Greedy Goblin

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Business report 2 weeks after Cata

My business activity has the following fields in Cataclysm:
  • Selling glyphs: I had large stockpiles of inks and I craft glyphs once a week, filling the glyphseller alts. The only ink I ran out is the BC one. With current herb prices crafting Cataclysm ink and trading in would be a huge loss, so only source of such ink can be random BC herb sellings. The alts post glyphs twice a day (early morning, early evening) for 25/45G. The income so far is 34200G.
  • Selling bags: I stockpiled lot of bolts of imbued frostweave and netherweave cloth. The bags sell pretty well for 70 and 11G, giving 10 and 4 G profit. The latter is pathetic and considering the time spent building the stockpiles was a loss. I simply can't quit now, I have to sell the remaining cloth as bags or they will rot in my bank eternally. Income so far: 8400G
  • Leveling inscription: I buy materials from the AH and find some during normal play and craft items that give levelups. While I carefully choose items that has price, I'm still at loss. At inscription I stopped after 518 as I don't see any reason losing more gold. I already spent 2K to level high enough to use shoulder enchants. Any further points came from the daily document forging and from futile attempts to sell offhands and relics above material price. The only epics I could craft are darkmoon cards, but looking at the herb and volatile prices, a single card will cost at least 2K gold in materials. Such huge material costs leave little profit margin and in case of competition, high risk of ending up with unsold stuff. So currently I opt out from high level inscription.
  • Leveling tailoring: while my losses here during leveling are larger (4K already realized, another 3K material cost stuff is on the AH), I'm much more optimistic about tailoring. I'm currently at slvl 421, will level the last points with cloth transmutation. Dreamcloth being soulbound, the competition is much smaller. I mean while a single scribe can craft infinite amount of darkmoon cards if materials are available, no tailor can mass-produce dreamcloth. I crafted 5 last week, 5 more to come this week. From this I can buy the recipe and craft 2 epic belts or one pair of trousers. I'll try to find buyer on /trade, if it doesn't work, I craft 1-1 belts and place them on the AH.
  • Selling whatever I bump into during normal play: greens, volatiles, fish and such. Blizzard is pretty generous with players, I made 6K from all this .
  • Leveling Archeology: that seems like a total waste with 0 business relation. But I actually farm keystones. They are either unavailable on the AH or there for ridiculous prices. I sell these keystones to my girlfriend who can level Archeology faster with these. Why? Because she is an alchemist! She has no faith in the stupidity of the people wanting to buy the newest "lol so cool" mount. So I will finance crafting these, buy the materials and pay her pitiful crafting fees. Then sell the dragons for huge profit. Of course that's just the plan, I can't be sure that there will be enough people with money but without common sense.

    Maartens found us this specimen:



28 comments:

Maz said...

In Spain, chorizo is a kind of sausage... and a despective term to designate a (usually incompetent or poorly profesional) thief. Ironic.

Anti said...

dont overlook the incom potential of [mysterious fortune card]

i figure i can craft ink for 20g.

i was selling ink in the AH for 30g. then i sold a large batch of ink to the guy spamming /2 with information on them and selling these cards on the AH. so i had a closer look.

he was selling the cards on the Ah for 75-95g. my anonymous alt put up 5 at 65g. he undercut by a copper. i posted more at 55g. he undercut by a copper. i posted more at 45g. he undercut. i posted more at 35g.

he bought all my sales and canceled his own back up to 95g.

this all took about 5 minutes. including several sales to legitimate consumers. so i repeated the process.

after 3x he quit the market and cancelled all his sales from the last discount war. i listed mine at 65g and sold unnoposed for a couple of hours. using his advertising that had already built up a sizable demand.

eventually other sellers entered the market but i'm continuing selling for 45-60g on a regular basis.

Andru said...

Isn't the Drake Alchemy Mount requiring alchemy to use, despite not being BOP?

Guess it's only for alchemists unwilling to gather mats.

Though, obviously, there will be some people who will miss those details and would buy it anyway, then whine they wasted gold.

Or rather, there should be, since I'm not entirely sure someone with that much gold can be oblivious on what his gold buys him.

In other news, JC is a license to print money. I've earned 40k gold from the start of Cataclysm, just being a middle-class "auction everything on main" and "cut some gems from time to time and price them by deep undercuttiong." method.

I also got my first angry "You, sir, are a retard for deep undercutting" letter!

