achieve their own measure of success and Phat & Profitz are both great gold makers I am proud to call friends.

You are 100% correct when you say that goldmaking shouldn't feel like a job, Vorkenlys - I think that's a trap I've fallen into a bit along with isolating myself in game but I actually enjoy my job so it's not as bad as it sounds! Thank you again for submitting your story - keep us updated with how it goes won't you?

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What's Been Selling This Week?

I'm just about over the jetlag after my US trip & almost back into the swing of things at work so I thought I'd better knuckle down & give you something to read here! I've been home 2 weeks now but I've hardly logged in at all so the screenshot is a summary of about 5 log ins to just post my auctions.

I need to spend some serious time topping up my crafted items inventory & use up some of the materials I have overflowing banks, bags & mailboxes too! Whilst I was away, I lost my grip on a couple of my favorite markets so the price of the Mammoth Mining Bags has dropped through the floor! I was selling them for 500g or more but now, some idiot is selling them for 85-90g! Needless to say, I'm buying up all the Borean Leather to dry up his raw material market & I'm buying his stock too. Luckily there's not too much leather floating around otherwise I'd really be running out of space!

Also while I was away, the Living Steel Belt Buckle market took a turn for the better with prices up from 500g-ish to between 600 & 700g. I have a fair bit of Living Steel tucked away so the belt buckles have been a nice income for me.

Before I left, I managed to snag a whole heap of cheap Golden Lotus's - less than 40g each so rather than get all confused about which cuts to craft, I checked out the raw rare gem prices. I was pleasantly surprised to see that on several occasions, the uncut gem price was higher than most of the cuts so I just listed the raws! Not all of the colors though and not every time - mainly the red & yellow gems. I don't know why those colors should be so cheap as cut gems but I picked my days & sold the uncuts when the market was in my favor. Yes, perhaps I lost a bit of profit but I didn't have to work out which gems to craft into which cut gems & I didn't even have to log my Jewelcrafter either!

I reset my Crafted Malevolent gear prices in TSM just before I went away. I'm now setting the market price on many of these without much competition & they are selling. I have managed to pick up so much cheap Exotic Leather that it's even feasible to use the non-cooldown 50 pieces recipe to make the Magnificent Hides too!

You may notice the Mysterious Fortune Cards are missing from my sales list! Yup - someone has decided to crash the price down to 5-6g again so I'm waiting them out. I could buy them but I already have about 2000 from the last crash. The funniest thing is that when the cheap lister isn't around, someone else is listing his MFC's - at 28g each! I was maintaining the price between 14-16g & they were selling on their own. I may have to try barking a bit over the weekend - will be fun to try that again!

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Saturday Celebrations - Exalios, Netherlands-EU

This week we have a wonderful tale of goldmaking from Exalios. He didn't say which server he plays but he's from The Netherlands which is just a couple of hours across the sea from me. His story strikes fear in to me - the thought of re-starting everything makes my skin crawl but I'll let him tell you the story!

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. Don't be shy! You've seen what others are sending in over the last 8 weeks so come on - tell us how you've been doing it!

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When did you start?
Since WotLK I always enjoyed farming and back then I said to some of my best mates in game that I would become a WoW millionaire. That unfortunately did not happen back then. I stopped playing and restarted in Cataclysm - I deleted the characters I had from Wrath, just wanted to start over again and again started farming, but that didn't go well either. 

I stopped playing again because I had to do an internship in America (I'm from the Netherlands). When I came back this year (2013), I deleted all my characters again except my main, which I transferred to a new server, since my old server was deserted and all my old guildies/friends were gone. But this time I was dedicated. I leveled the professions I thought would make the most gold - jewelcrafting & mining. So I started with about +20k on March 26 2013. 

Did you set a goal?
My goal was to reach a million gold and buy myself the Swift Spectral Tiger! 

First tips & tricks?
A mate of mine was always very good at flipping items at the Auction House, when he told stories about it, I always thought that's way to much work, learning what is valuable and what is not. So I was just farming alot at first. But then he mentioned Jim Younkin, he said; he might seem a bit crazy but he knows what he is doing. So I started checking some things out about him. And he thought like me so much, just like the other great gold makers like Goblinraset, Erogroth, Phat Lewts or you Nev! 

