Beginner's Guide to Gold Making

[Confucius]

There are many guides out there about making gold in World of Warcraft, but many of them require having gold at first or only touch on one singular method, in this guide I'll try to give an overview of ways to make gold in WoW and link a few helpful resources to help you with those different ways. The things I write here will all be from my personal experience, and I am in no way the greatest gold maker there is. If you feel something is missing from this guide please say so and I'll research the matter and try to add it into this guide. The idea for this guide is to help people who simply cannot make gold in WoW, no matter what they do!

There are many ways to make gold in world of warcraft and some may be better than others, but most of the time they come with a risk; whether that risk is a loss in profit or a chance of a ban there are many things that could go wrong in your gold making adventure, so it is best to always start off small until you are sure the method you are using is going to work for you!

Methods

The auction house

Playing the market

Playing the market basically involves buying items when they drop in price then selling them when they raise back up, much like the stock market. In my opinion the best things to try and make profit with are mats that are used often, such as herbs and ores, or if you want to attempt bigger profits truegold and hardened elementium are good ideas. What is best to look for is different on each server and I recommend searching the auction house for a few days first to get a good idea of what is best for your server.

You don't necessarily need addons for playing the market, if you are like me and able to remember all the items and their average sell price then that is great, however having an addon does make it a lot easier. Some addons you could think of getting are auctionator, auctioneer and market watcher. Remember to scan often with these addons, and if you want to take it a level further you could record the prices for each day in an excel spreadsheet, so you know exactly what to buy and when.

Playing the auction house isn't just waiting for the right time to buy the right item there are also some methods you could use to help you make the most profit. For example if you want to buy some items cheaper than normally you can post a few auctions of the said item at a lower price, then others will undercut you allowing you to get items cheap that you can resell later for more gold. Just be careful not to crash your server's market for the particular item, that has happened to me a few times and it will take weeks or maybe even months before the prices even out again.

Overall playing the market includes large risk but also can grant great rewards, just be sure to be careful while still willing to take risks. After a few tries you will get the hang of it and be on your way to becoming a great tycoon!

Botting

Botting is a great way to make gold if you can risk the ban. While it won't make as much gold per day as some of the more involved methods it does allow you to make loads of gold while doing nothing at all! However to make the maximum profit from botting there are a few things you can do.

First make sure you are botting the best thing to bot, the most profitable item to bot is not always the item that sells for the most; but it is the item with the least competition. If you aren't sure which item that is, look on the auction house and see which one has the least postings, also go to the zones that the item is gathered from and look around for any other botters.

Another important thing is to get private buyers, while selling on the auction house can make you a lot of gold you still have to deal with undercutters and fees; overall finding a private buyer will be very advantageous to you. The easiest way to find private buyers is to simply advertise in trade that you are selling an item in bulk, you will probably get a few whispers, once you sell the items to someone ask if they would like to buy any more in the future; if they say yes setup a flat rate with them that will stay the same no matter if the auction house raises or lowers in price.

Once you do all of these things you will have a constant profit everyday just with a few minutes of work from CoDing the items to the buyer! If you bot the right items you can easily make 12-20kg a night.

Professions

Professions are a good way to make gold but it requires more work than the previous methods and it can also be harder to sell your items. The main things you have to do to profit off your professions is know what items people are buying and craft them with minimal cost.

Obviously the most profitable way to craft items is by farming the mats yourself, however this can take a large amount of time and even if botted won't work out as well. What I recommend is looking for botters selling the mats you need at a value much cheaper than the auction house, you can easily tell a botter by someone advertising in trade that they are selling an item in bulk, such as cinderbloom or whiptail. The other way to get mats cheaply is to wait for a botter to post his load on the auction house and then buy them all, if you want you can also send a mail to that botter and ask him if he'd like to supply you directly for a flat price, most of the time they will say yes.

Another thing to remember is to make sure that the mats cost less than the item you are making for sells for, you want to try and make the items that sell at the highest price while costing the least to make. There are numerous of ways to make sure, the easiest is to add the mat costs in windows calc and then subtract that number from the sell price, or you could use a tool like my profit calculator.

If you do it right you can make loads of gold with 30 minutes or so work a day, for example I buy mats at a low price then I craft flasks with my alchemists and sell them for twice the cost of the mats themselves, essentially doubling my gold.

Another thing to consider is getting private buyers since the auction house can be a brutal place, this is kind of hard to do but if you try hard enough you may be able to get a guild to pay you for the items you make in order for them to keep their guild bank stocked; or maybe even your own guild will pay you for them.

Professions that don't craft mass loads of items like tailoring or blacksmithing will make most of their profits from crafting for people and tips, however if you can get mats at a low cost you can sell your items on the auction house and make lots of gold.

There are also professions like jewel crafting and inscription that can profit greatly from buying mass loads of items from botters and milling them or prospecting them. I do not have either of these professions so I cannot really touch that well on this topic but if you search for the jewel craft shuffle or inscription milling you should be able to find some helpful resources.

Overall when it comes to professions it's up to the player to decide what method of gold making they like best and what would make the most gold on their server's economy.

