[Mage] Selling portals

[zimieri]

Hi there !

This is a little business I started 2 months ago that has been netting me some nice profits while doing nothing in major cities.

The only requirement : being a mage (at least lvl 40 for your first portals)

What you will be doing for money : selling portals

I know this could sound useless, or obvious to many of you, still I found out (at least on 3 servers I play on), that absolutely NO ONE sells this kind of "good".


In a few steps, I'll show you how to get ready to sell portals at any time, from anywhere.


-1- You need to fill your bags with two necessary mats:

Rune of Portals (the wowhead link comes with a full list of vendors) Buy a 60, should be enough to start, this is you primary source of income in this business.

Rune of Teleportation (same vendors as the above). Buy 60 too, this will allow you to port yourself to any city, which is a core part of the business.

I'm 100% sure any 40 mage knows about these 2 items. But I quickly found while doing this I was running low on comps real quick, and sometimes had to wander in cities for too long looking for comps vendors. Thus the wowhead lists, allowing you to browse through vendors available in any area of the world you might be in.

-2- Make yourself a nice macro (/macro in game, for those -very few- who don't know about them, or new players) that should look something like this :

"Hello everybody, tired of waiting for you hearth stone's cooldown ? I offer you a full mage portal service ! For a small 5 gold fee I will take you from any major city to any major city (horde / alliance faction, Dalaran an Shattrah included). Good day to you !"

- Horde / alliance : pick up your faction to avoid people whispering you smart things like : "Moron whispers : port from UC to SW lolz"

- 5 gold fee, why ? Although this might seem ridiculously high for a few silver worth mats, keep in mind that 5 gold means nothing today for any lv 80 char. In fact, I more often than not get 10g from customers (average crafting fee).

-3- What you will be doing now

wait for customers, go to their actual location (any major city), and port them to any other city they wish to go to. Make sure they pay you BEFORE you even start casting !

GENERAL TIPS

a - ALWAYS be as polite as you can, even with morons. Firstly, they're customers, all you want from them is money, not sympathy. Secondly, if you're nice, they'll remember you and won't hesitate calling for your portals, telling their friends about you. Always thank your customers, wish them a good day and everything that's best in the game (purplz, achievements, arena rating, whatever)

b - Never take more than 3 customers at time. From 7 PM you'll easily have many people whispering you from the same city to the same city. Fact is, if you make full groups you increase your chances of one of them not paying you. All depends on your ability to not forget any of them.

c - Work at night : eventhough hearth stone CD has been lowered to 30 minutes, people are in need of a great mobility from 7 PM to 1 AM. Even shamies will often ask for a portal to a city they're not bound to. Therefore make sure to hit your macro every minute (you'll quickly find out people making business need this mobility to reach sellers / buyers many times). Even passing by Dalaran portals relies on their hearth stone, which is all good for you.

d - During the day : go through dailies zones, I found out I have good chances of getting people doing daylies / getting out of heroic ToC (easily done in less than 30 minutes) in need of a portal.


PROS of this business :

- does not take a lot of time to make money, you can even log on for 15 minutes and still find customers, at the right time of the day.

- is VERY profitable : considering the mats cost, and the pool of customers (basically everybody appart from other mages), this is very profitable. I often find myself doing 30 to 50 portals in a very short time before raid hours (meaning between 150 to 250g for a few clicks).

- you can sell your portals while doing absolutely anything that does not require you to leave town : queuing for BGs, crafting, playing the ah, looking for groups, etc


CONS of this business

- other mages : well, 2 months of porting people 5 nights a week, still no one to challenge my "market", which is quite good I think.

- you need to be able to handle mutliple whisps, not forget anyone, not cast the wrong portal AND being paid. But then if you can't, I assume you're better off farming eternal fires in borean tundra

- again, the 5 gold fee. If you think that it sounds too much in the beginning, lower it to 1 or 2 golds (it still nets you a 0.50 to 1.50 profit for a click, and small profits are the best way I know to reaching huge amounts of gold...it's small, but it's there, in YOUR pocket).




Allright here it is, I hope this will help both newplayers and experienced ones make some side money (repairs and the occasionnal epic gem).



Why this works ?

- players are lazy, most of them will assume 5 gold a portal is financially more interesting than wasting time waiting for a cooldown.

- queuing for a BG in a major city does not take you back to this city once you leave the BG if you entered it somewhere else (to me the main reason why I couldn't get this business to work in BC, where you could queue to a BG, hearth, than /abs to go back to the first city).

- When I started it, I had in mind my White mage / Black mage combo in FFXI... Blizzard made mobility so much easier it actually makes running this business a lot simpler.

Enjoy !

PS : sorry for my english, hope everybody interested will fully understand everything - although it's really not that hard to get going -.

[Trollblod]

Thanks for the guide, and of course it's common sense, guides are supposed to be, most of them, this will really help a new leveled mage ^^

[Dale93]

Hmmm, Nice to see how you wrote this guide for "newbs", I mean... Its not negative, its actually pretty good... Seeing as now a days from the second you make a char, you will be in this endless circle of grinding, seeing as a level 13 Green mace costs fkin 10g etc... So this is actually great for people that has just started playing and looking for some quick money.

[Imalinux]

Nice guide

[jpte]

Its a good guide for if one acctually decides to do this. But the income from this is SHIT, simply going out to farm regular mobs anywhere in Northrend should be better money; (Not to talk about playing the AH).

[~Jagris]

Good job on guide, but I was at the AH a few seconds ago doing a scan, and some illiterate inbred idiot that read this guide was doing this. He said and I quote: "want to buy port to Dal undercity thunder bluff silvermoon city shattrah city" I then asked him why he wanted to buy a port to all those locations and said that he was selling them. I told him how to correct it and the retard just kept on saying that he wanted to buy the ports.......

[Trollblod]

Its a good guide for if one acctually decides to do this. But the income from this is SHIT, simply going out to farm regular mobs anywhere in Northrend should be better money; (Not to talk about playing the AH).

Not if you are level 40, don't think so

[ReAcTiOnZ]

This is a nice common sense guide, However it is simpily greedy. Most Mages if you ask them will do you a portal for free and would be more than happy if you simply repay them for the mats.

[pct]

I think it's cheap, i sell portals for 10g ea.

[Scoobyy]

Good guide, but it is only to retail, on private servers no1 buys portals...

[Trollblod]

Good guide, but it is only to retail, on private servers no1 buys portals...

Well, this is the section for wow guides, not private servers, and who cares about private servers.... sorry, but... ye.

[Maydie]

Just to clear the air, why sell portals when it frankly cost no mana at all?
Its a way of making money,yes.. but think about the poor once that cant seem to find a way out of darnassus?

[zimieri]

As I said :
- the income might seem low, but then again, you virtualy aren't doing squat while waiting for people to pay you for what only your class can so accurately provide. When you go out farming, you might have troubles doing something else

- and yes it definitely is greedy, but as I said, it's a steady income if done right. I don't claim shiny "2000G / hour doing nothing", and it certainly isn't the best option for non-mage players, but I'm pretty sure it's a not-so-bad idea for new players (who, as stated before, can't really afford to buy anything from the ah to help them in their leveling).

- nice to see it can help some of you (if done right :s), good night

[torquxx]

Blizzard should remove all the portals, the mage class will become an economic class

[raggemurre]

Hahahahahahaha

Im one of the lazy bastard in orgrimmar. I always do /who mage orgrimmar
and then invited and whisper every mage (like 2-3x), portal to dala please. I pay 15g. If they'r "afk" I always say 20g fast!!!!
And then he comes to me and bang I Got a portal..