When did you start a banker alt?
Had one since I started, but I only used him to store some items that would not sell or anything. So I never had like a bank alt that did all my selling/buying or anything. 

Do you keep the same banker alt?
Nope deleted, I now just used multiple characters to sell different things. Just to keep track of what is making profit and what is not.

Best market over the years?
Well it has not been a year yet, but my best market was definitely jewelcrafting hands down!

Starting over - how?
Hmmm dont know if I understand this right. But if you mean if I would start over, how would I go about this. Luckily for me I already did this three times! :P But no, if I would have to start over again, then I would first make a druid herbalist/miner. Then another character with Alchemy and Jewelcrafting. So first make some gold with farming and then farm mats to level my professions and use the gold to invest.

Did you reach your goal? Set a new one
Well my goal was to reach a million gold and then buy a Swift Spectral Tiger. So it took me about 5-6 months and there I was one million gold richer! And not that much later some guy was selling a Spectral Tiger so I bought that, and then I saw an X-51 Nether Rocket Extreme for 130k so bought that too and lastly a Corrupted Hippogryph for 120k. 

Also I leveled some other characters to level 90 and thought what the heck, I'll just buy all my gear... So was left with about 300k, and that was like a week ago. But I didn't have the Swift Spectral Tiger yet, and so started with farming some gold again, slowly (very slow because a LOT of people are selling gems now all of the sudden so most prices are below mat price now >.<) but steadily. 

For over a year, our server had not seen a Swift Spectral Tiger, so I thought I probably have some time to get to gold cap again, and BAM! there it was... 780k buy out... and I did not have it. So I start freaking out because that is the mount I wanted, the Spectral Tiger is cool but the Swift has always seem cooler to me (very silly to be true, only difference is some extra armor, but it more the rarity of the mount). So I did everything I could to start getting gold, got to 400k in a few days, with selling everything I saved up for a long time. 

Classic, BC, WotLK, Cata, MoP materials, everything... even my two recently obtained TCG mounts, the Nether Rocket Extreme and the Corrupted Hippogryph (did get a 30-50k profit on them). And so on 12 October 2013 I found myself with 680k again, and the bid on the mount was 660k with 30 minutes left. Those were some nerve wrecking minutes, because in my head it went like; I'm going to bid, but then someone who wants it is going to bid as well and then I'm screwed. And 30 minutes later.... I was a Swift Spectral Tiger richer! Goal completed!

Now my new goal is; making one million gold again and with it buy every possible TCG mount available (gonna need more than one million, but I'll get there). I'm a mount collector, first of all I want El Pollo Grande!

Favorite niche market?
Well strange enough I was just selling MoP rare gems. When I started I was one of the only gem sellers on my realm. There were a few people randomly putting on gems and some were dedicated like me, for hours we underbid each other with 1 copper. But gems were selling left and right for a minimum of 150g up to 375g each sometimes! And the materials cost me 50g for ghost iron or kyparite and 50g for a golden lotus. So I was making gold like a train. Most gold I made in one day was 124k I believe. Just from selling gems. But those days are gone, don't have a niche market anymore.

Do you farm materials?
I do some mining, not that much. I think for the greater part I just bought all mats I needed.

Lesser known gold making addons
I just use the big addons like TSM, auctioneer and auctionator

Biggest oops!
Was some time ago, I bought a Spectral Porcupette or something. I knew it was a new pet and (relatively) hard to obtain. Bought it for 5k or something, and thought 'oh im gonna flip that and sell it for 22k atleast!' And then I forgot a 0. Sold it for 2.200 gold >.<. So not a very big oops but then I was not that rich yet :P

Biggest yay!
My biggest gold making yay was probably starting in transmog and just being so amazed. Buying a Jade Plate chest for 15g and selling it for 5k the next day. That was just amazing to see. 

Funny yay was when I just started making gold and was leveling a hunter and obtained some small eggs - the things that drop from low lvl birds. I remembered that these things were used during a certain festival or something. So I thought I'll just post 3 small eggs for 300g and omg! next day they actually sold. Back then I was poor so 300g was nice to get from that but that was funny too in my opinion.

How much playtime devoted to gold making?
Pretty much all my time at first, just came online and started selling stuff right away until I logged out. Now not so much, maybe 1/3 of my time? So thats like 1/2 to 1 hour a day?