Sniping

Sniping is buying items when someone posts an it at a low price (1 copper or 1 gold) on the neutral auction house with the intention of transferring the item to another faction. Sniping can easily make you 300k gold a day or no gold at all, it's more of a game of chance but it is a very profitable way to make gold if people transfer items a lot.

Good servers to try this on are ones with an unbalanced faction ratio where items are selling for a lot more on one side than another or where raiding is a lot more common on one faction than another, because your goal will to be get boes mostly. I'm not going to explain fully how to do this method as there are many guides posted here alone on the site and you should be able to find some with the search function.

Making gold with raiding

Trash runs

Trash runs are a pretty effective way to make gold if you do them correctly and are able to obtain items to sell. Trash runs is when a group of players go into a raid, such as the firelands, and kill trash for epics then reset without killing any bosses. This can be very profitable if you have the right group of players helping you.

There are many ways to go about making profit off Trash runs, for example you could simply pug a raid and say any non ms or os items go to the raid leader, this often times won't work too well because chances are someone will need the item or you won't even get a group because people see this as being very greedy.

The best way in my opinion is to set up a group from within your guild or community of friends and agree that you will be selling all drops for profit and that the profit gained will be split evenly between all players. If you go at it for a few hours you will get some epics and depending on your server you will be able to sell them for 10-40k gold each.

This method of making gold isn't as stable as the others as the chance of an epic dropping is not stable and the chances that the epic sells for a high price is even lower. But if you do it correctly it can still be a fun way to make gold that will also help you hone your raiding skills if they are lacking.

DKP

DKP is another way to make gold with raiding that we saw a lot of in wotlk. Basically with DKP players bid on items that drop from mobs and the highest bid gets the item, there may also be a few to join the raid. Then at the end of the raid the money made is split among the players and people who didn't bid on items make some gold.

I've never really tried this way of making gold but it does seem to be pretty popular with raiding guilds that need some extra cash. If you know a few good raiders you could set these up and make money off people bidding for items.

PvP

Arena boosting

If you are skilled in pvp then arena boosting could be a very profitable way for you to make gold. Arena boosting is selling wins or ratings to players. Basically they invite you to your team and you will own in arena for them and charge a price per win or a price for a certain rating.

For example people on my server charge about 130g per win, so that's 1300g every 10 wins, and best of all it's making gold doing something you love!

Buying mats and gems with honor

If you pvp a ton and have a lot of extra honor or if you battleground bot you can buy gems or mats with honor from the honor trade vendor in your factions honor vendor area. This won't make as much gold as some of the other methods but can be a fun way to make some gold while enjoying the game itself. It is also very easy to get honor now days.

If you want to do this method then I recommend also botting pvp, although you shouldn't if you don't want to risk the ban.

Other methods

Grinding

Grinding is much like gathering however instead of framing herbs or ores you are grinding cloth or other items that sell for a lot. There aren't really any golden items to farm and it's different on every server, but a few scans of your auction house and you'll get an idea of what you can grind for a lot of profit.

If you want to take it one level further or are just lazy you can also grind bot, however this has a pretty high ban risk, maybe even higher than gather botting.

Overall grinding is one of the slower ways to make gold and so we won't really touch on it much in this guide.

Farming low level content

This way of making gold includes going into low level raids and dungeons and killing mobs either for gold or for boes that will later be sold on the auction house. This method can make gold because many low level players buy gear off the auction house either for an advantage in pvp or just because they feel like it.

For gold farming you could try running through wotlk dungeons, I'm not sure of the exact numbers but from what I've heard you can make gold fairly quickly from just the drops alone. If you are farming gear to sell on the auction house you should first see what level range items are posted the most of on the auction house and farm items in the ones that are not. For example your server's auction house may have loads of wotlk boes posted but very little tbc ones posted, in which case it can be profitable to farm tbc items.

I can't say for sure how great a method of making gold this is but many people in my guild do it so it must be good for something.

Quests

Another way to make gold is by questing through lower level content that you haven't done. Not only will you get gold from the quests and the rewards but you could also try for the lore master achievement. This way of making gold is pretty slow compared to others but can also be fun if you enjoy questing or just want to try for the achievement.

If you are going to do this method make sure you start with the highest level content you can, as those quests give the most gold. You could also bot quests, but if you are willing to bot you may as well gather or grind instead, as though make more profit.
Dailies

Dailies are a thing that many people will tell you to make gold, and if you have multiple max level characters you can do them on each of them and possible make a few thousand gold a day. However dallies will not make the most gold possible but it will provide you with a steady, if slow, income. I recommend doing Dailies along with the other methods above if you really want to make a lot of gold. I personally don't do Dailies at all as I feel I can make gold faster other ways.

Maximizing your profit

Bank Alts

Bank alts are an important thing when it comes to making gold, not only will your bags get full of mats and other stuff that you want to relist but you may also get some enemies with your conquest of the market and gold, so it is best to protect your main by posting auctions from an alt.

Bank alts will also help you save your gold as it's a lot more tempting to spend your gold if you hold it on your main. The number one enemy of making gold is the urge to spend it which I will touch on later on.

