Gold for Dummies and You

I had began my Wow career like everyone else... a complete nub. I rolled several characters till I found one I was happy with. I always loved PvPing and began to get more into raiding as BC came along. When WOTLK had came out I raided until I was bored of my character. I was always sitting at 300g-500g Max, never had I ever bought epic flying. I didn't know why Wow was getting boring to me till after I sold my account. After I finally figured out the key to World of Warcraft I instantly grabbed my credit card and made a new account. I hit 80 about the time of ulduar, I was excited to play a different class and raid again. I started to collect money, I did very well, by the time I hit 80 I brought in a fine amount of about 3000 gold and I had already purchased epic flying etc. I was happy with the gold, it gave me a thril, better yet a titillated. I thought to myself, why settle for 3000g when I could push and make 5000g? I asked a lot of my friends that I knew made a large sum of money different ideas they used. Most of their ideas were helpful but a little bit out of date. I worked their ideas and pushed to about 10,000 gold and had server problems so I transfered servers. The day after I transfered my eyes opened, I understood everything everyone was telling me, what the blogs were saying, what the gold guides were saying. I wasn't sure if it was how bad my last server was, but I was pretty sure that was case. I'm going to share to you how I have made 100,000 gold in about 2 months since I have been on this server.

Of course I had urges to buy things so I bought a mechano-Hog +Travler's Tundra Mount, I also bought some gear for myself. My achievement statistcs on my alt tells me I have made about 150,000 gold on this server.

Alright I will be explaining a good way to make money with EVERY profession aswell as NO professions. This is a mosh together of everything I have learned, read, or saw. Excuse me if you have read some of this before, if you have skip to another part, because I am sure there is several things you have not heard of.

I. Profession Methods
I A. Primary Professions
Inscription
Jewelcrafting
Blacksmithing
Alchemy
Engineering
Leatherworking
Tailoring


I B. Secondary Professions
Fishing
Cooking

I C. Gathering Professions
Herbalism
Skinning
Mining

II. No Professions? No problem chief

II A. Auciton House Money

II B. DO WHAT YOU ENJOY

BEFORE I GO ON, WITH THE NEW PATCH COMING OUT SOON MY SUGGESTION IS SELL, SELL, SELL. Frozen orbs are shooting through the roof in price, the eternals, and crusader orbs will crash very low. frost lotus are going to crash 10g-20g (Very large margain depending on server), thus causing flasks to go down about 8-12g. Increasing the amount of frost lotus's will also increase the amount of herbalist that are interested in farming because they will make double the profit the made before, this will also cause lichbloom, and icethorn to fall, adder's tongue should remain uneffected.


Primary Professions, only thing that keeps an economy going.
"All Money is a matter of belief" - Adam Smith

Alchemy- Alchemy, the master of making flasks, potions, and transmuting. All alchemist should be Flask (Elixir) spec'd, there is nothing that matches the amount of increased money you make from being Elixir spec'd rather than transmuting. The flask is much more likely to proc, especially since you are making a shit ton more flasks than transmuting. So you should be flask spec'd, you should also make sure that you transmute everyday. Don't transmute whatever gem you want, you have to actually do some math with this, easy math is:
Price of Normal Gem- X
Price of Eternal- Y
Price of epic gem- Z
X+Y<>
Find out how much gold you would make per transmute and always do that type of transmute. I'll use an example of my own server I am currently doing King's Amber

Yellow Gem Autumn's Glow- 10g
Eternal Life- 20g
10g+20g<>
30g <>
170g profit every single day, then if i cut it it can be more. This is how you determine which is the best gem for you to transmute, you just went from maybe making 100g to making an extra 70g. Lets say you do that for 1 month straight Its an extra 2170 Gold. Your welcome your alt just got its flying mount and cold weather flying
Next flasks, this should be pretty self explanitory again simple equation to maximize gold made.

Frost lotus- X
Herb1 - Y
Herb2 -Z
Price of flask- XYZ

X+Y+Z <>

Example Flask of Stoneblood is making me top dollar right now, most people in the flask market are focusing on DPS flasks because more people need those flasks, but they forget about Flask of Stoneblood. I feel that the market is actually completely different considering people use health for pvp etc aswell. So here is my equation

40+15+20 <>
75<>
This is making me 15g per flask WITHOUT A PROC, if you are flask spec'd you are getting at least a 4-8 proc every once in a while, sometimes a 10 will happen, the flask market is the greatest market.

