My snap decision - the results so far.

Well, 3 days on from my Snap Decision post and hings haven't turned out quite as I had hoped or planned for in the original post. However that's the nature of speculation, sometimes it pays off big other times it doesn't. As the picture below shows, the whiptail market is still flooded with super cheap stacks and it is now mid week.

This would be a problem if my only plan for profiting from my speculation was to flip all of my stacks back onto the auction house. However, as anyone who's had success making gold in wow will tell you "there's more than one way to skin a murloc". So instead of re-listing the mountains of whiptail I had for a significant loss I set to using it in a more financially beneficial way. Not only did I listen to the suggestion from Faid of Nerf Faids of "Darkmoon cards gooooooooooooo!" but I also listed burning embers, inferno ink and blackfallow ink in various stack sizes, made a few mysterious fortune cards, and also a ton of glyphs.

As of writing this post I have made back all but about 4k of my original 15k investment. Not only that but I still have about 400 blackfallow ink left to make more glyphs with as well as about 75 more stacks of whiptail waiting to be milled and heaps of glyphs listed to sell.

What's the moral of the story?

Know your markets. If you are thinking of spending big gold (or any gold) on speculative items do your due diligence first. If it seems like a good deal that's great but make sure that you also have an exit strategy for if your plan falls through that doesn't involve wearing a big loss. If the item only has one use and that doesn't pan out you're screwed, however if the item has several uses the risk diminishes exponentially.

Trying something new

 As usual I made my rounds of the gold blogosphere this morning and found THIS post over at Alto's Gold"ish" Advice which basically details a guest post Alto wrote for JMTC about farming mobs while under the effects of [Potion of Treasure Finding]. Now I usually wouldn't touch farming with a 10 foot pole but Alto has found a great spot to farm using this potion so I thought I'd check it out myself to see if this would be viable for me as another layer of diversification. My results are below:

cash looted: 96g
vendoring [greys]: 71g
13 [green] items disenchanted into:
15 [Hypnotic Dust]: approx 75g*
8 [Lesser Celestial Essence]: approx 120g*
34 [Embersilk Cloth]: approx 100g*
18 [Volatile Fire]: approx 243g*
total: 705g
*these figures are based on monday morning ah prices so may be a bit skewed after weekend trading*

11 [Tiny Treasure Chest] containing:
25g cash
1 [green] item de'ed into:
2 [Hypnotic Dust] : 10g
52 [Embersilk Cloth]: 156g
15 [Pyrite Ore]: 150g
4 [Volatile Fire]: 54g
4 [Volatile Life]: 46g
10 [Volatile Air]: 200g
5 [Volatile Earth]: 67g

Grand Total minus 170g for potion: 1093g

So similar to Alto's results 1100g an hour isn't an amazing return, however I did gain 5 bars of experience in the process which took my paladin to lvl 84. Also I imagine that mid week the ah prices on most of these items would be higher as well.

I'm not sure I'd bother with this again as my time is better spent elsewhere (opportunity cost and whatnot) but it is certainly viable as a way to make decent low-risk gold to bump up your bankroll, especially if you are just starting to try and make some serious gold.

If you want to give it a crack, check out this post at Alto's excellent blog.

Snap decision

I woke up this morning and did my usual rounds of the gold bloggers on my blogroll and found THIS post from Alto over at ALTOs Gold"ish" Advice. Based on Alto's excellent research (pretty pictures always help), it appears that the recent boom in supply of whiptail from the Uldum zone is over and the incredibly fast node respawn times are no more.

What does this mean for any aspiring Goblins?

If this truly is a hotfix and not just a really unlucky night for Alto, it means that the price of whiptail is going to go back up to a level similar to before patch 4.0.6's explosion in supply. With that in mind I quickly jumped onto my bank toon and purchased all whiptail stacks up to a cost of 100g per stack. The price of a stack of whiptail on my server before supply went crazy hovered between 140g and 200g per stack so I stand to make quite a large profit just by flipping the 130 odd **Edit: 200 odd** stacks I just bought.

If on the other hand prices stay low, well I'll just have to be more creative in how I offload so many herbs to recoup my losses but you can be sure that inscription will play a central role.

Taking a leaf out of my own book.