To have the best bank alt you should make a guild and use the guild bank for anything related to your gold making methods, so you don't have to worry about accidently vendoring them or something else going wrong, it also just helps to keep everything organized.

Save your gold

The more gold you have the easier it is to make gold, so it is important to sell your gold until you get to a comfortable amount, in my opinion this is around 200-300k. The easiest way to save your gold is by sending it to an alt or having a bank alt and putting it in their guild bank. I know it can be tempting to spend your first earned 30k or so on a new weapon but remember when it comes to gold making often your profits increase exponentially, so the more gold you have the more gold you make!


Risks and Rewards

Taking risks is a big thing in gold making and can cause you to gain thousands of gold or to lose even more. Always make sure that if you are taking a risk you can at least come out even so that you don't lose money. It is also important to weigh the risk with the reward, for example if I see a vial of sands on my auction house for 33kg I am going to buy it because they normally sell for 40kg, but if I can't sell the mount then I have to try and break even by selling it at a lower price.

The important thing is to thing of long term consequences and to research the risk you are about to take, for example if one day an item goes for 70g a stack then the next 50g, don't buy them all out in hopes of reselling them; because the item could have just been low in supply one day and it may never go to that price again. Instead wait a few days and see what the average price is so you know for sure next time that you are going to gain a fair amount of profit.

Overall making gold in WoW is all about knowing what to do and when to do it. With some practice you will get better and better and hopefully start making loads of money.


Conclusion

There are many ways to make gold in WoW and hopefully this gave you an idea of a some of the ways and an brief idea of how to do these methods. There are many other methods and I'm sure some of you will know some I don't, so if you want you could reply with the method and I'll research it and add it into this guide! I hope you guys learned something from this guide and that it wasn't a complete waste of time. Hopefully if this guide helped you, you will be on your way to making thousands of gold a day

[Sychotix]

tl;dr =P

<3

[Narudan]

SO YOU THINK PLAYING THE MARKET IS A GOOD WAY TO MAKE GOLD?

[Confucius]

SO YOU THINK PLAYING THE MARKET IS A GOOD WAY TO MAKE GOLD?

Yes, I don't care about the occupy orgrimmar protesters, they aren't getting any of my gold!

[xlAnonym0uslx]

Lol that was just one of the numerous gold making options. Have some respect, he has quite a bit more rep than you and so has helped the community a lot more.

I don't really need to know how to make gold, but it looks like effort was put into this so gj. +5 rep (:

EDIT: If I didn't have to spread it around first... -_-

[Narudan]

I think you don't see the problem here. Using the auction house may be the fastest and easiest way to make money but it has consequences. Severe ones. The auction house isn't regulated enough and now players like confucius can damage the whole economy of the faction! And that causes further damage to the economy of euro.. the other faction so it affects the whole server!
Maybe he helped the community more, but I think since he already has so much rep he should spread it more. I have less rep so I don't have to contribute as much. It is not because I am lazy. I studied wow modelviewer history and wow ethics and now I can't find a subforum where I could contribute to earn more rep. Now I can barely afford to stay in the shared forum.
I am the 99% of ownedcore users.

[Fadelol]

I think you don't see the problem here. Using the auction house may be the fastest and easiest way to make money but it has consequences. Severe ones. The auction house isn't regulated enough and now players like confucius can damage the whole economy of the faction! And that causes further damage to the economy of euro.. the other faction so it affects the whole server!
Maybe he helped the community more, but I think since he already has so much rep he should spread it more. I have less rep so I don't have to contribute as much. It is not because I am lazy. I studied wow modelviewer history and wow ethics and now I can't find a subforum where I could contribute to earn more rep. Now I can barely afford to stay in the shared forum.
I am the 99% of ownedcore users.

I wholeheartedly agree with Narudan. I dislike that 1% of the users have 99% of the rep. In what way is this fair? We need to regulate this and spread the rep cross the users creating a more balanced reponomy.

OT: Nice introduction to each major way of making gold, though I think you should try and research the ways you have not tried yourself and elaborate a bit on them. The gold DKP method comes to mind.

[Confucius]

I wholeheartedly agree with Narudan. I dislike that 1% of the users have 99% of the rep. In what way is this fair? We need to regulate this and spread the rep cross the users creating a more balanced reponomy.

OT: Nice introduction to each major way of making gold, though I think you should try and research the ways you have not tried yourself and elaborate a bit on them. The gold DKP method comes to mind.

Yeah, I will be doing some more research and adding on later today

[Traxex84]

Great read Your gdkp section is not very informative though :P Pretty much at the moment they are very server dependent, the more progressed your server is the further you go in firelands and the more hard modes you do as there are more geared carriers around. I join as a carrier weekly to a FL gdkp my friend runs, our pot last week was just under 1 mill gold and everyone walked away with just under 40k gold

[A] Foxx GDKP - Sun Oct 30 2pm - 973.5k pot! - Forums - World of Warcraft

[Manisher]

thanks for the guide m8 will deff' try it out and long time no see