As a starter:
I am someone who leeches off the economy on my server. I love to farm, I never scammed accounts, I never scammed people in game...
I know, to the people that know how to do the things above will not need this stuff, people who are clueless about their economy/AH/buying&selling will find this helpfull.
Scream "common sense", i do not care, lots of people that I explained all this to in the past were thankfull and have finally got some money together.
Intro
Whenever you quest, raid, do instances or just run around a bit in the game, you get loot. You get green, blue, epic stuff, you get some ores, a herb left or right, you got your hands on some skins from animals that happened to cross your path.
Lots of people just rush to AH and put it on, while other think "meh, only a lvl 72 green, cba to go to AH for this"... they cash it to a vendor for a few gold, and off they go.
Lots of people, especially the ones that allready have a nice amount of gold together, think that a few gold wont change a lot, but all the little bits together can get you an awesome income.
The trick in all this is getting up a good system to sell all this crap + all the other stuff you farm. Interested? Keep reading...
Everything starts with a bank
"Ok, then why do I need a bank to sell this stuff?" You ask me. Well, I could sum up a few reasons:
- Most important of all: easy and cheap storage! Guildbanks are cheap, or atleast the first 2 slots are. Better get 2 banks with 2 slots then 1 with 4 slots.
- When you have auctions up on your bankalt, and lets say you mine and sell saronite every day, people can't start nagging to your main to get discounts. Happens a lot, can be kinda frustrating.
- Your main can't get angry whispers from silly people that get mad cause you lowered your prices under theirs again.
- Friends/Foes could end up buying other peoples auctions... You would be surprised if you would know the ability of some people to remember names. If you had problems with people on your main, these people could end up not buying your stuff since they simply don't like you, and go for another vendor that sells at the same price.
Ok lets get started then
Choice of race
Get a Human or an Orc, reason of this is that they start relatively close to a major city where lots of people roam the place, and they can run to this city without getting aggro once.
These cities are also the most important ones of Azeroth, since they have the best connection with Northrend
Choice of name
This is something very important when you create a bankalt.
- give him/her an easy to remember name. Sometimes you advertise someting in trade channel, people relog to their main to buy your stuff, and at this point they should remember your name when relogging. "Orebank" would be a good one, while "Lolbuyplixkk" isn't...
- don't use special accents etc. "élèvé" or "böélinck". people hate this and it makes it hard for people to remember your name.
Lvl your bank
I can't stress this enough! Some people use addons that automatically block lvl 1, lvls 1-3; lvls 1-5 out of their chat, this to avoid goldspammers. I personally always lvl up a bak till lvl 6 (it takes no time anyway). Not doing this will get you autoignored by a lot of players.
Gear your bank
Another important thing that a lot of people forget to see. People are still not trusting in low lvl characters. They just see them as scammers and thiefs. One way to avoid this is to show people that you really invested time and money in this bankcharacter.
A few good ways to do this:
- get a guild! Easy, cheap, and you can wear a nice custom made tabard. Remember to kick all the people who signed your charter out right after you created it. name your guild <general goods>, <Auctioneer> or whatever you think is a good name and can make people laugh. Humor is always the best way
- get some nice gear. Bankgear doesnt mean that it needs to be expensive, get a haliscan set or a smoking, and those will get you a long way. You could buy goggles, a nice weapon, maybe even get a beastslaying enchant on it so it looks a bit nicer...
- Last but not least: get bags! This is harder for a new player, but obtainable after a while. A nice set of 16 slotters should meet your requirements.
As an example of banks, I will show you my 2 banks that I use since some times now.
Once you done all the above, the real work can begin!
Banking: your behaviour and relations determines your income!
If you have your bankingcharacter, and you start spamming the trade channel like a madman, you can expect to get on a lot of ignorelists and maybe even a few reports.
This is maybe less important for people selling stuf only through AH, but if you prefer selling through trade channel this is pretty important.
If you have for example a miner as a main, and you constantly sell ores and uncut gems through your bankalt, people that have for example a jewelcrafter will start to notice you.
Since you are always the one putting up all the saronite at the AH, 10 stacks a day, people will try to benefit from you as you benefit from them, they could whisper you or send you an ingame mail to, instead of selling on AH (wich means moneyloss for you to the AH system) send the ore CoD to them at the same price. This way, you don't pay AH deposit+fee, and they are sure of a steady income of saronite. Win for you, win for them, your first "relation" is a fact!
This happens more then you would at first think, and I can tell you that the best auctioneers have a widly spread out network of these relations.