Professions?
Jewelcrafting / mining / alchemy / blacksmithing / tailor / enchanting

Flipping?
Green Cata, MoP leveling items, almost all transmog BoE gear, recipes and anything I can grab for a low price, even TCG mounts if I can

Vendor pets & pet battles?
No I started this once but did not see a big return of my invested gold so quit this pretty fast

Advice for a new gold maker?
First step, inform yourself, you need to listen to experienced gold makers. Listen podcasts and read blogs etc. After that the next step is usually getting some farming profs like mining and herbalism. Then find out what a good market is and start leveling a profession in that market. But you need to invest in research first of all and determine the time you can spend on gold making. If you have 30min a day or even one hour, a profession like jewelcrafting is not going to make you rich fast.

Reward yourself for reaching goal?
Yeah Swift Spectral Tiger, even though it was crazy expensive. That was what I wanted, would not know what to do with that gold besides that:)

Share the blog love - my 'must read' suggestions?
Love blogs, but I would recommend, Getrichwow, from Erogroth. He has some really nice info on that blog. And this one of course but I'm guessing if people get advice from you their already reading it:)

Well hope this is not to much info! I wish you good luck in your gold hunting quest! And keep up the good work, love the podcast and love the blog:)

Sorry for some bad spelling...

Greetings
Exalios

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Exalios - I think you're crazy deleting all your alts severals times but a huge Congratulations to you for hitting your million! It always surprises me how varied the road to one million gold is & I'm sure there are many folks out there with equally interesting stories!

I have a couple of the TCG mounts myself but I'm just sitting on my gold - maybe I should let go of the purse strings a little bit & get myself some shiny new mounts too - seems silly not to really!

Until next time - happy goldmaking peeps! mwah!

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Saturday Celebrations - Wareitout, Stormreaver-US

This week's Celebration is from Wareitout on Stormreaver-US - a fellow Wrath baby who picked Skinning & Leatherworking as his first professions - just like I did! Great minds obviously think alike huh?

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. Don't be shy! You've seen what others are sending in over the last 7 weeks so come on - tell us how you've been doing it!

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What is your Milestone amount?100,000 gold 

What got you started making gold and when?When I first started to play WoW, in WoTLK, the only gold I made was what I looted off corpses and got from selling junk to vendors. My friend, who recruited me to the game and was leveling with me, heard me say over Vent that I was selling Wool Cloth to the vendor and told me about how I could make a lot more off it by selling on the Auction House. I posted my cloth up and sure enough it sold rather quickly for much more than the vendor wanted to give me for it.  

Selling items on the Auction House pretty rapidly became a necessity as a new player due to the cost of mount, epic mount, flying mount, flying training and so forth. I found myself having to wait for epic flying and began to wonder how I could fully remedy the situation (and any further ones) using the Auction House. It was then that I really started trying to make a surplus of gold. 

I had picked up skinning and leatherworking on my first toon and tried to utilize those as well as scanning the Auction House for good deals on items I could resell for a higher price. I tried to get a feel of what was working on my server by observing what was going on in the market and exploit what I could. I eventually had enough gold to be comfortable and was able to afford my now 4 toons necessities. Making gold really captivated me and I just continued on after that. It has become just about as big a part of the game for me as PVE or PVP, and equally as enjoyable. 

Which markets have you concentrated on, if any?Leatherworking. In Wrath, all Cataclysm, and beginning of MoP I concentrated on Leatherworking above all others. I knew how to exploit the profession the best and it had a special place in my heart because it was my first profession that got me going. 

Biggest successes or biggest failures?The biggest success of gold making, if you are a person who enjoys it, is each and every sale. People get enjoyment out of getting end game gear and watching their dps or healing go up, goldmakers get enjoyment out of watching that number in their bank climb. Whether you crafted an item and sold it, disenchanted for mats, bought and resold, or farmed raw materials and sold them straight up, there is a satisfaction that is associated with everything you do everyday. Although, if I were forced to make a decision on a specific moment I would say watching my gold hit 6 figures for the first time felt more than nice. 

