Before I start, I want to emphasize something. If you want to make a TON of gold in WOW you have to do work, and you have to do it consistently. I'm not saying you have to work hard, because you don't this is EASY. You don't even have to work A LOT , 15 minutes a day is sufficient if that's all the time you want to put in. However you have to be consistent and keep at it every day.
Its all about execution and follow-through. A lot of people skim through a guide and think they learned something but then fail to follow through and take action.
So read this over, then read it over again, and then download the add-ons you need, and get started making gold. And if you have any questions feel free to email me.
My Strategy
There are many ways to make gold in WoW:
Grinding, Tradeskills, Etc.
However none are as effective as Reselling . or Buying low and selling High .
This strategy can be applied to any MMORPG, I started doing it in Everquest years ago, it worked well for me back then and it has worked very well for me in WoW as well. I have made somewhere in the ballpark of 50,000g in the 6 months that I have been playing WoW spending only around 30 minutes per day on average buying and selling.
I sold a good portion of that gold, and the rest I spent on friends, and myself. I was able to keep all my (and a couple of my close friends) characters in the very best blues and purples as I leveled them (I had all the BoE tier 1 epics from molten core in my bank when I was in my 40's), buy mounts at 40, and epic mounts at 60, power level all my tradeskills to 300 in a matter of hours, even powerlevel many factions through turn-ins of BoE items purchased in AH. Allowing me to buy other races epic mounts among other rewards. I got all 1,200 tickets for darkmoon fair in an afternoon buying all the turning mats on AH. I also was able to create an army of twinks all decked out in the best gear, and best enchants money can buy. And I still have so much gold I don't even know what to do with it. And the best part is that it was SO EASY! I laugh every time I think of someone grinding for hours on end to make a few gold .
Tools
Auctioneer
Auctioneer is included with many UI mods already, but if you do not have it, go download it, it is the single most important tool to have for making gold in wow.
Auctioneer scans the auction hall and records all of the items and their prices into a searchable database for you. This allows you to do two things:
1) spot items that are listed for too low of a price
2) buy said items and sell for a profit.
Shopping list
Shopping list is an add-on that works in conjunction with Auctioneer; It allows you to create a list of items which you can search for in your auctioneer scans. This allows you to search your scans for specific items rather than just search by price.
Why is this good? Because some items are very rare, which means they are not listed in AH very often. If something is not listed often then Auctioneer may have never seen the item before in a scan and thus would not report it in your search results as a good buy. For example I have Antenna of Invigoration In my shopping list and it came up in a shopping list report one day for 150g. Auctioneer did not report that as a good buy because it had never seen it in a scan before. I knew ahead of time that the item was valuable which is why I had put it in my shopping list. I bought and resold that item the same day for 1,500g.
Shopping List is also useful for finding tradskill items you use a lot.
CT mail
CT Mail Mod allows you to auto-open all the mail in your mailbox. Very handy when you are dealing with 100+ emails a day with gold from sold auctions, items to re-list from expired auctions, and items from new purchases.
Lootlink
Lootlink stores clickable links to every item that is ever linked in public channels or on people that you inspect. It is very handy for getting links to rare items to add to your Shopping List.
General Strategy
Make a level 1 character
Give Him/Her a catchy name
If you have enough money to do so at this point, go ahead and buy some 14 or 16 slot bags. If not don't worry, you can work your way up to that when your rolling in gold.
Park yourself in AH
Open up the auction window
Uncheck the categories: Container, Consumable, Projectile, and Quiver as things in those categories generally do not produce good profits and just slow down your scans.
Press the scan button and wait for it to finish.
For the first few days the best thing to do is scan with Auctioneer as many times as you can through the day at different times. After a dozen or so scans across a span of 2 or 3 days auctioneer will begin to accumulate enough data to give you somewhat accurate pricing information.
Once you think you have enough scans to have good enough pricing data you can start searching for good buys:
I search for good deals 2 ways:
I create a macro : /auctioneer broker 500
This is a quick button I can click at any time and see everything that is listed at least 5g too low.