Another example: I got to know the trick here on MMOWNED about making axes out of cobalt, wich diss always in greater cosmic essence.
I have someone that CoD's cobalt to my main, 5 stacks a day, at 40G/stack (normal AH price switching between 40 and 45G every day). I have my cobalt every day, he has ahis money every day, both happy...
In the meanwhile I have someone who has an enchanter, and buys all my greater cosmics at 30G/piece (price on AH switches between 30 and 35 every day).
So, in this case, I buy ores, I smelt them on my main and craft them in bars and diss them, and when i get the mats out of them I sell them to the enchanter, giving me a steady 100-200g a day for 10 minutes of work.
This + all my other auctions + buying and selling provide me with some nice money on a daily basis, and even if the whole AH price is ****ed up for a week, I still have a fix 1400G/week for 1 hour and a bit of work in total with the things described above.
So in the end, be polite, don't act like an ass and get to know some people through your bankingwork. Profit guaranteed!
Addons to make your life easier
These addons are well known and fior people like me that live from AH they are one of the most important tools to use...
Auctioneer
Auctioneer Suite provides you with the tools and data necessary to make those difficult auctioning decisions with ease.
From purchasing to posting, the Auctioneer Suite provides time-tested tools to allow you more time to actually play your characters or play the market. As you will soon discover, it is much more than a simple "Auctioning AddOn", the Auctioneer Suite also shows in-depth information for all game items, such as those used in quests or recipes, and much, much more.
Numerous other addons will also use the Auctioneer statistics you gather via scanning.
Auctioneer - Addons - Curse
Bulkmail
This addon enables you to accept a lot of mails in one time, take only the cash, only a certain item, etc
BulkMail2Inbox - Addons - Curse
Bagnon
This addon enables you to see all your bags into one simple screen. It also lets you search a certain item really fast by highlighting the slot the item is in when you type its name
Bagnon - Addons - Curse
Working with a bank = saving time
Once you have set up your bank completely, your ready to start the work. Whenever you come by a mailbox on your main, just start mailing everything you have to your bank. Once an evening, go to your bank and accept and proces it all. A real timesaver, and you will be surprised about how much stuff you actually get together on one evening of questing.
AFter a while, when your business is on a higher lvl, you will need to check more frequently to get a good view upon sold/bid/outbid items...
For this, be sure to disable all addons that arent needed, so you are able to make the relog time as small as possible
Selling through Trade Channel or AH?
Depends on your likings, but I have a few pro/contra
- AH takes usually more time to get stuff sold
- AH selling means losing money to deposit and selling fee
- Trade channel provides less safe selling
- Trade Channel selling is only really effective at the hours when everybody plays
- trade channel makes you sell stuff for better prices since you can interact more with the current AH prices
If you chose to sell through Trade Channel:
Always try to be correct in your decription of the item.
/2 WTS[item]2 30G[item]4 10G[item]
is the type of auctions you see a lot... What is selled, for wich price and wich quantity is what matters...
/2WTS 2x[item] 30G for both / 4x [item]10G-piece / 1x[item] 15G
is allready a lot better. Small difference maybe, but tbh I hate to look at bad advertised stuff. it costs me too much time.
If you sell an item cheaper then AH, its always good to say this...
/2 WTS [item] 20G/piece! 5G cheaper then AH!
Makes it obviously more interesting for people and more appealing.
And i just need to say this...
NEVAH USE LIEK CAPZ N L33TSP34K ITS LIEK SO STUPID AND PEEPZ THINK U R LIEK A NUB KK LOLOL?
If you chose to sell through Auction House:
This is quite easy:
Try to establish a fix price for an item, rather then undercutting everyone all the time. this will take down the value of your item a lot, and especially when you have more then one of them, you will lose a lot over this. It is a common thing at AH, and rather then joining those nibblets you should profit of them.
Lets say you have 200 infinite dust, and AH price is around 5, just post 200 times 1 dust for 5G Bid/BO.
Just keep watching the AH a bit more that evening, buy off every lower priced ust and put it on for 5G/piece. This way you take over the AH, and enchanting mats dont cost money to deposit them anyway!
Play smart is profit, and if you are too eager and fast to sell (undercutting) people will profit of you and you will make less money...
About wich items to sell and trade I will not write anything. This is way too much to describe in a guide, and it depends from server to server. Keep scanning with that auctioneer, search for low priced items, buy and resell. No more farming, and a happy, rich, you
Hope, although a lot was common sense, that some people learned something here, and if not, I still hope you enjoy the read.
Feel free to post any suggestions or remarks, and I will happily include them here.