Happy New Year

   I would like to bid all of you awesome people out there that are reading this a very merry happy new year. As this is the last post in this year i would just like to send my good wishes to everyone, and coming next year we are still going to be going strong finding ways to make gold, and most importantly finding new ways to have fun.

   So enjoy yourself for the new year's eve, and once again, don't drink and drive it's for your own good.

   HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012 FROM VILE

The Spotlight (December)

   

   Here we are with the third installment of The Spotlight series. If you have seen the previous posts in this series, you will know that it's a once per month post about the most interesting sites, blogs or general things i have found out for the month, but if you are a first time reader check out the October and November posts.

   For this month, i have a few sites, a game and something very special to put the spotlight on. And yes just so you are clear, i did say i had a game to put the stoplight on but more on that when we get to it. So let's start at the beginning of it all with the sites i told you so.

    First site i would like to put the light on is www.icy-veins.com. This site is an awesome find for anyone that enjoys reading information about WoW, be it raid related information or reading about their class, but most importantly it has a section that is all about transmogrification which is pure awesomeness. In there you can find the armor sets, as well as all the cool looking weapons that your class, or your alt can wear, and see where you can acquire them. And another good thing about that site is that it has a weekly giveaway for pets and mounts to people that are following them on Facebook or Twitter, so why not give those guys a chance and check them out.

   The second site i was talking about is http://transmogfashion.tumblr.com As you  might guess from the name of the site, it's a site that pretty much covers all about Transmogging. How this site is unique is that, they are putting up screenshots of characters that are wearing different sets of armor, that when put together simply look great. Another great thing is that they are updating the site every day, and there are multiple images per day of various armor pieces that you might decide you like, and you want to put on your character.

   These were the two sites that i liked in this previous month, seeing as how it was all about the 'mogging in the post patch period. Ok now down to the game part. For this month i have a game to recommend to you, and that game is World Of Warcraft. 

   Ok before you start thinking that i have gone insane, and that i am recommending a game that you are actually playing, i will stop you right there and tell you that this is a free private server. Now before you get the wrong impression, this is a server that is NOT a Blizzard operated server, but a private server that has 100% up time, has about 1000 players on it at any given time, has fully functional Blizzard like raids, as well as battlegrounds. Ok but now this is the GREAT thing about it ... dum dum dum (war drum sounds) ... this is a Vanilla server. What this means is that this server has only the original WoW to it, which means you can only progress up to level 60. I will put in a few of the strong points of the server and leave the rest to you to discover.

• High population
• High XP gain rate or normal XP gain rate, so whatever you want to do you can do it
• Working professions
• Working instances
• Working raids
• Working decay style PvP ranked system
• Working economy, and a very active auction house
• Very active world PvP

   So there were a few of the things that i find awesome, but if you decide to try it, i am sure you will find some  more things that you like. Before i close the book on this, here's a suggestion, if you are bored with the same routine of posting your auctions by clicking your predefined TSM script, try the AH on this server and see how it was to make gold back in the Vanilla time when gold was gold and epics were in most cases blues :)

   Ok and last but not least, heck i'd call this the BEST and biggest part of this month spotlight would have to be YOU. Yes i said it, You the readers and the better part of the community that is reading my blog, as well as the blogs of the other gold bloggers out there in the gold making community. The reason why i decided to put this in this month post is, well a post made by Cold on his blog. But the post wasn't that touching as the replies i saw in the comments. That moved me, i mean i saw that there is still a caring community that is supportive, and sticks together even when the times are rough, and not everything and everyone has declined to the levels of ignorance and irritation you might find in a random LFR. So not to make this a long rant, i wish you all the very best time for the holidays, a very exciting New Year's Eve and know one thing, you people are the best !

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there. ( While you have your eyes open, don't be a douche and drink, and drive for New Year's eve. If you are gonna drink get a dedicated driver, or take a cab. Other than that I love you all )

   

Making The Sale Continued ...

   One of the reasons why i am making this post is because i have spent a lot of time explaining to people the usefulness of advertising, and more importantly how to link items in macros. Before i start with my ramblings, if you want to read up more on advertising, read my post on The Art Of Selling With The Help Of Advertisement 

   If you have read up on that post, which if you haven't i would strongly recommend that you do, you can see that when making an advertising macro you need to link the actual items in the macro to get better chances for a sale.

   So let's get down to the point, and actually clear it once and for all how to link items in your macros. As you can see on the image on the left, i have chosen the Shadowspirit Diamond as an item i want to use in a macro. Now the way to do it is by actually using another macro, and yes i know it sounds like one of those Yo Dawg, i heard you like macros, so we gave you a macro, to put in your macro, so you can macro jokes, but just bare with me.

   First thing you want to do is open a new macro window be it by pressing esc and choosing the macro window, or by typing in /macro. After you've done that, i would recommend that you save the following script in a macro for easy access:

/script MacroFrameText:Insert("")

   This script is what we are going to be using to get the items into our macros. How that works out though is simple, yet crafty. What you need to do is copy the script, then open the macro window and make a new macro, and this time it's going to be the actual macro that you are going to use. Now when you've opened the macro screen, in the chat type in the script /script MacroFrameText:Insert("") and then find the item you want to link and shift click it into the script so it ends up looking like the one on the image /script MacroFrameText:Insert("Shadowspirit Diamond") and press Enter. 

   If you have done everything as i have told you, you will end up with the given item linked in the macro you are making, as it is shown up on the image.

   While we are at the matter of linking macros, i want to give you the macro for linking your professions in trade as well. This macro is actually another script, but unlike the previous one, there won't be any linking here but a more direct approach. 

