Meet Ohnekase: Getting the Grade Part : A continuing Journey and a dilemma

Meet Ohnekase

Earthen Ring, US.  Lvl 10 Hunter.

We have met him several times before.  He has recently hit level 10 and seems to be playing around in the Copper Market.  His gold has been increasing, though not crazily, and he is looking to expand his operations some more.  But how?

This week, I am going to try and talk about the general strategy I have been using in the Copper Market (more in depth anyway), but really I would like to see about what more I can do with this little market.

Markets

Ok, so first off, let me start by saying that I have been really lax on Ohnekase in the last several weeks.  I try to write some posts ahead of time so the reader doesn't notice the large gaps as much, but I haven't been keeping up on the character.  As such, we may see some less growth than over last week.

Lets check and see what his bags and gold look like.

Not bad.  850 gold is certainly more than he had last time.  The small eggs did sell and I did end up making some profit on those, as did the Leather.

Lets take a look at Mysales in the last little while.

OK, so mostly things we know about:  Copper, Pet Snakes.  There was one or two things I wanted to mention specifically.

1) Cocoa Beans:  So, if you remember a previous post on these, I mentioned that you can get these from the cooking dailies.  I did one daily and got 55 Cocoa beans, which sold for about 45 silver each.  Nothing spectacular, but I only spent 10 minutes maybe doing it, so I will totally take it.

2) Tree Frog Box:  These are purchased from Flik from the Darkmoon Faire.  I saw something from the Gold Queen about it on Twitter and totally jumped on it.  Again, 1 gold buy, 7+ gold profit.  Look for the other frog boxes too.

And then of course, there is Copper, which is what I wanted to talk about.  The Copper market for me shows us a great skill for us gold makers:  Taking advantage of volatility (aka as Buy low, sell high or buy low, sell medium or whatnot).

Market Volatility.

The great and terrible thing about the Auction House in World of Warcraft is that it is completely fluid.  Theoritically, you could find an item one day for 1 copper, then find the same item another day for 1000 gold.  Mats that you sell one day may only be worth 10 silver each, but be worth 1 gold each the next day.  It is that wide open.  And it is that piece that many goblins look into and time and plan.

So, first things first, what causes this volatility.  Lets take a look at a few reasons.

1) Suppliers:  Not everyone is farming the exact same item throughout their careers.  If I am leveling a miner, it is entirely possible that I will sell Copper for 10 levels, then Tin for 10 levels, and so on.  And, while I am trying to sell my copper/tin/whatever, the price, theoritically, will fluctuate just based on the supply I have and am putting.  So, there are times where your supply of a good is just based on who has the item and the time to put it up. 

2) Demand:  How many people are deciding that they need more of a material at the time.  If no one is leveling Jewelcrafting, it is possible for the gem market items to not be very sought after.  After all, if no one needs malachites for making lvl 14 necklaces, what happens to all the malachites on the AH.  The same character leveling mining could also be leveling blacksmithing and instead find that he needs more Copper/Tin/whatever than he is farming, so all of a sudden he demands it.

3) Time:  This is largely related to both supply and demand, but it does make a difference.  As such, it should be mentioned on its own.  The basics on this are as follows:  First, more people play on the weekends.  As such, there are both more materials on the AH and more people wanting to put them up.  Both fluctuate their price.  For those high end crafters, Raiding typically takes place on Tuesday Nights and Wednesday Nights.  As such, before raiding, people want stuff they are going to use during the raid (potions, flasks, food, etc).  After, they will want to be able to make the new pieces of gear they got better (gems, enchants, etc.)  Finally, the WoW pataches completely change material dynamics.  One item may not be nearly as good after a patch, so its prices changes.  As such, these can completely change the dynamic for the items you are looking to post.

4) Knowledge:  This isn't quite a reason for volatility, but it does affect prices, both for good and bad.  If someone gets a rare pet to drop and there are not any on the Auction House, what is that pets value to them?  If they know what to do, they can check theunderminejournal or wowhead or even AHSpy.  But many people don't know and won't check.  So what is its value?  Well, all of a sudden, for those of us that know, we can decide if it is a good value and take advantage of it.