JC is different because while every scribe or tailor can make those items as they level up, JC are different, at least now. Until JCs start getting all worthwile designs and start competing against each other, prices for gems will be sky-high...of which 80% is profit.

Riptor said...

Dream of Destruction has no cooldown. If you have the opportunity to get Chaos Orbs from heroics you can craft on demand. Especially now as everybody will farm gear and Reputation anyway you’ll always find a Group to tag along.

Ðesolate said...

Best selling in my business are still WotLK Meta-gems and Blue quality cuts and prospected green quality raw gems.

Second to that is the Goblin barbeque and high quality enchant rolls.

I´m just starting in archeology but I get easily bored by farming so, well you can imagine it´s not my happy work (I usually do it during queue for BGs or Tol Barad [only in defense situation]).

A interesting point is cooking I´m actually thinking on leveling it up to max for the Barbeque, since I hired my arena mate as my cooking supply (but when he´s offline and need another 10 stacks I´m a bit screwd)

Oh yes and as an engenees, Cogwheel-selling (the gems for engeneers googles) is also pretty profitable. I sell the mastery-cogweels (need one goblinbarbeque) for 2-4 time the price of a Barbeque.

Dust is sold on our AH at ~8g 2g below vendor peice, not profitable anymore. Oh but did I mention the engeneering Pets and the enchanting pet? you just have to get your hands on an epic shard. Sold three for more that 40k, quite pretty.

Ah and I encuraged the horde population by giving away 200k gold in form of Bags and 1k / player without accountbounds. I managed to not give anything to the same account by inviting them to a guild for that event. It ran 2 days.

Personal note: Ðesolate will be available this evening / night.

joost said...

Gevlon,

Why do you have gold? You are saying you stopped leveling inscription because it will cost you to much gold but you should have more gold then you can spend thus be able to just level inscription up. I spend ~10K to get both of my profession to 525.

Does it bother me? Abit since I'm far from gold cap but really whats the use of having so much gold in your bags? Isn't your ultimate goal to make enough gold so it doesn't limit you in your doings?

I can now craft stuff if I want and slowly selling epics. Sold one for 6K with 60% profit. Dust of Disappearance still sells the best though <3 :).

Anonymous said...

No faith in the stupidity of people???? has she learnt nothing?

aturing said...

@Andru they recently changed it to BOE so it now available to anyone with money.

@Desolate if dust is being sold for less than vendor then there is profit if you buy all the ones less than vendor price and sell them to vendor.

Personally i'm waiting a while to level my alchemist and if I want to sell stuff then I have to wait until the AH is dried up of recipes people made for skill ups. Prices of the finished goods on my server is severely under the cost of mats to make them, so I'm waiting until an opportune moment to sell.

also a tip for those with alchemy potion of illusion sell for quite high prices, and most seem to skip it while leveling so that can be a profitable sill up.

The other reason is the only things that seem profitable is true gold and the alchemy mount if i would ever get it.

Also i'm wondering if I could get some advice on professions for a character on a new server.
1. is it wise to level a production prof while leveling?
2. is it a good idea to start in a new market i'm unfamiliar with or better to stick with one i'm familiar with?

the reason i ask is because i'm currently leveling a miner and was thinking of taking JC, BS or enchanting to go with it. I'm thinking of taking enchanting to go with it while leveling as i can spec protection and do dungeons to provide the mats as AH seems unreliable to level enchanting and then drop mining at 85 and level either JC or BS.

Gevlon said...

@Aturing: transmute volatile life to air is very profitable

@Anonymous: no faith in that a stupid has ever seen 50K in his lifetime.

Anonymous said...

I had great plans at the start of Cata to use my 2 80 toon's I have that have a gathering proff to make huge amounts of cash. What of course happened was I levelled my main two characters instead who both had crafting profs!

I spent close to 30k gold levelling 2 Jcs an Alch and Enchanter.

However I am currently 12.5k gold above my starting level as enchanting, Truegold transmute and getting into the JC market early was a great albeit a none planned move.

Still today I am one of the few who selling the healer meta gem and the Rigid Ocean Sapphire as well as a few other none common cuts. A lot of people went for the common cuts like agility and strength. These currently go for roughly the same price as a raw gem where my cuts are making 150-200g profit and I am selling 30+ a day.

Enchanting again was fabulous in the first week as some of the enchants made a pile but as of now only the weapon enchants make any profit at all and sell slowly. I still sell 2 or 3 mongoose enchants a day. Lucky I had a stockpile of them.