/script s=strjoin(" ","Vile's",select(2,GetSpellLink("Jewelcrafting")),"emporium open for work. Get all your gems here for the best possible prices.");SendChatMessage(s,"CHANNEL",nil,2)

   As you might see the script i used gave me an advertising macro that has my profession linked in it, as well as some text. In the script you can see some red letters and then the normal black ones. The black letters is the actual script while the red letters are what i want to show up before and after the profession. 

   So i am hoping that this will clear out the confusion some people have about making macros, and then linking items in their macros. If you still are unclear on something though, ask in the comments or even the new chat option that's up on the right side of the blog.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

"Rare" Pet To Be

   This year for the start of the Winter Veil we get the same thing we've been getting every year, presents!  Well this year there's one thing that's a bit different and that is the fact that you can make gold by simply opening your presents from Grandfather Winter, that's usually found in your faction capital. 

   The thing that's different this year that's making this to have the potential to be a gold maker is the change Blizzard did when they made the seasonal BoP pets to be BoE tradables. What this means is that after you've opened up your presents, to be more precise your Gaily Wrapped Present inside you will find a Snowman's Kit which's is a companion.

   Tricky part about this companion is that everyone can get it by simply picking up his presents, but you have to think on a larger scale. What i mean by this is, after this event is over people that are starting new characters, or even new players that jump in the game will want their pets, and the only way to get it would be from the AH, and that's where you come in. Just so you are clear on this one thing though, don't expect any fast gold, but seeing as how it doesn't cost you a single copper to acquire get a few in stock for a later date or a summer sale.

   So if you have an alt that you haven't played in a while, log on get your present, get your pet and then log out as there is no need for your alt that you don't play to not make you some coin down the road some time. 

P.S. I didn't notice earlier but the Gaily Wrapped Present can contain Green Helper Box, Jingling Bell, and Red Helper Box on top of the Snowman's Kit. So this means that these pets no matter how easy to obtain will not be obtainable with only one character so you can see some sales from people wanting to have all of them.

  So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

Justice Maelstroms

   Like i have said in a previous post, we are entering the post patch period when everyone that was hyped about the new patch has pretty much killed Deathwing, if nothing else on the LFR but still brought him down, and now are starting to look at either PvP or playing their alts. Well no matter where they turn they will still need gems and they will still need enchants.What this does to the economy is, it inflates the prices of the enchanting materials and certain gems.

   This time we're gonna look at a way to effectively deal with the excess of justice points as well as a chance to dominate a certain market. As you are playing more and more on your character you start earning more and more justice points. Well in a while you get capped because there's nothing else left for you to buy and you are left with excess of justice points or even worse, you are capped and not getting any killing bosses while trying to get your dailies done.

   There are two ways to go about with your excess justice points, and that is either try and hold the market on the BoE items which are 1650 points or go for the disenchant option. Don't get me wrong, there's no right and wrong here, there's only choice options. If you get into the BoE market you can make some gold but know that almost 90% of the people out there that are capped are doing the same and you might find yourself in a place where you can't sell your item for a very very long time.

   Another viable choice, and this is my favorite one, though you need to be an enchanter to do it, is to buy the 700 point items and then disenchant them. The reason why this is a good and more importantly viable option, is simply because of the given inflation of the Maelstrom Crystals where on some servers it has reached prices of 500g. And another thing you should be mindful of is that whenever you DE an item you stand a chance to proc an extra from your guild perk so right there you can even double your money, and the best thing is that the Maelstroms are a fast moving commodity and their sales shouldn't take a long time.

   I know this isn't a huge discovery, but you would be amazed at the number of people out there that don't know what to do with their points, or don't know how to profit from it and simply let it go to waste with the excuse that they are capped and no longer need them.

   And last but not least, i would like to wish Merry Christmas to all of my readers, and may you have a great holiday with your friends and family, and i wish you all the best.

The Road Less Traveled

   Back at Blizzcon this year, Blizzard announced that in their next expansion of the game they are going to make a small change in the pet acquiring system, meaning all pets are going to be BoA. What does this mean to us ? Well if you are in the pet selling market that means that people will no longer have to buy that Winterspring Cub on 10 different characters but only one, and in return you will see a decrease in the demand for the pets. On the other hand if you are an owner of a site that sells TCG pets, well then you might get in the history books as someone that invented a new cuss word or words. But all this aside, the expansion is still some time away and we still have a lot of people buying pets for their characters, which in return means that that's a good market to get into.

   For this post i am going to tell you about my personally favorite route that i make before i go to bed, and when i wake up, because it takes about 5 minutes to do it and can net you in anywhere from 3-5k gold.

   Here's how this whole thing works. By the way, i've put in two way points in this line that are actual pet vendors that i usually visit when i am running short on the pets they are selling so you can skip them if you don't need them. First off i start with Winterspring and i go there so i can restock on Winterspring Cubs, which have been a good seller for a long time. 

   After i'm done with that i start flying south to the second marker that you can see in the Northern Barrens. The reason why i'm going there is to find Takk's Nest which has a 100% drop chance for the Leaping Hatchling pet that i've had the good fortune of finding quite a few times, and even better sell it at prices ranging anywhere from 200-2000g, all depending on the competition.

   After that i go further down south to Dustwallow Marsh, and there at the most northern part i start scurrying around trying to find Dart's Nest which like Takk's has a 100% to drop a pet, but this time it's a Darting Hatchling and this guy has been a great selling pet. The main reason why these pets are so good to sell, and why they are "rare" is simply because in order to find them you need to be looking for them. What this means is that you can walk right past them and not notice them because they don't have that sparkling effect like other lootable containers have, but rather you have to find them and click them to get them. If you were wondering how they look like you can see the nest on the image on the left, so it's pretty much like any nest you can see on the map there, with the only difference that you can click these.

