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.