There is a poll on Warcraft Econ about "how much gold you have?". You can see the yesterday situation on the picture, or click on the link for recent data.Shocking. Half of the people who are reading a gold making blog belongs to the poorest group. They have less than 5KG, so they cannot buy a BiS BoE for a good price or epic mount without extra farming sessions.
On the goldmaking forums of JMTC, there is a thread about farming instances for lousy 2-300G/hour. I consider 2-3000G/hour (active playing time without AFK listings) an unlucky session.
And we are not talking about the WoWInsider (WoW.com) commenters "pls som ppl giv me advice how make lot gold need muont hepl pls :DDD", but people who are reading specifically money-making blogs.
Is trading so hard, that even those who made serious background search fail? Or are people purposefully stay away from trading, because of impulse control and satisfaction delay deficites (elementals give money and trash wort 0.5G now, while trading takes -500G now and +1000 tomorrow)?
I'm out of ideas and appreciating yours. Please comment.
Please don't troll "people have other preferences", since these people came to a goldmaking site, so they definitely want to make gold.
73 comments:
I think that a lot of people dont have the patience to work the AH. They want to get rich quick. Instead of buying the materials to make the items that will sell, they farm the items and lazily post what they farmed rather than what makes them the most money. I have been buying stacks of Icethorn for 15 gold. You are just about guaranteed to get a snowfall ink out of each stack which makes up for the price and then some. Not to mention making glyphs with the inks of the sea.
They have the knowledge, just not the drive.
My best guess is that people in WOW like to spend their money. People would rather have a mechano-hog than say $15,000. I have no empirical evidence to support that statement, so its more of an untested theory.
If I ever went back to WOW (stopped in early BC) I would focus on the economics of the game. When you say you make 2-3000G/hr. you're not really making it($ only comes from quests & drops) but transferring from another player to you. So rejoice at the idiot players (part of the M&S) for they increase the gold supply and allow you to take their money.
I would myself have had to check the "poor people" box. This is not because I'm ineffiecient in my moneymaking. At this point my glyph business is averaging out at about 4k-5k g/h (yes I have booking to support that claim).
The reason for my low funds is simply that I have rerolled on a different server of the opposite faction and therefore could not bring any money. As I'm in the glyph business and have had great success in selling the glyphs from the 3.1 books I have invested in these when I've found them at a decent price.
Of course before I dove into my investing I made sure I had already passed all the mandatory gold-checks for a new character such as getting my epic flying and all craftables.
I'm sure that many readers of a gold making blog are up and coming traders and therefore are in a situation where they have not yet reached neither the skill nor the reserves of a experienced gold maker.
But of course, they could just be lazy! :)
Smart people read Warcraft Econ (as well as your blog) with an RSS reader. Polls don't show up there. Dumb people (or people randomly searching, not regularly following the blog) see the homepage and the poll. Simple.
Personally I'm thinking that the average wow player doesn't really care about having a lot of gold stocked up.
Instead they may just need gold, check up on a couple of tactics to make what they need, then once again quit the markets till next time they are running low.
And as such they keep themselves in the loop without really trying to make any money, but instead they have some fallbacks for when they do need.
Personally I always have around 20-25k. And I quit making gold because, well, whats they point? I've enough for my daily needs, and if I ever need more I'll simple do some of the things suggested till I feel I have enough again.
They were probably looking for something quick or easy :P
Gevlon, as a compliment to you, you have a real knack for trading and making gold. Even following your advice, I have significantly worse results. You're on another level.
Hi Gevlon,
the number are really impresive. I followed your advices also and startet the Glyph Business. I made my first 20k with the big patch day. Since that time everything is running though.
Making the ink myself it takes lot of time to produce the glyphs and for me it is more than an hour to make 1K. But at least it is going upwards.
But it is business. As you suggested to make real profit you would have to run the auctions for 12h and reproduce an relisten to be always on top of the prices.
This is work and you have to invest time. For player only giving the game, let say 6h a week, why should they spend that much time in AH?
Well, since i started reading actively Greedy goblin i've started a blog myself and actually started to make some gold.
During BC i was an hardcore raider allways with lack of desire to do dailies or farming (mining remained at 330 for a looonggg time :)) )and having good friends it was what provided for my consumables and repair bill. The most gold i had back then on all my characters was arround 500g after i sold some plate boe head.
Since then i lost the time to play, but i got much more. Now i am sitting on arround 20k gold on a server where my highest level toon is 62.
I started with bags made by a friend of mine, and now i am playing with all sort of things, but cba to start a glyph business. I am just playing the AH.
So what i am trying to say is that anyone with as little time to spare can make gold @ AH with little to no effort.
Everyone here seems to be running a *glyph* business.
I cut blue gems with my JC for money, and there is more demand for blue gems then there will ever be for glyphs in my opinion; people only need to glyph up once (twice with dual-spec), whereas they need to re-gem every time they get a new item with an open socket.
Although I believe I could make more profit with my JC (Currently getting 1k/day on average), I also believe that this is a byproduct of my server- Coilfang-US, where I can be the lowest-priced popular blue gem (runed scarlet ruby, for example) for hours before selling.
People should avoid focusing on just mimicking whatever Gevlon's doing for money, in my opinion. The more people that saturate a single market without an increase in demand, the lower the price of items in that market will be. Prices of glyphs are currently at an average of maybe 5g each, and dropping fast.
On a side note, is there anyone else here that plays on Coilfang that has any idea how I can increase the profit of my JC business? I don't really see any way at the moment.
