Saturday Celebrations! - A New Gold Making Community Idea

Following on from the amazing response I had to my 20 Days of Gold Making back in January, I've had another brainwave! A long while ago, when I was first starting out in making gold, I regularly used to read the milestone interviews over at Warcraft Econ website and they were often my inspiration. I longed to join the Millionaires Club so I put off writing my 500k interview. Then when I finally did hit my million, a computer hiccup meant I lost all my sales data so I never actually got around to writing my Interview! Sadly, it's no longer there and whilst we can all shout out on Twitter, Reddit or our own blogs etc about our successes, I thought it might be nice to have them all in one place again.

So, the idea here is to collect a whole bunch of interviews with Goldmakers as they reach their milestones. I don't want to restrict it to gold capped or millionaires - any milestone amount will qualify you for a spot here starting at 100,000 gold.

If you'd like to send in your story, you can email me at auctionhouseaddict at gmail dot com and put 'Milestone Interview' as the subject. I'd suggest the following questions to get your thoughts in order or you can use the 20 days of gold making questions as the basis for your interview.

• what is your milestone amount?

• what got you started making gold and when?

• which markets have you concentrated on, if any?

• biggest successes or biggest failures

• advice for new goldmakers

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

• what's your new goal, if any? 

I plan to post an Interview about once a week, probably on a Saturday (if I get enough responses, of course) and the links will be listed here in date order so we'll always have an easy way to find them.

You don't need your own blog for this - in fact, most bloggers post their milestones on their own blogs so this is more for those of you out there, making gold with nowhere to celebrate your successes! If you do have your own blog, send in an Interview anyway - it's a great way to improve your visibility! Lets all celebrate together - beers are on the house!

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Back To Basics - A Reader Inspired Post

Today we have a post from Robert H, a reader who emailed me some feedback & a question. We got chatting and this was one of his replies. I thought he made some very good points so I asked if I could publish it here. I hope you enjoy reading a different perspective on gold making and one that I really should try to remember myself when I'm writing!

Robert's Story

Many gold makers focus on a massive stock of mats, max level gear or enchants, and "big ticket" items like mounts or transmogs. I'm no where near that level and don't have the time or resources to be a competitive gold maker. What I prefer to do is get the most out of the AH while leveling my toons. Perhaps my experiences can help others do the same. 

I began with a few basic assumptions. I needed an engineer for the new 5.4 changes, so chose that and mining as professions. I also decided that I would level at a leisurely pace, somewhere between "speed leveling" and going for Loremaster. I would level mining and engineering in one shot, i.e., as soon as I reached 350 and level 50 I would make all the items to reach the next limit right away (or visit DMF when in town). This motivated me to gather mats while questing. I play on a medium population server with an average economy, so my cash goal was between 2,000-5,000 gold per week.

With these guidelines in mind, I built up a steady supply of ores by making one or two extra trips around key zones while questing, not to mention earn XP and get occasional mob drops. I always had my DMF Adventurer's Journal in dungeons (almost no one carries those any more, so I had nearly a 100% greed success rate on those).

The results were great. While questing in Vanilla zones, I was able to earn about 1,500g a week just from ores, especially gold, iron, and occasionally tin. Truesilver was hit-or-miss. I used the daily price feature on the Undermine Journal to determine if ore or bars sold best and smelted accordingly (that also helped level my mining skill). 

Green drops sold modestly well, but only those with great stats or good for twinking. Cloth was variable. Outlands ores were very successful, as Fel Iron and Adamantite always sold for 100-150g per stack. Two laps a day around Zangarmarsh really paid off. DMF items from dungeons did well at ~250g apiece, and I averaged 3-5 sales a week.

At higher levels the results were even better. In less than an hour I sold 2 stacks of obsidium bars and 4 stacks of cobalt ore and pocketed 1200g. 

Not bad at all. In a little under 3 weeks I had accrued 19,000 gold from the AH after starting at level 1, well above my expectations. 

Your mileage may vary, especially if your server economy is vital or moribund. If you're new to gold making this might be a good way to learn the ropes with relatively low risk. Skills like knowing what to look for, when to post, how to undercut, and when to just vendor stuff that doesn't sell will get you ready for prime time.

