The Path To Becoming A Gold Goblin! - [The Structure Guide]

[ResinMic]

Welcome back to the Path of the Gold Goblin.

Before we proceed there are a few things you should have at this point.
* A Level 90 Character
* A Guild Bank (with at least three tabs)
* Seed Money (1,000-5,000 In Game Currency)
* Auction House Addon / Trashcan Addon

If you don't have those acquire them now. If you do, lets proceed.


When You Check Your Gold What Do You Wanna See?
The answer is simple, capped status. How do you go about this? With profit. The bottom line is all that matters & the only way we go about that is having steady profit. During our process of earning gold we will have ups and down, the goal is to minimize the downs. Flipping items is a nice chunk of income for a lot of gold seekers however there is always a risk that is involed with it.

Resell Odds
Which brings us to our next point, resell odds. You can often catch a lot of steals on the market from people who don't know what they have & just list it at suggested value or post it for quick gold. However there is a danger zone to this which is the resell odds. You can locate an item worth 20k gold for 5k gold on the auction house, which is a heck of a deal right? Only if you can flip it. Some items such as recipes for example are rare, they are worth a lot of money.. to the right buyer. Not everything is going to sell fast, slow, or at all. Which can quickly turn a 15k profit into a 5k loss.

Always do your research. There are numerous sites, numerous ways to go about finding an items up & down numbers (postings vs sales). If an item has a horrible PvS # it might not be worth investing in it if you have no market for it. I know the typical person sales well I'll just post it up cheaper than the normal worth & make a little gold verses the entire profit margin. Posting price isn't always the problem. Majority of the time its actually the simple fact that people have no clue what that item is so they blow past it in the auction house.

Some items that suffer from this are safer than others, such as recipes. The items you can make from the recipes gradually can pay off + make you more money than you originally spent on the failed investment however its just something you have to work into your daily rotation of things to do. Other items such as gear do not have this luxury. If its a low level item its useless, especially if you don't want it for transmog on any of your characters. So before jumping head first out the window for a steal, make sure its not a sting.

The Value Of Risk
The value of risk is this, can I get rid of it? How long is it going to take me to sell it? If I can't sell it can it pay for itself in the long run? If it is going to take a long time to sell is it worth the money I'm spending on it AND getting back from it? These are all things you need to take into consideration when determining the value of risk. I have already covered if an item can pay for itself or what happens if you can't move an item in the last section, here I am going to discuss floating money. What I mean by floating money is if you spend 5k on an item which plans to flip it for 10k but it may take 2 weeks or 3 weeks to move that 5k is floating. Its tied up with no returns on it. In that 2-3 weeks time you could of invested that money into other items with a quicker turn around profit and matched if not made more than the 5k which is currently floating. You need to set a personal thresh hold on return profits for your value of risk. Personally if an item won't bring in over 20k & I have to sit on it - the value of risk is nonexistant. I wish the next person luck selling it and continue to search for my next investment.

Controlled Risk
Resin you just told us we need to watch the value of risk but also told us everything is a risk. True & true. Most things however are controlled risk. Enchanting mats, ores, herbs, specific epics & rares, certain transmog gear, cloths all are controlled risk. No matter how much is on the market, they will sell because they are everyday items. These are things that you pay attention to your value amount & not have to worry about the risk value.

Profit is Profit
I wasn't originally going to add this section but after being added by over 350 people since my last post on skype, well I felt the need to make this public. The most common thing I've heard is "I do some of the same things you do but I'm not stockpiling gold like you". There are two different methods of profit. The first is a % profit, which comes into play when you are flipping items or listing anything that you need to purchase something for. You are paying out of pocket to make a profit which makes your return slightly smaller, sometimes two to three times smaller than the other method of profit. Which happens to be..

True Profit
True profit is 100%+ returns. Items you have personally farmed, with no expenses at all. This is where a lot of your gold is made & loss. My rule of thumb is, never rely on the next man. If you are capable of getting said item yourself do it. Stop being lazy. The only thing I would encourage flipping is items with horrible drop rates, you aren't able to acquire via professions (gathering), special items (TCG) or items that require a group.

