30 Minutes a Day Project - Days 22 - 24

OK, time to play catch-up! I'm a few days late writing this up so it may be a bit sketchy on the details! Had a lovely quiet Christmas Day with just Mum and Bro and then Boxing Day there too (that's the day after Christmas for my US friends), so I didn't get much time online.

Day 22
Basically I just emptied the mail box and had a quick skim - saw a whole bunch of cheap Mageweave Cloth, grabbed it, relisted and dashed off to Mum's for lunch! It was nice to see such high prices for the Bolts of Linen Cloth and Silk Cloth though. I find it really hard to understand why the Bolts sell for so much more than the cloth - it's the same with the Bars of ore versus the ore prices - you can almost always guarantee that Bars/Bolts prices will be higher than the simple material cost.

Yes, I understand that one more process and therefore a bit of additional time has gone into making them but to buy cloth at 10 silvers and sell the bolts for almost 1 gold is crazy mark-up! I'm not complaining though - it's a great way to make some starting capital as you only need the most very basic training in Tailoring or Mining to craft them both and you can easily make a lot of gold if you have the time.

Day 23
So the holidays are over and it's time to get back to the Auction House. Not many sales but a nice chunk of change in the mailbox today. The 3 stacks of Silkweed netted me almost double the amount of gold I paid for them and the Mageweave all sold too.

I spent almost all of my 15 minutes today snatching up the cheapest items from a variety of categories. Herbs have proved to be a good source of profit so of course, I look there first. Today though, I also checked out the Mists cooking materials, the cloth and the Ores/Bars markets. There were loads of listings for herbs at silly low prices - Terocone and Talandra's Rose had really large gaps to the next priced auction so I nabbed those. I just hope they sell for that crazy high price!

I am having real problems spending large amounts of gold though - I'm so risk averse and very aware of my time limits so I'm going for the obvious bargains. I think perhaps if I had given myself more time, I'd be taking a bit more of a risk with the level 83/84 green armor market. I don't want to be left with a bunch of stock at the end of this project so I'm playing it safe I guess.

If this was going to be my new playing server, I think I'd be more inclined to just go for it, knowing that the stuff would sell eventually. I'd also be leveling alts, picking up stuff to sell or use and having professions leveling too. I'd be gathering on the first couple of alts just to provide materials for professions and then to sell excess stuff. Add in copious quantities of vendor trash and my gold stash would be building quite nicely I think!


Day 24
Yet another lazy day but what a great haul out of the mailbox! I listed fairly late last night and this was late morning so only a few auctions had expired. I planned to come back later in the day to relist any other expired auctions and to grab some bargains but time kind of got away from me and I didn't make it back into game to complete my 15 minutes!

At least I've stopped making silly mistakes from rushing to much now but that doesn't make me feel any better about my poor performance in this project! It does show me how important it is to keep up with the markets though and how much time is needed to really make this work.

I'm definitely going to do this again soon but with a different set of rules for myself. I think the time constraint was a good idea and it was designed to make me log in and do something productive in a short amount of time rather than to log in and faff about for hours. Knowing you have a whole evening ahead can sometimes put you off logging in when you're in a bit of a slump. You need to give yourself goals or a mini project rather than wandering aimlessly which is what I've been doing for a while now.

I have my to-do list on my other blog and I have a baby Shaman and Warlock fighting for my attention but I have this nagging main Pally that just won't let me rest! I'm trying hard to ignore her for the time being but I still find myself logging her and then getting disheartened when she's still rubbish! I think I'm going to have to turn my music up loud and drown her out for a while - I've got stuff to get done you know! lol

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30 Minutes a Day Project - Days 19 - 21

With Christmas fast approaching, I've been trying to keep on top of this little side project and my main server. I did get a little distracted by my shiny new baby Warlock so the baby Shaman I'm supposed to leveling with this bank alt has kind of been sitting around. I'm also late posting this update as you may have noticed!

Day 19

Not a huge haul from the mailbox today but I did go on a bit of a shopping spree in the herb section again. The Strange Dust market has finally been overloaded and prices have dropped considerably and although it's still very profitable, I don't particularly want Strange Dust to be my main source of gold in this project so I haven't bothered with it today.

