As you can see, Tzigone is doing well. While she is not a billionare, she is making more than enough to support her raiding without grinding or daily quests.
Her largest income comes from heavy borean armor kit, where she practically killed all competition with heavy undercutting, decreasing the price from 60 to 30G, 15G profit, huge amount of sales
She also started crafting the LW PvP sets, but these do not sell well.
Nice income came from bags (LW and mining bags). Also the quivers sell, despite no longer needed.
Since her crafting needs lot of leather, she made arrangements with leather farming guys to buy below AH price. Very smart.
We also talked about twink leather items (belt, chest).
The most profitable venture is the leather transformation for her, for unknown reason the heavy borean leather is 50-80% higher than its materials.
While she does not grind, we discussed skinning. Most people believes skinning is inferior to mining, while skinning is definitely the best G/hour gathering skill, since there are almost infinite supply of leathers by questing people. The Jormungar cave next to Dun Niffelem and the Nestingvary camp in Sholozar provides endless heap of dead animals to skin.
Her apprenticeship is over. She is a successful businesself now. Please post in comment which profession do you want to see next. The next apprentice recruitment post will be on Saturday, so the weekend funpost will be on Sunday this week.
Her largest income comes from heavy borean armor kit, where she practically killed all competition with heavy undercutting, decreasing the price from 60 to 30G, 15G profit, huge amount of sales
She also started crafting the LW PvP sets, but these do not sell well.
Nice income came from bags (LW and mining bags). Also the quivers sell, despite no longer needed.
Since her crafting needs lot of leather, she made arrangements with leather farming guys to buy below AH price. Very smart.
We also talked about twink leather items (belt, chest).
The most profitable venture is the leather transformation for her, for unknown reason the heavy borean leather is 50-80% higher than its materials.
While she does not grind, we discussed skinning. Most people believes skinning is inferior to mining, while skinning is definitely the best G/hour gathering skill, since there are almost infinite supply of leathers by questing people. The Jormungar cave next to Dun Niffelem and the Nestingvary camp in Sholozar provides endless heap of dead animals to skin.
Her apprenticeship is over. She is a successful businesself now. Please post in comment which profession do you want to see next. The next apprentice recruitment post will be on Saturday, so the weekend funpost will be on Sunday this week.
68 comments:
I'd love to see Engineering/Mining next. I've been an Engineer since Vanilla WoW days, and I've never found it very profitable, if at all.
I'd really like to see how you can make some serious gold with alchemy since there are just 2-3 profitable items to make (+not selling very well), definitely not enough to make at least 1K a week.
Blacksmithing would be nice too. Have always been a miner/blacksmith on my main and i haven't found anything that can make you decent gold.
alchemy and herb
I think blacksmithing would be a challenge.
Engineering goes well actually, with no farming at all. Bullets, arrows (will be even more profitable after 3.2), injectors, scopes, quest capacitor. For ammo you can do COD selling - just pick your best buyer and then ask him politely if he wants a constant supply of ammo for AH minus10% price, let him define days of delivery and quantity and voila - steady sales.
hei grevon:
Been following this blog for couple months and sorry for asking this, i mainly use inscription too to make gold in AH. Since i have to craft nearly like 30-70 glyphs everyday and each glyph is like 4-5in quantity, just wondering is there any add on that would auto list the glyph 1 by 1 ? i am using auctioneer lite but i need to manually list them one by one, thanks again for the lovely blog.
Alchemy and herbalism would be great. I have leveled my alchemy to 435+ lately and the end-game recipes realy don't give a lot of profit (except maybe the diamond transmutes). Would like to see what you opinion about this combination is.
I was the one who recently sent you an email regarding enchanting. I'd like to see how you would maximize profit with enchanting. I know how to do 'decent' with it, but not nearly the numbers you tend to pull with trade skills.
about the addon for glyphs: is just installed auctioneer and there is an appraiser tab on which you can auction items, you can choose stacksize and number of stacks and then it automaticly posts your items in the chosen stacksize (1 in your case).
@ Anonymous
Gevlon has posted several times about his inscription trade, but I found I had to do a little research out of this site and some experimenting to get my glyphs posted.