If I can spend 500g to make 1000g on linen cloth why wouldn't I just take the 25 minutes to farm it myself for the other 500g. Well because 500g isn't worth 25 minutes plus the travel time & the headache. No, your right. However what else you can acquire while farming the linen yourself will be. Every mob has a loot table bigger than one item (that isn't a challenge for someone to prove me wrong) that can be turned into gold. Even if you don't find something else to sell you increase your profit & increase your knowledge of items vs locations / mobs. Knowledge is key. The more you know, the more you earn. You can find out a certain items drop from that mob that you are looking for later vs spending a half hour+ of wowhead searching for that item, comparing farming locations & trying them out. Squandered time is squandered gold.

Half Is Better Than None & Money Management
The last thing I am going to touch on in this edition is money management. Earning gold is one thing, keeping it & increasing it is another. Either your a supplier or a consumer. You can't be both, rich people have hobbies but they aren't consumers. Spending a chunk of your bankroll onvanity items or that new flashy mount may sound cool but after everyone has it or seen you with it was it worth the gold you blew? If it doesn't increse your account value or is gonna be replaced later on the answer is no. Blowing 75% of everything you make is a recipe for being back at square one. Yeah you are stil making a profit but remember the risk we discussed? Not everyone has 100% success rate, a few bad flips, a dryed up market, a market completely dropping out while holding stock, having to spend gold to keep your subscription active, etc etc.

Nobody wants to make gold & not spend it, what fun is that right? Trust me I understand but keep in mind you are a supplier not a consumer. I'd much rather spend real money than virtual currency.


Before ending this edition
One other thing I'd like to touch on that I want everyone to be paying attention to. Scan your auction house, not just to keep your going rates updated but to all see what your missing out on. Just because you don't have an item doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to it or know about it. You should always be checking for items that sell in chunks of gold 500+ & doing research on how they are obtained. It expands your market, increases your income & raises your knowledge level. I gaurantee there is something on the AH you are fully capable of working into your sales on the regular basis that you don't know about.

Last but not least I wanna go over legal extortion. Its the process of overcharging people for items they want during the off peak hours of your realm time. Examples of items to do this with are treasure finding potions, health potions, buff food, etc. You scan your auction house for your target items & find one that is in low stock. Usually low stock is 1-10 items & you target things that people don't break their back flying to the auction house to resupply typically low cost items. You buy them out then repost them at 300-500% increased rates. Potion of Treasure Finding normally cost 75-90 gold with 4 on the market. Ill buy them all out & repost them for 450g a pop, selling at least two or three over night. The ones I don't sell I re-list on the AH the next day at normal prices. This works because people search for them items with a mind set on using it & will pay to accomplish their mission & because there isn't a ton of people online thats going to jump to their request for a low amount of gold.


That wraps this edition up, it didn't touch on everything I wanted to touch on because it was already long enough & any longer than the information wouldn't "sink in". For those of you who wanted for x amount of gold go here, for x amount of gold go there type stuff I apologize. I take my time to write this for people to learn the mentality & acquire the knowledge to obtain a steady income & know how to do it theirself. However I am starting my videos up tomorrow which WILL be supplying you with those type of hints tips & such. I also post little things like that on my twitter so if your not following go do so, its in the signature. I will update this post tomorrow with a link to the videos. I also am giving away free game time tomorrow make sure your following on twitter for information on how to win!

Also wanna say thank you to everyone who has supported my first guide 2,400 views in 5 days. I will continue to write these as long as you guys appreciate & find them useful.

[Kenneth]

tldr: basic economics; buy low sell high = profit

[nicocba]

Nice guide dude, keep it going. +rep

[ketrish]

why in all guides there is a rule : "goblin matches to market" ? on every realm which i've played i've crushed the market, took control and squeezed it by having over 50% of realms auctions per day

[Doctah Doom]

Still waiting on a response from you