So, volatility is a natural part of the game, and not always a bad thing (depending on who you talk to).  In fact, here is some good advice for buyers.  If you know situations will come up where you need to buy something, take a look at it several times throughout the week.  If you know you are a raider and will need new gems and enchants, buy them before a new patch when they are traditionally lower than after the patch.  Then, when you get new gear, you don't have to worry about paying 3x more than you would have for the same item.

For sellers, this is great advice that I have to teach, and advice for what I have been doing for Ohnekase.  The Copper market on Earthen Ring has been fluctuating.  Here, check out Theunderminejournal graph to show you the past little while.

Date Pulled:  01/06/20112

The blue colored graph gives us the Market Price for the Copper Bars.  Look at it.  Look at how much the Graph goes up and down.  In my view, this is a very volatile market.  The graph itself has highs of 88 silver each and lows of  9 silver each.  That is a swing of 79 Silver, on an item that someone at level 5 can get.  And that is just the graph shown.  I have seen Ohnekase sell them at 1 gold 50 silver each bar.  And these are some that I bought for 20 silver each.  1 gold 30 silver ea Bar is huge.

Great, whatever, so how do you do it?

Ok, so I thought I would split this up cause I was getting a little longwinded.

So, you want to try this.  I would say there are at least four good steps to this.

1) Research your Market

Ok, before you buy your first item, find a market to buy in.  Make sure you know about what goes in and out of that market.  For copper, look at what professions use it and how much they use of it.  If you know what a market is capable of and what can happen, then you can better control it.  You can try to buy a little bit of an item that looks low and try and sell it, to see how it sells.  But make sure you are careful.  Don't lose all your money before you can do anything with it.

2) Time your Sales

So, you think you know, now pick a time and test it out.  If you notice in your research that no one posts from 10 pm - 6 am, but there are some still being bought, try posting then.  If you notice that they don't sell well on Tuesdays, don't post then.  If you notice that there is a competitor that always posts every weekend from sunup to sundown, wait til the week to post, so you don't run into him.

It is really your decision how you want to time your sales, but that is what your research is for.  There is no hard, fast rule that all your stuff has to sell, and much of it wont.

By that same token, time your buying at the times when you know you can get it at a deal.  All of those times I posted different things, those both work for buying and selling.  If there are times when price is low, buy then.  If you find an item for 7 silver when the price is normally 1 gold, buy it.

3) Don't post everything at once

This one is easy for some and tough for others.  Remember how I said Supply affects things?  Well, it does.  If you sell 10 stacks of an item for the same cost as you sell 5 stacks over a longer period, that is going to affect your profit.  So don't worry about putting 30 stacks of 20 copper bars if you only think 10 are going to sell, or 5.  You can also figure out a magic number of stuff to put up.  If you post 2 stacks of something the first day and sell immediately, try posting 3.  If that sells, then 4.  If you don't sell all 4, that might be a magic number.  Patience is a rough tool, but one of the strongest tools you can have as an AH Goblin.

4) Don't get discouraged if something goes wrong

Ok, so it will happen.  Just ask anyone who tries to do the glyph market with other strong competitors in it.  If you can't sell anything, or you just think that you are putting in so much work and not making much profit, don't be discouraged.  It may just be a bad time.  Or, more likely, maybe your calculations are a little off.  It doesn't hurt to reevaluate your stuff, even if you are doing well.  Maybe you can do better.

Another option could be that the market is either not good, or maybe it just needs to be adjusting.  Rather than taking advantage of volatility in the 1 market, maybe you could do a little shuffling and change it up.  For example, maybe copper is taken over by some dumb gold blogger, but the market for Blacksmithing Armors for low level isn't being touched.  Try jumping over to that a bit.  Again, do research and follow the steps, but you can always find markets.

Back to Ohnekase himself.


So, lets look at Copper Bar/Ore specifically right now.

So, this was actually a little later then when I first logged on.  When I first logged on, Copper Bars were 10 silver, and Copper ore was 15 Silver each.