I use the Search Auctions Tab in the AH window. This is installed by the Auctioneer add-on
On the Search Auctions' tab in AH search for:
Buyouts with percent less 80% and minimum profit 50silver
Buyouts with percent less 50% and minimum profit 1g
Bids (short / medium) with percent less 80% and minimum profit 50s
Bids (short / medium) with percent less 50% and minimum profit 1g
I have the 6 searches saved so I can run them all quickly in a row, starting with the 1g profit searches first.
As you begin to make more money you can search for higher profit items only as the smaller profit items will not be worth the effort then. For example I usually search:
Buyouts with percent less 90% and minimum profit 2g
Buyouts with percent less 50% and minimum profit 5g
Buyouts with percent less 25% and minimum profit 10g
Bids (short / medium) with percent less 90% and minimum profit 2g
Bids (short / medium) with percent less 50% and minimum profit 5g
Bids (short / medium) with percent less 25% and minimum profit 10g
Then if I don't find many items in those searches, then I fall back to my lower profit searches and pick up a few more items there.
You can tweak these numbers and percents as you see fit those are just what I do.
Buyout all the good deals, and then head to the mailbox to pick them up and come back and relist them for more in AH. Read the rest of this guide for exact guidelines on what to buy and how to sell.
When you start to accumulate a lot of items (I usually have over 100 items in AH at a given time) it is helpful to leave the expired ones in your mailbox until you are ready to re-list all of the items at once. This will make it so that you only have to empty your mailbox and list items once a day, rather than every time you are at the mailbox. This will make your life a lot simpler once you have a large inventory.
Run these scans as often as you can, because the more you scan the more money you will make. I generally scan 3 times a day on weekdays: Once when I wake up and let it run while I shower. Once when I get home from work or while I eat dinner, and once right before I go to bed. Scan more if you can, remember it only costs you about 30 seconds of your time to log in and start a scan you can go do something else while it scans.
Always keep your character either at the mailbox, or in front of an auctioneer, that's why you made a lvl 1 alt for this so that you are always ready to go when you log in.
BUYING
Run scans as often as possible
Bid on Tuesdays before the servers go down
Get your bid in before the server goes down on items with short or even medium durations left and you will have a better chance of winning them.
Scan early late Sunday night/ early Monday morning
These are one of the best times to pick up some cheep deals because everyone lists all the items they found over the weekend late Sunday night or early Monday morning. Not only are there a large amount of items for sale, but lots of competition so people list their items cheaper undercutting each other. This is great for us because we can buy up the under priced items then wait till a better time to sell them for a profit.
Sell on Sunday
Sunday is by far the best day to sell. For some reason a lot of people do their AH shopping on Sunday. Maybe it's just because more people log-in on Sundays so more items get bought, but whatever it is Sundays are great for selling items. I always have a mailbox full of gold by Monday morning.
Make offers to people auctioning their items in the trade channel
If you see a particularly good item in a trade channel that you know will sell well make the seller an offer that is lower than what you know you can sell it for in AH. I usually offer anywhere from 50% to 75% of what I can sell it for depending on the item. Don't waste too much time haggling with them, just make them an offer, and if they refuse don't worry about it there are plenty more deals to be had. Also many times a seller who has rejected my offer will message me some time later and ask me if I still want the item for what I offered because they have not had luck selling it and they just want to get rid of it.
Use the Shopping list add-on
Use the shopping list add-on to keep track of items that you buy on a regular basis like tradeskill items for potions or whatever you craft. The most important use of shoppinglist however is searching for rare items. Auctioneer works by collecting prices over time and averaging them to find a value for an item. If an item has never been seen in a scan before (because its very rare) then when auctioneer sees it for the first time in a scan it will not know whether it is a good deal or not because it has nothing to compare the price to. So auctioneer will not even report that item, and you will never even know it was in AH at all. However if it's on your shopping list it WILL get reported at the end of the scan. Now this only does you some good if you have an idea of how much you think you can sell it for. But at least you know its for sale. I have gotten several very nice items because of shopping list that I would have missed had I only used auctioneer. Now in order to add an item to the shopping list you have to first know what rare items you want to look for(I will maintain a list of these items on this site) and have a link of that item. There are 3 ways to get the link in game: 1) be lucky enough to find it in AH 2) Search for the link in your Lootlink add-on 3) If you cant find the link you can always ask for the link in the trade channel.