I also used to use a lite auction addon, but when I started scribing the only way to really manage that many auctions is to take the plunge and use auctioneer. Research the batch-posting function, it lets me set around 400 auctions a day auto-posting, and I can just afk while they finish.
Unglar
Engineering. I have never heard anyone say that they had success with it outside these comments, so it would be cool to see.
Really, though, I would love to see a post from you detailing what add-ons you use and how you make the process more automated. Many of the add-ons in your old posts are defunct.
This apprentice program is really an amazing idea. Great that it worked out so well for Tzigone.
I think that you can make money with every profession if you just think out of the box. The leather conversion is a perfect example. Most people always try to craft high end stuff for a market that's flooded by people leveling the profession.
The thing is that such niches are (at least on my medium pop server) limited.
I also find Alchemy highly disappointing. The only profit I can make is from lucky specialization procs or from swiftness potions (limited demand).
But since I have a scribe all other professions are obsolete for me, anyways. Why should I look for niches when I can print money on pretty parchments?
TL;DR: try alchemy
Skinning is inferior to mining because you serve only one customer: the leatherworker (yes, all professions need some leather but it is only a small portion). Mining on the other hand serves thre customers: the blacksmith, the engineer and the jewelcrafter.
When I skilled my leatherworking I did not use a guide. Instead I made armorkits until they went grey and sold them for profit. Strange that it never occured me to do this on a professional basis. Thanks for your advice!
@Unglar
@Anonymous
for all your glyph-posting needs: QuickAuctions2. Look for it at Wowinterface, download it, deinstall the clumsy juggernaut that it auctioneer and be happy&rich:
* Automatic one-button canceling of auctions you have been undercut on
* automatic on-button posting of all the glyphs in you inventory using parameters you give (minimum posting price, fallback price if no competition, how much to undercut)
It used to have a very steep learning curve (no documentation, no gui) but the new version that's out for some days now has a nice GUI. It's still not the pinnacle of user interface design but you can't have everything.
@Nolan Enchanting cheapish (<300 g cost) WOTLK recipes gives excellent g/hr but mediocre (~300-500) g/day on my server. Highest profits appear to be the recipes with ~100 g material cost - many are not regularly stocked on the AH. I'd guess that old world recipes would add similar profits.
@Gevlon I'd love to see engineering. I've only found a few profitable recipes - but suspect that there must be something cool that engineers can sell. Been too lazy to look after levelling my inscriber.
I think you should give alchemy a go next. On my server, the only things I've found it to be profitable for are the Eternal transmutes (which vary from day to day as prices fluctuate wildly) and Pygmy Oil (Which though I make a killing on, is still a limited income source).
I keep seeing blacksmiths with no clue. My main is a JC / BS and yeah there is not much in the way of profit out there for a BS as most of the crafted gear is either blue crap no one wants, epics (almost no one wants), or Ulduar recipes that nobody wants to pay the actual mats cost for much less your profit. And surely I won't degrade myself to working for tips.
Eternal Belt Buckles. I'll say it again. Eternal Belt Buckles. This will vary by server of course, but on my server I sell about 20 a day, I buy the mats and the production cost averages 25g, and I am able to sell them for 45-65g depending on the market that day.
Usually when it's a 65g market day there is some asshole waiting to undercut by a copper, so I just dump the price to 45g, post 10 of them for 12hrs, and sure enough 12 hours later they are all gone, and I can post up my other 10.
So 45g-25g=20g, 20gX20=400g profit. Not a bad day to be honest. Still doesn't compare to how much I make with my glyph alt, but it's really the best a blacksmith can do in my opinion.
I am combining alchemy with blacksmithing.
Just smelt 2 saronite ore into saronite bar.
Transmute 3 saronite bar to 1titanium bar.
(if you are transmute alchemy spec, you could transmute more)
accumulate the titanium bar and smelt them to titansteel bar .
Lastly, use titansteel bar to make epic weapon bs and sell it but at most you only make like 400g-500g in like 2 weeks. Well, i hv 3 toon with alchemy transmute spec, took me 1 week with 10 min/day effort to make that epic weapon.
good for supplement you cashcow profession.