Now lets look at the mean for the server on TUJ.

Again, taking same day.

Ok, so the mean is 34s70c.  So, if nothing else, I can watch and likely make at least 14 silver ea (2 gold or so profit).

Even better, lets look at Standard Deviation.  For those who are not familiar with Statistics, Standard Deviation basically is a range at which roughly 70% of the items fall.  Looking at the Copper Bars, if you take the mean (34s70c) and add or subtract the Standard deviation (26s69c), you get the range at which 70%ish of the Copper is priced.

Even better for us, the closer the Standard Devation is to the mean, the more volatile the price itself is.  What it means is that the range between an majority of sales for copper fall between 10 silver and 60 silver.  So with a little patience, I can make some money on it.  Hence the 800 gold that Ohnekase has.

However, notice one other thing.  I also have a lot of stock.  I have several hundred.  Maybe that can be better served.

Which is where the next part of my post comes in.

Changes

Ok, so I got my Copper working great and I spend an aweful lot of time in town.  As such, I am starting to feel that Skinning may not fit into this characters moneymaking curve as well.  As much as I have been skinning, I am noticing that I have not left town much, therefore I haven't really skinned much either.  It did help me when I was gathering Small Eggs, but I feel that something like this could be better served by a different character who is a skinner.

So, now, the question is where do I go from here?  And here is where I am kinda stumped.  The things I do know.

1) As nice as the Copper Market is, sometimes it runs a really, really low streak.  There are times where I log on and see it for <20 Silver Ea.  I certainly buy up the low costed stock, but I still am not as happy with a 10 silver profit, when I know I can be patient and get a lot more.

2) Did you see how much Copper Ore and Copper Bars I have?  I have several hundred of each.  I can certainly use that in the Copper Market, there isn't anything wrong with that.  However, I am thinking that I might be better served to pick up a low level profession and try and make some cash off of crafting.  After all, if I make 50 silver off of 2 bars, or 50 silver off of something made from 2 bars, that is still 50 silver.  Plus it diversifies the market.

3) While this is definintely not a hard fast rule, I think I want to pick up a second profession that takes advantage of my Mining Profession.  Even if I didn't need to go out and mine them, I like being able to look at 2 places (ore and bars) for materials, rather than just the single market.  Diversification can always pay pretty well.

So, based on those factors, I am really torn on where to go. However, based on the 3 criteria (mostly number 3), I am left with the following:

1) Blacksmithing:  Low level Weapons and armors.  These can give me greens to DE on another character, or even try and sell.  I am not sure what the market looks like on Earthen Ring, but it could work.  Finally, I also wonder if I could sneak in some low level transmogriphication pieces that people would be interested in.

2) Engineering:  This profession I find is usually somewhat difficult to find niche markets to buy and sell from.  That is, of course, not to say they don't exist.  Pets are always good marketing and I have seen several people toy with this.  I could also try some low level guns, though I don't know what their margins would be.  Finally, there is a the explosives that you can make, but I have never seen anything on these and whether they could even sell.  Honestly, I am leaning away from this, but I would love people's input.

3) Jewelcrafting:  Ah, Jewelcrafting.  The Profession introduced in Burning Crusade does have me interesting in trying this one out and testing low level stuff.  Low level rings and low level amulets are not easy to come by.  I have had character missing a ring or amulet well into their level 30s, so it could be an underserved market.  In addition, Cold's Gold Factory points out that the Malachite Pendant is a great twinking amulet, for those who are inclined for BG twinking.  Plus, I believe that you can also make Fused Wiring with Copper, which Engineers use for pets as well.  Again, I am strongly considering, but yeah.  <Colds post on Malachite Pendants can be found here:  http://coldsgoldfactory.blogspot.com/2011/12/low-level-jewelcrafting-malachite.html >

So, for those experienced gold bloggers, I would love your input if you would like to comment or Twitter me.  As for others, if you have thoughts, I would love to hear it.  Actually, that is a big piece of this blog:  What do you think I should move onto?  I would love your comments.

