Maximizing MoP Profits

   So here we are counting down the last hours before we say farewell to Cataclysm and open our hands and prepare to embrace Mists Of Pandaria. Well while we are waiting that doesn't mean we should just stand around in our capital cities and do nothing, on the contrary we should be hard at work to prepare.

Maximize your profits by Syndicating

   In the previous posts i covered the things that should be on your watch list for making profit by stocking up on materials, and then reselling them later on for profit. Well today we are going to take a look at a different thing that will be more about optimization and maximization of the profits that are to be had in Mists of Pandaria.

   So i will try to keep this as short and informative as possible. Few of the most important things that we want to make sure we don't botch would be to stay on the up side of the supply / demand curve and always be ready to sell what the people are looking to buy. But lets get down to more specific examples.

   Let's face it, the majority of the people that are playing this game have been playing this game for quite a while now, some are playing since the start of Cata, some are playing from WOTLK and there are even some that are coming from the Vanilla/TBC era. Well the same thing that all of these players have in common is that they all have multiple characters (alts) and they have different professions on them. Well if you are one of those people then you should make sure that even though you can't level all of your alts at the same time, you can at least make sure you aren't missing out on the things that are limiting your progression by a time table. 

      What this means is quite simple, if you have a Jewelcrafter, Scribe, Alchemist or any other profession that has a "daily" quest to do, make sure you do it and don't skip any of it. The reason for this is, even though it's it going to be very alluring to play your main and race for the top level 90, in the long run it will be very profitable NOT to skip on doing your daily profession quests, even though you might have to put some time into doing that.

   A great example for this would be the new Inscription daily research in the form of a Scroll of Wisdom that will be the new way to obtain those glyphs. There are 21 glyphs to be learned from that scroll which means that if you skip on a single day then you are skipping on getting some serious profit because there are no other ways to get that glyph except for the research, which in return means that not even your competition will have them so you could have a monopoly on that given glyph for a day or a week depending on the competition's luck of the draw.

   And last but not least, as i put in the first image above that says "Maximize your profits by Syndicating" you should really think about doing just that.  I covered a variant of this tactic a while back in a post that was about making gold with the help of a friend, but now we are going to take that idea and further build on it.

   To make it as simple as it can be i will get down to the idea right away. You want to make a syndicate of a given profession ( Jewelcrafting in my case ) and invite the top sellers in the market to join you for the greater good of all of you. What this means is that you all get to an agreement on who takes which gems patterns and then among yourselves you can have 4-5 or even more people all gathering their profession tokens and working as one opposed to all of you going for the same gems and then miss out on the profits that are to be had by selling a particular gem that someone was looking for, but couldn't find it because noone had learned the pattern. 

   Though to clarify, when i mentioned that you want to divide the cuts what i meant is that if JC 1 learns to make STR red gem, JC 2 learns to make INT red gem and i learn to make the AGI red gem, then i send a stack of uncut gems to both of them, and they do the same to me and we get back a cut version of the gems. So that way in a single cycle that will be needed to get one pattern you end up with 3 patterns, and the market is going to be controlled by your syndicate, meaning the opposition will need a much longer time to get in on your market while you will be up posting ALL your gems and undercutting only with the people that are in your Syndication. But if you decide to play it fair you can put your friends in your white zone so you don't undercut them but that is between you and them.

   So bottom line, while you are waiting for MoP it would be a good idea to talk to the major players in your server economy and give them the opportunity and the idea of a syndicate, and try to explain why this would be a great profit making idea. So for now i leave you with that and wish you a great time and fun in MoP

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

   

Preparing For MoP Investments Part 2

   In the previous post about the pre-launch for MoP we gave the companion and Inscription market a quick glance, and today we are going to take a closer look at a few more markets that would be very lucrative to take advantage as we send off Cataclysm on it's merry way, and welcome to arrival of the new expansion. 

CRAFTING

   First market that you would want to keep your eye on would be the materials market. Now to make it clear, i won't focus on telling you about each crafting profession separately but am i quite sure you will get the idea.

   The idea behind the crafting market, and its potential to be a huge profit margin is quite simple, yet very few people will see it. The actual idea is to buy the materials you usually use to craft your items, be it PvP set items or PvE epic items. The reason for this is because their price is dirt cheap seeing as how it is the end of the expansion and very few markets are moving any goods at all.

