Saturday Celebrations - Lindrayn, Twisting Nether-US

This week, we have a tale of millions from Lindrayn on Twisting Nether-US server. I have to apologise here now, I missed this email a few weeks ago so it's a bit late being published! I'm so sorry, Lindrayn.

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 few months so come on - tell us how you've been doing it! 

I'm running low on submissions so if you'd like to see this weekly story continue, I'm going to need more stories!

I try to reply to each submission quickly so if I don't reply - poke me again as I may have missed it or leave a comment on a post - those I definitely see more easily. Now that AH Addict is getting more popular, the email address is busy with spammers coming out of the woodwork so I do sometimes miss things :(

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What is your milestone amount?
My first million

When did you start?
I started getting serious on a whim during Firelands in July 2011. I had heard about the “obsidium shuffle” on making gold and I had a max level Jewelcrafter, a max level Enchanter and a max level Alchemist so I thought “why not?” I bought my first load of ore for 30g a stack and I probably bought 50 stacks. After processing it and cutting gems I doubled my investment by the next day. It all went downhill from there. 

Did you set a goal?
My goal was 1 million gold in one year. I barely made the goal. I started with 70k in July 2011 and by the end of June 2012 I was sitting at 960k. I had a friend loan me the last 40k just so I could screenshot it and celebrate (took me 4 days to pay him back)

First tips & tricks?
For me, its frequent undercutting. Be bold about it. If the market dips too low, don’t be afraid to be aggressive and buy someone out and reset the market. The gem market has been ruthless at times on my server. Also, the phone app is a must. It allows me to check auctions every hour or two while I’m out and about. 

When did you start a banker alt?
I don’t really have one. I moved my main toon, Edrisa, to Proudmoore late last summer and this toon was originally intended as a bank alt. As you can see I’ve made it a full fledged alt that I raid on too.

Best market over the years?
Jewelcrafting by far. I would say 80% of my wealth has come from gems.

Favorite niche market?
I dabble in inscription. I picked it up at the beginning of MoP just for the 476 caster staff. I make a fairly decent amount of gold off shoulder enchants and occasionally dabble in glyphs. I just don’t have the patience to do it full time.

Do you farm materials?
Never. Early on I had some supply problems with herbs to transmute gems, but near the end of my first year I got rid of all my gathering professions. I buy 100% of my materials from the AH or private farmers.

How much playtime devoted to gold making?
I devote probably an hour a day to managing my auctions. 2-3 times a week I spend a couple hours processing ore to make gems, rings, and enchants. When patches first drops its not unusual for me to spend twice that managing things.

Professions
Jewelcrafting, Enchanting, Alchemy, Inscription.

Flipping
I make a moderate amount of gold flipping transmog gear, mounts, and pets. Recently I’ve found its profitable to buy cheap pets on Proudmoore and sell then for 2-3 times as much on Twisting Nether.

Reward yourself for reaching goal?
Therein lies my weak point! I tend to spend WAY too much gold on things I want. When MoP launched, I think I spent nearly 200k gold just buying myself gear off the BMAH and from players. 

I’ve bought many mounts for 70-90k off the BMAH and I can’t resist buying mini-pets. I would likely already have my new goal of 2 million gold if I would stop spending it on big ticket items. But hey, what good is the gold if you can’t get what you want!

What's your new goal, if any?
With me moving my druid to Proudmoore, my new goal is to cap on both servers. When I transferred my druid, I had just over 1 million gold. I transferred 920k to Proudmoore and that left me a nest egg of 100k on Twisting Nether to bounce back from. 

Since August, I have turned that 100k back in to 350k. I have lost gold on Proudmoore but I’ve also bought easily 150k in gear over there to raid with. I’m sitting at 870k there. So right now I’m sitting at just over 1.2 million and I am shooting to make it 2 million by the launch of the next expansion.

