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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Saturday Celebrations - Noopras, Drak'thul US

Saturday Celebrations!

This week we have a short but sweet interview with Noopras of Drak'thul server who has just reached his 500,000 gold mark. Congratulations Noopras! that is a really nice milestone to reach! He has some really great advice for new gold makers too - one that I've often said myself so I hope you enjoy this weeks interview.

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.

I've been a bit quiet round here the last week or so and it's likely to stay quiet for the next 2 weeks as well as I'm currently Stateside with no WoW access. I do have Hearthstone access though so I won't be bored! If I think of a post topic then of course I'll write it up but if you've been reading a while, you know I tend to write about what I'm doing which makes it a little tougher when I have no access!

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You can call me Noopras. I play on Drak'thul alliance. 

When did I start? 

I started about 6 months ago to try and make gold. I kept reading different blogs and guides about it and decided to see how I could do.

Did I set goals? 

Initially it was just lets see how much I can make. That actually got old pretty fast. I was making a modest amount, but with no clear direction. So at 300k I decided that I really wanted all the JC mounts. At 500k, I am short the jeweled onyx panther, but only cause I am making myself wait to hit 520k before I drop the gold on the orb. 

1st tips and tricks? 

READ A GUIDE. READ A BLOG. JUST PLAIN READ. It isn't rocket science. Lots of people have gone before you. Learn from them. Learn from your mistakes. 

When did I start a banker alt? 

Had this alt for I think 2 years. I was using him for storage and a few AH things before I got serious. I have 2 now. Both with LvL 1 guilds. 

Keep the same bank alt? 

Yep. 

Best market over time? 

I have been mostly in JC and enchanting. JC was my 1st crafting profession. It has been the driver for my gold making. I have not been deep enough in any others to really have much say on them. 

Reach your goal, set a new one? 

I will shortly. As for the next goal? I need a lot more achievements for items, so I may turn that into my next goal. 1 item every 20 k or so. 

Favorite niche market?

If you consider belt buckles niche. 

Do you farm mats? 

Ore, heck no. Herbs, 3 16 plot farms. 

Lesser known add-on? 

TSM addict.

Biggest oops? 

Not sure, really. Nothing huge springs to mind. My markets are low gold higher volume. 

Biggest yeah? 

Hitting 500k has been the biggest. The most memorable is the other AH dealer I have met. Started chatting with him and we have continued to chat. Learned some from him, also 1 less person to fight. 

Playtime to gold making? 

Well over 1/2 my time is devoted to it. Ore doesn't prospect itself, and I click ever single time I do it. 

Professions? 

Miner/herbalist 600/600, JC/BS 600/600, Alchemist(transmute)/enchanter 600/600, tailor/scribe 400ish/400ish

Flipping? 

Nope, keep falling on my face when I try. 

Vendor pets & battle pets? 

A few vendor, a few battle pets. Not really into pet battles, and I have yet to develop the patience for vendor pets. 

Advice for new gold makers? 

Read, when you have read all of one place, find another one. So many people already make gold hand over fist. Let them guide you. By all means, if you have an idea, try it. But there is so much good information out about how to make gold you are silly to not use it. 

Reward for reaching goal? 

Yep, and I cant wait to finish it off. 

Must reads? 

Undermine Journal front page. Its how I found AH Addict. Consortium WoW gold forums. SO much valuable info in guides and posts. And they are friendly too. I used to read JMTC, but I noticed the forums where getting out of date. Haven't been by in awhile, but it was one of the 1st places I visited.

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I remember clearly hitting my 500k goal - the excitement of that half way mark was almost more than the final goal to be honest! I know I was lucky in that I was making gold during early cataclysm and I think it was definitely a bit easier then. I don't know whether it was because my realm was busier or I was just so much more into it, but it certainly felt more rewarding to see all those 'sold' notifications in my mailbox!

Having said that, it's still fun to pit your wits against the server population - using your brain never gets old and apparently, it's good for you too!