I did buy just one level 83 green armor item just to see if that market is viable on this server. It's probably too late in the month to make huge amounts of gold from but it's also a market that requires a bit of capital and storage space. It's well worth checking out if you have a bit more gold than I do here at the moment though.

As you can see from my bought list and listed prices, I'm hoping to double my money on quite a few purchases today. Some, like the Ghost Iron Ore, will be a very nice chunk of change coming in, others, like the Silverleaf or Bruiseweed, will still be double their purchase price but there weren't so many cheap ones available.

It was nice to see the Spider's Silk so cheap but with a top end price that made the flip worth the risk. It was always one of my favorite things to snatch cheap on my main server for making the Spider Silk Cloak and Boots although those have been relegated now with the advent of additional heirlooms for those slots.

Day 20

Today is Christmas Eve and due to family duties, I only had time to empty the mailbox and list some of the stuff from the Shaman's leveling adventures this morning. I still have plenty listed on the Auction House from last night soI'm still hopeful for more sales later in the day which I can pick up tomorrow morning. I was really pleased to see the Ghost Iron Ore sold and the Stitched Shoulderpads - I'll have to remember this level 83-84 green armor market if I do another project in January!

Day 21

Christmas Day has finally arrived and as I logged in to Ironforge, I realised I should have taken my banker back to Stormwind! The lag was horrendous, with so many players trying to get their Winter Veil presents from under the tree and some really obnoxious idiots who refused to get off their giant mounts or move away from the area, no matter how nicely people were asking them to!

It's another family day too so I grabbed the gold out of the mailbox (eventually, stupid lag!) and hearthed back to Stormwind to spend a few minutes in the Auction House. I relisted any expired auctions and grabbed just a few deals before heading to Mum's house. 

One of the markets that has surprised me over the last week or two is the Silk Cloth market. I haven't leveled a lowbie in a long while but I know some of the loot tables changed a while back. I always used to pick up loads of Silk Cloth when leveling but I'm guessing it's not so plentiful now. With Bolts of Silk Cloth listed for 10g or more, I may have to rummage through my main banks to see how much gold I'm sitting on!

I was surprised to see Small Eggs are still holding a price of about 2gold as well - the Wool Cloth & Rugged Leather markets are almost back to normal prices and Copper Bars never really moved upwards at all!

Closing gold balance after purchases today was 979 gold - woop woop! So close to the 1000 gold mark now, I can't believe how excited I am! It seems kinda silly, given how much I have on my main server but I've been enjoying this challenge and once I saw how slowly it was building, I wasn't sure I'd even make the 1000 gold point by month end!

Early on, I bought just a few cooking recipes from the vendor in Old Town. Some sold but some didn't and through leveling, I've picked up a couple more which aren't selling either. I guess with the changes to cooking at the beginning of Mists where you can level cooking almost without leaving Halfhill, this is another old market which is dying if not dead already. It's a shame really as it was a great way to pick up some starter capital for new players.

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30 Minutes a Day Project - Day 13 - 15

Time for another update on this project of mine! I'm torn between just getting everything up to date in one mega post or breaking it up but I think I'll stick to 3 days at a time, even if I get a little behind with posting! I hope you're enjoying these updates - I'd love to hear any more lowbie tips from you - I'll admit, I'm struggling a bit here!

Day 13

One thing I keep forgetting to do is to make a note of my opening & closing balances - there's no excuse really as I have Auditor addon installed which gives me the totals for the day really easily and in a simple layout too!

Not really much to talk about today - I did the Auctioneer scan again to see if there were any items for easy money from the vendor search but that just reminded me why I gave up on Auctioneer! The scan takes so long! I had just enough time to check the vendor search then to grab a few bargains from the trade Goods/Herbs category and to get them listed. Closing balance today was 301 gold - not very impressed with my lowbie gold making skills right now!

Day 14
Today was a better day overall with a mailbox opening of 65 gold and a Blingtron loot sale of 16 gold too. I received an email from Misha, reminding me that the Gaudy Winter Veil Sweater can be disenchanted into Strange Dust & Lesser Magic Essences. When I say 'reminding me', that's what Misha thought he was doing but actually, I didn't know in the first place so thank you Misha!