   So the price of the given "raw materials" is cheap, the supply is abundant and the competition is really not in the mood to buy it out. Everything sounds like it's setting up to be a sweet deal, but wait that's not all. By buying your materials now you will buy them at prices that aren't affected by the incoming inflation that will hit when MoP ships out. So as an example, if you spend 20g for a stack of Obsidium or Elementium Ore, expect that same ore to be 100g or even more depending on the inflation scale when MoP is the new dog in town, and Cataclysm is left in the rear view mirror.

   But lets take another look at what we want to keep our eyes open for in particular: 

   You want to keep an eye on the price of Elementium Ore for it's use in crafting all the level 85 plate PvP items. You also want to keep a healthy stock of Pyrium Bars which you can use later on to continue crafting Ebonsteel Belt Buckle, these will always be in demand from the people that end up twinking their level 85 characters. Another very important thing would be to keep an eye out for the volatiles, and their price. They are easy to obtain now and their price is cheap, but as soon as MoP hits their demand will go down but the supply will simply borderline dry out, so get yours now while you still can. 

   Another material you might want to get stocked up on would be leather, even though it's price is still a bit steep remember that inflation still hasn't set in and everything is still rather cheap. So if you were in the PvP leather market it would be a good idea to get stocked up as well.

   There are a few markets though that i wouldn't stock up too high on, and that would be the cloth market. The reason behind this is that with the introduction of the mass looting system it is going to become very easy to obtain cloth and it's price is going to be rather "volatile". 

   Last of the professions that would be worth stockpiling on would be the enchanting market. As it is now the price of the Hypnotic Dust as well as all the other latest materials is cheap because the influx is rather high from people still doing the Ore Shuffle but as soon as that is over the price for the dust as well the essences will go up. While on this topic it might be a very good idea to stock up on some Jasper and Alicite  which you can use later on for some post Cata DE action, as well as crafting and selling the rare rings to people that are leveling alts, or the new Pandas.

   Ok i'll end this post here, but in the next post we are going to take a look at how to approach the end of the expansion as a Jewelcrafter,  as well as a trader that wants to bank on the uprising of the new "PANDAmonium".

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

Preparing For MoP Investments

   So in about a month Mists Of Pandaria will ship out and finally we will have something new to do, kill new baddies, raid new places, level our professions and open up new opportunities to make gold. But before MoP finally ships we are going to have some time to make some pre launch investments that will pay out big in the near future, and i will further explain how and why.

   As the sign on the side here says, we will be buying the "used" goods, or translated into WoW terms we will be buying the soon to be old tier stuff. 

   What i mean by this is simply the same thing that happens with the release of every expansion, the week or so before the release of the expansion people get into insane mode, and they are trying to unload everything they have in the hope of making some quick gold off it while it is still current. This has some basic logic behind it, but if you give it a second thought and realize that even though it won't be the current end game tier there will still be market for it, and it will probably end up being much more expensive than it is now.

   But enough with the vague talks about what is going to happen, let's take a look at some actual items that will be worth buying when the big "Yard Sale" begins.

PETS

   Pets or companions will be in great demand in MoP, especially with the whole new Pokemon like pet battles. Up until now there was a demand for these pets from people that simply wanted to have them walk next to them, but now that they will be able to actually make them fight, and level them the demand will go even higher. But not everything is as jolly as it sounds, with the shipping of MoP Blizzard decided to make one crucial change and make all the mounts and pets be account bound. What that means is what ever you have on one character, it will now be shared on all of them.

   So there will be a huge increase on the demand for pets early in the launch of MoP, but that demand will be saturated rather quickly for the more common (vendor/crafted) pets, while the demand for the more rare and extremely rare pets will be further increased, and with that the prices for those pets will inflate quite a bit.  I have covered a bit about the location of the pets in the world, as well as the vendor location in a previous post so you might want to check that out, but if you are looking for more information about pets, you might want to check out some of the other blogs that are on the blogroll.

SCRIBES

    MoP will open up a huge profit market for the crafty scribe that will be up to the task to pounce on the possible profits that could be made early on in MoP. To be even more precise i am talking about the whole new Panda glyphs that will be available at the start.

   Now even though everyone will have them, not everyone will be able to craft them in high volumes. The reason behind this is pretty simple, they will still require 3 inks, but instead of requiring the overstocked inks from Cataclysm it will require the new Ink Of Dreams which will be expensive as hell for the first two months or so. So knowing this here is the punch line, BUY YOUR INKS NOW WHILE THEY ARE STILL DIRT CHEAP !! 

   I can't stress this enough without putting them with big red letters so i did just that, and as for the Panda glyphs the majority of them will require Ink Of The Sea, so make sure you stock up on those in particular. 

