Diversifying Your Capital: A Guide To Market Domination

[Itachiwolf]

Guide will be updated around noon tomorrow with my top 5 farming spots, and the best moneymakers for cooks.

Though this guide (work in progress) contains many elements of gold making you may be familiar with, you'll hopefully learn to think outside the box a little. There are hundreds of ways to make gold — my goal is to help you find the one that is right for you. RESULTS MAY VARY BASED ON YOUR SERVER ECONOMY. And spare me the "Repost, not original information" crap — 12 million people play the game, nothing is new or original anymore.


1) Supplying The Raider
The World of Warcraft auction house is a short-term market — you'd be surprised how significantly you can increase your profits by posting minimal duration (12 hour) auctions. Taking advantage of your server's raid schedule is one of the most efficient ways to do so.

We'll be working with three basic principles:
- Always post 12 Hour auctions. Anything longer is a waste of money in this market.
- If you're undercut, cancel your auction and repost below them (so long as this does not put you at a loss).
- Always maintain a surplus of stock. Never post all of your merchandise at once — scarcity drives the market.

General:
On Kargath-US, most of our progressed guilds raid between 7:00 PM and 12:00 AM. Knowing this, I can post my auctions at 5:30 to 6:00 PM at a moderate markup (8 to 10 percent). While an extra 3 to 4 gold per auction may not seem significant at first, it will once you learn to deal in volume.

Let's assume each raider uses 4 flasks over the duration of the raid. With 25 players per guild requiring four flasks each, the gold flows in. Currently, we have roughly 30 guilds working on Ulduar 25, though only six or seven may be running on a given night. At 100 flasks per guild, you have a rather high demand.

Let's use Flask of the Frost Wyrm for our example. On a weekday morning, these will sell for between 21 and 25 gold each. If you notice an alchemist selling mass quantities, try to make a deal with him. If you offer to be a regular customer, they'll more likely than not be willing to offer you a discount (and they should — you're removing the additional 5% Auction House cut). So let's say you have 600 flasks in stock, purchased at 23 gold each (An investment of 13,800 gold). Later that night, come raid time, start posting them (in stacks of four, for best sales) 80 at a time — you'll be amazed how fast your product sells. At the end of the night (for roughly an hour's worth of work), you'll have earned yourself a hefty 3,990 (after cut - x0.95) gold on top of your original investment.

For Jewelcrafters:
Raiders need gems. Again, raid nights are your best profit hours. Whether you prospect Saronite (more on this later) or purchase the raw gems, you should be earning an average of 15g per gem. If you post an average of 30 gems a night, that's a nifty 427.5 (after cut - x0.95) gold for a few minutes of work. It's important to know which gems will sell, though. Your target market is the wealthy raider, so assume they're already hit capped. Try moving your 19 spellpower, 16 ArP, and 16 Strength gems — they'll net you the largest profit. Remember though, DIVERSIFY! Never post more than 5 of the same gem at a time.

For Blacksmiths:
Eternal Belt Buckles are a gold mine. With the recent Saronite deflation (Again, more on this later), you'll be seeing profits nearing 40g for each buckle you sell. Purchase (Or farm) your materials on a weekday morning, and craft as many buckles as you think you'll need. Come raid time, begin posting 3 or 4 at a time, replacing them as they sell out. Post-raid hours will be the best time for this. Assuming you sell 6 (an extremely low estimate) on a given night, you'll be netting yourself a nice 228 gold for 10 minutes worth of work.

For Enchanters:
Know your market. Know the prices of dust and essences. Know when they peak, and when they trough. Purchase Northrend greens for 10 to 12 gold, and disenchant them. I am not an enchanter, but dealing with enchanting materials is my most profitable niche. Post your dusts single, in stacks of five, or stacks of twenty. Greater essences will earn you nearly 20% more if you split them into lesser essences — take advantage of this. You can buy greater essences in bulk, split them, and resell them for a 19.5% profit. Again, while this may not seem like a great moneymaker, you have to remember our #1 strategy — quantity over quality. I'd much rather earn 1 gold 2000 times than 1000g one time.