Conclusion

So, not much for Ohnekase, and not something that is incredibly prolific.  But it is definintely something that you can use.  In fact, at this point with Ohnekase's cash flow, I would bet I could pick any trade goods market and play with the ups and down.  It doesn't matter that I am only level 10.  Maybe I could keep an eye on the Cata Volatile Market and buy them when they are lower and sell them when they are higher.

In fact, this idea of buying items when they are at a low profit is one of the features that both Auctioneer and Tradeskillmaster work.  So always keep an eye out for it.  You never know where your next gold will come from.

This next week, I want to try something different and interesting.  Flux at Power Word: Gold has been looking into and doing really well into the Transmogriphication market.  Even on a little test on my main server, I have sold some stuff.  So, I am going to try this plan for the next week.  I will let you know where I am sitting next week.

See ya next time...

Meet Ohnekase: The Perks of Guilds

My apologies for today, but Ohnekase will not be joining us.  This is more of an informational session than a practical one.

Today, I want to discuss the advantages of being in guilds.  Guilds are wonderful things.  They give you some friendship and companionship, and open up a great number of things in the game that are harder to get without it.  You can more easily get raids set up, you can have really fun events in your guild, guilds can allow for roleplay within the guild, and that is just the major ones.

However, for us gold makers, the best thing from guilds is Guild Perks.  Guild Perks give us in-game benefits just for being with your posse.  Almost every level of Guild Perks can be a great help to gold making.

When I create new characters, I try to get myself in a higher level guild.  It will help throughout your entire level.

Let me explain:

(Images Courtesy of Wowwiki)

Level 2 and 6:  Fast Track Level 1 and Level 2

How does extra XP help us in Gold Making.  Well, faster leveling for us means that we can get to Higher level Professions levels and Node levels.  This is, in itself, a boon because it will allow us to get through less profitable zones that we might be in.  For example, say on your server, Silverleaf and Peacebloom don't sell well (say, only a few silver each).  Well, with these perks, if we are so inclined, getting through the low level zones that would have that would be faster.

Plus, if you are doing this for a second or third character and are sick of a particular zone, this helps you cruise through it (Just remember, Northrend is where Alts go to die :) ).

Level 3:  Mount Up

Mount Up gives us an increase to our Mount Speed.  How does help us?  Simple, moving faster means we can get to where we are going, whether that is to extra Nodes for farming, or getting us to the next are faster. You cannot go wrong with going just that much faster :).  I love this guild perk.

Level 4 and 12:  Mr Popularity Rank 1 and 2

Mr Popularity gives us more rep, which means that we can get more of our Reputations to Exalted.  The best part about that is that there are some great recipes that we can learn to make some great items.

The best example I can think of is the Enchants for Agility for pre level 60.  There are 2 Enchant Recipes for weapon enchants for plus agility.  The best use for these is for all of the Heirloom weapons that people tote around.

But to get it, you have to get yourself liked by the Timbermaw Hold in Felwood.  And getting there can mean quite a bit of killing.  10% more rep will take the grind down a bit.

Level 5 and 16:  Cash Flow 1 and 2

Cash Flow gives the guild free money.  Every time you loot any money, the guild bank gets 5 and 10 percent of that.  This, however, is tricky.  It can be useful or it can just be kind of worthless.

If you have a more lenient guild (which many guilds are), they will allow you to use some of the guild bank money for guild repairs.  If they do, then this helps us gold makers because money that isn't spent on repairs is money saved.

However, there are some guilds that kinda use it to be a little stingy.  Is it wrong?  In my opinion, if the guild uses some other use for it, such as buying materials for its guild for its guild, than I wouldn't say it is wrong.  If it is just a money grab, then I disagree with it personally, but that is the guilds prerogative.  My theory is if you have such a problem with it, then leave.

Like I said though, your results may vary.

Level 7 and 9  Reinforce 1 and 2

10 and 20 percent less durability loss when you die equates to less money spent on repairs.  Less money spent on repairs mean more money in our pocket.  Even if your guild has some guild repairs allowed, it will still helps.