   After i am done with this one, i continue down to Thousand Needles, to be more precise i go down to "Plucky" Johnson who is a pet vendor that only sells one type of pet, namely the Ancona Chicken but that's enough. I've made some good gold with this pet as well, as not many people are even bothering to read where it's dropping or where a certain pet can be bought.

   And the last stop on our travels is Ungoro Crater. What we are after in this place is the elusive Ravasaur Matriarch Nest and inside you can find the Ravasaur Hatchling. Reason why this nest is a pain in the butt to find is simply because there are many other nests scattered around there that you can't do anything with. Other then that same deal as the previous pets, prices ranging anywhere from 200-2000g.

   So it's always a good idea to fly around these places and scout around to see if maybe you end up with some free good earning pets.

   If you are still reading, and you like the pet market to make some gold, then you might want to read up on the two previous posts Got No Professions But Need Gold and Gold Pets Continued as they will give you more of an inside on the pet market.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.  

Destruction Tailoring

   Today we are going to give "destruction" tailoring a whirl and see how we can make a profit, or at least grab the helm on a certain market. Before we head out let me explain the term "destruction tailoring". Prior to the patch the Chaos Orbs were BoP, but now they were changed to being BoE which means anyone can take it, but the reason why this is important for us. is that it can actually put a tangible price on Dreamcloth through the crafting of Dream Of Destruction, so hence destruction tailoring.

   With the accessibility of the Dreamcloth for a price we can finally move away from the plan where we could only get a finite number of Dreamcloth per week, before we had to wait for 7 days for the next one. 

   So what this means for us is that we can start thinking about making gold from crafting or even mass producing the items from tailoring. What i mean by this is the BoE patterns we get out of any of the raids as well as the patterns you can buy from the tailoring trainer. This time around though i am not going to get into the whole gear crafting ideas but rather into something that is more fast paced for moving.

   What i'm talking about is the Illusionary Bag as well as the Powerful Ghostly Spellthread. The bag is a good choice because it has a high price, well usually high price unless someone is intentionally bringing it down in which case you can buy him out and dominate the market. The spellthread is another good  choice because it is fairly cheap to manufacture, it requires only one piece of Dreamcloth and it's usually with a nice price tag on it.

   In case you don't have the bag in your crafting list it's because you will need to buy the pattern from your tailoring trainer for the low price of only 1 Dreamcloth, so don't freak out.

   Reasons why i'm not going into how much you can make, is simply because the price varies from server to server, but more importantly it varies from time to time and it can be 10g per chaos orb in the morning and 100g in the evening. But just for the sake of it, on my server i got on and bought 200 chaos orbs for 8g each which was a freaking steal, and then from the same guy bought Embersilk Bolts for 10g per one and that was simply awesome as it brought my crafting price for the bag at some gold short of 900 and i flipped it for about 2500g per bag. But deals like that are very rare to come by, so what you can expect to get is crafting cost of about 1500g and flip for around 2-2.5k which is still not a bad deal.

   Before i head out one last thing, if you happen to have a engineer or a blacksmith that has the patterns from the firelands daily quests it would be a good idea to check out the prices of the weapons that can be made, purely for the reason that there are still people out there that are buying them and their price is still decent to make you some profits.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

   P.S. If you are still reading this good on ya, and if you noticed there are no more of those annoying ads showing up in the posts that show you useless things about things you don't care then you have Nigel and Alto to thank for commenting in the previous post about it. Comments do have their strong points, so much love to those two guys for their input about the matter.

Potions For The Small Ones

   I won't make this to be one of those long and explanatory posts, this time around i will get down to give you the information about a few potions that turned out to be a real small gold mine. 

   First of all, these potions that i have been selling them for a long time and made some good profits from are  basically catering to the twinks that are hard into PvP.

   First potion that has been a great success for me has been the Free Action Potion. These little potions are the sheer awesomeness of being the unstoppable force for the next 6 seconds, meaning you can't get stunned or have your speed impaired. One other thing you should know about this potion is that if you decide to go for it and sell it you are going after a bigger twink market, meaning this potion is good for it's money up to level 80, but sadly above 80 it's simply not working.

   Another tip i could give you is that it would be a good idea to try and sell these by making some kind of a catchy macro to advertise. If you are looking for an example try  /2 You love playing PvP, love carrying that flag but those interrupts and stuns bringing you down? Well buy a Free Auction Potion and put a stop to it now. On the AH now ! (you could mention that it's only viable till level 80 but if you want to be a devious goblin leave that out of the macro)

   Another two potions that are a good choice is the Lesser Invisibility Potion, and the Invisibility Potion. These two are a good choice for the hard core PvPers that love playing in the low tiers but aren't Rogues. Only drawback with these is that they have a level thresholds where the first one is for level 21-29 twink tier while the second one is for the 31-39 tier. So unlike the Free Action Potion these two are more limiting, so you will need a macro for their sales as well, if you want to make some sales that is.

   Reason why i turned back to the Vanilla time items for things to make gold from is a good story, and i will make a post in the upcoming Spotlight series in a few days.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

Gambler's Gambit

   There are multiple ways of making gold in WoW, be it following a preset pattern of selling gems, glyphs, flasks, gear etc. What i really do love is when i'm trying out new markets and new ideas on how to make gold. In my previous post The House Always Wins i dived in the games of fortune waters, but i decided to take the usual Casino game and make a few modifications to the rules to make it more attractive. This post is primarily going to be as a recap on how i did with it, and hopefully give you an inside on the thing and let you see for yourself if you want to try it out of not.