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Saturday Celebrations - Sjögren, Windrunner

This week, we have a short but sweet story of success from  Sjögren of Windrunner server. She's fast approaching her gold cap and has been busy driving friends crazy with goldmaking! She also said she feels a bit dorky sending in an interview but that's what this idea is for! Send me your stories so we can all enjoy them & know that there are others out there just as dorky as we are!

 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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What is your milestone amount? 

500,000 gold

What got you started making gold and when? 

I didn't start playing around with the auction house or even seriously considering making gold until a couple of months before the release of 5.4. Originally, back in Cataclysm, my husband had a few characters on my account with which he made a small fortune through various professions. Unfortunately, he no longer plays, although I still have his characters to use. Back then I was more into gearing up fresh 90's and found no joy in sitting in town trying to figure out how to make gold, and, with a comparison to real life, I was living "check by check" with the meagre gold I could scrape up from daily activities.  

Eventually I became extremely tired of being broke, especially when I saw a cool new pet or something, so I went with my husband's methods of goldmaking and earned a couple hundred thousand in a few months' time - nothing serious. I stopped making gold a few weeks pre-5.4 so I once again was broke, which made me all the more determined once the patch came. With the surge of activity from new content, I earned approximately 650,000+ in 23 days after starting from a measly 5k.

Which markets have you concentrated on, if any? 

I've mostly concentrated on the gem market, although in the past couple of weeks I've began expanding into everything I can get my grubby paws on. Our economy is slowly dying, so a girl has to adapt and expand, sooner than later. 

Biggest successes or biggest failures? 

My biggest success with goldmaking was definitely everything I do concerning gems. Although I do profit off other items/professions, the large bulk of my gold comes from gems and I'm sure this will be the case for the foreseeable future. My failures usually come from when I don't take the time to check the math with my auctions... there have been times I've lost money selling something. 

Advice for new goldmakers?

Find the market that works for you, based on what you find enjoyable (I can't farm, I just can't, so I spend money on buying raw mats). Don't be discouraged if it seems like you aren't making much. Take some risks but don't go crazy - you never know, it may pay off big time in the end. 

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

Nope! Truthfully I've never used a gold-making guide. But... could I give a shout out to my husband? He got me started after all... :) 

What's your new goal, if any? 

Hitting gold-cap of course! I promised friends (and enemies), both of which have come with complaints about how many times they've been undercut, I would calm down once I got my dream mount - a Swift Spectral Tiger. 

- Eden, Sjögren - Windrunner

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Wow! All I can say is well done Eden! I don't think I've ever made that much gold so quickly even at the height of my gold making efforts. My server is almost dead in many respects too but the AH keeps plodding on! I'm really looking forward to Connected Realms in the hope of them revitalising Auction Houses everywhere!

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Hearthstone Beta Key Giveaway on AH Addict

You may have heard of this new Blizzard game called Hearthstone which is in closed Beta right now. I was lucky enough to be given a Hearthstone Beta Key early on but I've managed to get my sticky little paws on another one and as it's almost time for a 1st Birthday giveaway on my other blog - She Rides Dragons, I thought I'd pass on my own good luck & offer it to one of my loyal readers here or on my Dragons blog.

I can't believe it's be a full year already since my baby non-goldmaking blog was born. If you haven't popped over there for a peak, you're missing all my non-goldmaking adventure stories you know! I'm currently attempting to participate in the Alt Appreciation weeks but I'm slowly lagging behind. I keep my to-do lists over there as well & of course my pet battle stuff and anything else I fancy waffling on talking about.

My current addiction is Hearthstone and I have to say that at first I wasn't overly impressed. I've played Magic the Gathering for a few months now (thanks to Cold of Cold's Gold Factory for that addiction!) & Hearthstone just didn't seem as good - at first. But beware! There is still something very addictive about Hearthstone - whether it's the quicker games or the simpler interface, I don't know but I am definitely hooked!

So what do you have to do to get a chance at this Hearthstone Beta Key Giveaway then?