Level 8:  Hasty Hearth

15 minutes left on your Hearthstone means you have a 15 Minute Cooldown.  Hearthing every 15 minutes isn't the best gold making one out there, but I know I have used it.  For example, I have a high level Alchemist who does a Living Elements Transmute in Uldum.  I have found several times where my hearth was on cooldown and I wanted to head back.  So, 15 minute hearth can help.

Level 10 and 22:  Chug a Lug 1 and 2

As a gold maker, I would probably say this doesn't help you.  As a raider, it is amazing.  But, hey you cannot have all of the perks be amazing for gold making.

If someone wants to tell me how money could be made here, you can let me know.

Level 11:  Mobile Banking

By itself, I would say it is not terribly helpful.  However, there are a couple of times you could get use out of a free guild bank.  If your guild lets you pull out mats or buy them from the bank or something, it could be handy to have, or at least a time saver.

Also, I guess if you have a bank alt guild (I will talk about this later), then you could use it to save a bit of time, which never hurts when you are posting a ton.

Level 13 and 19:  Honorable Mention 1 and 2

How is a 5 and 10 percent buff in Honor going to help us.  Well, I am a big believer in the saying that you can never have too much of a good thing.  If you a PVPer, this is great.  And if you hit the Honor cap, go buy Mats, cause they sell a lot of different options.  I don't see a problem with that.

Level 14:  Working Overtime

This is amazing for crafting professions.  Once I have hit a higher level, I have level professions from 1 to 525.  I cannot tell you how much 10% chance to get points on those yellow and green recipes is helpful.

Seriously, this might not help you right out the gate (though being able to get up to whatever node you need to faster is good), it will help.

Level 15:  The Quick and The Dead

More Health when you resurrect and faster speed while dead is a nice time saver.  No matter how good a player you are, I am of the opinion that, at some point, you will die.  Sorry, it happens.  However, getting back into the action isn't a bad thing.  Less time dead equals more time getting loots :)

Level 17:  Guild Mail

Instant Guild Mail is wonderful.  Offering to buy materials from your guild is not a bad thing at all.  Getting items to your guild quickly is not a bad thing.  This is easily in my top 3 guild perks.

Remember, in a game where it is technically possible to create money out of nothing (it really is), you are still limited in the time you have in a day.

Level 18:  For Great Justice

5% extra Justice Points is a benefit you will reap at a later date, but it will help.  Again, it is a definite time saver perk.  However, if you have a ton of Justice Points, look into the BoE items.  Or the Wrath Gems.  They really are more helpful than you would think.

Level 20:  Happy Hour

Again, this is a raiders perk, more than a money making perk.  Let me know if you have better advice on this one.

Level 21:  Have Group, Will Travel

This is more helpful than you would think.  If you are careful or creative, you can offer to sell this ability to get someone there fast.  If you don't believe me on that one, ask Faid of the Nerf Faid blog.  I believe she has a story about this ability making money.

In addition, being able to get your friends to you is never a bad thing.

Level 23:  Bountiful Bags

For our purpose, this is the best Perk that we can get.  Getting extra mats means straight up extra money.  You cannot go wrong with this perk.

For level 85s reading this, think about Getting a bonus on something like a Heavenly Shard or a Maelstrom Crystal.  That is a really good win for us.

Level 24  Bartering

10% less cost on all Vendor items.  That is huge.  For us low level characters, that is less money on skill training and on any profession mats we want (think cheaper vials for alchemists).

But why stop there.  10% off of mount costs.  Win.  10% off of expensive mounts (think Traveler's Tundra Mount)?  Wow, that is over 1k gold savings.  Want to make and sell Motorcycles and Vial of the Sands.  10% on the more than 20000 gold in vendor mats you have to have is an amazing win.

Level 25:  Mass Ressurection

The Last Guild Perk and great to have.  Kinda a nice time server when your healer dies in an instance and you don't have to wait 10 minutes for them to get back.

Conclusion

Guilds are wonderful.  I would not still be playing this game if it weren't for guilds.  Guilds give you friendship and some great motivators to keep going.