"I'm sure that many readers of a gold making blog are up and coming traders and therefore are in a situation where they have not yet reached neither the skill nor the reserves of a experienced gold maker."
I think this would explain a lot of it. People reading gold making websites want to make gold. So a lot of the time they haven't yet made 20k gold. This is why they are reading the sites in the first place.
I think if I was sitting pretty on a massive stack of gold, I wouldn't be as inclined to read gold making sites as I wouldn't really need to :)
I know I haven't invested much time in gold making since I re-activated a couple of months ago. I've been spending more time levelling.
I have done a lot of gold making research outside of game time, and put plenty of strats into practice for easy profits, but haven't hit 5k yet as it just isn't a priority at this point.
Well, my old schoolteacher used to say: "if you want to have your own bussiness, you've got to have a knack for it, that and being ruthless".
Probably a lot of people lack one or both of these qualities. (spelling?)
Grtz
I read this blog, and a few other gold making ones, because I find it interesting, but when it comes to my in game time, I have done no trading at all, because like someone else suggested, I just dont care
Gold is simply not needed in any big quantities in WoW unless you want to buy the cosmetic mounts etc
I do dailies to maintain somewhere between 1k and 2k so I know I can always afford a weeks worth of raiding without needing to worry, and thats enough for me
You'll come back on this and say I'm dumb for spending the time killing mobs for a 13g reward when I could spend the same amount of time at the AH and earn more, but I find no fun in that, and I ENJOY doing dailies (I dont do the same ones every day, but I do 5-6 a day which covers what i need to earn)
I agree with what someone said up there... it seems that people who make the really quick money, make glyphs.
Whatabout other ways? I'd like to see some other tips.
On my main, I have about 35k gold but I don't play him much so his wealth (tailor / enchanter) is not increasing but I have just rolled a DK horde so no money or anything. With herb and skinning he now has 800g but I'm struggling to get much higher and certainly not the huge income suggested here.
Part of it is the sample. It takes almost no effort to participate in a poll, whereas doing serious research takes lots of effort. They probably got a lot of people looking for the secret to instantly making tons of money.
Part of it is that there is no real *reason* to amass wealth. I've made around sixty thousand gold over my character's lifespan, (not much in goblin terms, I know), but only rarely had more than 10,000 on me at any time.
I'm not saving for retirement, I don't have young orclings to put through college, and I don't have any living expenses. Once I'm at the point where I can afford consumables, armor repairs, and various BoE gear I have no further motive to hoard wealth.
So I blow my savings on vanity pets, mounts, gear for unnecessary alts, and so on. As long as I leave a sufficient cash reserve to continue trading and pay my raiding expenses, I have no need for the rest.
We're not all goblins like you gevlon :P, and most people wouldnt know where to start on AH, it can be intimidateing and people are afraid to lose their money
Just saw something in the above comments that made a lot of sense.
People who already have 50,000 gold or so have no need to read gold-making blogs. They clearly have a pretty good handle on things already.
People who can't afford their epic mount DO need to read gold-making blogs. So you get an audience of mostly people who don't have gold *yet* but are interested in getting some.
I can't see how people can't afford an epic mount, you get more than enough just leveling up in northrend. Personally I peaked around 100k gold in TBC from JC'ing and never bothered after that, now I sit at 40k gold and I just don't really buy anything to put a big enough dent into that to have any reason to start activily making money again. My guild provides people with glyphs, enchants,food,craftables and potions whilst myself and others provide gems. Unwanted raid drops BoE epics,orbs and Abyss crystals get auctioned, money goes into the bank to provide mats so a big bank balance doesn't really matter.
I cant help but feel a little dissapointed by this post. Even more so by you Gevlon. You of all people should see the obvious here, that people who know how to make gold wont read "how to make gold" guides. People that want to know how to make gold will want to make it because they dont have enought for whatever.
Personally, I have *enough* gold for the content I'm doing at the moment.
On the other hand, I was a businessman back in Vanilla (on another server, in another faction), and I find your blog an interesting read.
Besides, surely the people who have plenty of gold have the least 'need' to read your blog. Past the 20k mark, it's all just numbers anyway, so if they're reading moneymaking blogs, it's out of interest as to what a fellow hobbyist is up to, rather than for goldmaking advice.
Well, to be frank, I read your site because it offers a lot of good advice, but that doesn't mean I understand it all. I also have only been reading a little while, and there seems to be a core foundation of knowledge that I lack. Ultimately, I'll admit, I'm just not very good at it. Too many numbers and too much instinct for someone like me.
I /want/ to be good at it, but I'm just not.
Oh Gevlon, I'm so disappointed in you. You have made two very incorrect assumptions.
The first is that you assume that it is possible to tell how good a player is at making gold, by looking at how much gold they own. That’s quite untrue. The amount of gold that someone owns is dependent on two factors: how fast they make gold, and how fast they spend gold. If you make a lot, but spend a lot, you won’t own a lot of gold. As a way of showing who is good at making gold, the poll should not be “how much gold do you have?” but “how much gold do you make per week?” or something similar.