** UPDATE 7/19 **
Shopping List USE:
To add an Item to the list:
/sl add [Item Link]
To View your shopping list:
/sl list
To get a REPORT of items from last auctioneer scan that are on your list:
/sl report
*note- A report will automaticaly be shown after each AH scan, although you might miss it if you are not at your computer when the scan finishes.
SO :: Make a macro button for '/sl report' so that you can click it when you sit back down at your PC and see the report.
Manually searching for items
Here is where you can really make some money, after you have done the auctioneer thing, and all the good deals have been bought up, there are some other actions you can take to ensure maximum profits. And this is where I make a lot of money so pay attention.
I was bored one day with doing the same old auctioneer scan thing so I decided to try something new. I decided to find something that I could buy up for cheep that I felt was undervalued. While power leveling my rogue one day I noticed that the biggest help in my killing power was having the best daggers I could get for my level, I also noticed that a lot of people make twink rogues. So I went to AH and bought up every green dagger between the levels of 5-19 and having of agility and of power since these seemed to be most desirable for a lowbie rogue. They were selling anywhere from 5s to 50s on my server. I re-listed them all for 1g 99s, every time I was in AH I would buy up all the lower priced daggers than mine. Mine began to sell.
Within a week I had upped the price to 2g99s for of power, and of agility daggers, and was now buying up all the other alternative green daggers such as of strength and of stamina and was listing them at 1g99s. They always sell. The re-listing fee is negligible so I can list them as many times as it takes. In fact if I get an overabundance of a certain type of dagger, I usually just vendor them. Since I buy then for like 10s its better to just buy them up and vendor them and loose a few silver , and have someone buy yours for 2g99s instead. You are still making a huge profit.
I then moved on to other green lvl 1-19 items following the same idea:
Lvl 1-19 green cloth of the eagle ; listing them all for 1g99s to 2g99s
Lvl 1-19 green leather of the monkey of agility of power ; listing them all for 2g99s or more. I can sell a +5+5 of the monkey legs or +4+4 monkey gloves for well over 10g a pair.
1-19 green rings of the monkey, eagle, bear, etc as well as Blood rings, Demon Bands, and Ring of the Moon; Buying them all up and re-listing them for anywhere from 5g for a +2+2 stat ring to 19g for a +3+3 of the monkey or of the eagle ring.
Another idea I had that has worked well :
lvl 40-50 green MAIL of the Monkey, Agility, Power. At level 40 hunters can begin to wear chain, this means that they need to upgrade all their gear starting at 40, so I buy up all the 40+ green mail gear that has good hunter stats and I re-list it for higher prices. If you keep buying up all the cheaper alternatives that get listed the hunters have no choice but to pay your prices, which they will because they are excited about getting to wear chain so they impulse buy.
You can come up with your own ideas following the same idea, some that I haven't had time to try are 40+ plate of the bear for warriors, or 40+ gear for shamans.
It doesn't really matter what item you choose as long as you know there is a demand for it and you are diligent in buying up all the lower competition and relisting them. You could even do this with rare or uncommonly seen trade goods etc.
Use caution buying 40+ blues; especially weapons
Use a bit of judgment befor ebuyign up too many 40+ blue items. Be sure that you are going to be able to sell the item for a decent profit because the AH listing fees on 40+ blue items can be high. Some higher level blue weapons can have listing fees of several gold . So only buy high level blues if you know 1 )the item has a high demand 2) you will be able to make a profit even if you have to list it a few times because 2g a listing adds up.
Epic Items
The same goes for epics, they generally have high listing fees, and the auctioneer data may be skewed because of a handful of overpriced epics that have been sitting in AH for weeks. Use caution when buying epic items. I would suggest that you only get involved with epics once you have plenty of experience and gold reserves on hand. Unless you are 100% sure that it's a killer deal. If you do see something hat jumps out at you don't hesitate to buy it. When I was just getting started I didn't know a whole lot about the prices and values of most epics, but I did know that when I saw a Krol Blade for 150g it was an awesome deal and I snapped it up and resold it for over 500g.