   If you want to make some gold in WoW all you need is some logical thinking, but if you want to have fun while doing it get creative. Ok, now down to the facts on what i found out to work for me, and how much i thought was a fair deal for me.

   I will make out the rules of the game in a easy to follow way and with a option open for you to switch it around and set it to whatever you think it would be fair.

• Entry Fee ( this is the amount that all participants need to agree on and pay up before the start of the round )
• Ability To Allow for multiple payments per round ( this is for that guy that wants better odds at winning the pot, for instance everyone pays 50g he pays 200g, that way when you roll instead of rolling for 10 if there's 10 people you roll 13 and take his number and the next 3 as a win for him and move everyone above )
• Decide on how much you want your cut to be from the total pot ( i chose 20% per round, but you can choose to go higher or lower then that depending on your server, and the people willing to play )
• Offer some kind of a Jackpot ( you can choose to have it be a monetary reward like gold, but that's not much of an incentive, it's better to offer something that's like a gift wrapped in paper of awesomeness because let's face it everyone loves gifts )
• Don't Spam excessively because no one likes spammers and you can get reported 

   Following these simple rules i managed to get some people to actually have some fun while participating in a social group activity, even if that was a game of luck. The best thing about this is that everyone that came played about 5-10 hands, some made some profits others lost tiny bits like 200-400g which in today's economy is nothing, and especially if you take into account that they had some fun and giggles while doing it which is why they are playing a game. Well while they were having fun, and to be honest i was having fun as well, i managed to net in 9k in about  hour and a half which on it's own is an impressive number. But seeing as how i got into this to try it out and see if it's worth doing i decided to make it fair and give something back, Christmas Times are near anyways, so i made the Jackpot to be a valor piece by choice to the winner, which on my server goes from 6-9k. ( The fact that the person that sold that item was one of my alts doesn't make me a bad Grinch, just a smart business Goblin ). So everyone had some fun, some people made some gold, some people had some laughs and i made some profits all in all a good day.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

The House Always Wins

Here we are, few weeks into the Patch 4.3, and almost everyone and their uncle has killed Deathwing in the LFR feature, and we are nearing the point where people are yet again coming to the boring what to do now place. Well why is this important, or better yet how can we use this to our advantage to make gold ? The answer to this question is either by selling stuff on the AH, which is pretty much every day standard and nothing special, or you can take the creative way and start making gold by getting people interested in events that are fun and profitable for you as well as for them.

   Well i did some thinking about how to make an even that would make me gold, and at the same time get people to enjoy it and even make some gold while doing it. Well what i came up was a epicwincasinohybridgameofawesomeness (this would be a valid representation for the event if English followed the German logic in making words when they cramp 10 words into one, and just to clarify i'm not bashing on the German language, nor do i speak it but face it they do it non the less). 

   Ok now let me explain the core of the matter.  I started off with the basic of a casino game where i would take the element of letting the roll decide who the winner is, then i took an element of adding a premium prize that would make people interested in the game in the form of a jackpot, and last i made it so that every game, no matter what the roll is the player is the winner, or at least one of them is.

   Now down to breaking it down even more. Like i said i started off with the basic idea of the Casino, but had so move away from it because the Casino idea on it's own is considered to be exploiting the economy and can get you warnings even 3 day bans. The reason why this was considered cheating the economy is because of the way people would set it up where if you would roll 1-66 you loose 67-95 double money, 95-99 tripple and 100 x5, but the fact remains that there's 66% chance you will loose which meant you always ended up loosing (the player not the casino). So i took the idea about the gambling from the casino, but that's pretty much where i stopped with that. Next i took a bit of an event that i remember doing back in the TBC time within our guild at the time, namely this event was weekly lottery where every guild member would deposit 100g in the guild bank and at the end of the week one member would get 50% of the entire winnings and the other half would go for the guild for whatever we might need.

   So i gave you a vague underline of the idea, now here's the details on how it actually worked. Like i said i was going to do the game of luck thing so normally i needed people that were interested in playing. I did a macro where i would inform people of an opportunity to make gold by playing against other people. This prompted whispers full of questions about how that would work and what's the catch, so i needed a reply macro in which i told them it's a game of roll and the winner takes all, and a chance to win a Mechano-Hog.

   If you are still reading you are wondering what does a Mechano-Hog have to do with gambling, well that's the Jack Pot i was mentioning previously. Well let me continue and you will see how everything falls into place. In about 5 minutes i had ten people interested into playing the game, so i explained to all of them the rules and what was at stake, and what are the winnings. The rules were simple, yet alluring for the player :

• Entry fee 50g (higher if everyone agrees to the same price)
• Upon fee payment everyone is given a number according to their place in the raid group (just so you don't end up with a confusion tell people what their numbers are, or to make it even easier you can use an addon for raid rolling)
• After that make a /roll 10 (depending on how many people you have, for this example i'm considering 10 people), and to the winner of the roll goes 80% of the total sum.

   So as you can see each roll someone ends up winning gold, and that someone is not you (excluding the 20% fee). Now it's important to tell people that those 20% are going into a fund that will be used to pay for the Jack Pot when the winnings are high enough. To make it more alluring, and convincing i had one of my friends that i had told i was going to give him a gift come in the party and make a few rolls until he won. When i won i announced that we have a Jackpot Winner and gave him the Mechano Hog. Upon giving him the mount and him using it in front of the gathered crowd and getting the achievement i got swamped with people wanting to jump in and play. To make sure that everyone follows i DID ACTUALLY give a mount out, but it wasn't from the winnings but rather a gift to a friend that i was going to give out anyways.

   So underline for the whole thing was, people pay 50g with a chance to win 400g. Every round there's a winner and you are there to simply get people together and not to take their gold (to a certain degree). 