However, that’s not the thing that disappoints me most about your post. That honour belongs to the implication that people should want to own more than 5,000 gold, when in fact, the “best” amount of gold to own is zero, and you say so yourself. In your post “I’d rather burn it” you state that money is basically useless, and you’re right. The only reason to have gold is to trade it for something useful. Previously, in your post “Milking the M&S” you made a very valid argument that making gold in warcraft is work. We need gold to buy repairs and consumables so we can raid. Because we have a limited amount of time to play the game, the “smart” thing to do is optimise the gold making process, to give you as much time as possible to go raiding. Following that logic through to its conclusion, once you have paid your repair bill and bought your consumables, you do not need any more gold that day. If you have any gold left over, you have spent too much time collecting that gold. (It does not matter how efficient you were in collecting that gold, you did not need it in the first place so collecting it is a waste.) Therefore, the “smart” amount of gold to own is zero. There is simply no point in having a reserve pile of gold.
TL; DR – you said a couple of posts ago that gold is useless, so why should it be shocking that people don’t own a lot of it?
It seems to me that many people are interested in making "enough" gold, rather than as much as possible. They enjoy having the epic mount, but don't really enjoy the AH trading, glyph making etc needed to get it. So, once they've made enough to buy that new shiny thing, they stop. For them, making gold is a means to an end, not the end itself.
@Darraxus: probably right. But someone who can't wait a day to get money is doomed to wait forever.
@Arvid: very true, I forgot beginning businessmen
@Anonymous: I did not think of RSS, good point
@Phil: less than 5K is not even a security blanket. If you have only 100K you must farm before your raid TODAY. Everyone needs gold for a couple days of expenses and also for business opportunities. Granted, not 100K, but 5?
I'm down to around 5k again.
For me raiding is the main purpose of the game, I enjoy AH since I see it as an easy way to make gold. However I don't spend more than maybe 10 minutes per day managing auctions. This have netted me enough gold so I get up to around 20k. The problem has been that suddenly the next patch is here, the latest boe epic is here that's best in slot etc.
So I use up the gold. After levelling and doing random achievements at the start of wotlk I ended up around 20kish. Then I bought the dalaran ring for 7.5k, stocked up on flasks for a long time and other consumables for the raiding part. Suddenly I was down to around 5kish.
Next time was when I was closing in on different achievements so I blew 12k gold on reputations.
Then 3.1 happened and with that dual specc, improved dalaran rings and I felt the need of having 2 proper raiding professions so I rerolled JC and levelled it a bad way (2 hours just buying all from ah). Down to 5k again.
Then it went back up and when I noticed that the drop rates of Runed Orbs suck and it would take tons of time getting them from the guild I just bought everything needed from ah instead. That was another 10k gold.
So, I always find good use for the gold since my primary goal of the game is raiding. I think that's a big part of why there are many smart people out there that haven't got more than 5k. We are basically setting 5k as "safety line". Below that you will start having troubles with consumables and repairs which is the most important thing. We do make gold but most of the time we are not interested enough in it to put down as much time on making gold as I am testing rotations and spell priorities on a dummy.
I have to agree with Rapidresponceunit in that people seeking the guidance sites like ours are often in need of advice themselves. Other readers stop by for interesting ideas and commentary but the majority remain in the 'needs help' category.
Further, as anonymous #2 said, there is probably a large contingent of folks that didn't see the poll.
Finally, in my experience (both in-game and out) people with real money don't broadcast it. I, for one, saw the poll but abstained from answering because, as the great Goblin himself might say, I saw no point in answering... it is not scientific or standardized, the answers would obviously be skewed by the points mentioned above and I have no compelling reason to share the contents of my virtual wallet with anyone else.
Of course, I love Warcraft Econ, I just don't like data that isn't representative of the facts and a poll leaves too much to chance. One way to prove this might be if we all put such a poll on our blogs. At a minimum we could then compare and analyse all the data collected and perhaps produce an average that would naturally correct for outside factors. But now I'm probably going off the nerd deep end so I'll just stop right there :)
personally i dont find it any way satisfying to sit on even 1k+ gold i have all mounts i need even some i dont really need when i was playing ive been raiding had all the drops and bringing consumables to raids doesnt require that much money(back in bc there were even mark of illidaris) so why should i have more than 1k+? in my point of view having 150k gold is exactly like having 15 hogs useless, immaterial, until you sell it on some gold selling page, but till then its nothing just something you can be proud of just like the "extra" mounts...
although i fond your "theorie" really cool and helpful the point you always bring up against the ounts and bags also apply to having 200k gold only to have it.
still best whishes
Money coming in might be only half the equation. How fast are they spending?
I have less that 5k gold right now, but I just got done training artisan riding on my last 80. Something that before I started reading sites like this I would have considered impossible.
Currently sitting at about 5.5k, having peak at about 7.5k and dipped down to 4.5k. The peak was purely from monies found from levelling and selling off a bunch of hoarded cloth and other pre-LK tat.
I've invested heavily into skilling up Jewelcrafting and, more importantly, Inscription. From following money making blogs such as yours my funds are going up despite 90% of my online time spent raiding.
But it's a struggle. I craft the glyphs that give the best return but it'll take me a week to shift a stack of 10. Similar sort of deal with crystallized fire.
I occasionally try playing the AH For resale or disenchanting. Auctioneer is fubarred here though as it calculates a much higher return than is actual for disenchanting.
So I'm making money, but more like 500-1000g a week than multiple thousands. Possibly the biggest factor is that I can't play the AH regularly. I'll be lucky if I have the time to scan it more then 3 days a week, and I usually don't get online at the right times to make a profit on reset days and weekends.
The thing is, 5k is plenty for most people. These figures are probably for people with epic fliers already (I have 3 chars sorted already). What else is there to spend money on? There are some crafted epics and darkmoon cards. I know I'd like the nobles deck, but only because it may still be best in slot or certainly top 3 for me. The newer Ulduar crafted epics are in a similar position but lacking availability. So there's potentially 15k+ I could be spending there.