I thought I'd spread the love & give you several chances at it so all you have to do is:-

• be signed up for my newsletter (existing subscribers already included). Don't forget to click the confirmation email too otherwise you don't show up on my list management tool!

or

• follow me on Twitter @nevahaddict and retweet this post announcement (existing followers already included)

or

• share this post on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest or Stumbleupon using  #AHAGiveaway so I can track the shares

I'll be Stateside for Halloween and as She Rides Dragons is officially 1 year old on 1st November, I'm going to close entries at midnight 31st October, Eastern Standard Time (that's about 5am UK or 6-7am EU on 1st Nov).

I'll do an announcement post for Friday 1st November so the winner should have their Hearthstone Beta Key in time for the weekend! Good luck!

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Episode 15 Journal of Marcus Ty Podcast - Noodle Carts!

Fishing Boats in Zante

In a show full of giggles (from me) & corny jokes (from Marcus) we tried to cover the secondary professions this week. We talked about our week in WoW and some of the problems we've been having - Marcus finally found his Albatross but is still chasing his Noodle Cart and I can't use a glider to save my life! 

News from the Front is all about Connected Realms and Marcus got all techie, a bit of Blizzcon and the London Meet-up. Next we dived into cooking, fishing and archaeology - the whys and hows of making gold with secondary professions is one of the lesser talked about methods and we completely skipped First Aid. 

Marcus sidelined me a bit with his Alchemy section and then went all Alcheologist on me too! But I got my own back when I remembered the Pilgrims Festival right at the last minute and made him late for his lunch date with his wife! Oops!

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

• Noodles, Noodles!
• Our week in WoW - troubles with transport!
• News from the front - Connected Realms, Blizzcon & the London Meet-up
• The Endless Grind of the Timeless Isle
• Why level the secondary professions?
• Making Gold From Cooking and Fishing
• Archeology love it or hate it
• Markets of the week.

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
• Nev’s Iron Paw Shuffle
• London Meet-up
• Email Marcus at JournalofMarcusTy.com

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What's Been Selling This Week? 14th October Edition

After the disgraceful showing in my last weekly report, I knuckled down & got my crafters working again and as expected, my sales this week reflect exactly that! It just shows though that you can make some gold every week just by logging in and listing stuff. The point is to craft a bunch of stuff at one time so you don't have to craft every day. That's only if you want to tone down your goldmaking time of course! Otherwise the opposite is true - the more regularly you craft & list, it seems the more gold you make - I'm not saying bulk craft every day - that just isn't efficient but certainly restock on the fastest selling items. That's just common sense!

So as you can see from the first screenshot - I found myself a great deal on Borean Leather & got to work making Mammoth Mining Bags - I have about 30 in the Guild Bank now so I won't have to craft those for a while.

Mysterious Fortune Cards - yup - they are still selling & I'm still not barking them! I list about 20 singles, 10 x 5stack & 5 x10 stacks and just top up as and when. I list them for between 14 - 16 gold each when I don't have any competition and will go as low as 10 gold each when there is competition. You may remember I bought 1500 or so for 5g each a while back - I'm still selling my way through those but I knew it would take a while to recoup my investment.

It looks like people are getting bored with the Timeless Isle already and PvP crafted armor sales have improved dramatically. It probably helps that I've dropped my prices - not so much profit per item but with Exotic Leather so easily & cheaply available now, the 1000 gold plus prices felt like gouging & judging by the sales, PvP'ers either felt the same or couldn't afford those prices!

The tailored PvP items are also selling but again, prices are nowhere near what I think we'd all been hoping for. Having picked up most of my Windwool Cloth at around 1gold each though, even the 8 bolt PvP items still only have a crafting cost around 40gold so selling at 200gold or more is still a nice profit!

This week, for a change, I've included a screenshot of page 2 of the My Sales summary. Mike wrote in to ask what other stuff was selling at lower prices as he doesn't have a maxed character/profession yet. I'm not sure how much help this is Mike, but you can see that some of the 2nd page items are flips and some are lower level items. The level 83 & 84 Green armor market is still moving - I buy almost anything at around 25-30 gold and sell level 83 pieces for 175g and level 84 items for around 199g. Avoid the crafted items though - they just don't sell or have such good stats on them.

