Small business loans

A few posts back, I mentioned a broke guildie who had plenty of crafting professions but no cash. Since then, I’ve only really managed to do one mining trip of 1 hour to see how much I could gather and I forgot to write down what I did gather. So much for good note taking. I’ll be continuing that experiment this weekend, but I do have an update on the broke guildie. Since I have more than enough money to buy gems/enchants/repairs, I decided to take a risk and send all the materials to craft 10 eternal belt buckles to our financially challenged guild mate. I normally wouldn’t do something like that, but I had a lot of confidence in his ability to take the small loan of materials and turn it into something productive. This small business loan seemed to have worked, because he not only paid me back for my materials, he managed to turn it into 1600 gold in his pocket in the span of ONE WEEK. That’s right, in one week he was able to take his crafting profession and make enough gold for him to pay for repairs and gem/enchant his gear upgrades. This was done without farming for materials or grinding dailies. He would post a few items on the auction house, go do a battleground or heroic and come back and post a few more if he had a few sales. Now that he has some cash in his pockets, he can start branching out into his other crafting professions and grow his business.

To all you out there who are scratching your heads as to how to make money without spending hours and hours grinding for materials or doing dailies, try this:

Find a Goblin and present him or her with a business plan on how you can take a small starter loan of materials and turn it into a crafting business.

Inscription, the perfect profession.

Since I’ve been burned out on all the level 80 stuff out there, I decided to spend all my saved up shards and badges to get the hunter heirloom chest and shoulders and create an alt hunter named Grimsprocket. Grimsprocket was a name I came up with for a Warhammer dwarf Engineer. Engineers in Warhammer are a race/class combo and about as close to a dwarf hunter as you can get, except they don’t have animals as pets, they have gun turrets. So, the WoW version of Grimsprocket would obviously have to have Engineering as one profession and when deciding on his second profession, I decided to give Inscription a try since all the cool kids are doing it and making tens of thousands with a little effort. Now I know what all the fuss is about.

The first thing I noticed about Inscription is that it’s fairly cheap to level. Just buy cheap herbs or get someone to farm some for you (thank you Millie!) and start milling away. The second thing I noticed is that the stuff you make to level Inscription is actually useful as you level your character. I could imagine that an freshly created level 1 alt could pick up Inscription/Herbalism when it became available and actually have fun creating and discovering new glyphs, decks and buff scrolls because they are (as shocking as it may seem) useful! So much of the crap we have to make when leveling a profession has no value and just gets sold to a vendor.

It reminds me of when I was watching development blog videos from Mythic Studios when they were still in the Beta for Warhammer. Mark Jacobs talked about how in many MMO’s, professions are very grindy and pretty much useless until you got near the skill cap and even then, there are only a few things worth creating. His vision for Warhammer’s crafting system was basically what Inscription is - easy to level, complex but not overly so and useful from low levels to max level. He didn’t really get it right in his own game, but we’ll ignore that little oversight for now.

Another thing I’m finding out with Inscription is that once you get a few profitable glyphs, you can pretty much level Inscription to 400+ with the profits from glyph sales. I was shocked when for my first Minor Inscription Research at skill level 75, I got a glyph that sells on average for 15 gold. Now at skill level 133, I have several glyphs that sell for 15+ gold each. With a little work and time, Inscription is the ONLY profession that I know of that won’t cost you a dime, er…I mean silver.

It would be awesome if Blizzard redid the older professions and made them as useful and fun to level and PROFITABELE as Inscription. We’ll see what happens with Cataclysm.

If you know of any other professions that are fun, useful and make money as you level them, please post a comment and let us know.

Alchemy - Gevlon agrees with me

Back in May, I wrote this post about Alchemy and how to try to make it profitable. It seems that Gevlon has come to the same general conclusion. Alchemy won't make you rich like other professions can for the same amount of time and research put into it. It's good to see that the heavy hitter of WoW economics came to the same conclusion.

To sum thing up neatly for those who don't care to read those two posts linked above:

- The cost of materials is nearly identical to the price of flasks created by said materials.
- Alchemy can make you some money if you aren't a herbalist, but be prepared to do your homework.
- If you want to sell flasks, be sure to have Elixir specialization and be prepared to camp the auction house on raid nights.
- If you're not taking advantage of the perks of being an Alchemist like longer flask duration and you want to make money, then you'd probably be better off dropping the profession for something else.

Epic gems post 3.2

All this talk of PvP and Arena leads me back to something more on topic for this blog, which is a big money making opportunity. In a few weeks, Arena Season 6 will come to an end. A week will pass to calculate who the big title winners are and then Season 7 will begin. New Arena seasons mean new gear and new gear needs to be enchanted and gemmed. When 3.2 hit, Jewelcrafters were prospecting for the new epic gems and the rest of us were using Emblems of Heroism, transmutes and honor to buy our epic gems. When Season 7 begins, the Emblems will have already been spent, transmutes are on a 20 hour cooldown and Honor will be saved to buy gear. This means that there should be a major shortage of epic gems to buy. Players with less money will likely resort to the old rare/blue quality gems for their new gear.