But here's the funny thing - I wasn't concentrating this evening so rather than waste time getting my bank alt to Ironforge, I took my baby Shaman there instead. She bought 15 sweaters and ran to the mailbox. Oops! I hadn't noticed they were Bind on Pickup so now my baby Shaman has Enchanting as a profession too! As for not wasting time - by the time I'd made this mistake and learned enchanting, I didn't have enough cash on the Shaman to send them or list them on the Auction House so I had to log my banker anyway!

The 15 Sweaters cost me a whole 3silver and 30 coppers but as you can see above, Strange Dust alone is selling currently for well over 2gold each so it's well worth the few minutes it takes to disenchant them! What a great tip for anyone trying to build their first bit of capital! Just don't flood the market!

I regularly check the Linen Cloth & Strange Dust markets for just this reason - when linen is mega-cheap, I buy it and convert to Strange Dust. I almost always have some Strange Dust listed on the Auction House and can usually get 2g per Dust easily. In terms of percentage profits it's probably one of the best little corner markets out there. Sadly the quantities that sell don't make it the best income source but added to other small markets, it adds a nice little chunk to your weekly income, especially when you are still building up your capital.

Day 15
Another ok day at the mailbox - 73 gold picked up and another Blingtron dropped meant 4 gold from selling the vendor trash it gave me!

As you can see below, I dived into the Herb category again and grabbed some more bargains. It took me back into Wrath times when I saw Terocone so cheap and Talandra's Rose too - I remember farming Zul Drak for hours for Talandra's Rose although I can't remember why now!

The Strange Dust from yesterday all sold too so off I went to the Smokeywood Pastures vendor and bought 30 more Sweaters! I'm sure I could sell almost all of the Strange Dust even if I disenchanted 100 sweaters but with the time limit constraint, 30 is more than enough to keep the gold rolling in!

Summary
Closing balance for today is 364 gold. It seems I've forgotten how to really make gold fast at low levels. I did a Gold Rush thing a couple of years ago and came about 4th or 5th with a total sales figure over 50,000 gold. There's no way I'm getting near that this time but I don't think it's just me. Back then, during Cataclysm, we had the Volatiles markets and I remember flipping low price Volatiles of all sorts for way more than I'd paid! It helped that Volatiles stacked in 200's as well as the volume turnover meant that even profit of just a few silvers each could mean quite a nice chunk on a full stack. I also flipped glyphs for nice profits too - the market was pretty mobile so it was easy to pick up good glyphs for cheap & sell them a day or two later for 2, 3 or 4 times the purchase price.

I also didn't have the time constraint so I'm wondering just how much I could be making if I removed the 15 minutes limit. I'm not going to, of course! That would negate the whole idea of this little project but it has got me thinking of my next project! Once we hit 31st December, I may just send all this gold to my leveling alt and restart the same idea but without the time constraint. I'm not sure I'd report it in such detail either but perhaps a weekly update of time spent and a screenshot of what's been selling.

I've had quite a few comments and messages about this project so I hope you're enjoying my misadventures in lowbie gold making! I know it's probably not that interesting to experienced gold makers but I think it does illustrate quite well which markets to look at when looking for stuff to flip when starting out. I'd hoped to have a lot more gold by now so you could see the mid-range price markets start coming within my pockets reach but there's still time for that!

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Project Shoofly - Mid week 2

I've been barrelling along, leveling my herbalism & skinning as well as questing. I decided to brave the random dungeon finder last night - ugh! Have I ever mentioned how much I hate pugs? Well, I do - a shaman healer decided to roll need on a cloth intellect waist even though he was full on heirlooms & I had only crap quest gear. For once I stood up for myself & queried it but I did pretend to be a bit noobish just in case he got nasty! lol

After the tank spent the next 10 minutes reposting recount scores after each fight, I think the shammy took pity on me because he traded me the belt! Yes, my DPS was that bad! But I did get a pretty new dress after I left the dungeon, I just finished a quest chain so that made a huge difference and it kind of matches her hair too :) Shame about the gloves & boots though.