How much gold to keep in reserve, how much to invest
In the beginning buy up every good deal you see, don't worry about having gold in reserve. As you start to accumulate gold however you will find that you cant spend it all because there are not enough good buys on AH to spend it on, at this point you will probably be buying items and mounts for your other chars, and spending gold on other things. Once you reach that point you should always keep at least several thousand gold on your AH char at all times, you never know when someone is going to list 100 nexus crystals for 199g a stack of 10. This is exactly what happened to me one day. I spent 1990g buying 100 nexus crystals that I assume were listed by some guildbank , and relisted them for 59g a piece over several weeks, and turned that 1990g into 5900g quite a hefty profit.
SELLING
Sell on Sunday
Sunday is by far the best day to sell. For some reason a lot of people do their AH shopping on Sunday. Maybe it's just because more people log-in on Sundays so more items get bought, but whatever it is Sundays are great for selling items. I always have a mailbox full of gold by Monday morning.
Listing fees and durations
Always list items for 24 hours, the fee isn't that much more, it lets more people see the item, and it makes it so you only have to list the item once per day.
Always use buyout
Always Always set a buyout. If you don't you will miss out on 99% of your sales. People want instant gratification, and also a buyout scares people into impulse buying because they feel that someone else could buyout the auction at any moment. With just bids and no buyout people know they have hours to think about it and often decide they don't really need to spend all that gold on that item today.
Stack size
A lot of times I will buy up stackable items either in small stacks or 2 or 3 etc, or I will end up with stacks with like 17 or 18 items in them. This is not the best way to sell stackable items. I use the following guidelines:
In general if you have enough to combine into a stack of 10 or 20 do that because it is a nice even number and people can easily figure out if the price is good.
If you only have a few of the item (like 3 or 4) split them up and list them singly.
Some items are needed in specific quantities for quests or tradeskills; these are the exceptions where it may be beneficial to list them in those quantities. An example is nexus crystals are generally required in quantities of 3 for most high level enchants. So if someone else has them listed for 50g singly, and you have 3 for 150g, odds are your stack of three will be purchased because someone probably needs 3, and its less clicking for them to buy your stack of 3.
7's 9's rule
I always list my items using 7's and 9's let me explain:
If the item usually sells for around 10g I list it with a min bid of 7g77s and a buyout of 9g 99s. Never list anything for 10g or 20g etc, always 9g99s, 19g 99s
Its only 1 s difference but it makes people feel like its 10g cheaper. It's the same principal as all those TV commercials that sell stuff for $19.95 It just sounds a lot cheaper than $20 even though its not really.
Sometimes if the item is worth only 15g, but there is no competition in AH at the time I'll list it for 17g 77s / 19g 99s. People see 17g and think 17 is about the same as 15, and 19g is only 2 more g I really want it so I'm just going to buy it. They just paid 20g for a 15g item that's 33% markup. They probably wouldn't have bought the item had you listed it for 20g/20g.
Granted if you had listed the same item for 13g/14g99s they defiantly would buy it, but that is a judgment call you will have to make on an item to item basis based on how much competition there is, how much you paid for it, and how badly you need to sell it(because listing fee is high or whatever) personally I do not like to put myself in situations where I feel pressure to sell an item, and the best way to avoid that is to stay away from the higher level items whose demand you are unsure about.
Undercutting minimum bids
When most people search specifically for an item they sort the results based on lowest price first. The price is not determined by the buyout price but rather the minimum bid. So sometimes it makes sense to undercut the competitions minimum bid, but not necessarily their buyout. This will ensure that your item is at the top of the list and the first thing they see when they sort their results by lowest price. Be careful though never set your minimum bid below the minimum price you can sell the item for or you could loose money if someone bids on the item and the auction ends with that bid.
** UPDATE ** 7/19
MACRO KEYS
I have the following macro keys set up:
/auctioneer broker 500
/auctioneer broker 100
/sl list
/sl report
the first two will allow you to quickly check for buyouts with a 5 gold, and 1 gold profit, these can be pressed even durring a scan and if you see somethign worth buyign you can stop the scan and buy it.(if your sitting at your PC)
The third just shows you what is on your shopping list
The fourth is very useful, it shows you what items on your shoppign list were seen on the last auctioneer scan, and also what percent above or below the average price they are.