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A perfect example of one of my newbie tips - a copper saved is a copper earned! If you want to build your gold stash more quickly, then you have to stop buying yourself luxuries! I'm a fine one talking though - I hit my million as Lindrayn was getting started and I still haven't hit my 2nd Million! I do have a fine collection of mounts and pets though so I don't care!

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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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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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What's Been Selling This Week - Patch 5.4 First Report

As promised - my first proper weekly sales report since Patch 5.4 arrived and I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed! I've heard/read so many stories & tweets about large amounts of gold rolling in on these big patches that this report seems just a little lacklustre in comparison. Having said that, my server is definitely low population on the Alliance side so I guess it's not so bad really!

I've learned a few lessons too - I wrote about the new Noodle Carts & Cooking Recipes but in my rush to get my Leatherworker & Engineer maxed, I completely forgot to stock up on food stuffs! I also didn't dive as deeply into Glyphs or Starlight Ink as I should have so I'm playing catch up on those too. The good news is though, herb prices seem to be falling a bit so although I'm doing a lot of milling again, at least I'm getting my inks cheaper than I would have previously!

I did however, stockpile a fair bit of Living Steel and as you can see, the Living Steel Belt Buckles are flying off the shelf as expected - as are the various Shoulder Inscriptions. Gems are doing ok too although the prices are swinging high & low on many cuts. It's as if people are still listing them at pre-patch prices instead of making a killing on all these new armor items that need gemming! This was another market I underestimated material quantities for - I think I got complacent with the amount of Ghost Iron Ore I had but forgot to prospect much of it!

The Crafted Malevolent PvP items are moving too - albeit much slower than the older Crafted Dreadful gear but I'd take a guess that most buyers are over on the Timeless Isle picking up the free loot there. Once the shine wears off that, I'm hoping people will turn to PvP & buy some of this gear. I'm still doing the daily cooldown on my Leatherworkers, Tailor & Blacksmith - I'll keep the AH stocked with at least one piece of each pattern I learn if I have enough materials.

One thing I just noticed I have't done is to make any leg armors! I'll have to fix that tonight. The Tailoring Spellthreads is a market I haven't touched - my Tailor is still level 85 and apparently I need Honoured with the Golden Lotus to get the Epic patterns - I guess I'll have to add that to my growing to-do list!

And I couldn't finish a weekly summary without my two old reliable markets! Yup, Mysterious Fortune Cards & Mammoth Mining Bags are still selling well enough to stay in my top sellers list, even with a little competition on both!

So for this coming week, I'll be prospecting & milling what I should have done before the patch hit & hopefully as people continue to gear up alts, I won't have missed those markets too much! I'm running around the isle on my Paladin & my DK but I think I'm missing something. It's Monk Week over on Laeleiweyn's Alt Appreciation Week so I'll be leveling my first Monk a bit too this week. You can read more Alt Appreciation posts from me over on my other, more general WoW blog if you'd like - She Rides Dragons.

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What's Been Selling This Week? 1st Sept Edition

Here we go again - another week's worth of sales and a few changes to my usual top sellers too. My server has been marked as 'New Players' for a few weeks now & I'm definitely seeing more people in Stormwind & Ironforge although whether that is the new players or returning players in time for patch 5.4, I don't know!

My sales have doubled over the last 2 weeks which is nice especially as I haven't been crafting or selling the Leather or Mail PvP gear. I did break down & make a few of the Cloth PvP items though - I have so much cheap Windwool Cloth that it doesn't matter if they don't sell before the patch as the Ethereal Shards they disenchant into will be almost as valuable after the patch!

The Hypnotic Dust was a lovely bonus - I found a few hundred Cataclysm uncommon gems in my Alchemists bank when I was clearing out so I made jewelry & disenchanted it all! The Misthide & Stormscale gear is what I made from leveling my Leatherworker last week so I'm already in profit there now over the leveling cost and she hasn't even started on the main reason I created her! I can't wait for the patch to arrive - I'm really looking forward to reaping the rewards from the Leather & Mail PvP markets!