I have just started levelling up inscription which is turning out to be cost neutral with the Fortune cards and the Adventurers manuals.

I have also sold 2 Notched jawbones and a Tattooed Ogre eye for a fair bit more that the mats price which has funded the levelling process.

I cant really see a big inscription market at the moment. Gevlon said that the new darkmoon cards are just too expensive to make and to be honest I never dabbled in them before due to the random nature of the cards anyway.

Ðesolate said...

@aturing: Vendor Selling price not buying (by that no buying from vendor and selling at the AH with profit)... ...the bonehead basics are quite clear.

in case of levelung best thing would be to stack up material for skilling two crafting professions and sell everything what you collect aboce with two farming professions. By that you´ll get a pretty piece of gold to start from.

Most effective would be mining and skinning to proceed to JC and LW.

Anonymous said...

About profession levelling, I think the best time to level most professions was very early. In my experience with JC and BS, early (when new stuff at the AH start to appear reliably and with a more stable price) you pay a lot for materials, but also sell for a lot of money, and are able to amortize a lot of the costs.

With JC, prospecting, cutting and selling was a cash cow since green gems were selling for absurd prices. Right now I would be at loss trying to do that since green gems prices a very low bar a couple of colors/cuts.

BS: I put around 13K upfront in crafting materials and got to 525 in an afternoon, but was able to sell most of the stuff I crafted. I ended at around -2K which is pretty good. If I try now to sell a BS crafted green I would usually be at a huge loss.

Going early you need much money to invest at the beginning but you'll get back most of it with the levelling itself. On top this, you end up being one of the very few high-level crafters on the market for a couple of weeks...

Anonymous said...

I'm having around 10kg/hr rate with mysterious fortune cards. All you need is to masscraft those, put ah and spam trade with some macro like "Try your luck! Mysterious Fortune Cards now at ah, you can win up to 5000g [link to the epic 5000g card here]". They are selling 50g-75g on my server and people are buying ridiculous amounts of them.

Orgaansint said...

I was the one that sent today's moron of the day screenshot. It was like a week ago though that I sold it for those prices. After a couple of days they went to 50g each (still sold a lot) and then just above vendor value.

I stopped posting, it was just as an experiment to see how people buy vendor items for X of the vendor price.

Right now my income is from prospecting Cata ores, selling raw and cut gems. Mainly green gems. Buying some recipes for "cheap" seems to be worth it.

Ulsaki said...

@Andru

The alchemy mount is now BoE. I've made at least 50K these past few days from crafting them myself and selling them on the AH, or charging a 3K crafting fee.

Fumiyo said...

I started at 4,000g the day of Cata launch. I'm now at 12,000g, with roughly 8,000g worth of stuff currently on auction, and my tailoring at 511 and enchanting at 475.

My strategy has primarily been buying armor, DE it, and selling the mats. I did a bit of analysis to figure out what was my cut off price for armor so that I can still make a nice profit. Mat prices have gone down a bit, so I'll have to revise my armor purchase price.

But it may not matter so much. I think at this point, my strategy will switch to gaining the last few tailoring points to start making high-level tailoring gear. Right now, there's almost no one selling this stuff on my server.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon,

I'm surprised you're not all over the "Mysterious Fortune Card" sales!

I don't sell them, of course... because I'm far too ethical to sell something that has a hidden value of only 1 gold value for 50 gold. Don't get me wrong... I'll gladly sell something that costs me 1 gold to make for 50 gold, but the usefulness of the item must be fully disclosed at the time of sale.

But this should be right up your alley! In fact, I'm thinking you've gone soft. Lost your edge. You're not developing a conscious, are you?

Brandon said...

Something being "unethical" in the context of the World of Warcraft economy isn't even possible. Labeling deceit as "unethical" is equivalent to labeling a poker player that successfully bluffs as unethical. No one's going hungry or getting cancer because they overpaid for a useless card - it's a game .

Bristal said...

I note that we have the originator of the M&S commenting above...but it's just too easy to fake those types of screenshots.

I post & get my buddy to buy.

Even his comment suggests that sales like that are extremely rare. Gevlon continues to support his case that the game is full of idiots by using paltry evidence gleaned from his thousands of readers on the lookout hoping to get in the blog.

These are EXCEPTIONS to the rule. Not the rule.