But enough of the sappy stuff again, we can't go wrong with guilds.  If you can get into a Level 25 Guild, it will help you through your money making career.

But wait, one last quick thing...

If you haven't gotten a guild yet, keep an eye out in trade chat for people needing guild signatures.  I haven't seen it as much these days, but people will pay you for your guild signature.  They just want to make the guild, then kick everyone out of it.

20 gold for doing nothing extra?  You can get it.

Next week?

Next time, I think we are going to go for something completely different.  I will talk a little bit about it later.  However, in the mean time, if you need something to do, feel free to vote on my vote on the blog.  It expires at the end of the month, and I am very curious what you all think.

See ya Next Time.....

Meet Ohnekase: Money making through vendors.

Meet Ohnekase.

Maiev, US

We have been talking about making money through professions.  These are a great way to make money.  Today, we are going to talk about making money without actually doing any real work.  Instead, we are going to run around, buy stuff from vendors, then sell them on the Auction House.

In this dimension, Ohnekase was born to a merchant father and mother.  They worked out of Razor Hill and would buy and sell anything people would give them.  You know all those grey items you sell to merchants.  Ohnekase's parents had uses for them.  Ruined Scraps, they could turn into cloth.  Random animal parts, they sold to Taxidermists or made into cheap leather.  Ohnekase learned everything there was to know about making money, until he was put into the Troll Mages' program.

Vendor stuffs


There are 2 great things that you can get from vendors:  Profession mats, rare recipes, and pets.

Profession mats are great because people want them for their Alchemy, Enchanting, and other materials.  If you remember our second articles, where we bought enchanting materials, then sold them on the AH.  We can work on that.

Rare recipes look something like this from a vendor.

Ok, this is an example from another of my characters of a rare recipe found in Thunder Bluff.  notice the Merchant is only selling 1 of them.  This is something in limited quantity that people might want.

Finally, there are pets.  Companion pets are super cool little creatures that will follow you around and players.  Many vendors sell these pets.


Of course, here is the question that I know you would have on all of these.  "Wait a minute," you would say.  "If vendors have these items, why don't people go check them first."  The answer is very simple:  People do not know about them and/or people are lazy.

Lets take an example of the first one.  Pretend I am a level 85 character leveling up my Alchemy from 1 to 525 (very popular thing to do).  I am looking at making 100s of potions to get there, and I need a lot of Herbs (again, popular for people leveling alchemy not to have an herbalist or what not).  Because I need a bulk of materials, should I first spend 5 minutes going to the Herbalist or Alchemist to see if they have something I would want, or should I just go to the auction house and pay a small premium for them.  Auction house it is.

For pets, there are a sizable number of people who don't know about the pet sellers, or don't know about some of them.  They just click the Misc/Pets tab of the Auction House, click the Button that says, "Usable Item", and buy what they don't have.    Even if they are spending 10 times what they could vendor it for, either they don't know or they don't care (most players don't really cringe at spending 10+ gold at 85).

For these examples, us low level people can use this to actually make some coin.  There are so many ways to do it, with just a little bit of time and patience.

So, here is how it is going to work this week.  Ohnekase is going to get to level 5 and head straight up to Orgrimmar.  I might check some merchants on the way for stuff, but I am not going to train in any professions or anything, just going to head up there.  My hope is to walk in with 5 silver, then we will check places to try and make some money and put them up on the Auction House.  Every day, I will try and monitor my auctions to see if I can get some sales, and we will see how we are doing.

Lets give it a try

To level 5....and beyond....


Ok, first things first, leveling

I was sent to help what can I do.

Burn baby, burn

Vol'jin, it is a pleasure to meet you.  How can I help?

Holy crap, holding on for dear life.

Alright Vol'jin.  Lets take her down.

Nooo, my partner.  Nooooooo....

Ok, so we hit level 5, lets see where we are sitting...

Ok, so we are at 9 Silver and we have a bonus of 7 Clam Meat.  Clam Meat is used for cooking, and usually a pretty popular seller.  So we are going to try and sell those to for bonus gold.