I mentioned in last weeks report that I had bought a shedload of Mysterious Fortune Cards and many sold as you can see in the screenshot but I've been fighting off low priced competition again. The guy I bought the shedload from said he was quitting but less than 10 days later & he has 40 stacks back on the AH at 8g a piece. I refuse to buy him out again of course but it is slowing down my own higher price sales. I'm undercutting him by 1 copper & burying his auctions under 100 singles at a time! Every time he barks his cheap cards, mine sell! Ok I'm not making the 9g a card profit I would do otherwise but I get the feeling this guy isn't going to let me have my market back so I'll take 3g profit & let him do all the work!

What I did do though was buy up all his Starlight Inks so whilst he's playing in the Card market, I've been selling the Shoulder inscriptions. With a basic cost of about 60g, I'm making between 100 & 200 gold per piece so that almost makes up for the loss of Mysterious Fortune Card sales! I may seem nice but this guy is going to learn not to piss off Nev! lol

Gems have been dribbling out the door - someone crashed the market on Friday so I didn't bother listing over most of the weekend. The price had recovered last night though so hopefully when I log in shortly, I'll have a nice little pile of gold to collect!

Mammoth Mining Bags are still selling regularly and the Titansteel is too - it is a slow mover though & now I have my own Engineer, I'm going to keep the bit I've got left. I've been buying up any & all the cheap Exotic Leather & Magnificent Hides I can get my sticky little paws on - I still don't think I have enough but I'm drowning in Ghost Iron Ore & Windwool Cloth so I really hope those markets pan out as expected in patch 5.4!

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What's Been Selling This Week? 26th August Edition

What a wild ride it's been this week! Not that my sales really show it but I made a couple of great deals early in the week & they should start paying off over the next week or so. I also found a gold mine in one of my banks so all in all, it's been a pretty good week!

Over the last few weekly reports, I've been banging on about Mysterious Fortune Cards and oh look! there they are again at the top of my earnings list! This week though, I've had a lot of competition from 2 people selling them at 7-8g a piece so to start the week, I just slowed down & thought I'd wait them out. Well, until I saw that one of them was trying to offload all his stock at 6g each in the trade channel! I quickly logged a different alt and whispered him - he had 1600 cards. I hesitated so he dropped his price to 5g each at which point I snapped them up! He also offered me the Starlight Ink he had so I grabbed a couple hundred of those too - at 20g each which is less than 50% of the current market price. I've been selling the shoulder inscription scrolls quite well so I thought I'd soon shift the inks too.

By Wednesday evening, the other cheap MFC guy had sold out or gone AFK for a while so I listed 400 cards in various stack sizes & actually barked a couple of times in trade. You can see the results in the screenshot - all 400 sold by the next morning at 16g each! Happy Nev that day.

I've also been doing a bit of prospecting & gem cutting - now that I'm using TSM2, I seem to have got the bug again - I think the challenge of making it work has given me the spark back for now. My server is still slow though so I'm not shifting gems at any great pace - I'm hoping the Connected Realms will help to fix that though!

I've also been picking up more & more of the 83/84 MoP Green Armor - buying any below 50g and reselling them for 199g or 225g. The usual Mammoth Mining Bags & Netherweave bags have been selling - although Netherweave Cloth seems to be getting more expensive these days. I can wait though - I'll just snatch the really cheap stuff & make bags in batches when I remember.

So what's this goldmine I found in my Rogue's bank? Cataclysm uncommon gems - 100's of them I'd totally forgotten about! I popped over the the Auction House to check the price of Hypnotic Dust. At 8-10g a piece, I decided it was worth the time to convert all those gems to rings & necklaces to disenchant. Above you can see some of the result - almost 1400g in one evening and I still have about 10 stacks of Dust to sell! That was a nice little bonus this week.