Id like to see Engineering too, especially since Blizzard are planning to get rid of consumable ammo for hunters.
I'd like to see the two most overplayed professions:
Jewelcrafting
Enchanting
People are always spamming those professions in trade, and heavy competition is always present in the AH.
If I'm lucky, I'll get 25-50% profit on my server from gems.
For enchanting, only certain scrolls seem to be profitable enough to mass produce. I'd love to see more analysis on it.
I would like to see someone make money using no profession at all :)
I started reading after getting a link from Project Lore, and though I might try selling lower level armour kits, my server -Chromaggus EU, Alliance- does not have such good profit increases on leather transformation. It is either the same, a few silvers more (which if I was able to buy and re-sell all I wouldn't earn more than 50g) and in some cases -I think scraps>light is one of them- I would even loose money.
Still, great blog. I'm gonna keep reading I think since I agree with your stance on most things and any extra tips on money making will be great. -You may say I'm one of those M&S for this, but I will get that travellers tundra mammoth. I'm a pet/mount whore. =P
I'll sign the above post (since I'm anonymous), in case I post again and so you can relate to someone if you want to leave a reply comment @ me,
Phanttas
I'd also like to see Alchemy and herbalism.
I make tons of gold with making loads of Lifelike Mechanical Toad, the recipe can some times be found at the AH for around 500g and I earn about 150g each time I sell these minipets for 200-250g while crafting them costs me about 20g. I have been selling these for a very long time and even though my current server has some competition in this market I can always sell them for atleast 150g / each.
The bullet machine / arrow makers can also be pretty profitable. I usually make a few of them and post them at the AH like this:
A couple of complete bullet machines and arrow makers
A few stacks of 1000 bullets/arrows.
A few stacks of 200 bullets/arrows.
And some stacks of 100 bullets/arrows.
This seems to be selling nicely and selling the arrows/bullets out of the box can usually be done for a lot more then the entire box. I guess some people either want to refill their stacks or don't need more (e.g. Warriors that don't shoot that much).
Regarding Alchemy, I tried buying two stacks of frost lotuses recently from the AH for 20g each and using herbs I bought for milling at 80s each I was able to make flasks for about 5-10g cheaper then AH value (at raiding days), without even considering procs.
In the early days of WotLK transmuting was very profitable (even though I didn't specialize in it) and now some easy gold can be in Fel Mana Potions and Mighty Shadow Protection Potion when you are on a large PVE realm since these are needed in large quantities by guild killing General Vezax hard mode. Fel Mana Potions are the only pots usable during that fight, it is more effective for DPS then using a shadow resistance potion, but you may have to hint at these pots in trade for a while to inform guilds that just started on this hard mode and get them interested. The recipe is an easy drop in Shadowmoon Valley.
Id like to see Engineering too.
Enchanting! I know it's overplayed, but I haven't seen how to make it profitable.
I would love to see what you do with Alchemy. I've been running a flask business on my server, and it is doing pretty well, but I'm wondering if there are other ideas that I am missing.
I would like to see Blacksmithing done also. While I have found a few good things to sell most of the items need a large investment for only a 100-200g profit and don't always sell fast.
I would like to see Blacksmithing as well.
My vote is engineering. I dropped Engineering some time ago (once I'd acquired motorcycle parts - had the profession for a LONG time) in favor of JC for stat maximization, and because it made so little cash.
@Wooly: No professions? Farm BC instances for vendor trash, greens, cloth. Or if farming is forbidden (since the goal appears to be avoiding 'farming'), pure AH speculation/relisting is all that's left - unless you count rolling a female NELF and providing lapdances in Goldshire as a viable option.
@ Alchemists, do some research into what elixirs are used by quests/other professions like leatherworking and see if there's a readily available supply of these on your faction. There's low but steady demand for these and the market is often ignored.
Engineering would be fun to read about next since it has such a bad reputation as a moneymaker.
I'd really like to see Alchemy and Herbalism. The flask market has absolutely died on my server and it would be nice to get some new ideas to bring in profit.
Alchemy.