One thing I have found out is that keeping my herbing & skinning leveled to the zone I'm questing in, is a bit of a pain! I spent about 2 hours questing & dungeon last night but over an hour or more, trying to get my skinning up to a level where I could skin the beasties I was killing! Having said that - skinning on a priest? Seriously, WTF was I thinking??? lol

But on the other hand, I did end up with several full bags of herbs & leather as well as a few green items which mostly all sold overnight. I've just pulled almost 200 gold out of my mailbox this evening, giving me a nice current total of 359 gold. Out of that, I've bought 3 netherweave bags & a couple of items for my priest to wear as well as paid for my riding skill & sent 30 gold to my priest for pocket money. So at a rough reckoning, I think I'm upto about 440 gold overall if I hadn't spent anything.

Now I know that may not seem much but remember, this is my non-goldmaking experiment :) I'm trying to think like a new-ish player - just selling everything I pick up from questing & the odd recipe here & there when I find them.

I'm going to try to get to level 30 tonight & dual spec into Holy - I have an 85 Holy Priest but I never did lowbie dungeons as a healer so I thought I'd give it a try this time through. Wish me luck - I think I'm going to need it!

Project Shoofly - End of Week One

So I've been poodling along on my baby horde priest, just made level 15 last night - woo hoo! I have to admit I am finding it pretty slow going - a priest isn't the quickest class for leveling anyway but not knowing where anything is on Horde-side is also slowing me down. I am also missing my luxuries like heirlooms & my army of alts support system.

My banker Shoofly has been busy though - we're up to 161 gold so far from selling herbs & leather than my priest is picking up as well as meats, cloth & a few low level green items too. Somehow, I've managed to wipe out my MySales data again so this little screenshot is just my overnight sales

Now in my first post, I did say I wasn't going to do any real goldmaking stuff, well I may have to modify that a bit! I'm trying to think more like a novice goldmaker so when I stumbled across the Tradesman upstairs at the inn in Falconwing Square, I had to have a look. He sells the Recipe:Lynx Steak for a whole 40 copper - I've managed to sell 2 so far for 15g & 18g each - now that is the sort of mark up I like!

Many moons ago, my other half started playing this game & he quickly got lost & confused. It took me another 2 months or so to realise that resistance was futile so I signed up too. Around the time that I signed up, hubs purchased Zygor's Leveling Guide. Now I know a lot of people say they'd never pay for a guide etc but this one has saved me so much time. I used it extensively when I first started playing & I get regular updates for no extra charge. So now that I'm lost & all alone on Horde - it's in full use yet again!

Without wanting to sound too enthusiastic, it is a great guide. It always was but since they've updated & improved the whole thing to keep track of XP, the guide will jump steps to keep you on track. So that means that if you do a load of dungeons or battlegrounds & get ahead of the guide, it will jump to an appropriate place for you to restart questing! No more green or grey quests clogging up your quest log!

Regular readers will know that I finally finished my Loremaster achievement around Christmas time - another fantastic part to this guide - once you've been through part of a zone when leveling, it can be tough to find the quests when you come back to complete for your Loremaster. Zygor's Guide has that under control - it lets you choose your zone, it will flip & skip past quests that you've completed & then you just follow the steps until you're done. If you still haven't finished the zone when the guide finishes, there is then a little Loremaster section with all the other quests in the zone that are still available.

So why would there be quests still available? Well the main leveling section of the guide is designed to maximise XP gains & also time so some 'pain in the ass' quests are skipped to improve your leveling speed.

That all sounds super positive doesn't it? So do I have any negatives to talk about? Well, yeah, there are a few silly little bugs dotted here & there - the odd quest may have wrong text or it will skip a step near the end of a zone & leave you lost for a moment or two but that really is nit-picking with a microscope to be honest. Even better, right now they have a 25% discount on the World of Warcraft guide & if by any chance, you are one of the people champing at the bit for Diablo3 next week, they also have a 33% off their Diablo 3 guide if you've already got the WoW guide. How cool is that?