As an update to yesterdays Leveling Leatherworking post, I can now report that the enchanting materials I got from disenchanting all the low level stuff has netted about 2700g so far and the MoP green armor which I decided to sell has netted about 1300g so far. After an initial outlay of about 4200g to buy all the leather I needed, I've regained about 4000g so far and I still have some materials & armor pieces left to sell. I think it's just about paid for itself already you know :)  Now if I can just do the same with Engineering I'll be really happy!

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What's Been Selling This Week? 18th August Edition

Keep It Varied!

Just a few days late this week with the post and the screenshot is from 19th so just a day late with that! Don't think it would have made much difference & my addon is set for 7 days so it still only shows a week's worth of transactions! I do have a very good excuse though - I spent a huge chunk of Sunday installing TSM2 & reworking all my auctioning & crafting groups. It was kind of nerve-racking but with the help of Phat Lewt's video series, I quickly got the basics sorted out. He covers all the modules, each has it's own video & he's kept the videos to around 7 minutes each - perfect for me - all the info without time to get too confused or bored!

So this week, I'm finally seeing some different items in the top section of my sales list - I've stopped making the leather & mail PvP items and have almost sold out of those now but instead I'm cutting gems & making some enchant scrolls. I did pick up a boatload of very cheap Windwool Cloth though so I have made a few of the Cloth PvP items - just to keep the gold flowing!

But the big seller this week is Mysterious Fortune Cards yet again! Until last night, anyway - Monday evening I did a deal with a player & bought 2000 MFC's from him for 5g a piece, knowing I was selling them fairly easily at 15g & I wouldn't have to mill for ages yet! Then last night, a different player decided to drop the market down to 8g a piece & list 100's of them. Now I could easily buy him out too but I reckon expecting these guys to stay out of the market would be pushing my luck so I'll just hang on to them until my competitors get bored of milling! I did manage to shift 3-400 before they dropped the price though so that'll show up in next weeks post I reckon!

One nice side effect of all that milling though is the production of Starlight Ink as a by-product. I've turned those into the 4 types of Shoulder Inscriptions & they are selling nicely too. I've not been paying attention to my scribe so I don't know if that's the best use for them but for now, it'll do!

I wrote a post a while ago about Titansteel and as you can see, I moved a few bars again this week. They've been dribbling out in 1's & 2's but nowhere near as fast as I'd hoped. Having said that, my server is still pretty dead, I think I'll hang on to them until the Connected Realms thing happens after patch - more people using the same Auction House should shift things in general, I hope.

I'm still learning new gem cuts on my Jewelcrafter but I'm cutting & selling gems too. I haven't started major prospecting yet though - my stash of Ghost Iron Ore isn't going anywhere for a long while yet so I'll prospect as the mood takes me or I run out of gems to cut! It's nice to see some gems making it to the top of my sales list though - Haven't seen that in a long while!

Had a run on Netherweave Bags this week too - I had picked up a load of Netherweave Cloth for around 3g a stack & I finally got around to converting it to bags last week. Cloth is back up to 15g a stack now & the bags are around 18g - just not worth the effort this week so I'll do my usual and wait patiently for the prices to fall again!

And that's about it for this week - next week's post will be the first full week of using TSM2 to craft & create auctions. I kind of like it already but I have a lot of tweaking of groups and operations to do yet so it will be interesting to see if there's any effect on my sales report next time!

Have a great week y'all :)

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What's Been Selling This Week? 11th August Edition

Yet another week of slacking here at Casa Nev & no good excuses either - unless you count my dearest getting me hooked on the crack-game that is Candy Crush! It turns out I'm a lot more competitive than I realised and getting ahead of my Facebook friends & staying ahead of my fella has become addictive!

But I did manage to branch out a little this week so although my overall sales are pretty dismal, there is hope on the horizon for 3 new markets! As you can see from the screenshot, Mysterious Fortune Cards are still selling well & as a by-product of those, I have a few stacks of Starlight Ink accumulating. I decided to try the various Shoulder Enchants and have been pleasantly surprised by those selling well. I tried selling the basic inks too - the prices are such that 3 for the inscription is roughly equal to 3 raw ink - but none sold so I guess I'm not the only one trying to use them up somehow!