Enchanting. I dare you to make good money with this profession. The scrolls are expensive to produce and heavy competition equals very little profit. I'm lucky if I can sell more than a handful a day (one of each type) before I get massively undercut by 10 other people.
In most cases the market price is so far below the mats cost that it isn't even worth the effort to produce them. (How the market price gets so low, I still haven't figured out. People like losing money?)
With blacksmithing there just aren't many items to sell. Eternal Belt Buckles, enchanting rods and maybe shield spikes, the shield enchant (if you have the rep) and weapon chains.
I'd like to see how to make money with JC. There are so many items to make, it gets a little daunting. Even with stuff like Auctioneer, lsw and skillet.
Hey Gevlon, I'd love to see what you're able to do with blacksmithing. Right now, I'm able to make an okay profit with Rods, but not great by any means.
Alchemy >.>
It would be cool to see engineering because it has such a bad image as a moneymaker and PVE prof.
I'd guess that the price of Heavy Borean Leather is inflated by two factors. First, you can't skin it, so you don't have gatherers flooding the market with it - only leatherworkers. Second, the AH deposit on it is pretty hefty compared to most trade goods - over 10g/stack if I remember correctly. That probably keeps some of the more risk-averse traders out of the market.
I'm gonna echo the call for Engineering and Blacksmithing.
I'm pretty happy with how making flasks is going for me (mostly Spellpower with some Attack Power thrown in for variety) so I'm not quite so concerned about Alchemy, personally, but I'd definitely pay attention there.
Making Money with Enchanting 101.
Disenchant stuff and sell the Dusts!
Some good ways to do this:
#1 Eternal Earth- Earthgaurd ring? Infinite Dust for cheep
#2 White Bandit mask - Vison Dust.
#3 Buy Green crap from the AH turn it to white crap and resell!
I had to smile about the "flask market is dead" comment. Remember that everyone leveling alchemy has to make the four Northrend flasks to get their final alchemy levels. That means that occasionally the market will flood as some knucklehead dumps all his leveling flasks. Those days, you just ride it out. Eventually he will go away to "make flasks for his guild", and you will have the market back again. Nobody is going to waste Frost Lotus to sell at a loss for the long term. Right now, on my server, I'm seeing the mojo and wyrm flasks as barely profitable (and slow), while the other two are still flying off the shelf. Of course, you still make profits on transmuting titanium, arcanite and diamonds, making certain high level elixirs, making PVP potions/elixirs (Swiftness, Free Action, Giant Growth...), and making quest items like Strong Troll Blood Elixir and Goblin Rocket Fuel. I make about 750G per day with this stuff on a pretty slow server.
I think there should be more analysis of gathering professions. For example skinning has two sweet spots; around level 80 mobs while you are questing, and around level 60 vanilla mobs while questing. Of course there is nothing preventing you from farming (ie going back at 80 just to slaughter mobs for their skin). The problem is for many of us we level up LW/skin simultaneously, and then at max level never really touch skinning again as it's not really time efficient to farm skins.
My thoughts are that if you are farming, all 3 profs have sweet spots, and at the same level (60 and 80), and all can be used to generate a steady income (about 200 per hour max). But you really need the complementary profession to utilize that profit, and that profession can generate so much more income so quickly that it doesn't really make sense from a time point of view to invest in the gathering prof. Anyway I do like the idea that I KNOW i can make money gathering no matter what the state of the economy is.
However nowadays I do derived sales, and find amazingly enough, that my inscription which is only 200 makes more money that just about everything put together, steady, consistent money.
But yeah that's my take; i would if i was starting over, either run around and collect recipes or do a gathering prof as i level, until I had enough income to support inscription, which you can make quite easily a few hundred gold a day at a low level.
@ Anon guy who replied to me about enchanting: I currently make about the amount you stated on my 'auction' days (every other day I spend an hour or two doing goblin stuff). Like you said, it's good gold/hr, but not great gold/day. You reach a cap in what you can sell. I have yet to find anything enchanting can do in mass amounts to make money. It's more like making decent profit on a variety of enchants, but you are only able to sell 1-2 each day.