My biggest failure as far as gold loss is concerned was hands down the last time I took a break from the game. I've been playing since WoTLK but I've taken a few extended breaks along the way. Last time I took a break I was playing the AH hard. MoP had just been released and I had made 4 bank alts with their own guild tabs and full banks of stuff. I stopped playing pretty suddenly leaving my items that were on AH to expire in the mail, including what I had in transit between characters as well. This included probably around 120k worth of items including a rocket mount from my Engineer. 

Advice for new gold makers?Step back and decide what it is that you are wanting to do. Do you want to live comfortably in WoW, not worrying about repair bills, raid meals, flasks, etc? Or do you truly want to become filthy stinking rich? Once you've decided, you can then assess how much time and effort you're going to need to pour into the hustle and bustle of the AH.  

Starting from scratch typically is going to get off to a slower start, but don't fret. Stay with it, deal with markets that you are comfortable with and expand as you learn the others. Take some risks on reselling, if you feel compelled, but calculated risks so you don't bust yourself - you're going to get demoralized if you go all in on an item and then can't sell it for a while. 

Get some addons as you get more involved, they will make your life SO much easier and more enjoyable (Auctioneer, Auctionator, Tradeskillmaster to name a few). Utilize your professions and, if you have more than one toon, use them all together! Mine some ore, prospect it, craft some gems then make jewelry for your enchanter to disenchant and so on! 

But most importantly, HAVE FUN. If you feel like all the time your spending on the AH is a 2nd job, you're doing it wrong :).

Shoutouts for any blogs, podcasts or streams that helped you out along the way:Jim Younkin is a pretty cool guy I've checked out a few times. He's a very successful gold maker that really puts himself out there to help people with the market. I know he has tutorials out on how to run Tradeskillmaster and stuff but I haven't checked it out myself. Tarou WoW guides on youtube. When I first started gold making what little help I sought out was from this guy right here. Undermine Journal - Such a good website for ideas, information, and tools to help you out on your server specifically. 

What's your new goal, if any?I've slowed down a bit but I'm back at it now that I've returned to the game about three weeks ago. I churned out 24k in sales today and it felt so good I think I might start putting more time into it. I'm comfortable with the amount that I have but for giggles I am going to make the push for 250k. Although, if I decide to sell the Sky Golem I'm going to be making shortly, I might need to raise the bar to 350k. I thought that I'd be content with the 100k but what can I say except... "Can't stop, addicted to the shin dig" lol

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A big 'Thank You' to Wareitout for sending in his Interview - I love reading all the different stories & how people get to their Milestones. As this was submitted about a month ago, I'm sure he's made his Sky Golem by now - let us know if you sold it or decided to keep it Wareitout!

Getting caught by the mailbox autodelete is something I think many goldmakers are familiar with - I did the same last year - stopped playing abruptly & lost a shedload of stuff! Now I'm more careful and only send stuff via my banker - that way, if I don't log an alt for a long while, the mail bounces back to my banker who I log everyday & I see the stuff coming back! When I went off on my travels a few weeks ago, I specifically logged every alt & sent everything back to my banker or took it out of the mail & into the alts bags. It left me with messy bags now but at least I didn't lose anything!

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Episode 17 Journal of Marcus Ty Podcast - Talking about Blizzcon

Not quite Jaffa cakes but still yummy!

For this episode, I borrowed my friends set-up & got up extra early to adjust for the time difference between USA & UK. We recorded on the Saturday morning after Blizzard announced some of the details for the new expansion Warlords of Draenor on the first day of Blizzcon.

Marcus treated himself to the Virtual Ticket and glued himself to the screen by the sounds of it! He covers some of the back story as explained by Chris Metzen and summarises some of the main changes we can expect. Then we went off on one of our random thought trips as we sidetracked to gold making possibilities on each point!

As you can imagine, these are our first impressions & our first thoughts on various bits of the news so we may not be 100% correct on some details - news and information has continued to come out since we recorded but I think you can tell that both Marcus & I are definitely excited by the possibilities ahead of us.

Just in case you're wondering about all the jaffa cakes references - see below & if you want to try them, you can even get them on Amazon too!

As always, we had great fun recording & I hope you enjoy listening too. If you have anything you'd like us to talk about or you want to add something, feel free to contact either of us, email & twitter details are below. We'd love to hear from you and of course, if you like us enough, we'd love some iTunes reviews or Stitcher thumbs ups too!