I also dipped a little deeper into the cut gem market - still no huge volume - either posted or in sales but a wider variety of cuts sold this week. Prices aren't too horrible but they're not great either - luckily the bots seem to be back & Ghost Iron Ore prices are staying around the 40g mark. I just need cheap Golden Lotus now to transmute some of the piles of rare gems that are building up. I could do the whole Jewelcrafter/Disenchanting thing but for the moment, I really can't be bothered!

Talking of Enchanting - I actually made some scrolls this week & they've been selling too! Again, I didn't dive in deep & the prices fluctuate wildly so I still have some learning to do in this market. I also had a couple of posts ideas so watch for those in the next few days!

In other news, I've almost stopped selling the PvP crafted gear - mostly because I'm trying to build up my stock of Magnificent Hides and because with patch 5.4 seemingly so close now, I've noticed sales slowing anyway. I really don't want to be left with a lot of this PvP gear once the new stuff is released! The Tailored PvP gear hasn't been selling for such good prices so I'd stopped that a week or two ago as well.

And that's about it for last week really. The Mammoth Mining Bags are selling but slowly & I've snagged a few of the level 83/84 green armour items for less than 25g so those are showing up on the bottom of the list too. I did make up 60+ Netherweave Bags on Sunday so I'd take a wild guess & say they'll be showing up on next weeks report!

Have a good week everyone - enjoy your gold :)

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What's Been Selling? 4th August Edition

In last week's report, I gave myself a mini to-do list which included expanding my markets into gems & enchants. I hit a small snag with enchants though but I have been doing all my profession cooldowns & that meant I had some extra gem cuts to choose from when hitting the cut gem market. I'm still working out which ones sell the best but as you can see from the screenshot, sales of 4 Brilliant & 7 Bold Primordial Rubies this week are not going to make me rich just yet!

My old faithful market at the moment is Mysterious Fortune Cards yet again - they have been flying off the shelf & I've been having a great deal of trouble keeping up with demand even though I'm not even barking them in trade! I've found that 15g95s is a sweet spot price for my server so I have to keep my herb costs as low as possible. With milling, ink crafting then card crafting, it's quite a time intensive product so if I can keep my herb/ink costs down to 3-4g per card, it makes it a little more worthwhile!

The price you see in the screenshot is a combination price - I sell my cards for around the 16g mark but in 1's, 5's & 10's and I don't bark them in trade at all. So the 77 stacks sold is a mix of the various stack sizes & the price is averaged across those sales too. Just in case you're reading it wrong! I'd hate to see someone try to sell cards for 49g each these days - although it's a nice memory :)

My Sales Addon Screen

The rest of my top sales are, as usual the various leather, mail & cloth crafted PvP items. I have been slacking on my Tailor though so not many cloth items up there. I'm also not selling Living Steel Belt Buckles anymore - the price is dropping for starters but also I'm saving up my Living Steel for Patch 5.4. Even if I don't manage to level my Engineering in time (for the Sky Golem Mount), I'm pretty sure the demand for Living Steel will increase so I'd rather wait for now & take larger profits later. I'm still watching the market though & I do post a few Living Steels when the price is high enough! I can't give up all that profit now after all!

So in this coming week, I plan on continuing my daily cooldowns & getting more into the cut gem market. Once I get my head around enchanting, I'll be throwing some scrolls up there too but Enchanting is the one profession I've never really managed to do well with! Let's see how that goes this week shall we? Oh & the other thing I didn't manage to do was get my Warrior out of the city to Itoka for the Lightning Steel Ingot recipe so that's still on the board for this week now :)

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20 Days of Gold Making - Day 6 Best Market

The topic for Day 6 of my 20 Days of Gold Making is "Which market has made you the most gold over the years?". This would appear to be a fairly easy question to answer but if you haven't managed to track the sales data, you just have to go with your gut reaction.