I dived back into the cut gems market this week too but I badly miscalculated my stock pile of gems pre-patch so I'm having to watch the prices like a hawk - I have plenty of Ore to prospect but I really don't want so many Common gems. I'm watching the Golden Lotus prices at the moment & transmuting Commons to Rares if the prices are right. The supply of uncut Rares is pretty low on my server at the moment with the Uncut gems selling for higher prices than many of the Cuts so I made an investment and bought out 90% of the Golden Lotus market so I have plenty to transmute. I'll let you know how that goes!

A few other bits and pieces moved this week too - the Hypnotic Dust seems to sell slowly but almost always for a great price. I've made a note to myself to look deeper at that - maybe buy up cheap greens to disenchant or look for cheap Cataclysm gems to make jewellry to disenchant. I thought I'd seen the last of those days!

Anyway, that's enough waffling from me - I think you get the picture though - a little bit of time & attention has tripled my sales this week from last week (I know, still not that amazing but it's a dying server!) - actually having the right stuff to sell makes all the difference so be casual, be a bit lazy if you want to but don't forget to do some work on your goldmaking!

Have a great week everyone - may the gold roll in for you all xxx

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Saturday Celebrations - Eevaine, Dreadmaul-Oceanic (Horde)

It's that time of week again - time to celebrate with another successful gold maker far across the seas this time - Eevaine of the Dreadmaul-Oceanic server. Eevaine mentions making gold makers cringe & I have to admit, cringe I did! I just cannot imagine doing that! (You'll have to read on to find out what! :P)

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.

I've had quite a few more submissions in now so this crazy idea of mine seems like it will run a while longer yet and if I get too many in, I'll probably post more than 1 a week. It just doesn't seem fair to make you all wait weeks to see your interview published!

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Hello,
I am an average progression raider and average gold-maker. My game time is split between raiding, farming, and gold-making. I'd like to take this opportunity to share a quick story that I imagine will make a lot of gold-makers cringe: 

I made it my goal to make one million gold without any auctioning addons.

Just so you can fully appreciate the pain of this, when Blizzard introduced transmog to the game at the end of Cata I was all over it. I was on Wowhead looking up where items dropped from and then I was out farming them for hours and days. Naturally I picked up duplicates, items I'd personally never mog, and other valuables. 150+ auctions of transmog items listed by hand. And I had a competitor. So that was 100+ auctions cancelled and reposted by hand. 

I sold all of the popular gem cuts two at a time with three big comepetitors and other dabblers. I recut them as soon as they sold. When I ran out, I went out to Tol Barad and did mining circuits whether my faction owned it or not. 

I sold flasks and Fortune Cookies often faster than I could ever hope to replenish them. And I sold fish. 

About six months later I hit my goal. I celebrated by downloading TSM and promptly setting it up SO THAT I WOULD NEVER HAVE TO LIST HUNDREDS OF TRANSMOG ITEMS BY HAND AGAIN. 

I began gold-making simply because I became frustrated one day that I only ever seemed to have a stagnant 30k. MoP wasn't far around the corner. When it came out, I wanted to be able to afford anything I wanted that came up on BMAH. And I have accomplished just that. I have bought a Plagued Proto (330k), an Onyxian Drake (380k), a Blue proto (50k), a Dragon Kite (100k), and various heroic pieces for myself and friends (~900k). Other hefty purchases include MoP trinkets at the start of the expansion (3 at 100k each) and a lovely Ghastly Charger for 400k. 

Currently, I make 10-20k a day, have a gold total of 1.6 million, and have spent... quite a lot. I work mainly with the raiders' market - selling gems, enchants, shoulder enchants, leg enchants, scopes, flasks, pots, belt buckles. Occasionally I sell bags and battle pets. And I am of course still selling transmog items. 

If I can make gold, surely anyone can. I just needed to understand a couple things first: don't undercut by a lot (1c is all that's necessary) and if it isn't selling it's most likely not because the price is too high, it is because you are undercut. 