   Its a fact that if you have 10 people playing the roll, each roll the winner takes 400g for 50g investment, and you end up with 100g going towards the jackpot or your personal bag of gold, whichever you choose to be. I did this for about 2 hours, had some fun and people had some fun. In the start while i got it off it was slow getting people but after the first hour and especially after giving the Mechano Hog away entries exploded. In the second hour i made 6k from the 20% fees i was taking (and this can be a flexible amount, to anything you find fair but keep it decent)

   Anyways i'll keep polishing this way and see what i can get in the long term and i will give an update in a future patch, but until then, keep your eyes open for good opportunities out there.

The Cookie Season

   So Winterveil is upon us and the only thing i'm giggling about is the amount of cookies i'm selling. Well these are not the regular fortune cookies but rather the Gingerbread Cookies that are required for the event with "WoW's Santa" (No i'm not going to call him Great Father Winter)

    The only requirement to make those is to have 1 small egg and some holiday spices, and boom, profit. So if you didn't pick up any before the season check your AH to see maybe (slim chance though now) there's some egg left for a cheaper price, then flip it and make it into a cookie and then profit. I've been selling them in stacks of 5 for 350g per stack, and they are literally going ... well like cookies/cakes.

   If you didn't stock up on eggs, or simply didn't know about it, there's a way to farm these eggs and quite an effective way for that matter. What i'm talking about is killing the Feral Dragnohawks outside Silvermoon that have 100% chance to drop it and have a chance to drop 1-2 per kill. It took me 4 minutes and i already gathered up 50 eggs so it's an extremely fast way of obtaining those. As you can see on the image on the right, that's the best place to farm these.

   Another thing that you might want to get down to supply your Auction House is to make those outfits that you end up with the pattern in your mail if you have the corresponding profession leatherworking/tailoring.

   With these two in mind you can make some easy profits, but be warned though, the prices i stated were from my server, so before you get into this market check your ah and see what's what.

   I won't drag this on any more, so i bid you happy holidays and good hunting.

   If you want a second opinion on the matter check out Cold's post on the matter, and see what experiences he has had with the event and what he has to say.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

The Quick Flip

   Like i've stated in many cases in the past, my favorite way to turn a profit, or make a killer sale is the one where i have to invest the minimum time into it and get the maximum profit. 

    One of the ways that i see are easiest to get to this is simply by using your professions to acquire raw ore/herbs then smelt/crush them and re list them back.

Main reason why this is a good idea is, well because everyone that's playing the game for the PvP or PvE aspect of the game are choosing their professions that give them the edge in competitiveness and maximum amount of DPS/HPS increase. 

    Well the good thing about this is that even with those professions they will still need someone with the gathering professions to actually turn their ore, leather or herbs into the materials they will need to have to continue working with their max professions.

   As a good example for this would be the price disparity between the ore/bars in many of the mineral tiers. We can see on many servers that prices of a given ore is (as an example) 10g/stack, and some of the bars require 1 ore or 2 ores to smelt into a bar, but for some reason the price of the bar for that same ore that requires 1 ore to make it into a bar is 15g or 20g. Well what that means is that you can turn a profit by simply buying out the ore stock ( i'm talking about the older tier of ore) then smelt them into bars and put them at 200 or even 300% profit margins.

   Only thing you need to be careful, is the amount of ores it takes to make a bar, because as i said some of the bars require 2 ores to make a single bar, so open your eyes. 

   Best market you want to get your greedy paws into, is the Vanilla and TBC markets, purely for the fact that people that powerlevel their professions will be picking up their bars as already smelted. But if you don't want to deal with the more slow moving bars then you might as well try to get into the Cataclysm markets, but be warned those investments could be tricky to deal with purely for the fact that most of the botters are gathering the Elementium and Obsidium Ores, and in effect keeping the prices down.

   This same strategy could be used in the leather markets, or the herbs/ink market, so pretty much any market in which you turn the raw materials into finished materials. Just so you don't have to manually check the prices the see if it's worth it, you can try and get your information from any of the AH gathering sites that will give you a overview of the situation of the prices.

The Undermine Journal 

WoW Trader

AH Spy

Wowuction

   So as a short recap, check the prices of ores against bars, check the prices of lower tier leathers against the higher ones and check the prices of the higher inks compared with the price of the lower ones.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

   

The Old Man And The Sea ... And The Gold Fish

   Before i start this post, i would like to thank an unnamed person on my server that reminded me that even at this time of WoW's life, there are still people that are just starting out and are finding the WoW universe to be just that, WOW. Ok now that i got that out of the way, lets see how we can make some gold off from those people or even people that started in Late WOTLK, or hell even earlier.

   Unlike my usual stance on "farming" where i'm all about not doing it to make profit, i find fishing to be relaxing sometimes ( i'm going to put the accent on SOMETIMES, because at other times it can piss you off ). The best thing about fishing is that everyone can do it, but not everyone does it. Back in Vanilla, TBC and especially WOTLK fish were a very sought after commodity, but in Cataclysm that demand went down the drain except for a few types for fish that were needed for the feasts.

   But here i am again going deep into a subject that i didn't really mean to write about. So even though this post is about making gold from fishing, i am not going to tell you to go out and fish for those feast fishes, no, i am going to direct you to the oldest and most profitable fish since WoW was released. Yes, ladies and gentle goblins i give you the Deviate Fish.

   What is so great about this fish is the ease with witch you can catch it, and it's availability. One drawback for catching this fish as an Alliance character is that, well you will need to go to the Barrens to catch these guys.