For me, I have 2 markets that did superbly well for me during Cataclysm, glyphs & gems. Unfortunately, my PC hiccupped & I lost all my sales data so I've never been able to see which of the two markets was actually the best one.

I didn't really start gold making until just before Cataclysm arrived in December 2010 & by January 2011, I had added Jewelcrafting to my maxed professions list & also added Trade Skill Master to my addon list. Both these actions boosted my gold making in a big way - suddenly listing 100's of glyphs was easy & crafting only the most profitable ones using TSM to tell me which they were, also increased my profits.

The gem market was a new one for me but the Elementium/Obsidium Shuffle was in full swing & the vendor price of the common gems was un-nerfed at that point so I went into full scale gem production, transmuting to higher quality gems whenever possible & selling stacks of common gems for the daily jewelcrafting quests. Even after the vendor price was nerfed, I still made good money by making jewelry to disenchant & then either selling the enchanting materials or making enchant scrolls.

At the height of my glyphing/shuffling period, I was easily pulling 7-12k out of the mailbox each day, just from gems & glyphs. If I had to guess at a split between the two, I'd say 55/45% between glyphs & gems but that is really just a gut instinct.

Now in Mists of Pandaria, neither market is doing much at all. Glyph sales have dropped in quantity & prices have fallen dramatically too. Gems seem to be hit & miss as well although I am selling a few here & there. At the moment, I'm still too busy doing dailies, leveling, dungeons & scenarios to really get into a proper gold making routine but part of my lack of enthusiasm for getting the gold machine rolling again is the sheer lack of sales on anything I have tried so far! Maybe I'm not seeing results because I'm not paying close attention but it all seems very hit & miss right now.

Hopefully things will change as everything settles down but with the new patches coming out so fast, the markets are in an almost constant state of flux - a good market one day will bottom out the next day & be back again next week! Don't get me wrong, I am not moaning about the good old days of easy gold! The truth is, there is so much gold to be made from dailies, questing & of course the new Tiller farms that I'm not feeling the urge to dominate markets any more. I'm enjoying the challenge of making gold in this mobile market but until I get all my girls maxed, gold is definitely taking more of a back seat. I still can't resist the Auction House though so leveling is taking longer than planned!

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Weekly Sales Update

© Nev 2004 - Calm, Tranquil Dawn

It's been another lazy, slow week at the AH for me - I've been levelling my hunter with a guildie (or should I say, trying to keep up) & I finally got my 1 year old warrior to level 80. I have made a little more effort with rare gems this week but the whole sense of urgency to cancel/relist multiple times a day has definitely gone on vacation!

Having said that, almost 25k income is pretty good, I think. I've done a little prospecting as my Inferno Ruby & Ember Topaz stocks have almost disappeared & I even had to transmute some Nightstones to get more Demonseyes!

The meta gem cuts have leapt up in price this week so I made some more of those with my alchemist & cleared down a few stacks of the uncommon gems in the process. This was probably a good thing as it made space in my banks - I picked up around 250 stacks of Elementium Ore this week at around 35-39g a stack.

Why did I buy all that? Well, the price for Elementium Ore has been fairly steady at 65g or more so I wanted to clear the cheap stuff off the AH before everyone decided that was the price to list at! By trying to keep the price high-ish, I'm hoping my gem competition will have smaller profit margins and/or be eating into their stockpiles.

This is a bit of a new direction for me - I used to only buy what I knew I could process quickly but I was subject to the same price fluctuations as everyone else. This way, I know I have cheap ore that I can prospect, smelt & use in Blacksmith stuff or turn around & sell at the higher price! As you can see below - I did sell 50 stacks & pretty much doubled my money on them too.

Other odd bits from my sales data shows that I finally managed to sell my first ever top end enchant - Windwalk for 1551g - disappointing but still a small profit. The prices for maelstrom crystals have dropped to around the 100g mark so the prices of these enchants have dropped too & I've had this scroll listed for almost 3 weeks. I don't think I'll be making many more of these, that's for sure!