My two current goals are to own a Corrupted Hippogryph (never any on my server's AH) and to goldcap Invincible on BMAH for my husband the day it comes up. 

Thanks to Shiftwarloc, who was my first goldmaking friend (I'm sorry for trolling you with the "I farm my own goods so I have no crafting cost lololol"), and Nev for having a friendly writing voice and creating this opportunity for those of us who don't have blogs. 

Eevaine the Undying
Holy/Shadow Priest
Dreadmaul-Oceanic (Horde) 

Update
I am happy to report that while a Corrupted Hippogryph still hasn't been on my AH in ages, someone popped up in trade yesterday selling one. Usually they're level ones from a website selling for real monies, but a quick shift-click showed me this seller was level 90. I immediately offered him 200k for it and am now the happy owner of a Corrupted Hippo. Just Invincible left now.

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Eevaine - thank you so much for your submission & you're right! It will make goldmakers everywhere cringe but it's also great to hear that it is possible to make a Million without using any addons! I got Auctioneer very early on in my WoW days purely because the standard AH interface was horrible. I still posted by hand though - it didn't have the auto-post function that TSM has.

I'm so pleased you finally got your Corrupted Hippogryph too - let us know when you get Invincible ok?

It's scary to think just how much gold-making has changed in the last 3 years, you young padawans just don't know how good you have it now! I'm just joking though - learning something new is always difficult, no matter how much us old-timers tell you it's easier these days. Should I add "get off my lawn" here?? lol

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What's Been Selling This Week? (Or Not!)

Chocolates to Cheer Me Up!

So what's been selling this last week - not much at all, if I'm honest! I feel I should be ashamed to show you my screenshot this week but hey, it is just a game after all! With the wipe on the Hearthstone Beta last week, I've found myself sucked into that big time - re-leveling all my decks to 10 and using some of the gold to actually try my hand at arena for new packs. I think I've managed to win 3 games in all my arena attemps so I have a lot to learn about deck building, that's for sure!

I haven't really been paying attention in WoW - just relisting what I have in my bags & slowly emptying the junk out of my overflowing Guild Bank.I have kept up with some of my profession cooldowns but not all of them - mainly the Engineering one because I really want the Sky Golem - I'm still days behind the curve though - the Sky Golems should be hitting the EU Auction Houses tomorrow I think & I have only 15 or so Jard's Peculiar Energy Sources so I still have 15 more to make :(

As you can see from my screenshot, the Darkmoon Faire is in town & the Treatise on Strategy was a random find in my guild bank - just as well really, given how bad the rest of my sales have been! I promised myself I'd do better this week too but it's now Wednesday & I'm only just doing a post I normally do on Mondays - can you guess what next weeks screen shot will look like? lol

I am going to try & do some crafting tonight though which should help a bit. I haven't been buying materials either but as I did stockpile a fair bit before patch 5.4, that shouldn't be too much of a problem. The Timeless Isle quickly lost it's appeal for me - I only go there to skin now but Exotic Leather is so cheap on the Auction House, it's almost easier to just buy what I need!

Having said all that & having seemingly lost the will to play much right now, I did have an idea for a mini project that might help. I'm going to start it & see if I can drum up some enthusiasm in myself before I publicize it though - I really don't want to get 3 or 4 days in & decide it was a terrible idea!

I guess it's time to dig the alts out and have a look at all the stuff I missed whilst rushing to level 90 on my Main. There's bound to be some gold making along the way too though, isn't there?

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Saturday Celebrations - Just Mark

Celebrate!

This is the 2nd Milestone Interview and I'd like to thank everyone who's sent them in so far. We have a few really interesting posts to look forward to and this week, we have Mark's story. He didn't include character or server details so it's just Mark :)

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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Milestone amount?

250,000 

What got you started on making gold and when?

I got started making gold a couple of years ago. I’d been playing WoW for a few years and was starting to get bored with the game. I like questing and doing a lot of things solo. I tried doing some LFD but found most of the groups either were in a race to get it finished or very selfish. That’s why I don’t do raids or dungeons except in guild groups or with some guildies. I was noticing however that there were people barking in trade for items for a lot of gold. I mean who would spend 20k on a mount? My level 85 only had 15k and I was very careful with my gold. 