ITEMS
Rare blues
These are a good example of what to put on your shopping list. Odds are you will miss a good deal on them if you do not. Ask for links in public channels, or check your Lootlink, for the links to put on your shopping list
Again the command to add to your shopping list is:
/sl add <shift-click item link here>
These are the two big ones that I have on my list right now I will update this list as I find more:
Antenna of Invigoration
Elemental Attuned Blade
These are less rare, but still worth putting on the list, especially in the beginning when you don't have many scans:
Pendulum of Doom
Assassin's Blade
Shadowfang
Miner's Hat of the Deep
Expert Goldminer's Helmet
Shovelphlange's Mining Axe
The Jackhammer
Unearthed Bands of _ _ _ _
Unearthed Bands of Agility
Etc. (keep in mind its leather so the good ones are going to be agility, power, monkey, etc)
Petrolspill Leggings
Mantle of Thieves
Flintrock Shoulders
Wolfclaw Gloves
Hotshot Pilot's Gloves
Mechbuilder's Overalls
Maiden's Circle
Cross-faction patterns/items
There are several patterns or items that are only available to either alliance or horde. These can be purchased at vendors and if you can get them to the other faction AH you can mark them up hundreds of percent.
For example an alliance only pattern that costs around 50silver and sells very well horde side for 50gold + on my server is
Pattern: Red Whelp Gloves
To get ahold of this item you will either need to have a friend with an account on the other faction, or a second account yourself. Have the friend, or on your other account buy the item and list it for 1s or something in a neutral AH, then buy it and list it in your factions AH for whatever you want.
This is one of the better items I have found because the Gloves that it makes are highly desirable 10-19 BG Twink items.
Again I will update this List as I find more items worth doing this with.
Rare Tradeskill goods
These are hard to come by tradeskill goods that usually are not on the AH much or are very expensive because they come from raid zones/bosses. They are defiantly worth putting on your shopping list and keeping an eye on, especially once your get a good stash of gold, or if you have a lvl 60 char that can use them, or items made from them.
Dreamscale
Fiery Core
Lava Core
Brilliant Chromatic Scale
Bloodvine
Core Leather
Rare Tradeskill Patterns
There are some rare tradeskill patterns that you should keep an eye out for, prices on them might vary by server but they will sell for a lot regardless. I found a Formula: Enchant Chest - Greater Stats for 5g once, and a Enchant Shield - Lesser Block for 1g. I sold the first for 500g, and the other for over 100g. So just keep your eyes out for a obviously cheep price on any of these.
Formula: Enchant Weapon Lifstealing
Formula: Enchant Chest - Greater Stats
Enchant Shield - Lesser Block
Formula: Enchant Weapon - Crusade
Formula: Enchant Weapon - Superior Striking
Formula: Enchant 2H Weapon - Superior Impact
Pattern: Core Felcloth Bag
Recipe: Major Rejuvenation Potion
Pattern: Flarecore Wraps
Resist gear
Fire resist gear is a good resell item because the majority of guilds and players are doing onyxia molten core and blackwing lair right now, and most have minimum resist requirements for them, so the demand on these items is high. The other resists are generally not as good.
Stick with lvl 50+ items, not many people want low lvl resist gear when they are 60.
Rings with +19 or better FR are generally desired
To search for fire resist items simply search AH for fire resist lvl 50+
Just check for any items that are obviously underlisted. For example I just picked up a +15 FR green necklace for 7g. I sold it for 75g.
Items with no listing fee
Some items have NO listing fee, enchanting supplies are a good example. Dusts, Essences, and Shards have absolutely no listing fee, which is good because it means you can relist them over and over and not loose money. These are GREAT items for people who are just starting in their gold earning career because you can start with the lower lvl ones which are cheep and you can relist them without loosing any money. Also you can list them for only slightly more than you paid because you don't have to worry about fees.
One word of advice about buying enchanting supplies is to buy on the weekends or when you notice a large amount of them in AH, and then sell in the middle of the week when supplies are dwindling.
TWINK ITEMS
Twinks are a huge source of money for me, A twink for those of you that don't know is generally a lvl 19, 29, or 39 char (top of each battlegrounds level bracket) that is decked out in the best blues/purples that money can buy or can be obtained through instances or quests. And they generally have lvl 60 enchants on every slot. They are usually funded by their lvl 60 mains, and their only goal is to be the most decked out badass person in the battlegrounds so that they can dominate. They generally stay at that level for months or indefinitely just to dominate that bracket. Many people have one of each of the 3 levels for each bracket.