I do DE cheap greens whenever I can, but that's generally only worth 50-100g, as there is a limit on how many green items have been listed below their average disenchant value at any one time. I generally do this when I log on, and just before I log off. I call it my disenchant daily.
I also have a couple of the twink enchants, and those are a very high profit ratio. But, again, on average I only sell one of each per day. (1h agi and 2h agi)
I'd love to see engineering. There are a couple niche items I used to be able to profit off of, but the margins aren't that high anymore and they're all for vanilla content.
I'm not hurting for money (and I never farm!), but it seems like I should be doing more with the profession than making toys for myself.
I would love to see Alchemy (possible in combination with herb). I've been transmuting diamonds, but the volume just isn't there. I've stayed away from the flasks since it's very competitive with marginal profits. Maybe that's a mistake...
Put me down for wanting to see blacksmithing as well.
@Nolan
I pose your right, i dont make much doing it either, ive mostly been selling vendor items, mostly faction specific ones (aka Cats)
or even hordeie pets sell too lol, and working on an insription biz, i really dont have hard numbers on how im doing at said inscription because right now im investing as fast as im making (Yanni's Auction helper is a blessing and a curse lol)
I can buy out all the adder's tongue on the server in 30 seconds
porblem with enchanting is most people do not go to the AH for an enchant, not at first... They look for an enchanter then buy the mats, i suppose one strategy would be to take the enchants your getting a 10g tip to do for some one (when they dont stiff you)
And post the exact amount of mats for those enchants on the AH, then Spam Trade that your doing those enchants...
22int to Weapon sells for quite a chunk because of the rarity and the fact that you cant put high level enchants on BTA weapons
Another that i wish i had that i see ppl going nuts for is mongoose, if your the right class or have a good group of hlpful friends you could farm kara for it, drops off Moroes. i see that sucker going for 400+ not sure what the mats costs are though.
Another one ive seen looked for is the 30sp to weapoon (+healing from Molten Core, not sure what boss or drop rate, i havent seen it last few times ive been through there)
you might also visit places like maxdps.com or http://www.wow-heroes.com/ and look at recomended enchants and sell those.
Gevlon mentioned that Tusdays is when new arena gear can be bought and raiding night would be another good time to post the enchants
Tip for you.
3.2 is going to add conquest badges to heroics, that means that for 2 weeks after the patch drops less then serious serious people are going to forgo raids in favor of farming five man heroics for Badge Gear, stock up on enchants that will go well on that gear, which is at least a chest peice and i think leggings. But check the conquest vendor.
Also New Heirlooms will be added, im going to have to find a list of what those are going to be, assuming that the ilv 1 status is not going to change on them those "Twink" Enchants will be in high demand.
Also wouldnt hurt to spam trade when you post an enchant that youve put it up.
"Making Money with Enchanting 101.
Disenchant stuff and sell the Dusts!
Some good ways to do this:
#1 Eternal Earth- Earthgaurd ring? Infinite Dust for cheep
#2 White Bandit mask - Vison Dust.
#3 Buy Green crap from the AH turn it to white crap and resell! "
Point 1 : Most realms Eternal earth is around 10g so making an earthguard ring is 2x eternal earth = 20g . Disenchanting it gives 2-5 infinte dust or 1-2 greater cosmic essence. Infinite dust ranges from 3.5g to 5g and greater cosmic essence is around 7-11g so you're looking at a range of 7g to a max of 25g for your 20g layout. So you'd either make a 13g loss or a 5g profit or something in between. A better bet is the level 70 rings and chains that require 2 crystallised earth + 1 gem.
Grats on the new weekly income levels Tzigone! Unfortunately, being US, I can't apply for apprenticeship.
I personally would like to see an engineer or enchanter apprentice, as an enchanter, not many people buy scrolls off the AH, most just talk to the random people who spam "[Enchanting] LFW free w/ur matz"
and thus I can't really charge a fee to compete with those who offer their service for free.