Now, in Orgrimmar and see what we can find.

Orgrimmar...

First things first, I want to put up the Clam Meat and see if I can get just some small gold to work with for Vendors.

Nothing there, but I am gonna try for it.  They usually sell pretty well.  I am just going to go for 1 gold a piece, lets see what happens.  We may be in trouble. :P

Next, lets see what professions vendors have for us...

Some rare recipes, which is good.

More rare recipes

Ok, so here is the Strange Dust and the Essence.

So, I am going to try for a Strange Dust, first.  Lets check the Auctions.

Ooooh, this could be problematic

Wow, strike out for now.  Doesn't look like it is up for now.  However, we can hold onto it until later.  Lets check back later and see what else we can come up with.

Orgrimmar, part 2...

Ok, so lets check a day later at both the cost to sell the Strange Dust at, and if our Clam Meat sold.

Clam Meat Sold.  7 Gold will help us for our next step

Strange dust is up to 40 silver.  This is good news for us.  Now we can try and make some money. 

Ok, so, this is good news for us.  We now know that we can make money (also, note that the price of the Strange Dust is a little bit volatile.  We could technically use this too).  Now that we have 7+ gold to work with, lets start with buying some of the stuff we looked at.

Rare recipes from the Goblins.  Lets try that. 

Another rare recipe.  Lets try that as well.

You can get some tailoring patterns here and they are rare.  Lets grab them too. 

Ok, so we talked about rare recipes.  Lets try and sell them.  In addition, there is a Snake Vendor in Orgrimmar, lets grab 1 of each pet from him (50 silver each).

NOTE:  I grabbed the Steam Tonk Controller Recipe.  It was soulbound.  That was kinda dumb.  Oops.

In addition, I went and picked up the Strange Dust and the Magic Essence that we found from yesterday (it refreshed).  Now that I have a list of 10ish things to sell, lets see what they sell for.

Assuming they sell, 30 silver profit.  Not bad 

1 Gold, 25 profit 

Holy Cow!!!  I doubt it will sell, but if we can, that is 100 gold profit, for nothing.  Lets try.

Another Crazy profit.  Again lets try. 

1000%+ profit.  I will take it. 

100+ gold profit. 

If it sells, this is great for us. 

$$$ 

Even this one is pretty good.

Ok, so even if one a few of these sell, we have made back our money.  This is just wandering around for 5 minutes.

Again, lets give it a day and check it later to see how we do (we might not do well, but really, we are still not out too much and we haven't put in that much time).

Later...

Ok, we will check the AH one more time for 1 more 24 hour turnaround and see where we got to.

First, lets check what happened...

Ok, so the stuff that we put up didn't sell or got undercut.  So lets cancel them.  I don't want to give up on the Enchanting Mats, so I am gonna try again.  I am also gonna pick up some more Enchanting mats.  Finally, I wanna get some snakes and put them back up.

So, we picked up a couple more Strange Dust and Magic Essence and the Snakes.

So, lets wait one more day and see what we can find.

Last Day...

So, first, lets see what we sold

So the Essence, Dust, and a Snake sold.  Not bad.

As you can see below, the rest did not sell.

So, 2 of the Snakes didn't sell, which is fine, cause we have seen those pets sell without too much trouble.  None of the rare recipe's sold.

Lets look at what we have learned.

1. Items can sell even if they are not hard to get:  So, we went and purchased low level dust for 7 silver and sold it for 40 silver.  That is a pretty good profit for us considering the amount of time it took us (lets say 2 minutes for good measure).  Why?  Well, as I said, people are lazy.  If I am leveling Enchanting from 1 to 525 and I am at 85, I do not want to sit there and save 70 silver or so.  I am going to buy as much dust and essence as I can get.  Sure if the price is prohibitive (say 30 gold a piece for Strange Dust), then yeah, I will probably find other ways to do it.