Anyway, that's me. Here's a useful question that might be an idea for a poll. How busy is your AH? The busiest days on my server might see 300 pages but it's usually nearer 200-250.
Here's another idea. How do you maximise gold earning if you can only spend a couple of hours each week in one sitting at the weekend?
By analogy, I think Gevlon is puzzled that there are lots of sick men in the doctor's waiting room. But the only people that you should expect to be seeing the doctor are, in fact, ill. I'd hazard that the majority of respondents to the poll (and indeed readers of gold making blogs) are preparing to go into AH business and are not, as yet, businessmen.
Alternatively, let's imagine that all the readers have been doing so for months. As for Wow-Econ, it's easy to read, makes no difficult judgments, and is easy to find. Perhaps people feel that reading it is a magic salve that will make them rich, so they read it and read it and read it, not realising that what they need is the mindset to figure out the current hot sellers. So they all do the same single thing, the Mammoth Cutters trick, the Eternal Fire trick, Eternal Belt Buckles, and the auction house sees more flooding than Noah. As do their inboxes with "auction expired".
Flipping on the AH, in the end, is neither surefire nor is it particularly effective at amassing large sums of gold. Yeah, that's how I paid for my epic riding skill, but it took a while.
Also, there is a limited number of people who are going to make significant gold from professions. Once you move beyond 6 or 7 people actively selling specific items on the AH, the market is glutted and you simply don't make much. Hell, I don't amek more than about 3% profit from glyphs (granted, my inscriber isn't max level yet). I make most of my gold from selling crystallized fire.
Another option is simple boredom. Non-raiders make alts. Each alt sucks up 6000g in mount expenses at 77, and then as much BoE equipment ezpense as desired until you move to another alt. I have 20k after pimping two 80's. I have 6 other toons that are 70+, 4 of which have fast flying mounts.
If you can stay focused on your main and you enjoy raiding, you need to make raid expense money, and that is trivial to someone who can work the AH. If you don't raid, and make serious alts, your expenses are MUCH higher.
Yeah, I'm trying other games. But I always seem to pop back and check my WoW auctions.
My own gold fluctuates between 10k and 20k depending upon what I want to buy. Past 20k I generally just stop bothering to make gold- it's just numbers at that point.
@Gevalon, I'll disagree with you about 5k not being enough for anything. It's easily enough for a raider who is just spending cash on his raidables and related.
(Using wowhead data for this example:)
4 nights raiding, say
max of 100gold repairs a night: 400g
1 full stack of M.M.M food: 100g
1 full stack of endless rage: 500g
Weekly raid costs: 1k
Leaves 4k to remake 1k
Example prof. JC:
Saronite ore: buy 100 stacks at 20g: 2k for 400 prospects.
Saronite prospects @4% for rare gems:
Scarlet Ruby: 16@100:1600
Autumn's Glow: 16@40:640
Sky Sapphire: 16@10:160
Forest Emerald: 16@10:160
Twilight Opal: 16@20:320
Monarch Topaz: 16@40:640
3520 from blues
640 green gems: cut and vend (for simplicity):
80% @0.5g:256g
20%@1g: 128g (gem perfection)
384g from greens
total: 3904g
I may have an error in my maths (quickly doing it in my head), but that's enough to cover raiding costs, and make an alright amount over - while keeping half back to cover yourself.
Add in vendor trash (full naxx clear is about 250g as well apparently), and that's a reasonably sustainable WoW lifestyle.
I echo what people have said about the 'glyph' business. I'm a JC/Miner.
Cut gems sell for the same if not less than the uncut on my server. Weird, but that's what's happening.
Flipping on the AH tends to leave me with plenty of inventory and very little sales. This probably means I'm buying the wrong things and need to learn to use Auctioneer better.
I know I need gold, but it's not terribly fun to make it. This is still a game, by definition, something I do to have fun.
I'd much rather be out doing stuff, 'playing my toon', than interacting with the auction house UI.
It's almost like my day job. I work so I have the money to play (go out to eat, spend time with friends, play WoW, go to a ballgame, etc).
Same in WoW, I make gold so I can go out and actually Tank/DPS things.
Thanks for the link to the JMTC forums, I strongly suggest that your readers take a look at some of the other gold making strategies and tips as well as the one you linked. We're almost up to 1000 posts in less than a week... it's insane how many people are actively participating.
there are no "disasters" in wow you dont need to spare money for some unseen to happen...actually with achemy and enchanting you can easily raid without money(je je i know its not true) so why spare money, why invest it? to see the counter going higher and higher why? dont get it...
as Criven said you can eaily live from 5k/week i would even say you can do it from even less
Since discovering this blog, I have lurked around. I saved a complete listing of everything Gevlon every wrote and read all, more or less, in the last month.
During BC, I had a nice disenchanting business going on, getting me up to 15k but taking alot of time (too much for a goblin anyway).
The two most important things I learned from Gevlon are:
1) When you find something and use it, it's like you just spent it's price buying the same thing on the AH.
This rule really opened my eyes. Since then money is rolling in. In raids, I ask myself: Do I really eat this 6g fish bufffood for this try when there are other people in the raid not even foodbuffed, and would I have bought it for this price? The answer is almost exclusively "no". So I make money.
2) One man's trash is another man's treasure.