So, how should we enterprising players prepare? Spend all your honor on epic gems immediately and start grinding battlegrounds. Don't forget to queue for Wintergrasp when you can for the huge chunk of honor for 20 minutes of "work". Lastly, look for good deals on Saronite and either prospect it or have someone else prospect it. Basically, do everything you can to stock up on epic and rare quality gems. If you happen to be a Jewelcrafter/Enchanter, use the junk gems that are left over and start making rings to disenchant.

Or should you? At 10,000 honor per gem, it would take about 3 hours to grind battlegrounds for one gem, not counting the badge trade in for honor. In 3 hours of grinding with any gathering profession, you may end up with more gold than you would from the sale of one cut epic gem, even if the gem prices go up from their average of 200-250 gold. On top of that, you won't have any honor left to buy your own PvP gear, if that kind of thing is your bag, baby. I suppose it all comes down to what you consider fun while playing the game. My wife loves farming while some detest it. If you love battlegrounds more than picking flowers, then this may be a golden opportunity for you to make money and have fun playing at the same time, especially if the price of gems goes up due to the increased demand.

Quick impressions on 3.2 and the economy

3.2 hit faster than I thought it would. Had I known, I would have dumped my 4 boxes of arrows very quickly. Luckily I had just bought about 30 stacks of saronite ore for 16 per stack and not done much with it, so I was ready to change my strategy if things got tough in the ammo business.

It only took a few days for the price of 1000 stacks of Saronite Razorheads to take a huge nosedive due to the new reduced materials cost. It used to take about 15 gold to make 1000 Razorheads. Now it takes 2 bars or about 4 gold. So, the cost of arrows is now 1/4 of what they used to be and the demand is probably about the same. I don't know if the lowered cost will cause more hunters to buy Razorheads over the vendor Terrorshaft arrows but my gut tells me they won't. So, I fully expect to make less than 50 gold per week on Razorheads now, which is pathetic. Sure, I could play the deep undercut game, but without a larger customer base, I don't think it would be worth it. Maybe I will just as an experiment.

Mammoth Cutters haven't dropped in price much at all. I attribute this to the fact that they are a little more complex to make since they require Volatile Blast Triggers. Since most people are lazy and don't want to bother with the extra materials, they aren't flooding the auction house with thousands of super cheap bullets.

This coming week will give me a better idea of how ammo sales will go. There's a lot of new stuff to do so I'm hoping that hunters will be using lots of ammo this week.

On other fronts, I'm taking it easy with epic gems for now. There seems to be a lot of undercutting at the moment and I really don't want to spend all day camping the auction house. Once the majority of jewelcrafters have exhausted their supply of epic gems from honor and badge purchases, I'll start selling my epics slowly and steadily. It will also give players more time to get deeper into the new Argent raids so they can get new gear to gem.

I was also able to get the plans and create Jeeves the mechanical butler. He is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in the game. Having a permanent repair bot that I can also use to access my bank is full of awesome. Along with Jeeves I created the Wormhole generator. The first time I used it, it teleported me about 500 feet above the big lake in Borean Tundra. Take the warning on the device seriously and make sure you have your parachute cloak tinker! The other times I've used it, it put me right on the doorstep of Ulduar and Utgarde Keep. It seems the Gnomes know that wormholes should open right in front of instances, which is very convenient. Who needs to fly between points A and B when we can just fold space-time so that point A IS point B!

A Little Advice for a Penniless Noob

A fellow guild member who has been absent until very recently has a dilemma. We found out about this dilemma when doing a Naxx 10 run on Tuesday night where he was playing his shaman alt. We wiped on the Dance and I noticed that he hadn’t released and was waiting to be resurrected when we got back into Heigan’s room. When we asked why he didn’t release and fly back (as Krys would say “Don’t be that guy”) he said he can’t fly back because he couldn’t afford a flying mount. That’s right, he quested to level 80 and somehow didn’t manage to have enough money for regular flying training. How this is possible, I don’t know. I know I must have made several thousand gold just questing between level 70 and 80. I’m sure if I think about it for too long, it will make me angry, so I’ll move on to the more important thing, which is giving this guy a little advice on how to make enough money to buy basic flying skill + a cheap gryphon.

First things first. To protect the identity of the guilty, I’ll call him Noob. Fitting, huh?

OK. So, Noob is this player’s alt. His main has…wait for it…450 herbalism and 450 alchemy. That’s right, maxxed out in 2 major money making professions. Clearly Noob is poor because he is clueless.

Now that we have that out of the way, here’s what Noob should do:

1) Farm herbs on your main! Our GM, Krys, has offered to buy every stack of Northrend herbs that Noob can muster. That’s one hell of a deal, having a guaranteed buyer.
2) Save all the Frost Lotus that you get while farming for regular herbs. These are a primary component to all of the flasks used by core raiders. You can either use them to craft flasks to sell, or sell them in stack of 5 or 10.
3) Change your alchemy specialization to Elixir Mastery. This way, if you choose to make flasks with Frost Lotus you have a chance to create additional flasks which means free money.
4) Do not try for achievements, do not play any battlegrounds, no world pvp, no heroics, no standing around Dalaran looking pretty. Just get out there and farm.
5) Look up the recipes for Flask of Endless Rage and Flask of the Frost Wyrm. Save enough materials to make these flasks using the Frost Lotus you have saved from your farming. Don’t worry, it won’t be too much to have to save. Craft the flasks and sell them on major raid nights, which are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Those are some pretty basic guidelines for Noob to follow. He could probably get enough money for his basic flying skill and mount in less than 2 weeks. It’s up to him to put in the effort. There is no magic formula for making money. It just takes a little brain power and some time. Once he gets the basics down, then he can start working on more advanced techniques and branching out beyond selling flasks and herbs.