   If you are looking for some more info on Inscription and how to prepare for MoP as a scribe, then you might want to pop over to Croda's Blog where he covers all about Inscription. 

   I will cut this post short here, because if i continue on it will end up like a wall of text and we don't want that do we. Anyhow in the next post i will cover the preparation and shopping lists for the Enchanting, Jewelcrafting and the major crafting professions. But for now i leave you at this, and remember like always keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

MoP Preparation Part 3

   As time passes without any new content it is more then obvious that the economy is slowing down. Well this was expected as it is the same cycle we see before every expansion, but one thing that is actually a positive about the expansion ending time is the amount of gold one can make with some smart investments. In the previous posts in the MoP preparation category we covered some of the things that will be profitable to stockpile on for the expansion, and today we are going to take a look at another profitable venture that we can take advantage of. 

   Raw Materials, yup that is going to be a great market to invest in for MoP. To clarify a bit, when i say invest into raw materials i mean scope out all those materials that people will want to powerlevel their professions. If you want a better idea as to what those items are check out a previous post i did that covers that particular area, or you can simply jump on over to WoW-Professions to see the list for each profession.

   The reason why this is going to be a great market to invest is due to it's potential for sales, and the increased demand for those materials for when the Pandas are unleashed in the world. 

   From what i have gathered from talking to different people is that they will make a Panda as soon as the expansion hits the live servers. Now when that happens you will see a bunch of people that will shoot past leveling professions because they will want a shot at the server first Panda achievement, well those people are not the market that we will be aiming for, rather we are going to take aim at the bigger portion of those people that will want to play their Monk as their main character and would like to level their profession while they are leveling their character.

   Weirdly enough from what i have gathered, the majority of the new people that were talking about starting a Monk told me that they would choose to level Jewelcrafting as their main profession due to the fact that the profession gives a major boost to their stats, has Awesome gold making potential and will be able to make mounts in MoP that you can turn around and sell for profit ( allegedly ), so i would take a closer look at the jewelcrafting leveling market.

   In another post i talked about whether MoP will bring inflation or deflation in the economy, but seeing as how the item level squish didn't happen we can only see inflation of the prices, which in return would mean that the worth of the gold would decrease, and by knowing this the worst case scenario would be to hold liquid gold as it will loose it's worth for about 20-30%. 

   So to sum it up, don't be afraid to invest your gold into materials that you will turn around and flip back on the auction house. When looking for items to sell, check items that have a higher price but stack in a higher number ( certain gems are the ideal candidate ), and i'll say it again as i can't stress how important this is, DON'T be afraid to invest, as anything you spend 10g on now is going to be worth 15g coming MoP.

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

Scribes Get Ready For MoP

   Today we are going to talk about how you should get ready for MoP if you happen to have a character with Inscription leveled up. Unlike the previous post that covered investing in MFC's  in this post we are going to take a look at how to save yourself thousands of gold, and in return actually make a crap load of gold. 

   Yup i am talking about glyphs again, but this time with a bit of a twist. Coming MoP glyphs are going to see a bit of a overhaul and we seeing as how we will see a sharp increase in the creation of new Pandas that only means that we are going to see a sharp increase in the need for glyphs for all classes and especially for Monks.

   Now the thing with this is rather tricky and if you are unprepared it can turn around and bite you in the ass. Let me explain why exactly so you know what i mean. As it is now making a glyph is more or less an easy task with the existence of the ink traders, so all you have to do is mill some herbs and trade the last tier inks to the ones you need to craft your glyph. Now coming MoP we are going to have the same options but the only difference would be the fact that the price of the new herbs is going to be more or less in the 200-300g per stack price range which is helluva lot more then the 15-40g per stack we can get the stacks at today. 

   So knowing this it is only logical what our step should be, open up your guild bank and stock up on inks that are of a lesser tier now. So get your inks to your ink trader and get stocked up on all the inks that you need to craft your glyphs, and if you have been in the glyph market for a while you will know that the stock you will need is going to be rather large because when you are crafting glyphs those inks are simply melting.

   Two inks that you should keep an eye on would be the Moonglow Ink and the Ink Of The Sea which are the needed inks for your Minor Inscription Research and the Northrend Inscription Research. Now even if you have done all your researches, don't forget you will still need to do them as you will not know the glyphs for the Monk. So those two inks you can even sell on the AH for all the people that will not get their stocks up now.

   Third and last thing you want to get stocked up on would be the Books of Glyph Mastery, and the reason for it is like you might guess the new glyphs that will be available from them. So if you find some of them on the AH for an acceptable price buy them out for yourself, or for later resale with a hefty profit margin. 