So that peaked my interest and I was starting to follow (lurk) the Gold Queen and she announced on her blog about a gold run that Jonathan was doing and it was going to cost some real money to get involved but I figured that for 30 days getting that much instruction (30 days of videos) and concentrating on doing nothing but making gold would be worth it. That is where I really learned how to make gold I didn’t win of course but I did respectfully well. 21,000 gold in 30 days starting on a new server with a level 1 toon and not being part of any guild. 

Which markets have you concentrated on, if any?

I haven’t really concentrated on any specific ones, but I craft and my goldmaker that reached 250k is a blacksmith. So I’ve been concentrating lately on the PvP gear (which I don’t PvP so I’m not sure if I’m getting the right gear out there but I make everything) and what pushed me over the 250k mark was one of the Reborn weapons. Otherwise I put up everything that I get in questing that I can’t use on the AH and I’m very patient. 

Biggest successes or biggest failures?

My biggest success is just the change in mental attitude toward what an item is worth. I learned that an item that can be purchased from a vendor for silver can be flipped on the AH for 50g. 

My biggest failure I think came when Chaos Orbs began to be able to be traded. They were going for around 400-500g each on my server and I saw a stack being sold for 100g each. That’s a good deal! I bought it and then the market price went down to about 50g each. I lost about 1 or 2k and I know there are others out there with bigger losses but for me, only having around 30k that was a big loss. 

Advice for new goldmakers?

Check The Undermine Journal for items and on their front page is a blog roll. Read those blogs they will have nuggets of advice that you can learn from. 

Don’t sell things straight to vendor unless it’s grey and even then there are some grey items that people will buy because of transmog those are mainly armor pieces. If you’re not sure check The Undermine Journal and see if it’s been sold on the AH on your server if so then you might be safe to sell it on the AH. 

Find a market and then fill it’s need. Be patient sometimes things don’t sell in a couple of days. 

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

Auction House Addict, the Gold Queen (now retired), Just My Two Copper, Hayden Hawk, The Goldrun (which really got me started), all the fine blogs that come across The Undermine Journal. 

What’s my new goal, if any?

I was thinking that 500k should be my next goal but that seems so far away at this point that I’ll make my next goal 300k. My ultimate goal is to reach gold cap, but I need smaller goals to reach my bigger goals.

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So there you go - another gold making Milestone Interview for your reading pleasure! The thing I like most about these kinds of interviews is just how different we all are. There are the basic methods for making gold, sure but what we do with that knowledge & how we adapt it for our own servers or playstyle is what makes every story different.

I have 2 more Interviews submitted but I know there are more of you out there - come on, tell us a little bit about your methods, your style & most important of all - your successes! We want to read about them & buy you a beer too! 

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The Marcus Expanse! - Ep 14 Journal of Marcus Ty Podcast

This episode was a little off the cuff as life hasn't been playing nice with us but we had a lot of fun, talking about our latest adventures on the Timeless Isle and what we've been up to in the Auction House.We're already thinking & talking about making gold in the lull until the next patch or expansion.

Learn how to cross the Marcus Expanse (and what it is!) and have a giggle at our expense with our failures in game and how sad I am for New Year's Eve. I also explain why I'm only taking one alt to the Timeless Isle for now and Marcus called me lazy!

As usual, you can find the show on iTunes or Stitcher radio or if you prefer, you can play it directly from Marcus's website

Show Notes - Episode 14 Journal of Marcus Ty

• Welcome to the Pig & Whistle, Stormwind.
• Our week in WoW - real life can suck!
• I launch my Milestone Interviews (Saturday Celebrations - 2nd one tomorrow!)
• No fly-zone on the Timeless Isle
• Hints and tips when questing on the Timeless Isle.
• News from the front
• The EU Hearthstone Beta - I got lucky!
• Auction House Armageddon - Marcus is looking forward to Connected Realms!
• Making gold in the quiet times
• Markets of the week.

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!

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