Engineering ammo changes

A Blizzard developer mentioned recently that he thought that hunter ammo expenses were too high and they wanted to change that. After some reader responses and a few calculations, I found that hunters do indeed spend a lot of gold on crafted ammunition. The costs are so high that one of our guild hunters (read his blog here) recently said that he has stopped using crafted ammo all together and that he’s still doing exceptional DPS. Well now we know that Blizzard is going to go forward with their ammo changes. Here’s the breakdown:

Currently, engineers create ammo crates which hold 10 charges of 200 pieces of ammo. Each crate = 2000 shots and at 20 gold per stack of saronite and cobalt ore, cost roughly 30 gold per crate for saronite razorheads and about 21 gold per crate for mammoth cutters.

The change for patch 3.2 is that engineers will no longer create crates but stacks of 1000 arrows/bullets. The materials cost for 2000 razorheads is now 4 saronite bars. For 2000 mammoth cutters it’s 2 saronite bars and 3 cobalt bars + 1 crystallized water. The materials cost for 2000 razorheads @20 gold/stack of ore should be ~ 8 gold. The materials cost for 2000 mammoth cutters should be ~ 7 gold. That works out to be a materials cost of about 25% of the previous cost.

I don’t know what to think of the change. I don’t sell a lot of ammo crates because there is more competition and it seems fewer buyers. Lately with school being out, it seems there are a lot more buyers for my ammo stacks. I guess more casual players are picking up the game again for the summer. What does this have to do with anything? Well, ammo crates are going to go away for good. All crafted ammo will now be sold as stacks of ammo. This is good and bad for me. It’s good because it means more customers, it’s bad because it means more competition. Since the price of materials is going down by 75% it also means more room to undercut. It’ll be interesting to see how much ammo goes for after the patch. On Bleeding Hollow, the price of a stack of 1000 has stabilized to about 35-37 gold. Will we see prices drop by half? What will the competition be like? Ammo sales are my primary source of income, so I am a bit concerned.

An Interesting Prospect

Oh sweet, sweet Titanium, how do I love thee...

One of the most substantial changes to the WoW economy in 3.2 will be the addition of epic quality gems that can be prospected from titanium ore. There will be other sources for these gems which are PvP (purchased with Honor), emblem of heroism and transmutations.

So, what does it all mean? Well, just like gas prices rise just before Memorial Day due to speculators buying up gasoline, the price of titanium ore is absurdly high right now. I’m seeing stacks of 20 going for between 150 and 250 gold. Plus, the amount of titanium ore on the auction house is very low on Bleeding Hollow. Just like higher gas prices mean higher prices for consumer goods due to higher transportation costs, the titanium ore situation will affect a lot of other areas of the WoW economy.

Mining is one of my professions and before the patch notes for 3.2 came out, Titansteel Bars sold for about 90 gold each. I suspect the quantity of Titansteel will drop dramatically and the price will shoot up quite a bit. It takes 6 titanium ore to smelt into enough bars to make 1 bar of Titansteel. At 250 gold per stack, that’s 75 gold per bar of Titansteel in titanium materials alone. Miners who would normally smelt Titansteel aren’t going to buy titanium because their costs have skyrocketed and they’ll likely save any titanium that they mine for themselves, either to sell at greatly inflated prices or to have prospected when 3.2 hits. A lack of Titansteel on the AH and in personal stocks will also affect the prices of crafted BoE items like the Titansteel Destroyer, Shield wall, etc.

How will this affect rare gem prices? It’s hard to really say. On the one hand, it could kill them because rare gems will become the new “perfect” cut uncommon gems. On the other hand, these new rare gems will likely be going for over 400 gold each, probably higher for the +strength and + spellpower gems. Add to that the fact that all dungeons and raids (save for the Argent Crusade stuff) will drop emblems of conquest, which can be converted into lesser badges if needed. This means that we will be able to run heroics until we’re blue in the face and buy ilvl 226 gear. That means multiple upgrades for the vast majority of players and those players aren’t going to want to drop 1000+ gold just to gem their new chest armor. If anything, we may see a modest increase in rare gem prices for at least a month. Rare gem prices will likely deflate over the long term once players stop using badges and honor to buy new armor and start using them to buy epic quality gems.

Should we be speculating? How should we plan for 3.2? Without details on prospecting rates for titanium ore, transmutation materials and honor/badge costs, I think the best bet is to hold on to your ore and only buy new ore if you see it listed for close to the old market prices. If you aren’t a jewelcrafter, don’t want epic gems for yourself and see ridiculous prices for titanium ore on your server, feel free to sell. My guess on the prices and prospecting rates for epic quality gems is about a 25% chance for an epic per prospect (1 per stack of 20) and cut gems will list for 500 gold and up. Just look at the prices of Stormjewels, which have the same stats as the new epic gems, and use that as a comparison. To prepare for 3.2, the only thing I’m doing differently is saving the titanium ore that I mine and as a result, not making any more Titansteel. My behavior may change once we find out how much the new epic gems will cost and what the prospect rate will be.