I found this rule to be generally true but did not make a sufficient amount of money to say I was successful with it. Sure, I bought stuff that was underpriced, mostly everything that was not grey and was below 10% of Auctioneer's suggested price. It took a month to sell about half of the stuff. The other half I sold to a vendor since they had not been sold for 10-20 relistings.
There are several things that I think prevent me from making the same amount of money Gevlon does:
1) I never kept book. It's not in my nature, neither IRL nor ingame. I find it boring, and before I start something boring in what otherwise should be fun, I usually pass.
2) I never got a feel for the market. For almost every auction/relisted item, I had either no idea how this would fare (only that Auctioneer said it was underpriced) or only a slight idea because I had already sold the same thing. This might change with more time. On the other hand, new items are added constantly.
3) I might miss the "knack" for this kind of work, although this might be only an excuse because I believe that with sufficient time everyone above a certain intelligence level can learn to see business potential - and I believe myself to be above it.
4) I never levelled a tradeskill exclusively for the purpose of making money. There seems to be serious money in that.
All in all this blog is fantastic in itself, even without me making money. Rarely somebody has such clear and rational explanations for social phenomena.
I really enjoy your blog and hope to read much more of you.
Thank you,
Thomas
I had been half-heartedly making inefficient progress in the AH selling low level items as I leveled. I always had enough for repairs and mounts and I stayed away from impulse buying a green unless I could really justify that.
But, I didn't find myself "wealthy" and recognized that there would be some advantages as I am now leveling a number of alts.
So, I turned to the wow blogosphere and Warcraft Econ to start "figuring out the AH". In time, I ended up on your blog and this would be a good place to give you a hearty THANK YOU for your efforts here.
My first point is that others might be following an identical path. Your blog is about the 2-3k/hour and that seems daunting at first to someone who doesn't necessarily understand markets and is learning about them within a game. WarcraftEcon I would argue is a nice "getting started" place to help someone double their take to maybe 4-600/hour and still have "just enough" to be satisfied. I suspect they aren't playing with a ton of goals in mind, rather WoW is a way to "pass the time."
Ultimately, for all of us, that is what it is. Some of us have decided to have goals. For me, I have limited play time and farming gold is not an enjoyable past time, so I opted to learn the AH.
Getting into that, however, required learning more about fundamental business practices and I am currently considering whether it is worth the effort to upgrade my "botique" business (pulling maybe 800-1500/hour) into a factory operation or not.
Ultimately my decision will NOT be based on what I need in game, but whether I want to do so for my own learning. I don't HAVE to do it because I'm doing fine at 20 min a day before work steadily approaching 30k gold for alts who, conveniently enough, don't NEED to farm as I'm making the gold in the AH.
But, its very tempting to take my 'savings' and invest in a factory operation just to learn some more about the market and to prove I can do it.
I hope that sheds some insight on why some readers of the gold blogs may have not taken the next steps.
I'd say the gold per hour from trading depends heavily on the server and the number of markets the player has a hand in. I pretty much exclusively deal in flasks, buying most of my materials and selling for profit. On a server that has multiple top-500 guilds, there is a lot of demand and a lot of competition. I probably make 1500 g (profit) per week on my flasks with about an hour of playtime. However, that hour is much distributed, as I log on to my banker to buy low/sell high multiple times per day. I'm satisfied with that. My gold pretty much grows despite the fact that I buy whatever I want/need.
I read this blog to be informed and entertained, not to learn how to make gold.
Informed: how another section of the community chooses to play the game and how they achieve their goals so that I am ready to emulate it should I ever adopt their playstyle.
Entertained: because it's fun, I like the author and his no-nonsense approach.
Gold is not what I find fun, so I use the AH to get just enough to get by, I'm always around 1-10k poor, yet I read this and other blogs regularly.
I'm one of those "embarrassing" people who bring in 3-500G per day, even per week sometimes. But I've just started learning my server's markets.
I'm also still building certain professions on a few toons to a profitable level. There's a lot of tendency to flood various Wrath-content markets, so I need to either increase inventory, or capital with which to control pricing.
Both will come in time, and my gold income will scale with patience and practice I think.
So I'm not embarrassed at my current gold income. I also don't need to worry about buying BiS gear from the AH either. I'm not in any hurry to grab the gold cap, I haven't hit a wall where I've "needed" more gold than what I have.
So it comes down to...I put in very little time, and get very little turnaround. I appreciate the informational portion of your posts, but the "philosophy" stuff that relates to real life, I could do without, that content really doesn't interest me, regardless of whether I agree or not.
For most players, 3000 gold is probably sufficient -- it's a safety net (or working capital) for their daily activities. (100g for arrows once a week, 50g for repairs, 30g for a couple of flasks, 50g "allowance")
Remember, prices are a reflection of supply (of gold) and demand. You say that they cannot buy a "BiS BoE epic at a good price" -- that's likely to always be true. If most people had 30k gold, then a BiS epic would probably go for 45k or upwards. Heck, I recently spent 7k gold as part of putting together a decent DPS set. I would have spent 10k gold on a Surge Needle Ring, but... they aren't available for love or money. For my gold, I did get:
ilvl 213 bracers
ilvl 213 gloves
ilvl 213 boots
ilvl 200 helm
plus some enchants and gems. I'm not surprised at all that most people aren't really spinning the gears of the economy very quickly -- I'm actually paying a guildy to craft engineering stuff for me because he only makes what he needs to be able to raid, and isn't really interested in having a lot of gold -- just enough to cover repairs and enchants.