As always - you can find us on iTunes or Stitcher Radio or you can listen via the website if you prefer.

Show Notes

• Jaffa cakes all round.
• What’s new at Blizzcon 2013
• Level Cap 100
• Inventory Management
• Free Level 90
• Heirlooms/Vanity Items/Quest Items in own tabs
• Garrisons - what we know so far & some speculation - ok, a lot of speculation!
• The future of paid Warcraft

Resources mentioned in the podcast:

• Contact Marcus Ty on Twitter @MarcusTy
• Contact Nev on Twitter @NevAHaddict
• Marcus' blog - Wow Gold Journal
• The Warlords of Draenor Post
• Email Marcus at JournalofMarcusTy.com

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Saturday Celebrations - Mario, Ragnaros-US

This week we have a lovely interview with Mario from Argentina. He's been playing a long time but is pretty new to serious gold making. Well Done Mario - you'll be at gold cap in no time I reckon :)

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. Don't be shy! You've seen what others are sending in over the last 6 weeks so come on - tell us how you've been doing it!

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My name is Mario, 33, from Argentina. I started playing in April 2005 (wow!, time has gone by) on US Servers, moved to Ragnaros US some time after it went live because most of my friends had a hard time raiding with people from english speaking community, I started playing a resto shaman back in Vanilla (raided Onyxia and Molten Core 40m), and have since then played/maxed and raided every class at some point (unless for a Monk which is sitting there at lvl 5 still) 

My array is as follows:
2x Tailor
1x Blacksmith
1x Leatherworker
1x Scribe
2x Alchemist (both transmutation)
2x Engineer (1 of each type)
1x Jewelcrafter
2x Enchanter (no real use here, just silly redundancy, kept up my enchanting on my first character, the shaman (non-90); and made a second one on a lvl 90 alt to get the end game enchants)

What is your milestone amount? 

My aim was milestone 300k for the first week at launch, and see from there. I figured I could take advantage of the price boom and then just be cool for the rest of this xpac. That way I would have enough to start the next one without having to worry about gold. Made it in a few days! (update: I'm at 550k now) and got the bug =) 

What got you started making gold and when?

I guess aside from raiding there aren't many things that attract me a lot at the moment (PvP, Pet Battles, etc are not my thing) and I had the desire to be “rich” in WoW for a long time but I couldn’t really make it. I had lots and lots of gold in WotLK, but spent all of it playing Cataclysm (I didn’t have a lot of time at that point and keeping up with my characters without generating gold meant bankruptcy for me). 

I played MoP only for a few months (the old group disbanded and I decided it was time for a little break and left my 40k as fund for the guild bank which was almost broke at that point). When I got back at the end of 5.2 I said to myself: this time I’m going for the big one. I started reading forums and listening to podcasts and in 5.3, I started stockpiling (buying and crafting like crazy).

Which markets have you concentrated on, if any?

• Jewelcrafting (via shuffling) has been my main and most profitable market (those vermilion onyx, nom nom), also:
• Inscription cards and decks, glyphs (which have somewhat slow down on my server)
• Tailoring (spellthreads, crafted pvp/epics)
• Leatherworking (crafted pvp/epics, skins)
• Engineering (Sky Golem and Pets)
• Blacksmith (crafted pvp/epics, belt bucklets)

Biggest successes or biggest failures? 

Managing my stockpile has been both a success and a failure I think. I did cover all the markets and items, but I burned all my stuff on the first month! Demand and profit was just too good to ignore on most markets. Should have gotten a lot more materials and less random stuff. Example: Tried to reset the market on the Warlock green fire books (spent like 25k on that) and it really didn’t work. That 25k would have been worth a lot more in raw mats. Oh well.. “Experience is a cone that life gives you when don’t have any hair left” goes the saying =) 

Advice for new goldmakers

• Do NOT be afraid to buy stuff cheap when you see it. It will sell for more later or you will use it to craft stuff later on the patch, or you can always reset markets. 

• Look info up on official and non-official communities, read a lot. 

• Watch for trends (on TUJ and Wowuction), it helps understand what’s going on and take advantage of it

shout outs for any blogs, podcasts or streams that helped you along the way 

Yours of course, Marcus Ty, Phat Lewtz among others 

What's your new goal, if any? 