The rest of my top sellers are mainly rare gems as I would expect - I've completely left the glyph market other than a few stragglers still to sell. Other stuff that has been selling regularly includes the Rich Purple Shirts (78g each), Mechanical Squirrel Boxes (35g each) & Pet Bomblings (135g each).

With all the levelling I've been doing, I've also picked up a fair few bits & pieces to sell - chilled meat, rhino meat, frostweave cloth, green quality armour as well as lower level cloth like wool & silk from one of my lowbie alts.

One thing I did do this week was to clear the AH of a lot of very low level green armour & weapons - why? Well, Khalior did a great series of posts this last week or so about how a social member of raiding guild can contribute & make a bit of money too (although that's not the main point of it). The one I picked up on, was the Guild achievement for disenchanting items. I set my buyout price at 1g per item & have been checking sporadically for items to disenchant. Not only is the achievement counter climbing nicely but as he points out, I am making a bit of gold at it too & hopefully, by buying the low level crafted items, I am helping build gold for new players just levelling their first professions!

So that's my week - lots of actually playing out in the world & a bit of AH'ing. I still feel a little 'lost' & directionless but I needed the break. This coming week, I'm hoping to get my hunter or warrior to 85 (maybe both, who knows!) & start running some dungeons with them.

I also have most of the herbs needed to level a second alchemist which will be my Hunter so it will be interesting to see how the levelling products sell. I'll be taking notes as usual & reporting back here eventually!

What's Been Selling This Week?

© Nev 2009 WW2 Spitfire Aerial Display

It's been a pretty good week for me, this week. I've dipped a bit further into the cut rare gems market & it's showing up nicely in my weekly sales list. Even better from a liquid gold point of view, comparing the sales income with my increase in liquid gold figure & I've only spent 2580g this week! That gives me a beautiful profit figure of 66800g-ish so I'm flying high & on a roll!

So you may be wondering how come I've spent so little this week? Well, I was doing a lot of shuffling for enchanting materials at the start of the year but the prices for rares, either cut or uncut were so low, I decided to hang on to them. Now the prices have risen, almost all those cut gems have come from my various banks!

Also this week, I was asked to join some guildies in 5v5 arena for a laugh. They want me to bring my rogue who has been sitting around since she hit 85. Off I went to various gear optimiser websites to see what I needed & then came back & made her the Brazen Elementium Medallion. Unfortunately I forgot to check what she was already wearing! It seems she hadn't been sitting around the whole time since 85, she must have sneaked out & done a dungeon or two somewhere along the line because the neck piece she had was better.

Glyphs have continued to be a strong seller even if the gem sales are pushing them off the first page of my sales figures. I've also sold a few more pieces of the Bloodied Leather pvp set although competition has set in so I may leave them to fight it out for a while now.

Some of the lower level leatherworking items have been selling too - 3 sets of Barbaric Bracers, 2 Gem-Studded Leather Belts & a Black Dragonscale Breastplate have all sold as has the masses of Chocolate Cookies I baked up earlier in the week.

Going forward, I'm almost out of Inferno Rubies & Carnelians so I guess it's time to start prospecting again. Luckily I picked up 200 stacks of Elementium Ore at 25g a stack yesterday (muhahahaha!). I'll carry on glyphing too especially as I have Jewelcrafting & Inscription on the same character.

I'm not sure I could face cancel/reposting gems & glyphs if they weren't on the same character so if you haven't got your professions set yet, that might be something to think about although it isn't the optimal combination, to be fair.

Most bloggers suggest jewelcrafting & enchanting on the same character so you can disenchant the jewellery you make without using the mailbox. The only reason I didn't do that is timing & space - I already had inscription on this alt & enchanting maxed on another. When I needed to add jewelcrafting to my profession list, the only spot was on my scribe so that's where it went! I like happy accidents :-D

The Second Dumbest Server on WoW maybe?