Inside the mind of a customer

My wife fished up a few stacks of Dragonfin Angelfish for me over the past few days, which I turned into Dragonfin Filet and sold using my AH broker. Last night, before I log off for the evening, I check my broker’s mailbox.

Click…click… Click…click… Click…click…

“Did any of my fish sell”

“Yep, 3 or 4 stacks of 5”

“How much did you post them for?”

“20 gold each stack”

Click…click…Click…click…Click…click…Click…click…Click…click…Click…click…

“Are those unsold auctions, or are you picking up money?!!?”

“This is gold from my ammo sales”

Click…click…Click…click…Click…click…Click…click…Click…click…Click…click…

“OMFG!!”

My ammo sales are interesting. First, I love being able to make money with engineering. Sure, it’s not an Inscription Empire, but it keeps me from farming when I don’t want to and I make enough gold to more than pay for my weekly upkeep and my wife’s never ending quest for 100 mounts (she’s up to 80 now). Sales can be spikey, usually every 2 days or so I sell a ton, but in between only a few stacks.

I often wonder why people would by ammo in stacks of 200, or why they would buy anything in lower stacks at a higher cost per unit. I think trying to get inside the mind of your customer is a good idea. It could really expand how you sell on the auction house and open up new selling opportunities.

First, let’s look at some of the items I sell on a regular basis – Mammoth Cutters, Saronite Razorheads, Saronite Bars. For the ammo, I was surprised that people would buy it and not just the ammo maker. When I started selling ammo by the stack, I could only sell it stacks of 200. Then, there was a change to ammo and it stacked up to 1000 per stack as a way to help hunters. I decided to continue to sell in stacks of 200. Why? Because most people aren’t good at doing even simple math. They probably don’t even have a calculator in the house and don’t know that you can minimize WoW and use the Windows calculator (it even has a Scientific mode!). I also know that most players don’t use Auctioneer, so the % of market value isn’t displayed for them. Lastly, most players sort by lowest price. So, I put these three things together and I have a formula for ammo success. Sell ammo in stacks of 200 for over 2x the cost of materials. Buyers will sort by lowest price and see pages and pages of my ammo at a cheaper price than the stacks of 1000, even though their cost per unit is lower than mine. Of course, since they lack simple math skills and calculators, most won’t even notice that my ammo is more expensive. I sometimes feel guilty about this. I’m not as cold hearted as Gevlon seems to be. Whenever I do feel guilt, I tell myself these very real facts: I’m not holding a gun to anyone’s head forcing them to buy my ammo and there are other, cheaper options on the auction house. Plus, I really do hate blatant laziness so if someone can’t figure out how to find a better deal, it’s not my problem. In many cases, these are the same people who come to raids unprepared, do substandard DPS and “stand in the fire.”

For saronite bars, there are a few different reasons for buying a stack of 2 bars for a higher price per unit than a stack of 20. A buyer most likely only needs between 3 and 6 bars so they can have something crafted for them, be it a ring, weapon or armor. If they bought a stack of 20 saronite bars, then ¾ of them would “go to waste” after they had their gear crafted. So, in this case, selling bars in small stacks is kind of like selling boneless, skinless chicken breast. Sure, I could buy a whole chicken and butcher it myself, but my wife doesn’t like legs/thighs and it’s a time saver to not have to dismantle a whole chicken. So, I pay a little more for convenience.

Sometimes I sell crystallized fire/earth/whatever in stacks of 1. They don’t sell fast, but I can sell 10 crystallized fire for more than the cost of an eternal fire, which can be broken down into 10 crystallized. Why? Well, given that they don’t sell very quickly, they are probably being purchased by players who are farming their own eternals and after spending 2 hours don’t want to farm any longer for that one or two more crystallized to convert to an eternal. Again, it’s a time saver or in this case, they don’t want to waste any more time waiting for elementals to spawn.

Get to know your customers and tailor your sales to meet their needs…or to take advantage of their shortcomings.

Oh and thank you Jederus for the kind words and inspiration!

It's On!

That’s right, it’s on! I can only speculate that it’s because of this post on Just My 2 Copper.

What’s happening? Well I used to be the sole provider of ammo in stacks of 200 on Bleeding Hollow. There were others selling ammo, but in stacks of 1000. I’m assuming they sold their 1000 stack ammo when it was listed, but it was listed at about half of what I listed my 200 stack per arrow/bullet so I was making huge profits compared to the others who sold ammo. So, I log on yesterday afternoon and what do I find? Someone listed 10 stacks of 200 arrows undercutting me by 1 copper. So, I posted a bunch more ammo and undercut him.

It was nice being the sole provider of ammo in the small stack category on my server. Every few days I’d sell a ton of it and it’s been my main source of income since the decline of buff food sales. If this keeps up, I’m gonna have to get ugly and pull a Gevlon, which is to say, undercut my competitors by so much that they go away.

So, not only will I Bring It, it’s already been “Broughten”!