I, unfortunately, won't be able to play Diablo3 - my graphics card is too old & finances are pretty tight right now. I never had much interest either so I didn't sign up for the Annual Pass for my free copy of Diablo3 so that would be even more expense. I'll just have to live it vicariously through all my lovely Twitter friends who are posting vids on Youtube & livestreaming on Twitch.tv.

Spring - Time For Fresh Starts

© Nev 2004, Spring Blossom

So, it's been a while again but I finally logged into game a few times this last week or so. The first few hours really wore me out - my eyes really had problems adjusting to the whole movement stuff after months of static websites but eventually they settled down & let me get on with trying to remember where I had left everything! I never intended to just stop playing like that, it was just the way it worked out but I lost everything in my mailboxes & I'm pretty sure I had a few big-ish items gone bye-bye but never mind, they would be out of date by now anyway! So my first few evenings back in game were taken up with emptying rubbish out of banks & bags, as well as catching up with my lovely guildies.

Just before I stopped playing, I also signed up for a US account which I played for about 2 hours & never went back! Bad timing all round except that it gave me a lapsed account when the new Scroll of Resurrection was announced so this week, thanks to Cold over at Cold's Gold Factory, I've restarted on that account. No heirlooms, no cash back up, nothing except 50 empty character slots & a few basic addons. Cold doesn't have to worry though, I'm Alliance so his Horde gold making empire is safe ... for now :P

So with a clean slate, I chose my usual human banker, levelled her to level 5 & ran to Stormwind. She had about 8silver to play with. I also started a human hunter to be my main questing alt & by the time she got to Goldshire, she had about 9 silver which I sent to my banker. So with 16 silvers, I bought 2 of the cheapest cooking recipes from the guy in SW Old Town, then ran to the florist on the canals to see if there were any herbs available. There were a few bits & pieces so I bought those up & ran to the Alchemy supplies shop in the mage Quarter, nabbed all the herbs I could there & off I went to the Auction House.

Off I went to the Auction House & started to list my haul of cheap herbs. Arrggggh, I'd forgotten the deposit/listing fee so I only managed to list the 5 auctions shown in the screenie above. Well that was a bust I thought so I logged back to my hunter & did a few more quests. You can tell I'm out of practise at this game too - look - I only listed them for 12 hrs - normally I would pop them up at 24hrs - it's the same deposit for most of them & I don't lose the deposit after just 12 hrs if they don't sell.

So I told myself to slow down & think this through - as I was running back to the alchemy supplies in the Mage Quarter, I passed the fishing trainer & a light bulb went off in my head! I quickly checked the cost of training & a fishing rod & decided to fish for vendor trash for 10 mins.

Here's my haul
8 x tangled fishing line @ 18c each
6 x tattered cloth @ 1s each
5 x weeds @ 18c each
3 x driftwood @ 18c each
1 x sickly fish @ 18c each
1 x old boot @ 18c each

So in about 10 minutes of fishing I gained a grand total of 9s 24c & 10 achievement points for catching 25 fish! Those 9 silvers let me post the rest of the herbs I'd managed to pick up and as of late this morning, I'm up to about 20gold now. More than enough to really get going again.

Not the biggest gold making revelation, I know but if I've missed this simple way to get some basic starter cash, how many others have too? I know to go get some cheap vendor items & list them but I've been gold making a while now & reading blogs & stuff for even longer. This brand new empty account is kinda reminding me of the basics so I thought I'd pop out a post so I don't forget in future & maybe help a complete newbie to make those first few silvers.

Inscription - Hope For Lowbie Glyphers

© Nev 2008 Every scribes best friend

About 3 weeks ago, I decided to take another look at the glyph market on my lowbie AH Alt's server. For those of you who don't know, I started this blog with a new alt on a new server, levelled her to lvl 10 & took up inscription. The idea was to see how much gold I could make in 30 days via inscription & AH flipping. I got to about 6500g before I realised that it didn''t really make for good blogs posts, day after day so I abandoned her in SW & started blogging about other gold making stuff. (If you're interested, you can read those posts by using AH Alt from the tag cloud in the side bar)

I did a post about giving away my cash as I never intended going back & thought it might help someone else getting started. I got 1 whisper so he had 5k & I popped a bit in the guild bank to say thank you for not kicking me out even though I hadn't been online for months or really contributed to the guild levelling! That left me with 936g to start my latest little escapade.