There has been a bit of a theme running through the gold blogs over the last couple of days, but Wes at CappedbyCata said it best in his I think I play on dumbest server in wow post! I logged on yesterday evening to find the AH on my server flooded by stacks of Obsidium Ore at just 50g per stack. I immediately bought 40 stacks before getting cold feet as I couldn't see the end of the listings! I passed word to my hubby who took his fill then logged an alt to go & let my guildies know. Two of my closest friends in guild managed to take their fill, as did several other guildies that I know about. Happy days all round then!

So why is my server possibly the second dumbest server on WoW? Well this morning I woke up extra early (about 6am ugh!) so I logged on as it's something quiet to do without disturbing sleeping beauty next door! What did I see? Over 250 listings of Obsidium Ore at less than 2.5g each! Luckily they weren't all in singles otherwise I may have passed but I just couldn't resist! I am now the proud owner of 90 stacks of Obsidium Ore at an average price of 50g per stack. I took out all the auctions below one guy who had his listed at 6.50 per ore & promptly relisted maybe 30 stacks in various multiples at 6.45g per ore.

 Besides watching the AH like a hawk for the next few hours, I foresee a LOT of prospecting, crafting & d/e'ing in my near future. I'll try to keep detailed notes and report back soon. It does follow nicely from my Obsidium Ore & Prospecting post and also I'll be keeping an eye on Mageshadow's post on Making Gold with Obsidium just to make sure I don't miss any tricks.

Obsidium Ore & Prospecting - sort of an experiment!

A slight change of direction for this post today - I'm still plodding along with my lil' auction house alt but I've spent most of my WoW time this week levelling Jewelcrafting on my level 75 DK & putting a few points on her Inscription too. Just out of curiosity, I kept a log of results from prospecting Obsidium Ore so following on from Smudger's 24hr Elementium Ore Project, here are my results so far.

I haven't been able to max her JC to 525, she's sitting at 501 for now whilst I get some of the daily tokens. I've been stockpiling most of the gems from this prospecting for 3 reasons - a) prices are ridiculously low at the moment for almost all cuts, b) I'm in no rush to get the capital invested back just yet & c) I can cut anything other than the standard trainer learned cuts!

I've bought 1120 ores (56 stacks) at various prices over the last week or so, with a total outlay of 3940g (3.52g per ore average). Results so far :-

Carnelian - 48 (aver price 22g) - 14%
Zephyrite - 50 (aver price 20g) - 15%
Jasper - 73 (aver price 12g) - 22%
Alicite - 45 (average price 13g) - 13% 
Nightstone - 60 (aver price 55g) - 18%
Hessonite - 60 (aver price 33g) - 18%

Inferno Ruby - 4
Ocean Sapphire - 4
Dream Emerald - 1
Amberjewel - 0
Demonseye - 2
Ember Topaz - 3

What I find interesting is that the two most expensive uncommon gems have the highest proc rate in my sample. I'm going to keep my results going and see if it evens out over time. I hope not because this is the good news :)

The other snippet that may be of interest to number crunchers is that I usually prospect just 100 or 200 at a time. These have produced 31/30/62/31/61/62/30/29 total uncommon gems per session - very consistent numbers I think.

I've sent 9 of each to my alchemist to transmute to Shadowspirit Diamonds, made some Carnelian Spikes for skill points & to sell and made a bunch of the Alicite pendants & Jasper rings to be disenchanted & turned into much more profitable scrolls.

As I said above, I'm holding on to most of these gems but even at these silly low gem prices, the uncommon gems alone are worth approx 8800g, a possible profit of 4860g before taking the rare gems into consideration. If I take care when timing my auctions, I've seen Nightstones at 80g & Hessonite at 45g, even Zephyrite jumps to 30g on occasion so the possibility exists to increase that raw profit quite considerably. Now these are the sort of numbers I like!

I haven't prospected much Elementium yet but I'm keeping a tally for that & also for any herb milling I do. The herb prices are still very high though so I'm being much more cautious there - I think one expensive habit is quite enough for the time being, thank you very much!