Consider that not everyone who goes to goldmaking sites wants to make gold. I stay abreast of as many parts of Wow as I can. Often goldmaking sites provide articles which help in other ways (like knowing which patterns are worth more because of demand). Also, they are often written by smart people, and reading what smart people have to say is generally pretty good. Narrow-minded much?
I saw an advert once for a gold selling site which offered 60g per hour, i thought 'hang on you can get more from doing dailies'.
My personal problem are usually down to apathy with the game (I found a new hobbie recently) and since i've got a very comfortable stack of gold I've not seen much point in making much more except for the odd AH flip or titansteel bars being over priced, even with raid buffs you really dont need anymore than 10k good to feel comfortable with an environment which currently nearly tosses money at you. Most of my AH buys sit lying in my bank alts guild bank waiting to be used for that time where I might think about leveling an alt, mabye I'll try for the gold cap, but currantly, since lets face it there is no rent, feels like a challenge which is only there to me if i get REALLY bored.
Don't get me wrong, I love this blog and I like some of the ideas and have used some to make more gold than I was used too, but from a game perspective blizzard have made life so easy now it actually shocks me that people are still poor.
I'll agree with Lerbic -- earlier he said making gold while doing dailies isn't as efficient, but doing the dailies is fun -- and it raises rep with factions (only really useful for achievement points at this point, but that's 'fun' too).
I am a part-time raider who generally gets into 'clean up raids' right after the progression raiders of our guild clear bosses, and I rarely need more than a few hundred gold a week to keep pace. With about 500-1000g on my main, just as much on my healing alt, and the same on a bank alt that is mostly just parked in IF to buy/sell things, I have enough to enjoy the game and participate in raiding (but not enough for vanity mounts and the like).
For me it's about maximizing my enjoyment while minimizing my time investment to do so. Currently if I can 'reserve' a 3 hour block of time with family, I raid. If I'm on for 20 mins or a few hours at the end of the night, I do dailies and goof off.
(I'm planning to add some actual AH time to that end-of-night goof off time, but otherwise it hasn't fit into the time-vs-fun optimization equation very well.)
You can lead an M&S to knowledge, but you cannot make them learn.
The people who play this game, by and large, are not very smart people and do not have very complicated jobs.
In my guild, I hear people complain all the time about their jobs and here is a sampling: waiter, waitress, bike messenger, military, housewife, students.
Not a true moneymaker among them, and certainly not a businessman.
My best friend works for Morgan Stanley, and I work for a Mutual Fund company in the Philadelphia region (there are only two).
Not coincidentally, we're the richest characters by FAR. I tried explaining the opportunity cost (and please do a friggin post on the Opportunity Cost of a BOE found in an Ulduar raid) people were losing by equipping a 219 item vs. their 213 item, or just selling it and using that money for top end enchants, gems, repairs, flasks, etc.
It was like trying to explain Philosophy to my cat. I think he was listening, but all he wanted to do was curl into a ball and nap.
By and large, the people who play this game and are M&S in the game, are M&S in real life. It's not like there are many doctors, or laywers who play WoW...
...so the same intangibles that keep them from making money in the real world(ability to think like an entrepreneur, adapt to a changing economic climate, and develop long-term strategies for a better life) are the same things that keep them from succeeding in a virtual world.
Instead, like the person who works at the factory all their life and dies lower middle class, all they know is to put in the "overtime" while their boss gets richer.
AND GOD BLESS THEM FOR THEIR STUPIDITY! Without it, I might actually have to farm that crap.
Why do the Working Classes read business news, stock market reports and keep half an eye on the status of the FTSE and Dow? The answer is probably the same.
Apart from one thing of course, Gold doesn't matter.
I like what was posted a few times above:
It's not "How much do you have?" - it's "How much do you earn per week?".
I HAVE 35k gold. I EARN *maybe* 500g a week. The only thing I'm likely to put real money in is mounts and training skill (I had 5 char with epic flying pre WotLK).
So while I can happily answer the poll in the 20k+ marker... I'm not a business man by ANY stretch of the imagination. I'm just a miser. :)
We farm instances for 300g an hour because the guy at the end drops a spiffy-looking horse. If you're going to be in there anyway, an extra 300g in your pocket every time you reset the instance is a nice bonus.
(My banker alts can sit at the AH and grind out endless streams of gold, but neither one is going to get me that mount.)
I just don't need all that much gold honestly. When I started looking for help and using some of your techniques I was always broke(maybe 200 gold between 10 toons). Now I constantly sit around 2500-3500. Thats enough for me I trade a little raid a little and just do whatever I feel like. If I feel the need to get more gold for epic flight for an alt or something like that I can make a push for a couple days and get it done but I just don't need the gold to enjoy the game. Thats my take on it. Also, the mad money makers out there probably don't need to read money-making blogs.
I'm one of those poor people that read these blogs, and don't have a 5k nest egg.
Problem is I spend money like a drunken sailor. I am one of those people that Gevlon mentions.
I need an epic mount. I am trying to change. Thanks to Gevlon, and other site like Two Copper, it's helping.
I'm learning to use tools like Auctioneer, and finding deals that I wouldn't look for before. Am I making 1000 gold or more an hour, or day. Not yet.
I think my server economy on horde side just isn't there, but I do have some success stories. I started with 100 gold, I quadrupled it with just a few minutes. Like finding some gems with bids of 90 silver, and resold them for 60g, or just holding off on selling goods when the market is ripe.
So yes I'm one of those people, but I'm learning, and growing.
RyanC - a little self important are we?
Your job probably isn't too hard either compared to the jobs you listed that your guildies have.