I was making a small amount of money with bullets and arrows, but that market fell apart after the announcement of the mats reduction come 3.2. And even then, I was only able to move 5-10 boxes a week.
personally.. I'd like to see mining and enchanting. its a real challenge
Mining is not very goblinish...
i think about the one ability you have there would be Titan Steel
goblinish would be more gathering mats off the AH rather then grinding, sure you can make money with stuff you gather along the way but to make real money is investing money and crafting, changing then reposting for profit or real goblinish buy stuff that ppl sell for nothing and posting for huge profit...
@Mel
My comments here have been short, but I sent a longer email directly to gevlon that stated alot of the tips you just mentioned. I have been stockpiling enchants for a bit, as enchant prices/mats tend to double, triple or even quadruple after any new patch that includes new gear. With a new PVE zone AND a new PVP season, it should be pretty nuts for a bit.
Currently, supply is up and demand is down with enchants. More people have the gear they need, so more gear is being DEd on instance/raid runs.
Imo, enchanting doesn't fall under most of the classic profit patterns that other trade skills do. It's more about making large sums here and there, rather then small amounts constantly. Especially when it comes to those twink enchants (I've been 3manning MC for the 30sp enchant, and kara for mongoose, no luck yet)
This is why I sent gevlon an email, I wanted to see his take on the profession to find out if I'm missing something. Don't get me wrong, I make MORE than enough money with it to support my raiding, probably 1.5k a week, for 5-6ish hrs of work. But, nothing even remotely close to gevlon's inscription profits. It's most likely impossible to make that much, but I'd like to see how close he thinks you could get with it.
Alchemy and Herbalism
Would be nice to see you kill the urban legend of Engineering being a crap profession (money-wise).
Thanks Gevlin for the ongoing excellent blog. I would like to alchemy and herbing as the next profession.
i would love to see a BS also majority of the black smiths income comes from the gear they create now besides 2 weapons its all for plate or for plate. this and the rairty of their materils due to the Titansteel Cooldown would be intersting
I'd personally like to see Engineering next. I've always thought that engineering was a "gimmicky lifeless profession" to say the least, and I've never really seen how you could turn a profit from it other than self-profit(I.E-rolling a engineering twink or crafting that mechahog you always wanted)
Alchemy, Enchanting or Jewelcrafting would be nice!
Don't do enchanting. It is very easy to make money with this profession. Just craft the non-uber enchants. I've found it too difficult to sell the very expensive enchants (+50AP Bracer, +44 Gloves), but the cheaper versions sell well (+38AP Bracer, +35 Gloves). They're prices can swing wildly, but when its low just don't sell it.
Other great enchants that sell well are:
Chest - Super Stats
Staff - +60SP
2H Weapon - +85AP
Weapon - +50SP
Boots - Icewalker
The mats required to make these are so little, and often times you can find the mats at very low prices. Varies by server but I get Infinite Dust for ~3.5g/each and Greater Cosmic for ~12g/each.
This selling strategy is very common to what Gevlon preaches, to not rely on the common crafting items, find some items that are lower down the totem pole that can be of use to others.
Another great way to make money is to create the twink enchants. They don't sell as regularly but you can make a lot for little effort.
I would love to see you make gold with any profession on my server. These tips i'm reading here just aren't working... for example those heavy borean armor kits sell for hardly 15g a piece... And it's like that with everything.
How much does the Borean Leather go for? On my server its much cheaper than Heavy Borean Leather. So as long I don't use Heavy Borean Leather even at 15g I'd eke a small profit. Fortunately they are 20-30g on my server, so the profit is much larger.
I would like to see mining/BS, how to make from Saronite. currently im selling heaps of saronite to my JC friend 15g/stack also putting ironbar,silverbar,mirthilbar in AH, im only making <100g per day can't see a way on how to make money with BS.
To Bill: they sell for a bit less then the armor kits, say 3g profit if you're lucky. And buying the heavy leather is cheaper then buying the normal leather and transforming them. Another example is the whole prospecting-jewelcrafting-disenchanting process. People get values per stack for like 50g while buying for 20 a stack so 30 profit, on our server it's a value of 22 and buying for 15 a stack. And that's theoretical because gems just aren't selling.
alchemy and enchanting would be great to learn about. thanks for the great blog Gevlon.
Engineering for sure.
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