My lowbie glypher is maxed at skill level 150 until I get her to level 20 (probably next year sometime!) so at this time, she can make glyphs using midnight ink, lion's ink & jadefire ink as well as the Rogues Deck ( from Hunter's ink) & the Swords Deck (from Dawnstar ink). I've also been doing my Minor Glyph Research for the last 3 weeks so I do have some of the discovered glyphs too.

I ran a TSM AH scan for just the inscription market & looked at what glyphs to make. I was horrified to see that none of the glyphs I could make were selling above 20g each. However, TSM was telling me that due to low herb/ink prices, there was still some profit to be made so I thought 'sod it' & decided to make 1 of every glyph I could. I made my craft list & went shopping for herbs to mill. That first day I spent 480g on herbs but as the midnight ink prices were down at less than 1g each, I could make an awful lot of glyphs for that 480g!

Over the next week or so, I logged in maybe 3 times a day - 9am, 4pm & 10pm-ish to cancel & relist as well as to restock but after the first week, I got a bit more casual & only logged in maybe once or twice a day & to be honest, not every day either! 

The screenshot above shows that over the last 17 days of MySales data, I sold 6264g worth of glyphs at around 12-15g each. MySales is configured to show 1 month so in effect, this whole story is about the last 17 days or so. For a level 10 Glyphing alt, I think that's pretty good going.

This screenshot shows the total number of sales & income per glyph but this is only the top page. As you can see, there were one or two glyphs with slightly higher prices but most stayed in the 10-15g range. By only buying herbs when TSM told me the ink prices were 1-2g or less, I knew that even at 10g, I would be making a small profit.

My opening balance was 936g, I received 6264g in sales & my closing balance was 4548g so overall I spent 2652g on herbs, parchments & listing fees, leaving me a profit of 3612g.

As a by-product of all this low end glyphing, I also have shedloads of Hunter's Ink & Dawnstar Ink which I have yet to make into the lowbie Darkmoon decks. I also currently have around 90 glyphs still waiting to sell but I'm not going to make any more glyphs so those will just add to the profit figures for this little escapade.

Now, before anybody jumps on this and says I was lucky with the herb prices, yes, possibly I was. My main server rarely has any ink price below 4g but at the same time, the actual glyph prices are much higher even at this low end of the market. This experiment server has 1 or 2 players posting walls of glyphs at 15-20g across the board but I was still able to make a profit on a lvl 10 alt played very casually.

Regular readers will know from my weekly sales reports that glyphs have been my main source of income for the last 6 months or more & that top end glyph prices on my server are over 200g & even 350g on occasions. I've had many comments about being lucky with my glyph prices but I think this shows that even at the very bottom end of the glyph market & with horrible bottom end glyph prices, there is still profit to be made & hope for anyone just starting out with inscription.

Farewell AH Alt - part 2!

It seems there's not many EU readers who wanted a free 5k boost so following Ali's post & Alto's post, I guess this little alt is going to survive to try another experiment!

I think I'll continue to use her as my banker, take a note of her starting cash & go from there. She has a profession slot open so my next decision is which one to level. I'm fairly familiar with Leatherworking, Alchemy, Enchanting & Jewelcrafting from my mains so I guess I should look at Blacksmithing, Engineering or Tailoring.

By picking a prof I'm not very familiar with, I will be using my brain to make a market rather than relying on already accumulated knowledge. This server is very different to my main server as well so it may or may not make for an interesting read! 

Another option is to start another alt to level with say, mining/blacksmithing combo & see how much I can make from questing, drops & 2 low profs. The only problem with this option is that I always have an overwhelming urge to get back to my main server so I'm not sure how much levelling will actually get done!

What do you think? Should I let her fade away or carry on experimenting? Which option should I choose - level a lowbie prof via AH in Stormwind or via questing/profs? And of course, which profession shall I choose?