One million!. This was really my goal but it seemed kind of far away and unrealistic, so I decided for something more real when I started, hence my 300k initial goal. Now being at 550k and with more knowledge of the market, etc it seems closer to reach =)

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Thank you for sending in your story Mario - I wish you good speed towards your goal & I'm pretty sure you're almost there by now!

I see a definite trend towards Jewelcrafting as the most lucrative market in these interviews but I don't think that surprises anyone! Now that we have some news on the next expansion, it will be interesting to see how things develop but I'm still waiting for Connected Realms to have their impact on the Auction House before I worry too much about the new Warlords of Draenor expansion!

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Journal of Marcus Ty Podcast 16 & EGP

So just before I jetted out to see my fella, I recorded episode 16 of the Journal of Marcus Ty podcast with Marcus as he was jetting off to USA too! We had a great time as always & I think the show came out pretty good even if it is best described as organised chaos!

This post is a little late but we talked about Hallow's End, the Sky Golem mount (again!), Noodle Carts and fishing. The usual waffle on random side topics as I wander off to storytelling and Marcus reigns me in, back to topic!

Show Notes

• Our week in WoW

• What goals we set ourselves when we log in

• Crafting & selling the Sky Golem mount - should we or shouldn't we?

• Changing Markets, regular markets & old faithful markets

• Hallow's End - what I love & hate about it!

• Marcus finds Ben of the Booming Voice & goes fishing

• More Noodle Cart & Pandaren Cooking chat

• Our Markets of the week

As usual, you can find the show on iTunes or Stitcher or you can go directly to the website at Wow Gold Journal and listen from there. If you enjoy the show, please feel free to leave a review on iTunes or give us a thumbs up on Stitcher - we'll send hugs by return :)

Resources mentioned in the podcast:

• Contact Marcus Ty on Twitter @MarcusTy

• Contact Nev on Twitter @NevAHaddict

• Marcus's Blog WoW Gold Journal

• Nev’s Milestone Interviews

• Email Marcus at JournalofMarcusTy.com

If you don't know, Marcus has written a very extensive gold guide and is working on updating it all the time. I've been an affiliate of his for a long while now as I believe it is one of the best gold making guides out there. You can get more details at his Auction House Secrets site. It's not for experienced gold makers of course but if you're just starting out, you will find it very helpful and there's a 60 day money back guarantee too!

Guest Spot on EGP

Also last week, I guested on Episode 70 of EGP which usually releases on a Monday evening so that would be today's episode. It's become a bit of a habit to turn up on their show when I'm visiting my fella as the time zones work out! Sadly, I can't stay up until 2am to record when I'm in the UK (although I used to, before I got a job!).

I love the show & I get on well with Cold & Rez but it was a big fangirl moment for me to finally get to talk to Nonmail! I don't think I squeee'd too loudly! The guys used me as a guinea pig for their new gameshow segment & we all had a good laugh - will be interesting to listen back to it for me as I was concentrating so hard, I missed a lot! I usually have to listen to the show 2 times just to catch the bits I miss anyway - imagine trying to play a gameshow whilst corralling a needy cat & not using your own PC set up! I loved it anyway & I hope the show is as good as usual, even with my girlie-ness calming down the boys!

I'll be heading home at the end of the week so hopefully, normal service will be resumed here then. I still have some Saturday Celebrations/Milestone Interviews lined up so it won't be totally dead here at least. Hope you enjoy the shows, I love guesting so if anyone wants me - just shout!

Have a good week peeps! mwah!

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Saturday Celebrations - Vodmos of Twisting Nether

It's Saturday already and that means it's time for another Celebration! This week we have Vodmos's tale of glory - fighting evil foes at the Auction House & conquering the Gold mountain that is goldcap! I love reading all these interviews and I hope you do too.

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. Don't be shy! You've seen what others are sending in over the last 5 weeks so come on - tell us how you've been doing it!

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What is your milestone amount? 

My first milestone amount was 100K. It took me almost 6 month's to get there. During that time it was a lot of trial and error to learn my server and find all the helpful blog's out there. My new milestone amount is to cap out and I am half way there.

What got you started making gold and when? 

What started me was another player. I was still leveling my first toon and while flying around questing there was a request for help taking down a quest NPC in chat. I responded and helped the guy out. In return he gave me 500 gold for my time. At first I wouldn't take it explaining that he didn't need to pay me for helping. He insisted because he was capped out on his main and didn't need the gold. 