Once you start making gold you will be able to make twinks if you choose, however the reason we are talking about them now is because they will buy certain gear from you for ridiculous prices. I know a lot of other guides say no lvl 19 will pay 200g for a lvl 19 blue. But that is just in fact UNTRUE. Lvl 19's repeatedly pay 50-200g for lvl 19 blues. There is a list of these items to look for below, but let me just provide you with one specific example. For example I love when I find an Assassin's Blade
For like 5g in AH (happens quite a bit) they sell for 150g 200g on my server. And they DO sell. You might have to relist it 5 or 10 times, but the relisting fee is like 5s so no big deal. That is an extreme example because it is an especially rare item which comes from only 1 instance. However many of the items below sell for 40g or 50g + regularly.
Twink blues:
10-19:
Feet of the Lynx
Deviate Scale Belt
Sentry Cloak
Assassin's Blade
Thorbia's Gauntlets
Silver-linked Footguards
Skeletal Club
Night Reaver
Shadowfang
Black Malice
Tree Bark Jacket
Darkweave Breeches
Keller's Girdle
Magefist Gloves
Twisted Chanter's Staff
Witching Stave
Skycaller
Lil Timmy's Peashooter
20-29:
Barbaric Bracers
Enduring Cap
River Pride Choker
Watchman Pauldrons
Tigerstrike Mantle
Brawler Gloves
Harbinger Boots
Dreamslayer
Cobalt Crusher
Forest Tracker Epaulets
Mantle of Thieves
The Butcher
Zealot Blade
Ironweaver
Claw of the Shadowmancer
Frostreaver Crown
Pugilist Bracers
Girdle of Golem Strength
Hotshot Pilot's Gloves
Beguiler Robes
Mechbuilder's Overalls
Glowing Magical Bracelets
30-39
Basilisk Hide Pants
Assault Band
Necklace of Calisea
Ogron's Sash
Papal Fez
Speedsteel Rapier
40-49
Elven Chain Boots
Twink greens :
Some lvl 10-19 greens sell for 5g or even 10g+ simply because they are the best items you can get for those slots period(AH, Instances, Quests or otherwise) here are a couple examples.
Bristlebark Gloves
Forest Leather Bracers
Red Whelp Gloves <- On horde side they are very valuable, because it's an alliance only pattern
LVL 10-19 rings : Ring of the eagle, monkey, bear, agi , eluding, blood ring, demon band, ring of the moon, etc etc
good low level rings always seem to sell well, I think it is because lower levels always seem to have empty ring slots to fill because they seem to drop less than regular armor.
Also because for twinking they are generaly better than the blue instance dropped or quest rings for some classes.
** UPDATE 7/19 **
Lvl 60 blue spell/skill books:
New lvl 60 spells and talents drop in AQ20 and AQ40 now, and are sellign for quite alot. I have sold them for 500g and up to 750g for the more desirable ones.
Keep an eye out for cheep ones in AH, and if you see one in public trade , haggle with them a bit and see if you can get it cheep.
note that there are also a few new lvl 60 books from normal instances that are not worth nearly as much. all of the good ones however are listed below.
Rare ones:
Grimoire of Shadow Bolt X
Tome of Frostbolt XI
Grimoire of Immolate VIII
Manual of Revenge VI
Tome of Arcane Missiles VIII
Guide: Serpent Sting IX
Tome of Fireball XII
Guide: Multi-Shot V
Manual of Heroic Strike IX
Book of Healing Touch XI
Grimoire of Corruption VII
Codex of Prayer of Healing V
Libram: Blessing of Wisdom VI
Manual of Battle Shout VII
Book of Rejuvenation XI
Libram: Holy Light IX
Libram: Blessing of Might VII
Codex of Renew X
Book of Starfire VII
Guide: Aspect of the Hawk VII
Handbook of Feint V
Handbook of Deadly Poison V
Handbook of Backstab IX
Other thoughts:
You will find that over time you will get better and better at knowing what to buy and how to sell, it is just like anything else it takes practice. This guide gives you a big head start but there is still plenty to learn, different items will sell better or for different amounts depending on your server, the economies between new and old , high and low pop servers varies greatly.
Once you have a good feel for the local economy on your server you will begin to make wiser choices and make more gold.
Thats it , go get started !
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