For Cooks:
[Coming Soon — LARGE profit market]

2) Supplying The Twink
You may love twinking, or you may hate it — regardless, you will profit from it. These are players that are bored of high-level content (meaning they aren't part of a flooded market — given the scarcity of lower level items, you can monopolize and manipulate the market) and have the financial means to make you very, very wealthy. I'm not going to get into the generic "BUY LOW SELL HIGH!" garbage that everyone posts here — I'll give you actual items that will make you money... Ready? Here we go.

1) Scroll of Enchant Bracer — Healing Power
This is a big moneymaker. You can purchase the materials for this from the auction house for minimal cost (20-30 gold) and sell the final product for as much as 150 gold. Keep ONE posted on the Auction House at all times, and you'll be selling three or four a day. That's a nice return on your investment, isn't it? Yeah.

2) Scroll of Enchant Gloves — Healing Power
This is the single most profitable enchant in the game, hands down. For roughly 45g in mats, this lovely little enchant will grab you between 280 and 300 gold on the auction house. What's the catch? The enchant formula drops from bosses in AQ40. Take advantage of this — very few enchanters can make it, and fewer bother because of its low level. Corner the market, but again, keep ONE on the Auction House at all times.

3) Spidersilk Drape
These are selling for roughly 160 gold a piece on Kargath right now. Farming the spider's silk, you can make between four and six of these cloaks an hour. Purchasing the spider's silk, you'll be cutting your profits nearly in half, but you'll be saving time. It's up to you, but please, only post ONE item at a time.

4) Spidersilk Boots
Same as above, but with a slightly higher cost of production.

5) Heavy Stone
Because twinks need to level Engineering, right? Nope. The best of the best twinks know the real secret here. At 110 Jewelcrafting, a level 19 character can craft Heavy Stone Statue, a consumable item that heals for roughly 400 hp on a two minute cooldown. This item IS Bind on Pickup, but HAS NO JC REQUIREMENT. Twinks will be making these in mass quantities, because they can craft them, drop Jewelcrafting, and still use the items. Heavy Stones should be moving at 8 to 10 gold a stack after patch 3.2 — stock up.


3) General Farming
[Coming Soon — LONG section]

4) Preparing For Patch Day
Alright, let's not pretend this hasn't been mentioned before. There have been numerous posts on "MAKE THOUSANDS OF GOLDZ WHEN 3.2 HITS!!1," but nobody has really taken a deep look at the many changes we're facing. I'll gladly do the honor.

In Summary:
—Twink items will see an immediate decline in value, followed by a steady growth... Expect to earn 150% of your investment if you buy them up now and wait a month.
—Mithril Spurs will jump in price.
—Scroll of Enchant Gloves — Riding Skill will jump in price.
—Titanium Ore will skyrocket in price. STOCKPILE IT NOW.
—Greater Cosmic Essence and Infinite Dust prices will be EXTREMELY volatile. If your server prices spike, sell. If they crash, buy. It will eventually stabilize.

[DSJ]

What you have done is take a post off the JMTC forums, put it in your own words and added small bits.

[nothinglol]

1. at first I thought this was going to be about stock lol
2. there is a thread for all AH stuff amirite?
3. NO, you spare ME the 'nothing is original anymore' crap. there's always something new out there.

[Smirdzius]

What you have done is take a post off the JMTC forums, put it in your own words and added small bits.

Can you link a thread on JMTC?

[Itachiwolf]

He's probably referring to JMTC Forum • View topic - Supplying the raider, simply for the the title, and it was a source for most of the information in that section. A portion of a comprehensive list is hardly something to fuss over.

And again, I'll be updating it soon, I have a U10 in 30 minutes.

[Cryde]

this looks veeeerry nice, ill rep you 2moro when cd is rdy!!

[DSJ]

Title had nothing to do with it.

I read that post on the JMTC forums yesterday and when I was reading your post it was clear where all your ideas had come from. Fair enough you added small bits and changed all the words but its basically the same.

[salsworn]

This is what Obama did to our economy.
haha