I note that buying and reselling vendor items isn't in your business report anywhere.

Tazar said...

I've got 200k in WOTLK from darkmoon cards so I will try them again. Currently I crafted 6 and 3 are already sold for 3k each (material cost was 1k each for me). Besides that it leaves me with a lot of inks to fuel my glyph sales (about 4k / day). I'm selling only glyphs that go above 50g (2-3 each as that confirmation is quite anoying).

Anonymous said...

The JC market is wide open.

I was 2nd or 3rd to market with the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond last week and made a killing for a few days, selling 2-3 for 1500g each. Then some people came in and tried to drop the market - which was fine by me. I have a ready supply of shadowspirits through a xmuting friend and 2k gold worth of elementium ore can yield 8-10 shadowspirits at a time after procs - so I am never short of gems. The only time I ran out was last Monday where I sold 12-16 in a day at close to 500g each.

Lei said...

Mount requires ridiculous amount of time invest/luck. Let me explain:
1. level up alchemy to 525
2. level up archeology to 450
3. tol'vir digsites are 16% "drop rate" compared to night elv/troll/whatever
3. even if you find a tol'vir digsite, you NEED to get specific artifact to be solved (canopic jar)
4. recipe is not 100% drop rate atm, more likely 15-25%

worst case (or shall i say average?) you will get 1/10 tolvir digsite, you solve EVERY Tolvir artifact (including epics with insane amount of fragment requirement) thats 13 artifact, and canopic jar won't drop the recipe so you have to solve the commons AGAIN and AGAIN.
While, a random noname just flies there, sees: "oh a digsite!" and wham!, he got the recipe. And he selling the crafting for ridiculously low price. Just like on our server :)

I hope your girlfriend is lucky and got the recipe on the first try, but even the first try will take 35-40 hour dig.
Of course, you only need to get recipe once, you can sell zillion mounts after.
Also keep in mind that the goblin racial can save 5k-ish gold from the crafting price (vendor items), well, not on the alliance side ;)

Orgaansint said...

@Bristal,

It's a shame you actually even mention one (or just me) would fake a screenshot just go get it posted on this blog.

Nobody knows me, there's no gain in it. I'm quite sure atleast 95% of the submitted screenshots are real. There are just a lot of stupid people.

More than you believe there are.

The sales are rare now that more and more people start getting noted by their "friends" that you can buy Dust of Dissapearance rom vendors. But when I was selling them, I sold atleast 10 for loads of profit.

Coa said...

The mount's recipe is RNG within RNG. It's extremely unlikely that there'll be enough interest on the server to actually offset the time spend farming it and that's with your GF being extremely lucky and actually getting the recipe pretty fast.

Malkil said...

I managed to sell a few Dusts of Decay for 100g each as well. Four of them, only, but that's still a nice chunk of change for minimal time and gold invested. Sadly, this was quickly broken as others entered the market. Before that, I was selling Vanishing Powders for 10g each, making somewhere in the vicinity of 3500g total from them. I'm unsure how much exactly, though, because auctioneer was broken for about a week at the time.

On the same note, I've sold 45 Ice Cold Milks for 10g each so far. Others have entered the market since, though, bringing the price down to 50s each. Still a profit, but hardly worth the time invested.

Ulsaki said...

So far I'm now sitting on 140K profit for the past 2 weeks.

Getting the Vial of the Sands recipe requires a serious time investment and luck. I was one of the very lucky ones.

Of course, luck plays a role in business as well. Just the successful goblin can maximise his luck.

On alliance side on my server there are around 20 sold now, most of which were crafted by me. I'm sure there'll be enough to make it at least profitable, if your girlfriend can get the recipe.

However, there are also a lot of morons who lack common sense and will claim you're overcharging because "u farm rest 4 free",

The market for them seems to be slowing down on mine, so now I only craft on demand. That said, there is also a lag period as some players are saving their truegold transmutes, so I've still got several incoming orders.

Anonymous said...

It might be to late, but I have made 30k gold selling pvp cloth items in the last week(head, legs and chest). Also sold about 600 16 slot bags for 20g (5g in mats).

Anonymous said...

I don't understand the inscription decision.

The main reason to level inscription seems to be cards.

Say you sell a half-dozen decks for 50k each.
I can certainly see how you could be unlucky & incompetent and lose tens of thousands. Or make 100,000 if you can buy herbs well.

But why in the world would someone level inscription unless they were going to play deck roulette????