   On the image here you can see the best locations there are for catching the fish. As you can see there are three spawning zones for the fish, and when i say spawning zones i mean spots where schools of fish will appear that will guarantee you a catch every time you toss that fishing line. Another great thing about having three spots to farm these fish is that by the time you finish catching the fish at the first location, then are finishing the second location and thinking about going to the last one, the pools in the first one have already respawned. Except these spots there is another place that you can farm for these fish, and that is inside the Wailing Caverns instance. only difference is that there are no fishing pools in there but a rather 40-45% chance of catching the fish in open water. So we covered where to find the fish, now lets cover how to sell, cook and market the fish.

   The Deviate Fish when eaten on it's own has a few side effects. These side effects are five in total ranging from small heals, stamina buff as well as the ability to put you to sleep, but there are 2 other effects that are kind of cool and those are the Shrinking and the Party Time. The Shrinking is an effect that is pretty much like the Noggenfogger Elixer and can shrink you. ( Don't worry guys the effects are temporary, it WILL grow back up ... so where was i ), while the Party Time effect basically makes your character start doing random emotes and dance and laugh. This effect can be dispelled, but lets be honest if you dispel that effect you have no soul ... or you are a politician.

   But even with those two effects the Deviate Fish is not a big seller because of them but rather to the effects that it can have if you cook it. So if you have the Recipe then you can make it's cooked form which is Deviate Savory Delight. The best thing about this is that it can make you end up looking like a, and now get this, a Pirate or a Ninja!

   When we say ninja, the first thing we end up thinking is something like the guy on the left ( Scorpion for those who have never heard of Mortal Combat ), while when we hear about Pirate we think of ... ahh .. what do we think of, uhh i know, Polly wants a cracker talking parrot. But that's beside the point, whatever we think is not important, what's important is that they sell a lot if you do it right and can net in some great profits.

   So, after covering the where and what, lets get down to the last part in which we discuss the marketing and selling strategy.

   Best way to sell these is in stacks of 5's and 20's. One of the things you want to check out first is the competition on the server, usually it's low to none but still check it out, and check out the prices. On my server i was in a bit of luck and managed to find a seller selling 40 stacks of raw Deviate Fish for 20g/stack. Bought them all out, posted 1 stack of 20's for 200g and 4 stacks of 5's for 50g/stack, while the rest i cooked and posted on the AH for 250g/stack. I managed to sell about 30 stacks in 1 day. I'm not saying you will always find deals like that but if you see their prices being low at under 100g buy them out then repost them at 250 or even higher if you think you can fence them, and watch your profits soar.

   And last but not least, this item is an item that people generally don't know about unless they've tried it out in the past, so you want to make a macro that you can post in trade channel that will advertise it a bit. Making a ad macro for this is easy, simply put Ninja and Pirate and anything in between those two and it's a formula for success.

   So we covered the what, the where and the how, and now the only thing you have left to do is go find some chillout music if you decide to do some fishing, or go and dominate that part of the market and watch your profits.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

Pissed Off, And Then Some

   See this baby on the picture, well he's a level 1 pissed off individual, me on the other hand got to level 10 yesterday and today. The reason for this is not something i did in WoW, or maybe someone even undercut me or cheat me out of a sweet profit, no, the reason for my pissyoffness (not a real word but who cares, it's how i feel) is the streak of bad luck i've had with posting for the last few days. What i mean by this is actually the inability to post.

   What really happened is yesterday i spent about an hour and a half making a very detailed post about a new auctions site that is rising up, gathered all the info, cropped and PS tens of pictures, made some funny remarks, and in general i liked it because it made me happy. Well my happiness came to an abrupt stop, when about one minute away from pressing the post button the power went out. That was a moment just like the ones in the commercials when they end it up the word PRICELESS. But my case was even more amusing when the power came back on and i saw the only thing that was saved in the draft, was the first intro line, and the line stated as following "Settle in a comfy position because this is going to be fun". That was when PRICELESS went to EPIC.

   But enough about that, let me give you the given site information, but this time instead of doing it on my own again, i will simply put out two links to two guys that did a pretty good job covering it. Just so you know the site i'm talking about can be found at  http://www.wowuction.com  and here are the two posts that did a pretty good job covering it.

The Golden Crusade

Alto's Goldish Advice

   These guys did a pretty good job covering the site so give them both a whirl and see what they think about it.

   Another thing i had written about and is pretty much lost was a think that Kuja kinda made a similar post about. What i mean is the ability to make gold by catering to the needs of the leveling characters, or the twinks in the 79 bracket. Kuja's Post on flipping twink gear is pretty much what i've done for a while, with a bit of a twist where i would go and acquire the gear on my own when i was bored. How i did that was simple, i would take a treasure finding potion, and go do the Embersilk Cloth farming spot, if you don't know about it, read all about it in The Way Of The Farmer post. The reason why this is the best place to do it is because everything you kill is a humanoid and you end up killing a lot of them so good chance at getting greens. When you get items there if they are for level 79 price them at 350g if they are 80 or 81 price them at 250g .. they will sell, eventually.

   So hopefully next time i make a post, i will not have to make it as a repository of links but rather something more in the line of a proper post. Until then a shout out to the guys that did cover those three topics

Xsinthis, Alto and Kuja.

New Season, New Possibilities

   One week ago we saw the drop of the patch. That is when all the sales started going haywire, when the demand for gems, enchants and everything in between went up. Well, today is that same day, but on a smaller scale. What i means by this is, we have the start of the new PvP season, which in return means new PvP gear and people starting to do more PvP to get the new gear. Like we all know, new gear requires new enchants and new gems so we should see a big increase in those.