Bargain Hunting

Attention WoWMart shoppers. There’s a special on Lich Bloom in isle 3.

So, I have been keeping track of the herbs needed to craft the flask of endless rage. This flask seems to be a very popular item on raid nights so I’m using it as the basis for my test. An interesting thing happens on Bleeding Hollow for alchemists. The price of materials for a flask is usually equal to the price of the flask itself, +/- 3 gold. So, if you are a dual crafter, like say a Alchemist/Tailor or something like that, you’re pretty much out of luck when it comes to making flasks for enough profit to be meaningful, unless you do your homework. The word "meaningful" in that sentence is very subjective, but let’s assume “meaningful” is at least enough gold to cover weekly maintenance costs.

So, who’s making money off of Alchemy on Bleeding Hollow? Alchemist/Herbalists are. I suppose there just aren’t enough pure farmers on this server to bring the price of herbs down low enough for an Alchemist to buy all his/her materials from the auction house. One side effect of this “self employed” style of gatherer/crafter market is that there are very few, if any, deep under cutters. Producers are limited to selling what they have farmed for. You can’t sell 500 flasks if you didn’t farm 500 Frost Lotus so the cheap flasks get scooped up fast. Furthermore, since the cost of the materials is so close to the cost of the flask, no one is going to undercut the market rate by 40% like the Greedy Goblin does with his glyphs. This also makes flasks a bit more attractive to buy low and relist later.

What happens if you don’t want to gather your own herbs? You have to become a bargain shopper. This is where a tool like Market Watcher could come in very handy. Add the materials for a flask AND the flask you want to make to your Market Watcher addon and scan the auction house twice a day for a few weeks and take a look at the trend. Each herb should start to show a pattern of low and high prices over the WoW week of Tuesday through Monday. Gathered resources are almost always cheaper on Sunday and Monday nights as players unload their stocks after a long weekend of farming. Start buying herbs at their low point and save them for when the flask sells at its high point then craft the flasks and start selling. The high point for flasks is usually Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night as those are the nights most guilds are scheduled to raid. Remember not to flood the market with them, just post 2 or 3 at a time and repost as they are purchased. It really is an easy thing to do and it seems silly writing about it, but I suspect a lot of people don’t bother with this kind of planning and preparation. You may not get rich by selling flasks for a lower profit than someone with alchemy/herbalism, but you won’t have to spend time farming and ultimately that is the goal for a lot of us.

Of course if you enjoy farming like my wife does, then that’s more coin in your pocket for something that is relaxing and care free. Sometimes though, farming doesn’t produce enough materials to supply your crafting or real life gets in the way of us flying circles around Northrend so stocking up on materials from the auction house when they are dirt cheap is always a good idea, especially when it’s a rare drop material like Frost Lotus.

What's the materials cost vs. market price for consumables on your server?

Lazy

It’s been a while since I’ve posted something. I have a few ideas rolling around in my head but I just haven’t gotten to writing down something coherent. My wife and I haven't spent much time in the World lately due to us buying some DVD's. Now that we've burned through the entire first season of True Blood (I've even switched our premium cable subscription from Showtime to HBO in preparation for season 2), I should have something up on Thursday with a little meat behind it. For now, the WoW economy seems to be on a slow spiral back to low activity. I asked a former guildmate Dagr about his guild’s food buffs because it seems that my buff food isn’t selling well and prices are deflating. He says his guild always uses a fish feast before every boss. I’m going to see if raiders buy the fish feast, just the raw materials neither and just farm it. I have a feeling they just farm it. I guess it’s good for regular raiders that they don’t have to spend money on individual buff food, but bad for those of us that used to make a decent amount of money from it. We’ll see how the Fish Feast research goes. I think I need to head to Wintergrasp and do some fishing first.

I read a few days ago that Gevlon of the Greedy Goblin is going to give some tips or show how Engineers can make money. I’m curious to see what he comes up with. As an “Engineer for life”, I’ve found that we can make money, just not nearly as much as some other professions, especially Inscription. Since the decline of buff food, I’m making most of my steady income from ammo sales. I’ve tried selling scopes before and they don’t move in any significant quantity to really bother with most of the time and the profit margin is maybe 10 gold each. Maybe I’m missing something, so if anyone has any tips on Engineer money making ideas, please share them.

Scribes Have More Fun

The only professions that aren’t shared between my character and my wife’s 3 characters are blacksmithing, tailoring and inscription. That’s not a bad spread of professions over 400 skill and many of them are at 450. In terms of making money in game, we seem to have found our niche and know what sells and doesn’t sell. I always get the feeling though that I could be making more money. We’re not poor by any means, but we’re not swimming in gold like Scrooge McDuck is. When my wife’s death knight hit 80, I pushed her towards jewelcrafting/enchanting as there is a decent synergy between the two. She can craft jewelry and disenchant it and sell the dusts for more than the materials cost and it will sell faster than the original materials.

After reading through my long list of WoW economy blogs again, it seems I may have misguided her professions by ignoring Inscription. First, to get this out of the way, I absolutely will never get rid of Engineering, so changing professions for me is out of the question. For my wife, she’s making a steady income so dropping one of her professions and leveling inscription isn’t really necessary. But, looking at the money being made by the authors of the other wow economy sites (and by fellow guildmate Krys) makes me realize just how easy it is to rake in cash as a scribe.