I usually write about what I'm doing or planning in game but of course, it's been a long while since I was semi-broke & very inexperienced. Much of what Robert says is what I did to get started, long before I considered myself a gold maker.

As a gold making blogger, I tend to focus on specific things or tips you can do to make gold. Robert's story is a more general 'lifestyle' way of making gold than my current gametime so I'd be really interested to hear your early days stories too so feel free to drop me an email or maybe leave a comment below.

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New Blogroll Additions & Guest Post Opportunities

New Blogs & Guest Post Opportunities

When I first started this gold blogging lark, I had no idea how much time & effort it would take to keep it going but I also had no idea how much fun it would be & how many new friends I would make. There were only a few 'big' gold blogs back then & when I got a mention or a response from them, it really made my day.

Now, I don't consider myself in their leagues but I do have an increasing number of visitors so I thought it would be nice to highlight some of the newer blogs I'm adding to my blogroll these days. The gold blogging community is expanding all the time and I would also include the goldmaking Livestreamers & Youtubers in that too - just because blogging tends to be written doesn't mean that the video/audio peeps have any less valid input.

So if you have time today or over the weekend, maybe go say hello to some of these lovely new blogs - I promise you, it will give them encouragement & maybe find you a whole new source of reading material :)

New Gold Blogs

• First up is a very new blog from Matt a.k.a @mcKinnon81 called Arllan's AH Game - just a few posts for now but I enjoy his writing style & hope to see lots more from him over the coming months.
• Next up is Xtreme - yay for another female gold blogger (@XtremeAHGuru)! She used to write for Goldgrubs (more about that later) but has branched out & has started her own blog, called The Xtreme Gold Blog. Just a few posts for now but again, I look forward to reading more.
• I also found another female gold blogger (watch out guys, we're coming out of the woodwork!) but I have no name for her - the blog is called WoW Gold Girl & she writes beautifully detailed posts full of useful information.
• Not quite so new but just ramping up a bit is WoW Tungsten written by @wowtungsten. Easy to read & well written, I always enjoy his posts.
• Lastly Auction House on Farm, written by Dealmaker has been going since May but was a bit quiet over the summer & appears to be on a roll recently. Another well written, informative blog that I enjoy reading whenever a new post is published.

Guest Posting Opportunities

Now maybe you have a topic you have some opinions about or a subject you think you have something to contribute to but you don't feel that starting a blog is for you. Luckily for you, many gold bloggers welcome an email to discuss a guest post - I am certainly open to hosting a post for you especially if it's something I haven't already covered!

I'm easy to contact too - you can find me on Twitter @NevAHAddict or email me at auctionhouseaddict@gmail.com - drop me a message or an email & we can discuss your idea further.

Now I also mentioned Goldgrubs earlier - I used to contribute there & if I get an idea for a more basic level post, I'll be sending more posts over there too. It's run by Cold from Cold's Gold factory and his idea was to form a teaching type environment, hence the name Goldgrub's Goblin Academy. With previous contributors such as Wes from Capped by Cata, Rewt from the Hearthcast podcast, myself & of course Cold too, if you submit a post there, you will be in good company. You can contact Cold via Twitter @ssmith0911 or via email on the Contact Us page.

Other New Gold Making Stuff

Lastly I want to mention a new subbreddit, moderated by Cold & Eric from The Golden Crusade called /Goblinism - quite a few regular bloggers are publishing their links there so it's a nice easy way to find information.

It looks as though the main /WoW reddit is also forming it's own goldmaking subbreddit in direct competition with /Goblinism & /Wowgoldmaking. I have no idea why but we'll just have to wait & see how that works out!

Summary

So there you have it - all sorts of new stuff & places to check out - just in case you haven't got quite enough dailies to do in Mists of Pandaria! Oh and I almost forgot to mention my new blog! I'm branching out a little into non-gold making areas of WoW so if you're feeling a bit curious as to how I spend my time when I'm not making gold, pop over to She Rides Dragons and come say hello - I don't bite, I promise!

Have you started a new Gold Blog recently? Let me know & I'll add you to my blogroll & maybe feature you if I do another post like this in the future.

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