Dropping off the top sellers list for Alliance Nagrand on The Undermine Journal this weekend has prompted me to take my own advice and expand the markets that I am operating in. To this end I dropped mining on my lvl 70 druid (who already has 450 JC) and picked up Alchemy as a transmute master should work nicely in synergy with Jewelcrafting. Not only this but I figured that the weekend was the perfect time to powerlevel a new profession thanks to an abundance of cheap herbs on the auction house. As a result I have been questing like mad today in an effort to hit lvl 75 and open cataclysm crafting as soon as possible which has slightly curtailed my gold making activities but the end result should be more than worth it.

My main reasoning behind this decision is the fact that I want to grow my earning capacity and as my first Key to Success post explains, diversifying is a great way to achieve this. Alchemy/JC was an easy choice for this due to the fact that ore prices have been steadily dropping lately while demand for cut gems is still strong. Guilds are starting to down raid bosses and need to fill all those empty sockets introduced to epics with patch 4.0.6 so there is plenty of opportunity for profit here.

Hopefully I'll hit lvl 75 in the next day or two and then I'll update shortly after that with the initial results and my impressions of sales so far.

Key to Success #1: Multiple Markets

What's this all about?
This post marks the first in what will be an ongoing series of "Key to Success" posts. At this stage I am hoping to post one of these per week and they will be aimed at highlighting the fundamentals that any aspiring auction house goblin should know and use. So anyway, one with number 1...


Taking advantage of multiple markets.

The long and the short of it

Up first is a relatively uncomplicated concept to understand and implement. The short story is basically that if you sell across more than one market instead of putting all of your eggs in one basket, you will make a lot more gold. Diversification is the key to big time results for the simple reason that if one market tanks you still have several other markets to keep your profits solid until it recovers. In effect if you find an area is in a major slump your daily/weekly/monthly profits will not be too badly affected. On the other hand, if you have everything invested into one market and the bottom falls out due to whatever reason you are basically screwed.

How to go about it

Research is the key to success in diversification, find areas that will provide consistent sales on your server and then climb on board the gravy train. Finding these multiple markets does not necessarily mean finding the three or four biggest volume markets on your server as these typically have the most competition and are often rife with deep undercutting and generally frustrating behavior. The strategy that I have found to work best is to focus on a single big ticket area (in my case glyphs) as well as a bunch of smaller areas as well (bags, enchanting rods, darkmoon cards, ore shuffling, flipping etc).

This is a rough breakdown of my recent sales on the auction house from The Undermine Journal (a fantastic resource and awesome to see it back in action!). As it shows, I get a majority of my sales from the glyph market with about 1/3 coming from other sources.

I am not particularly happy with this as I am relying a little too much on one source for income so I am branching into other markets as we speak (my jewelcrafter/alchemist is a hair away from lvl 75 and all the cataclysm recipes). But still the basic principle is reflected in the above graph; if for some reason the glyph market takes a tumble one week I haven't lost 100% of my earning capabilities.

In my regular travails around the wow blogosphere I found a paragraph written by Markco over at his awesome site Just My Two Copper which sums up how to successfully diversify perfectly:

"Keep in mind that diversification does not mean equal attention to all markets. You should plan and set different amounts of crafting depending on which markets perform the best. No different then investing in the stock market, you wouldn't put all your money into the worst performing stock nor would you put equal amounts into every stock you invest in. Diversify but put intelligent analysis behind it."

That last sentence is the kicker. Backup whatever moves you chose to make with adequate research and analysis and you can't go wrong.

Darkmoon Faire Opportunities

There are numerous opportunities for cash that come with the advent of the Darkmoon Faire each month which can increase your bankroll significantly for very little effort. Altolycus over at ALTO's Gold"ish" Advice has a great rundown of stuff within the faire boundaries itself so I'm going to focus on the Darkmoon Card side of things.



For Scribes
The first port of call for scribes is of course to make and sell your own darkmoon decks and it is pretty much a no-brainer: buy herbs and volatile life when it is cheap (especially on the weekend) > make cards > convert to decks then trinkets > profit.

There are 2 other ways that scribes can profit from darkmoon cards that can prove every bit as effective as making and selling completed trinkets.

1) INDIVIDUAL CARDS:
Selling cards individually on the auction house or over trade chat can net you some nice income if you don't have enough to complete a set or simply can't be bothered. Once again scribes can make these directly to post but there are a few other ways to help increase profits.