Of course you didn't list your job, just that you work at a mutual fund company. Chances are you have software that performs most of your analysis, you read that, make the same recomendation and have your boss bless it.
Don't be ignorant. Your assumptions that waitressing, military, and homekeeping are not complex reflect are wrong.
At the lowest level, with no effort, sure they can be. Anything can be.
If you aren't focusing on the meta-game that is making gold in WoW, what is the point of hording gold?
It's not like RL where you need to have money stashed away for a rainy day, what's the worst thing that can happen to your toon? A 50g repair bill?
While I am not an M&S, I never really have much gold on me for this reason. I'd rather buy a mount I like the look of or a cute pet then have more numbers at the bottom of my bag slot.
I focus spending gold on serious gear related items, but once I have those it's fun time :D
Easy answer: it's almost impossible to make "1000g per hour" unless you have an actual business (see: inscription). I am a raider and a pvper, I min/max everything for both. I simply cannot afford giving up engineering (pvp) or jewelcrafting (pve) for something like inscription just because it brings in more money. Engineering is generally worthless, except for arrows/bullets, but with those, if I buy my stacks I end up making about 5g/box of arrows and I can't sell more than about 4 or 5 per 48 hours (and I am the ONLY provider for those on my server). Jewelcrafting is money sometimes, but the gem market is going really downhill. Uncut and cut gems are going for the same price on my server. The only real money my profession bring is the money from prospecting, and even that can be sketchy with all the undercutting for gems and the price of saronite.
The money I actually make is from arbitrage and even that isn't even CLOSE to bringing in 1k/hour. The best example for that is a market I've found that ALWAYS brings in profit: abyss crystals. They can go for as low as 60g and as high as about 80g. I constantly buy those at 50g and resell them for 20g. The other day, I bought every single underpriced abyss crystal I could afford with my gold (which is about 2000 gold). That was about 30 abyss crystals. That might seem like a lot of money, but when you think about it, it really isn't.
Bought 30 abysses at 60g/each = 1800g
Sold 30 abysses at 70g/each = 2100g
300 gold in 24 hours. And that's with something that brings in TEN GOLD OF PURE PROFIT.
because 5k is a lot of money for raiding. Let's assume that it costs an absurd 1k/week to raid, that means that with 5k you've got enough banked for over a month of raiding and doing nothing else. Of course re-gemming and enchanting weapons can easily tack on expenses, but then that means you've actually downed bosses. By doing such you're now making some money from raiding, given the absurd gold hordes of bosses and not having to spend money repairing up.
But as a lot of people have pointed out, what's the point of having a lot of gold all at once? Really it's just a laziness buffer, and how many lazy people actually make good raiders? Now if gold earned interest by sitting in my bags then I'd be hoarding it carefully, but as such, meh I'd rather drop it on a useless mount, given I'm motivated to follow stupid achievements
I can't speak for anyone other than myself on this matter but using your blog and a few others i've started to accumulate lots more gold than i ever had before, however the one thing that stops me trading to the same extent as yourself and others is that i often worry that if i buy an item or mats for around 30 gold i won't make 30 gold back at all, this happened when i tried out buying and reselling a few epics a while back and i've been over cautious ever since.
In all honesty, I'm taking what I learn and beginning to understand more, but tailoring it to my server is a bit harsh. Undercutting is fierce and without strategy. Things spontaneously drop to half price for no apparent reason, are done so in large quantities and for extended periods. So I have to move my market as my warchest won't quite allow for a lot of defensive buying (not when I know the S&M will only be encouraged). It's so bad I can make money a few times a week just vendoring saronite bars. I have a few hundred bars I'm sitting on now. I'm not sure what my tolerance is for getting more.
Working on it. Since I've been doing research, my funds are a paltry 1-2k a week, which is much better than before.
Well i dont got money above 5k but i got 2 epic flyers an i just started whit *Goldmaking* an im not realy that good at it :) but i like your blog btw
Since you ask, I am risk-averse even with virtual gold. Running dailies is a sure thing, and gets me needed rep. I've tried some AH trading and gotten burned a couple times. I am starting to make more money following your tips, though.
I read gold making sites for tips on making gold as easy as possible.
that being said. I never have much more than 1000 gold.
Why?
because I don't need it. I have enough to pay for repairs and consumables. If I want something, I will build up that gold supply to buy it, usually by trading and following the tips on your sites and others.
it makes it easier to get money, but doesn't increase my desire to have more money than I need.
I'm pretty sure the problem is people getting into the market. When you start out, like I recently have, you tend to stay away from anything that your are not 100% sure will give you a nice profit within a few hours. when I started, I tried buying and re-listing on the spot because I wanted my gold quick, but this gave me even fewer options on which items to buy for a profit. When you first start off and you find items that sell well you tend to stick with them and rarely move outside your comfort zone.
I just make Netherweave Bags. I can usually get almost twice the price of the materials for a bag, so it's definitely worth it. The downside? There are several other people who seemingly only make bags. I can usually get 100-200g / day doing the bags, which isn't by any means great, but it keeps me from having to do dailies (which I loathe).
I'm not in any huge hurry to get rich NOW in WoW, so I don't mind how long it takes me to get the ~7-8k for a new character's flying levels/mounts.
I read your blog more b/c of the sociological insights, not b/c I need to know how to make money.
I'm not quite wealthy, I'm not poor either. I don't like to earn money if it feels like work, I'm fine if I enjoy myself while I make money (even if it's much less) I raid with flasks and food buffs always on, so I do need to earn some money, yes.