   As i have still to get my Beta invite i can only give you preparation tips, but as soon as that Beta invite comes through i will shell out some more solid info, and tell you exactly what to expect from the profession and what to focus on.

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

MoP Preparation Part 2

   Here we are back with another post that should give you an idea of what to start buying now, even though MoP is months away from being released. In the previous look at this subject we covered a more space efficient option of stocking up which was the Mysterious Cards, but today we are going to be looking at the more high investment/high payout market.

   This picture might be a bit corny looking, but then again it will do us justice as it basically hits the market we want dead on. So that market is the pets market, or to be more precise the rare pets market.

   As we all know until now with the shipping of Mists Of Pandaria we are going to get Pandokemon ( Panda Pokemon ) which will let  you take your non-combat pets and duel them against each other. Even though this might sound like a nonsense to some of you out there, it will attract a very high amount of players to it ( mainly kids ) and with it in the first month of MoP it will explode the demand for pets. If you want to check out which pets can be found where, you can find all the info you need at Warcraft Pets and i will separate a few that i think can be "farmed" of a sort from the Auction House.

   The best way you can start to obtain some of those pets is to get them from the Icecrown Champion's Seal vendor. As the name indicates, the currency for those pets is not gold but rather daily tokens called Champion's Seal  and that right there kind of limits your ability to buy a stock of these and then sell them as you see fit.  

    But it's not all that grim as there is a way that you can obtain these at a reasonable price, and then when MoP ships you can have a high profit margin. This way of procurement i am talking about is the trade channel. The way it actually works is simple, you go on trade and ask if anyone has any leftover tokens from playing back in WOTLK that would like to make some gold. If you don't get many hits like that, try to find yourself some "farmers" where you tell them a price you are willing to pay and they will go out and do their dailies and when they buy the pets they sell them to you, and then you sell them back to someone else for a much higher profit margin. This second way is a much more stable way of obtaining the pets as i have 4 people doing their dailies and buying me the pets. For a last bit of info, if you are interested what are the names of the pets, just check out the vendor sales list and you can see it. Or if you want some more ideas you might want to check out the Pets Category i have here on the blog

   That was about the pets, and now before heading out i would like to point out another market that is going to be profitable more or less on release week. And this profitability will come from the people that will level their professions. To be more specific the prices for the NEW ores and herbs will be sky high on the first week while the prices for the current ores/herbs will be all time low, so buying out the current ones and reposting them at a reasonable price will get you a nice quick profit as no one will bother farming the current materials just so they can get those initial 10-20 skill points off in their new MoP profession. As the beta hasn't started yet i can't say for sure how many of what will be needed until the current materials are redundant, but as soon as we get some info about it, i will make a post detailing this topic and have a number of materials you will need to level a single profession with the current materials.

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

Preparing For Mists Of Pandaria

   As the title says, this post is going to be a bit of a real early take at the "Get ready for the expansion" surge we are going to see when the Beta gets announced, and people start thinking about offloading their stocks. In this post i am going to try and give you an idea of what to expect, and better yet how to profit from it when people get to offloading.

   First thing we need to know is very simple, the bare basics are that you want to buy your items when their buying price is low and their selling price is high. This is best seen when a new expansion is about to come out, and everyone that has a stock of anything of worth start unloading it for any price they can get. This is THE best period to buy, purely for the fact that you will be able to sell those items back at those people when they level their alt monks for five time the price they sold it for.

   A while back there was a post that covered the inflation or deflation that will happen in WoW in this expansion, and if you read that you got the idea that no matter what you do, you are going to have to make a choice to either invest and bid on the inflation or sell and bid on the deflation. 

   

   Instead of taking a risk with either buying or selling, you might want to do the equivalent of buying gold in real life, and that in WoW would be to get stocked up on Mysterious Fortune Cards.

   The reason why i am comparing these cards with raw gold is the fact that they will NEVER go out of fashion, as they are a gambling item that is always in demand. Another thing that is boding really well for them is the fact that it will be harder to obtain new cards because the herb market will shift and you will see a big lack of herbs to make the cards. On top of that comes the fact that you can stack these cards in stacks of 200 which allows you to make thousands of cards and still have them only take up a tiny bit of space in your bank.

   As there is still no info about MoP i can't say for sure, but i am quite positive that there will be a newer version of the cards, but that won't downgrade the worth of the current ones.

    I will continue making more posts about which items it would be profitable to get a stock up on and which items would be a good idea to get rid of, and you might want to read up more in the following post about stocking up for MoP.

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