2. Pets will sell:  As of this writing (looking at the website warcraftpets.com, I just googled it), there are 211 pets in the game.  I, like many others, love pets, and do like to try and get to the 150 pets for the littlest pet shop achievement.  That means that I am going to be needing a lot of pets for that.  That also means that I don't know or don't care where I get them if the price is right.  Do I care to fly to Thunder Bluff to go get the Prairie Dog (If I know it is there) when I can buy 1 for 3 gold on the Auction House?  For a lot of players, the answer is no.

A side note to this, it can also be advantageous if you try and get into the cross faction pet selling (it is difficult, but doable), you can actually make a sizable chunk of profit for little work.

3. Our Vendor Recipes didn't sell:  Ok, so this one is one I thought I would bring up because I want to defend my choice a little.  As it was here, and as I was trying to demonstrate, you can make money without leaving Orgrimmar or sitting on the Auction House for days and days at a time.  Vendor recipes are one way you can try to do that.  However, with Vendor recipes, they will not always sell.  For one, not everyone will need them.  If I am leveling Engineering, I may not care about the Red Firework Recipe.  Several people at max professions don't care about the lower level recipes (Note this, it is actually a good tactic).  The completionists do like to get all the recipes.  And they will usually pay to buy them, especially if they don't know or didn't check wowhead. 

Besides, we only spent 1 silver putting them up. So, lets say that we try and try and try, but cannot sell them, but eventually we will sell 1 of them for 20 gold in 2 months.  We are down maybe 2 or 3 gold for posting them up @ 48 hours, but still made 17-18 gold profit.  Is that bad?  Gold is gold.

4. If you put your mind to it, you can make gold anywhere:  If I play a character and am working on getting money, am I going to get to the gold cap with this method?  Probably not.  However, if I am a DPS waiting for a Dungeon Queue (which happens at every level of play), maybe stop in and grab a couple of dust and a few pets.  While you would be just running laps around Orgrimmar, Stormwind, or anywhere else, you could make a few gold.  Sure it isn't tons and tons, but it does make a difference.

Other Profession Recipes and Pets for profit.

So, we have found Mats and Pets in Orgrimmar and Stormwind.  However, I will tell you right now that there are a lot of Vendor and Pet Recipest to be found everywhere you go.  There are a lot of other blogs that have talked about this way of making money.  Rather than giving them all credit (and I think most blogs will mention at least one or two places to pick up a vendor recipe), I will go ahead and give you one of the better ones.

One of the blogs that I follow is http://nerffaids.blogspot.com/ .  I like her style and she has a lot to say on the subject.  I especially (for max level professions) like her WoW Gold Rush Youtube Videos.  They are great guides to use profession information and make money with very little time invested.  The real important reason I mention her on this post, though, is that she did a youtube video of a long series of places you can go to get rare recipes and pets to sell on the Auction House.  Now, obviously, if you just started on a server, you will not be able to get all of them.  But it is definitely helpful to know where they all are.  So here is a link to that Blog post.

http://nerffaids.blogspot.com/2011/10/vendor-recipes-and-pets-redux.html

Conclusion

Ok, so this blog post wasn't the most prolific, and I didn't end the thing with tons and tons of gold.  But if I made, say, 6 or 7 gold on top of what I had already been doing (professions or what not), then I wouldn't consider it a waste.  At low level, even having an extra 1 gold will help you a lot just in playing the game.

I know several people who had trouble affording their class training, their mounts, and all of the other important stuff.  So, being able to use simple tactics for a few extra gold will help.  In Faid's guide above, she is not kidding when she says you can make 1,000+ gold off of these recipes.  Sure, you wont make it in one sale, but one of the early lessons I learned is that it is easier to make 1,000 gold from 100 items than it is to make 1000 gold from 1 item.

So that is all I have to say for that.  I am sorry this was such a long post, but I really felt like this should have been something that was tended over more than one day.  It is important to get a little bit of cycling time and show that the percistance does pay off.

Next time, I am going to do a shorter post I think, where I discuss guilds.  In particular, I want to point out a couple of ways you can make money from guilds without putting them out anything (i.e. stealing or cheating your guildies).

So,

See ya next time....