Firstly you can watch the auction house for any cheaper than average cards to flip (usually easy to pickup on the weekend). Secondly, if you get unlucky with the RNG in your crafting and only get the least valuable cards on your server (most stones cards on mine), you can try to trade them over /2 or create a dedicated card trading channel and advertise that. Doing this you should be able to trade away your less valuable cards for ones that will turn a nice profit when auctioned.








2) SELLING DECK TURN-INS
Yep. Although it seems like small potatoes compared to what you can make selling the cards, decks and trinkets themselves, you can make some nice bonus gold for no effort at all. It is super easy to do too, when you want to turn in your completed decks just advertise in /2 that you are selling darkmoone faire rep turn-ins for however much you  think you can get. I tend to have most success in to 100-200g range but really, depending on the buyers on your server the sky is the limit. 
One thing that must be considered when doing this to make it very clear to any buyers that you are selling the reputation only and the completed trinket must be returned after the turn-in takes place. Demand something as collateral if you want but make sure you are covered against the "haha thanks for the trinket n00b! lolz" people that are out there.


For Non Scribes - Flipping
Yes it's a fairly boring option but if you don't have a toon with maxed inscription buying trinkets off the auction house then flipping them for profit is still a viable way to make some cash. This is especially useful at the start of the darkmoon faire week (umm... now!) as there is generally an influx of trinkets as people have been sitting on their decks for 3 weeks waiting to turn them in.

The above picture is from my server this morning. The day before the faire started there was maybe one ore two trinkets TOTAL up for auction across the four different types. Not only this but during non faire times, each category sells for anywhere between 25% and 75% more than the prices above.


So there you have it, a couple of ways to make some nice gold while the darkmoon faire is in town. If I've left anything out or got something wrong feel free to let me know in the comments, otherwise stay tuned for more posts soon...

Auction House Junkies FTW!

Following in the footsteps of many distinguished gold bloggers before me I would like to add my two cents on the new podcast by Cold and Wes called Auction House Junkies.

As the name suggests this is a podcast which should be right down your alley if you are reading my gold blog (which you are) as Cold and Wes bring their goblin ideals and ideas straight to your earholes.
While it's still a little rough around the edges they have managed to put together a very interesting and detailed two shows so far and it's clear that the guys share a good rapport and are also very knowledgeable  about making wow gold.

It is a very easy podcast to listen to while I mill herbs and do my daily auctioning routine and the cameos from Hagor da Goblin have me in stitches every time - hilarious!

Keep up the good work guys!

New name, new focus! Also, Darkmoon Cards and big $$$

I'm Back!

After a fairly long hiatus I've decided to return to the blogging scene with a more refined focus. From now on this blog will be about the subtle art of making a Scrooge McDuck style vault full of wowgold for my toons to swim around in as I push towards the new gold cap of 1,000,000g.

Or ski in if they so desire.

Hopefully along the way I can share some useful and interesting tips for all the other budding goblins out there. So with that out of the way, lets talk gold.

Darkmoon Cards

I've been hovering at around only 5k liquid lately as I have invested very heavily into making the new darkmoon cards. I haven't been keeping proper records of my spending on herbs and volatile life stacks but at a guess I would have spent around 60k gold total. The reason I've been putting all of my eggs into the darkmoon basket so to speak is the fact that there is still a very limited supply of the various trinkets on my server. As I go about my daily auctioning routine I generally check the prices of these trinkets only to often find that there are none for sale at all. Coupled with the extremely limited supply is the fact that this early in the expansion and with only the first tier of raiding available there are very few substitute trinkets so demand is high as well. It is basically a no-brainer: make cards > turn them into trinkets > profit.

What I have gotten in return and the usual sale price per item on the ah on my server for the completed trinkets (as I will be turning in the cards and selling the trinkets themselves):
- 3 x Hurricane Deck (30k+ each)
- 2 x Earthquake Deck (15k each)
- 2 x Volcanic Deck (30k+ each)
- 1 x Tsunami Deck (35k+)

Total if all sell at the above prices = 215k for a total profit of 155,000 gold. Not bad for a few hours spread over a few weeks.


The darkmoon faire starts tomorrow and given that it's the weekend herbs and volatiles are super cheap so I may even manage to squeeze out a few more decks to pump up the profits even more.