Let’s look at the basics. Scribes need herbs to mill into pigments to turn into inks. The thing that is frustrating here is that any standard Northrend herb can be milled into 2-4 of the pigments that are used to make the ink for the top tier of glyphs. So even if you bought all your herbs from the auction house, it will only cost between 1 and 3 gold on average to make a glyph and most glyphs sell for 20-30 gold each. I don’t know of any other profession that has such huge profit margins. Huge profit margins also leave room to undercut all your competitors. Another great thing about inscription is that unlike say, engineering where I make ammo for one class – hunters, your target audience is pretty much every character, because everyone should use glyphs. Even after buying a dual talent spec, people still need to change glyphs all the time as they try new build/glyph combos for pvp and pve.

So, if one of my friends were to start a new character and ask what profession they should take, Inscription will always be my suggestion. Unless of course they want to be a part of the cool crowd and rock the goggles.

The Death Knight Weaver

Today's post is from Beermaker, fellow AUO guildie and alt-a-holic.

“Hi, I’m a bag salesman”

I didn’t used to be, but after reading Rorik’s post I decided to give it a go. I had an up and coming priest that was a tailor, seemed like it would be a good fit. It would just take a while to get him leveled up to be able to make the Netherweave Bags. “Don’t you have a Deathknight you could power level it on?” Rorik asked. A light went on, a Deathknight took up tailoring (There’s a joke in there, I just know it), and now I happily sell Netherweave bags on the auction house.

Leveling up tailoring wasn’t all that difficult. It probably took about 3 days of limited playtime. I used a guide off of wowwiki to level up. It’s a little bit outdated due to some recent changes, but it still works well enough. I deviated from it here and there so I’d have items to disenchant on another toon, but other than that it only cost a couple hundred gold for me to get leveled up (I had a fair amount of runecloth on hand, so that helped).

Now, I haven’t been keeping great notes at home. This is still a game so I refuse to maintain a profit/loss statement regarding my little “business”. I do know for a fact that it has a positive cash flow for me though. Here’s a few of the details of what I’m up to….

I may be opportunistic, but I’m no fool. I don’t way undercut on my prices. I usually price them out anywhere from a few silver to one gold less what’s listed. Other times, I’ll price above them if some are too cheap. Why give away a nice profit margin? I don’t flood the market. There are other tailors who do. I list a few, and when they sell I’ll list a few more. The sellers flooding the market also usually undercut by a large margin. Those will sell out fast, and my few bags listed in my normal price range will sell anyways. On average, I’m probably moving 20-30 bags a week.

I buy all my mats. Yep, I don’t spend time farming Netherweave. I buy it. I watch the AH every day to see where the price is. It’s a commodity to me, and when it falls below a certain price I buy all that I can find. Notice I said find, not need. If it’s below my price threshold I buy every single piece I can find on the AH. Why do I do this? It keeps my competitors from being able to buy at that low price (Let them pay more for it), and it insulates me from the market. Recently I went through about a 5 day stretch where the price of cloth was ridiculously high. I bought nothing. Then the market crashed, and I bought dirt cheap.

Interestingly enough, as the cloth market crashed the price of bags has increased a bit. Perhaps it was from everyone else paying more for cloth (after I bought up all the cheap stuff)? I’m happy to play along of course, and price a bit higher myself. More money for me.

Undercutters

My wife's jewelcrafting and enchanting businesses are going well. She's making a steady income and not really spending a lot of time farming for anything other than honor for pvp gear. One of the guild officers (and now temporary GM) Krys, is also doing quite well for himself mainly from his glyph and alchemy businesses. Both of them have a few competitors in their markets that undercut them by quite a bit, usually by several gold and sometimes as much as 10-20 gold. Both my wife and Krys follow the unwritten rule of undercutting by a few silver.

Why would someone undercut by so much? Here's one possible reason: volume. If someone is undercutting by 10 or 20 gold, they are probably selling a lot more of that item than the rest of the sellers who are colluding on a higher price to try to maximize profit per item. That increased volume could mean higher overall income than those selling fewer items at a higher price. If that is the case, then there's really nothing you can do but to either hope the undercutter depletes his stock of goods, leaving no other option for buyers but to buy your higher priced goods OR to start lowering your prices and try to take his market share. If supply of the item is fairly limited, then you can simply buy him out and relist. It's always risky to buy out someone who listed low and relist at your price, especially if the demand is limited because you may not be able to sell off all your stock plus the relisted stock. As always, know your markets.

In other news, not much has been going on. The gem, enchanting and buff food markets seem to be doing well. Goods are moving and prices are leveling out. Even Saronite ore has rebounded from just before patch 3.1. I only wish I had bought all of the saronite that was listed for 15 gold and less per stack. At the very least I would have a huge stockpile of ore for making ammo. Which reminds me...

Gevlon over at the Greedy Goblin recently posted about a thread on the official WoW forms regarding maximizing dps in raids by uncovering the math behind the game. The overall impression I got from the original poster was that he (or she?) doesn't like math and doesn't want to bother trying to figure out how to increase his dps and would rather just wing it and go with what feels right, no matter how stupid it is.