     So this time around make sure you get your crafters shelling out goods to sell. One good thing about the start of the new season besides the new rise in demand for enchants and gems is the rise in new characters in playing PvP, and those characters need a intro level gear so they don't absolutely suck, and get them selves killed in two shots.

    That right there is what you want to focus on. Get that PvP gear out on the market and see how many you end up selling.

   If you have a Leatherworker, Blacksmith or Tailor, make sure you have bought the patterns for the given PvP sets and that you price them relatively high, as an example if the mats cost you 200g price them at 1500g, they will sell no doubt about that.

   If you are a Jewelcrafter, this time around expect a rise in the sales of the PvP gems. So all those gems that are collecting dust in the corners of your bank are going to see some sales today and in the following week.

      This next bit is more focused at the PvP playing community. Namely they have been given the chance to acquire their epic gems that are PvP oriented straight from the PvP vendor, but given the fact that it costs 750 conquest points i don't see them going for them any time soon unless they are playing on an alt and want to make some gold off the insanely high price of the gems now. My guess is that this is Blizzard's way of addressing the crying PvP community that was crying out on the forums, now they have a place where they can go ahead and tell them that there are PvP gems in the game that can be bought.

   So not much else to talk about, except one thing, if you are a PvPer enjoy the new season.

   So, like always, keep your eyes open for good opportunities out there.

Two In One, The Faire and Awesomeness

   Before i begin, i want to say that i have never been someone that has been doing the achievements in the game, be it seasonal or event ones. Well today i decided that i want to try out the new Darkmoon Faire, and by gosh it was awesome. The awesomeness didn't come from the the cannon shooting event, or not even from the tonk driving game either, it was from the quests i saw there.

   What i mean by this is, they are not quests per se but they are more of a profession boosts. When you get to the Faire you see a lot of daily quests that will award you tokens that you can exchange for mounts, pets and what not, but no i'm talking about the quests that require you to do some menial thing and you get +5 skill in a given profession. This might not sound like a lot but the best thing is that you can use those +5 skills to get from 520-525 and in certain professions that might end up costing you 2-3k gold.

   So if you have a character that has a profession that doesn't have it's professions maxed out you might want to go to the Faire and take on those quests and get that free boost for your profession leveling. Just so you know there are quests for every profession in the game, starting from cooking, fishing .. all the crafting/gathering professions .. ending with archeology.

   So no point in not going there, go on have fun, and unlike other posts where i tell you ways to make gold, now i'm telling you ways to save gold, so use it wisely.

   Second thing i wanted to show you, is a free version of the Race To World First which is a movie made about the top raiding guilds in WoW and what they are doing in their lives to help them achieve that, so i hope you get to enjoy it as well.

Race to World First from Looking for Group Productions on Vimeo.

The Spotlight (November)

  Even though a little late, can't blame me, too many things happening with the patch to remember everything, back with another post in The Spotlight. In this post i would like to put the center of attention to two sites, one podcast and one very very ingenious evil little goblin. So let's get going, and we'll start with the sites i was talking about.

   This first site i'm going to put the spotlight on is www.askmrrobot.com The main reason why i'm telling you about this site, is that it's a site that will help you with all your reforging, and you will not have to do any math on how to properly do it on your own. Apart from that the site offers tips on how to gear up your character, what specs you should take on, and what would the advantages be if you didn't take something opposed to taking something else. Plus there you will find what stats are priority for your class, and even goes for spec wise. 

   You might have heard about this site, you might have not, there are many blogs/sites out there that advertise it for money, but me being the nice *cough*dumbass*cough* guy that I am, i am doing it from the goodness of my heart.  

   This second site i'm about to tell you, it's a fairly new site but it has a lot of potential to grow into something big as well as to be a nice place where you will be able to go to, when you want to know what is going on in the WoW gold making world. So without further ado, off to the next site.

   That's right, The Power Word: Gold Chronicle. http://chronicle.powerwordgold.net/ Like i said in the intro this site is all about bringing the latest and greatest news from the WoW gold making community into one easy to read, and quite accessible place. He has a RSS feed from the most visited blogs that are out there ( still doesn't have mine :( but maybe in the future he might put me up there ).

   Anyways, it's a good site, i love the way it's structured, i love the sheer simplicity yet awesome functionality, and last by not least, it's a site that brings you the best info on how to make gold so what's not to like. Go there, see it, and if you like it put it in your favorites and check it out daily.

  Ok this was all about the sites, next up we have a podcast, and an awesome one for that matter.

   The Mana Cooler podcast is not a new podast, it's been around and it's been and still is a very good podcast.http://themanacooler.com/ One of the awesome thing about listening to The Mana Cooler  is that it's not one of those 2 hour long podcast, but rather a short and down to the point podcasts that cover what is going on in the world, and what he is doing. So check out George WoW on twitter, or simply go to the manacooler site and check his amazing podcast.

   I know that these few short lines don't do it justice, but i will simply leave it up to you to check it out and see it for yourself, and belive me you will not be sorry.

   So that was all from the two sites, and the podcast i meant to put into this post, but then i got hold of a certain information about a certain gold making goblin that simply go to me and i had to put it out there so people know about it as well.

   As you can see from the trophy image, the thing this guy did is so amazing that i decided he needed to be given something. Ok enough with the suspense, let me tell you what he actually did.

   For safety reasons i will leave his name out of this post. Ok so first of all he's a gold maker and enjoys doing it, and mainly he plays the gem market. So the great thing that he did is the following. Two days before the patch hit, he marked up the two major contenders in the gem market and decided to get very aggressive in the way he deals with them. He started off by mocking up the first guy, but he did it with an alt. He played it very smooth where he was antagonizing the guy, but without actually saying anything  offensive, which at the end the guy snapped and started cussing, insulting and then even dropped the F-bomb and the N-bomb on him. That's exactly what he wanted, he reported him and got him a 48h ban, a day before the patch day, pure epicness to be seen. 