I simply don't waste money. I hate earning money by trading on the AH, b/c of inventory management, having to track material prices so I know if it's worth it to convert saronite ore to bars or not, getting stuff mailed back and having to relist it, etc.
There are mods that make that easier I'm sure, it just feels very much like work to me so I dislike it.
However I am good at "stacking" daily quests so that I get them done efficiently. And I happily do those dailies, and ENJOY my time doing those dailies to a small extent, so even though I only make about 250g in a hour at the more optimal portion of my dailies, including the gathering done there, and probably 100g in the non-optimal portion (Basin faction dailies)
P.S. I was about to post this when I remembered something... the reason I have so much money now is that when Wrath came out I quickly god my DKs mining to 300 and then mined as I leveled him up, made a killing on the AH b/c I sold all the ore that would no longer give me a skillup to smelt and stayed ahead of the curve. This gave me a 10k gold buffer for everything I could need, and I'm still living off the remainder of that buffer.
Saying "Why don't people have more gold?" is kind of like saying "Why are so many people overweight?" or "Why don't people use good grammar?". People may be interested in improving their lives, but maybe not as soon as others would expect. Everybody comes around when it's their time to come around.
I think it can be an issue depending on what server you play. I've recently experimented with a different server starting with 1s and found it much easier to turn a profit than on the original realm I play most often.
I'm one of the "poor" ones, actually I only have about 1,5k gold atm and I've read your blog (and several other gold related blogs) for over a year. The reson I don't have a lot of money is partly because I'm lazy, partly because I'm more of the instant satisfaction kind of guy, I'd rather have 100g now then 500g in two days but mostly because I don't need more money, 1,5k gold is easily enough to buy flask, pay repairbills, gem and enchant new gear. As I read this blog I always wonder what you do with your money, but I guess you just like making it.
I have under 5k gold.
I _can_ play the AH, I enjoy it, and I make a fair bit of gold when I do it.
I enjoy raiding more. I even enjoy running heroic 5-mans more. I even enjoy leveling my alts more.
I don't have enough free time to do _all_ of those things (plus non-WoW stuff).
So my AH activities take the hit. When my next alt hits 80 (well 78) and I need 7K gold for epic-cold-weather flight, I'll head back to the AH for a few days and make it.
So...why do I read gold-making blogs? Well I happen to be fascinated by economics. Plus I can _read_ about WoW in a lot of places I can't _play_ WoW.
I have no idea what percentage of the "under 5k" crowd is under 5k for similar reasons. I claim neither to be a unique snowflake, nor a poster child for the masses.
I guess I'm in the minority here, I'm sitting on about 40k cash right now. I figure this: Make the cash now while I have the time to invest in it so it's available when I don't have the time to invest. This way if all the time I have is just to log in and raid, I can still afford whatever I need without sweating it. Sites and blogs like Gev's helps me create and maintain such a "rainy day" fund.
Quote from: Darraxus.
"They have the knowledge, just not the drive."
For me... atleast, drive is everything...
After a while making money just feels so pointless... : /
on my server trading seems to have a fairly narow margin.
that and being somewhat newer its prices seem to be in downlside mode so the risk is a bit greater(the Tradeskill aholics who were in at launch are leveling there third alt and some are setting up there alt spec alts)
that and I suspect that a lot of the people who read econ and gold makeing blogs tend to be the kind of people who dont have cash to start with.
lets be honest here.
Your focus is making money. you blog about it and you probably spend more time thinking about increasing your "GPS" than I do.
My focus is on how the hell do I up my DPS and deal with agro but I also think about trade skills.
Ive been with mmos long enough to know that three things are true about how most people play.
There is what they "want" to do. some want to get to the max gold, some want to be in the endgame raid guild some want to be the top PvPer on the server.
There is what they like to do. what they have fun doing. often its what they are addicted to doing. one of my dear freinds in EQ created alts just to get every racial tradeskill in the game. Another in EVE runs up to 10 accounts to mine(without useing macros) using one orca 8 hulks and a hauler and 2 to fly shotgun(she loves flying canflipers and wanabe gankers who dont use shipscanners)
And there is what they are good at.
the ones for whom all three are one and the same are often the ones who are invariably in the top 5% of the server at that.
The poll is ambiguous. How many may have only 4000g, but may have tens of thousands of gold invested in metals, herbs, enchanting mats or whatever their chosen business may be?
Besides that, many of the people who will search these sites are probably those who are looking to make money for some specific purpose. Say earning enough for their epic flyer, so they stop once they hit 5000g. I don't think the results are all that much of a surprise.
Well, I read gold making sites, and I have ~5k G, a little under.
The answer is that like most things I do in the game, I do it for fun. I spend maybe an hour on each new trading opportunity I come across, and once I find out whether it works or not, I usually stop because I don't have much use for the gold anyway.
I already have all the mounts I care to posess. (A class epic land mount, and a Bronze Drake from H CoS) I don't have any alts I need to bankroll, and raid loot is far superior to any BoEs. As for enchants, gems, consumables, I *do* have enough for those, and thus no real interest in accumulating wealth just for the sake of it.
If there were something ingame that I actually wanted, I might care, but as it is, I see no reason to earn any more than I do as a by-product of my other endeavors.
I don't play the game to stockpile gold. I make it, then I spend it. What's the point of having 100,000g?
Last week I spend 20k on Runed Orbs to make a Best-In-Slot boots. Before that I bought a bike. I use my glyph income to buy the things I want, without ever having to farm or do dailies.
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