These people, dear readers, are your target consumers. They don't like math and are afraid of it, thus they will never do even simple arithmetic to figure out what's a better deal for them. How do I know this? Well, there are plenty of auction house tricks out there like selling single bars of saronite and buying things that can break down into smaller things and selling those smaller things. I've tried most of them and they work. They may not sell fast or in big quantities, but it's money for almost no time spent farming or grinding.

Hard work won't make you rich, smart work will.

Market observations

Just a short post today. I've noticed a few things about the past month's economic activity on Bleeding Hollow.

The Pre Patch economy was slow (not a lot of buyers) and low (low prices due to low demand).
Immediate Post Patch wasn't much better unless you were a Scribe or Alchemist.
Arena seasons affect the economy more than one would think.

The last comment has held true to every season. Players have a ton of new gear that is immediately available to them that wasn't before. For season 6 that is Deadly offset pieces and Hateful set pieces. Sure, you could get a few from the Vault or badges, but the offset pieces required a rating. Contrary to what the Arena Junkies gladiator level players think, getting a rating above 1600 in season 5 or 6 is NOT easy for the vast majority of us. Anyway, the number of people getting upgrades from PvP vastly outnumbers the number of people getting Ulduar upgrades, so we get things like uncut rubies going for 80+ gold and a lot of movement in the enchanting business. I don't think the demand will taper off for a little while either, since a) it will take several weeks for most teams to top off their arena rating and b) it takes a ton of games to grind out enough honor to buy something. That alone should spread out gear upgrades for at least a month.

So, while the Scribes made a killing the week after 3.1 and Alchemists are selling potions at a decent rate, now is the time to start making money as a jewelcrafter/enchanter. Oh hey, look at that, those are the professions of my wife's Death Knight ;)

Enchanted with Enchanting (and Jumping for Gems)

Today we have an article by guest reporter Millie. (Sorry I forgot to post it sooner!)

With the release of Patch 3.1 my hopes were high (thanks to my husband, Rorik) for enchanting and jewel crafting to bring in great sums of gold. Much to my chagrin things were looking a wee bit grim on the Auction House immediately after the patch. Enchanting supplies and gems were both in the gutter. But the WoW Gods were smiling down on me because Arena Season 6 was just around the corner. Thanks to Rorik’s advice I made 400 gold last night, mainly from enchanting supplies. Gems also brought in some cash, including “lowbie” gems such as +12 strength. The key? Patience!

Now that season 6 has started and guilds are also starting to get through Ulduar, more and more gear is being replaced. And what good is sweet new gear without some sparkly new gems and ritzy enchants? That’s where you come in. If you’re an enchanter and/or jewel crafter, NOW is the time to make good on your professions. Below are some tips and tricks to help move your supplies along and get you rolling in dough.

Tip #1 – The prime time for selling gems and enchants is after 10:00. This is usually when guilds call it a night for raiding and people finish up arenas and battlegrounds. But before you go to bed, what is the first thing your potential customers do? They run to the AH to purchase your goods and buff up their sweet new gear. So, if you have enchanting supplies or gems put them up before you go to bed! In the morning you’ll have a mailbox full of gold. It’s just like putting your tooth under your pillow and waiting for the tooth fairy to come, only it’s way better!

Tip #2 – Scrolls sell! If you can find someone to make you Armor Vellum the return you get on scroll sales is through the roof. However, you will still make a pretty penny if you purchase Vellum. Last night I got a stack of 5 Armor Vellum III for 36 gold. I made 5 Scroll of Enchant Chest – Superior Stats and sold each for an average of 38 gold. That means I made 154 gold, roughly a 230% profit. WEWT! The best part is, there is no deposit required for scrolls or any other enchanting supplies.

Tip #3 – Infinite Dust means infinite riches! The stuff goes so fast you’ll have to keep posting more every hour just to keep up. Again, no deposit required.

Tip #4 – If you have Greater Cosmic Essences, break them down into Lesser ones and sell them for a higher price. I was selling single units of Lesser Cosmic Essence last night for 7G 50S. For whatever reason, Greater Cosmic Essence sells for a lower price. I guess people don’t realize you can break one Greater Essence down into 3 Lesser Essences. Take advantage of stupid people.

Tip #5 – Gems are going up in value. If you see some jerk post any gem for 50% lower than the next highest post, BUY THEM and re-post at a higher price, just slightly under the next highest seller. People don’t realize the value of gems is going up. Take advantage while you can.

Tip #6 – Strength is where it’s at. According to Rorik’s research last night Strength gems are going for an extremely high price. My guess is that there are lots of DK’s out there getting new arena gear and they want to make themselves even more OP than they already are.

Tip #7 – The most important tip of all. BE PATIENT! If you knew me you would probably laugh at me for saying that. I have the least patience of any person I know. But if something isn’t selling right away, hang in there. Demand will eventually go up. Keep checking auction prices. Don’t undercut by too much and as Cathy has said before, if someone undercuts you by a little, re-list at a lower price…just don’t go too crazy.