   

   Second guy he marked up didn't get hit as hard but it was funny as hell non the less. From that same alt, he bought up bag full of flour stacks of 20. From there he got his mailing addon to recognize his target as the alt and send mails but separate them in 1's opposed to sending it in stacks. He sent 2000 mails to the guy on the day the patch hit. I thought there was a limit to the mails you can have but i guess they changed it at some point. What this meant is that the other guy got 2000 mails that would take him 40 minutes to take them all out of the mail. Well the given goblin did this to him 4 times, which put the other guy out of business for about 5 hours. In those 5 hours he had the market pretty much for himself and a few of the other small time sellers.

   So this trophy goes out to you, ________ from Sylvanas EU server for being the most deviate goblin of the month.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

Patch Week, The Perfect Time To Sell

   Welcome back ladies and gentle goblins. Today we are going to cover a small thing that if used right can earn your truly awesome profits. From experience, we know that when a new patch hits the sales go haywire, but if that patch brings an end to a season, and start to a new one, then it's a full out sale out.

     Well, this patch happens to be one of those patches, and we all made those awesome profits, but this patch has something that's even better about it.

What i mean by this is, this patch was released on a mid week day when people were at work and didn't all get a chance to play as much as they would want to. Well now we are coming on the weekend, and all those people that were busy working or what not are going to be free and playing. If you happen to be one of those people that were stuck on their work place, or  were busy with something else and didn't get to make the gold you wanted now it the time. So what this means for us is quite simple, SELL SELL SELL.

   I happen to be one of those people that loves to make gold, and on the patch day i tried to surpass my previous record of 200k per day, but kinda failed due to some problems but that's not important i made some awesome amount as well, but what's more important is that the 2nd day of the sales i made half of what i made on the patch day, and the good thing is that now the weekend is starting. So this only means that we get to have 4 consecutive very big sale days so expect to see huge incomes.

   So let's keep it short, and lets get down to what to sell if you missed the previous posts that were made check out The Hour Of Twilight Aftermath post, more precise near the end of the post you will see a list of things to sell, just copy that list and add a few things.

   One of the big, and i do mean big sales has came from selling gear on the AH. Let me clarify, when i say gear i mean visually interesting pieces of gear that in most cases can be obtained by crafting it. Most notably for me at least has been the Nightscape Boots and other boots that have a model that looks like an actual boot. Before i'm misunderstood, when i say actually looks like a boot i mean about how the model looks on a Undead ( This is primarily for Horde ) because a lot of the boot model for Undeads end up looking like slippers. So if you have a character that can craft gear, be it Cloth, Leather, Mail or Plate, make sure you inspect how they appear and see if you like them.

   So a fast recap in short lines of the top sellers that you should be selling :

Gems => Enchants > PvP Gear >Visually Interesting Gear > Food => Flasks, Pots

   And last but not least, if you missed out on the patch day for whatever reason, or didn't make as much as you were hoping to make, then i bid you all good luck and huge profits for this patch weekend.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

Hour Of Twilight Aftermath

    Here we are a day after the patch (or two days for the US readers), and this post is not going to be a long one but rather a patch day aftermath report. Things with this patch were a bit unusual, at least on my server, and the reason for this was that i didn't take into account that alot of people had left the server. ( 3 major raiding guilds transferred away ) Given this information, my profits weren't that high, to top my last patch winnings of 190k. This patch i made 135k in about 6 hours of game time, and the reason for having only 6 hours even with the fact that i had a whole day free, is the universal law that states when everything is right, something will go wrong that will make it all go wrong. In my case, that was the internet connection going down for 2 hours in peek hours. But enough with this, it sounds like i'm making excuses, lets get down to the facts of what was happening and what to expect now.

Here's my MySales sales list taken at 9pm last night, for some reason i didn't make one before i went to bed, so on this one you can see that the sales are hovering at 105823g at that time. From what you can see, 90% of the profits i did are coming from the gem market. Well actually come to think of it on this image you can't see that much about what was selling, but only the gold acquired from the sales. Ok off to the next one where you'll be able to see the most profitable things that i sold and made some gold from.

   On this image, on the right you can see the top earners for this patch for me. Like i said i chose to go full out on the gem market, but did take on a few of the most sold enchants as well. As any patch day, this one was following about the same guidelines. Those guidelines are simple: people get new gear, people want gems for new gear, people want enchants for new gear, goblins make gold from people wanting things. So like i said i chose to go full out on gems for two reasons, first one being that i had all patterns and a stock to hold me for 3 patch days, and second one is that epics got released now so i need to offload the stock i have piled up before it deflates.

   I have a friend that took the other route about making gold on this patch day, he took up the enchanting scrolls and made almost as much as i did. So if you happen to be a enchanter it's still not late to jump in the market, because it's going to be a busy month for us gold makers because everyone will be getting new gear now and gems and enchants will go through the door.

   So that was what i did, and now this is what you should expect to see in the next week up to a month. So if you happen to have a character that can do any of those things you might want to jump in and make some profits.

• Enchants will have a high demand, so if you are enchanter get to enchanting
• Gems need will be high so this is the time to get to cutting gems
• Flasks and Pots will be in high demand so get mixing 
• Food is a great seller now, people want their food before they jump into instances and raids, so get cooking. A great way to make gold here is with the Fortune Cookies.
• New Season starts next week, so the need for PvP gear will go up, so get down to crafting some PvP gear. ( This is going to increase the need for enchants and gems again )
• Sell the belt buckles, everyone will want those so they are and will be a big seller.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.