This intrigued me and after a long conversation he agreed to help me out learning the JC market. This was during Cataclysm and Inferno Ruby's were the hot ticket item. He taught me about posting, when and when not to undercut and when to reset the market. That was the beginning of my AH addiction.

Which markets have you concentrated on, if any? 

The markets are always shifting around with what people are looking for. At first it was just the JC market for me. Then that kind of tapered off and I took what I learned from that market and leveled another toon with Enchanting. I started making decent gold again and used that gold to level more toons to bring up Blacksmithing, Mining,Tailoring and Alchemy (transmute master). 

Now I craft for all of those markets and as a result have a steady flow of income averaging about 10K to 50K per week. If I ever stop being lazy I will finish leveling a toon that has been idle at level 72 for a long time and learn engineering and leather working. Engineering I hear is hard to make gold with but I like some of the items that you can craft personally. 

Leatherworking because I think on my server it seems to be an untapped market. I see people barking in trade looking for a Leatherworker often and cannot seem to find gear for my hunter on the AH. No gear on AH = untapped market!

Biggest successes or biggest failures? 

My biggest success would be learning how to make gold in the first place. It has kept my interest in a game that I may very well have moved on from after the first year or so. One of my two biggest failures would have to be purchasing high end Blacksmith and Tailoring patterns towards the end of Cataclysm with the intent on crafting those items for raking in millions and millions of gold. In reality I over paid for the patterns and didn't break even on any of them. 

LEARN your market before investing anything more than 500 gold. My second biggest failure was purchasing some mounts for resale and mis-posting one of them because I wasn't paying attention. That led to a very disappointing visit to my mailbox.

Advice for new goldmakers? 

1) AH add-on's of course to help with posting and crafting. It is too much to keep track of with paper and a pen. 

2) Get a mentor. Just as in real life, a mentor can really help further your success. Unlike real life that mentor can be any number of the blogs posted weekly by the people that have been working the AH long before you started. I learned a lot from the blogs. I am new to the Auction House Addict but have already learned new things that I overlooked previously (thank you very much by the way). 

3) It is not really needed at first but eventually start or purchase your own guild for the extra storage. Before the last patch for Mists of Pandaria, I invested heavy in raw materials for crafting and resale. I had 5 tabs of one Guild bank and 4 tabs of my main Guild bank completely full of ore, cloth and leather. I have moved almost all of that inventory since the release through crafting or resale but saved tons of gold by buying before the prices almost doubled. It also helps me when I need to reset all my postings by giving me the room to sort them all out and re-post them grouped by category. This helps with the timing for when I go back to re-post after I have been undercut.

Shout outs for any blogs, podcasts or streams that helped you along the way?

Auction House Addict, Tauro WOW guides and the Consortium website that contains blogs, add on tutorials and just general tips that are invaluable.

What's your new goal, if any? 

My main new goal is as previously mentioned cap out. This will take a while as I am not a penny pincher. If there is something I wish to purchase I do so. I spend a lot of time making this gold and really why if I cant use it to purchase the things I want. 

My other goal is not in the game. I have been batting around the idea of starting a blog myself. There are already a lot of blogs out there but this has been enjoyable to write and some of the veteran players seem to be moving on to bigger and better things. Maybe now is the time to do my research and attempt to fill the voids that are left behind by the others such as The Gold Queen. Maybe I will get lucky and have an opportunity to collaborate with someone like you and Marcus Ty do. I have yet to experience any podcast. I think I will change that and make yours the first.

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Congratulations Vodmos - that first 100k seems to take forever doesn't it? Half way to gold cap now though so I guess you've speeded up a bit! It really does depend so much on the server and the phase at which the game is in - I started seriously making gold at the beginning of Cataclysm when everything was moving fast & for pretty good prices. If I was starting out now, I wouldn't expect such a quick accumulation of gold - with more & more servers slowly dying and populations falling everywhere it seems, markets are slowing down too.

A new expansion will sort that out but brings it's own challenges too - once we have more details, I'm pretty sure there will be a flurry of new articles from me & others too so stay tuned to make the most of your gold making when the time comes.

Have a great weekend everyone! mwah!

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