Hopefully you’ll find these tips useful. I know I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I woke up and saw all those auction sales in my mailbox. Of course, I have to give credit where credit is due. If it weren’t for Rorik convincing me to become a JC/Enchanter I’d probably still be very poor. After all, I don’t think I can compete with Cathy’s herbing and flask business!

On customer anger and stealth nerfs

A few quick items today. First, one of the guys we run Naxx 25 with on occasion got an in-game mail last night from an upset customer. What would a customer have to gripe about if all items in game are of equal quality (e.g. all flasks of endless rage are exactly the same)? Well the price of course! With flasks and glyphs going like hotcakes, herbs are also going up in price. Our PUG friend was selling frost lotus at about 18 gold each, where pre 3.1, they were around 8 gold each according to Cathy. This angry consumer basically told our friend that he was a jerk and shouldn’t rip people off. I say, good for you, PUG friend! Keep it up!



On another note, paladins got nerfed…again. This time it was a stealth nerf. No patch notes, no nothing. Exorcism before Tuesday was doing damage to enemy players, now it only does damage to monsters. I understand why Ghostcrawler and his coworkers at Blizzard did it, but not announcing it or including it in the patch notes is pretty crappy customer service. Remember, we pay for this game and are customers. I’ve quit WoW for another MMO before and I can certainly do it again. I was really excited to start doing Arenas with my paladin as Ret again too. Now it’s back to Holy.

And I heal and I heal and I heal and I heal and I heal and I heal. /yawn

I wonder how Warhammer is coming along…


*PS - I think Tom over at Blessing of Might said it best: http://blessingofmight.blogspot.com/2009/04/exorcism-can-no-longer-be-used-on.html

The 2-Hour Crazy Lady

By staff reporter Cathy C.

Yes that’s me!! For two hours, a couple of nights per week, I stand in the Auction House with my multitude of flasks (my HOT item). You should start heading to the AH around 6:00 pm. Presently, Endless Rage is just that ..endless. None of the other flasks are doing nearly as well in price and sales.

Where to Start:

Firstly I will do an item search for my flasks. What’s the price? How many sellers? Are there any flask spammers with 50 flasks up? With all these questions answered, my first decision will be whether the price I’m using to maintain the lowest bid is profitable enough for me. If it isn’t and the prices are too low and too many flasks listed, I’ll either check back later or hold off until another night.

For tonight, lets say it was a prime selling situation (since it actually was). The price point was perfect, not an over abundance of sellers or flasks. Since I am in competition with my husband, he takes the 5 stack approach and I take the singles.

Next Step:

I will take my first 2 flasks and undercut by about 10-25 silver. While I wait for the first couple to sell I give shout outs for other items in my bags that I’ve crafted from Jewel Crafting. Within a few minutes the first 2 are gone and I replace them immediately with 2 more. Now, if one of the other sellers is checking periodically on the Endless Rage situation, he will just see the same 2 flasks I’ve had up with the same price point. Later, he may undercut thinking he is safe, but immediately go just a few silver lower with two more flasks and remove the other two you had listed at the higher cost. This happened to me 2 or 3 times this evening but I just keep slightly undercutting. As long as I was still comfortable with the price point, I was in the game and kept my sales moving. Most of the 2 hours I would simply replace the 2 flasks without issue. With Ulduar raiding starting to rise, I was selling them probably every couple of minutes at times. Shortly after 8 pm things will die off. I sold about 40 flasks this evening in about 2 hour period with little variation in my price.

Final Step

I certainly realize this particular strategy would make many people cringe. It takes tons of patience and is not for everyone but I like the excitement of seeing my stuff moving so quickly and staying on top of the sales for that night. Most important thing to remember is to call it a night if someone undercuts by a ton. The time you spent in farming the mats has value so don’t sell yourself short.

Additional Tip: Always have an Elixir Master make your flasks so you can enjoy the procs.

My Broker

I don't have a banker. I have a broker. I can't tell you the name of my broker. Why? Well first, I'll tell you why I call this character a broker and not a banker.

To me a banker is just a pack mule - a character used to store your junk. You park him at the bank and he runs from there to the mailbox and that's it. Sure, your banker can post stuff on the auction house for you, but the vast majority of his time is spent moving goods to the bank or his bags.

A broker is a character that is used to play the auction house. My broker has a section of a bag dedicated to keeping 1 of a few types of goods just so that I don't have to type in the name when I search for them. For example, a stack of saronite, 1 infinite dust and 1 buff food. The reason I only use a stack of one is that it makes it easy to see what the market price is when I mouse over it. It makes determining prices for items I post easier to compute if I feel that Auctioneer isn't pricing well due to the quantity on sale at the time. My broker is also the character I use to scan the auction house every morning and holds the vast majority of my cash.

So, why don't I reveal my broker's identity? Because sometimes I undercut and sometimes I buy low and relist and some of the people I undercut and relist from are guildmates or players I know in game. I don't do it maliciously. Most of the time I don't even realize I've undercut them until I do another scan of that item and see their name listed. If someone I know undercuts me I definitely don't take it personally, quite the contrary, I expect them to in order to be competitive and make money. I just don't want to deal with the possibility that one of them would take it personally. The Greedy Goblin would probably scold me for this but sometimes when I see a guildmate has something posted, I'll even post at the same price even though he/she has no idea who my broker is.