Pot market, I am rarely in it, but if anything I would make potion of speed, the mats are pretty cheap and you'll make 5-7g per stack you sell, unfortunitly the demand isn't so high because guilds don't really enforce a pot as they do flasks.

Blacksmithing- Many believe Blacksmithing had a big explosion in the beginning of WOTLK and then didn't really have many methods of making money after people began to raid. I feel that there is money in EVERY single profession.

First tip for blacksmithing, Titanium Weapon Chain, check you auction house they should be running from about 80-90g. For each of these on my server it cost about 24g to make, and they sell for at least a 60g profit + mats are 2 saronite bars and 1 titanium bar, check if your server would be good for this.

Second tip, and probably the best money I have seen out of blacksmithing in a long time. Eternal Belt Buckles, Everyone needs them no matter what, after raids, after pvp, hey its a new arena season, take advantage (at least 1000 people on my server are getting new belts through pve or pvp take advantage PEOPLE OMNOMNOM GOLD) mats are (Based off my servers prices)
1 Eternal shadow- 6g
1 Eternal earth- 3g
1 Eternal water- 3g
4 saronite bars- 8g
Total of 20g, I sell about 10 of these a day for 50-60g, 30g profit times 10 = 300, 300 x 7 = 2100g, 2100gx4 weeks= 8400g / month, and yes for those of you wondering THE DEMAND WILL ALWAYS BE THERE AS LONG AS YOU DON'T FLOOD THE MARKET.

Enchanting- Not going to go very indepth with this, it is quite easy to make money with enchanting. Buy armor vellum III, or have an inscriptionist craft them for you and use mats or purchase mats and put enchants on the vellums, so many lazy people will just go after a raid and buy a vellum, instead of getting a 10g tip for an enchant you will now have something like this:
50g expenses
3g Armor vellum
sell for at least 100g, 47g+ per vellum, especially on big enchants you can make alot more. This is a difference of 37g + a enchant than what you do sitting in trade waiting for some undergeared scrub to look for an enchanter.

Engineering is a very slim and luck based money source. You have to invest money to make money for this profession, to be honest it is not a profession you would go for to make money. The only time I only see it making money is making a Mechano-Hog and selling it. I have at least 700 people on my server with a HOG people will be willing to pay 15k or so for it, you pay 12.5k or so. But not always a high demand, once someone has one they don't need another one like a eternal belt buckle if they get a upgrade.


Inscription- Easiest money you'll ever make. I buy icethorn for 15g a stack, after milled I get aprox. 7 Inks per stack of icethorn and 3 or so inks of snowfall. The 3 snowfall, put them aside for later, i'll tell you what to do with them. With these inks i usually will keep milling till i get as much as i feel necissarry, then i'll make an Armor Vellum III, These are constatly being bought the equation for this=

Ink- X
2 Parchment- Y
Armor vellum- Z
X+2(Y)<>
so for my server

2g + 2(50s) <>
3g <>
Your making 9g for EVERY VELLUM, I stockpile over 500 vellums and sell them by 1s, 5s, and 20s THEY ALL SELL, the demand is so high. This is my favorite way of making money with inscription, i feel like the glyph market is overflooded and is nearly lost on my server, but if you like the glyph market, by all means do what makes you feel best.

Now remmember when you milled all that shit? Well you had alot of snowfall ink left didn't ya? Yeah well when I made my 500-600 vellums i had probably around 50 snowfall inks. What did i do with them? No i wasn't a terabad and auction them, i used them to make Faces Of Doom, the offhand that is very good because it is tough to get a itemlevel 200-219 offhand as soon as you hit 80. I sell these for 190g each, mats are 5 snowfall ink, 1 frozen orb, 10 resilient partchment, and 2 ink of the sea. So i made about 10 of these and sold them all, if i sold 1 i made profit, all of these snowfall ink are just additional money to the armor vellums i had made, so there was no rush in selling the offhands. I made an extra 2000 gold from smart mechanics. (get on mah level)

Jewelcrafting- Saronite shuffle was the best thing to happen in world of warcraft for a while, was very effective when it worked, if your question is do you still use it? My answer is YES I do, with variations of course. All of my green gems are posted directly on the auction house because of the insane prices of green gems, all of the Yellow rare gems are sent to my priest to transmute, reds are cut and sold on AH, blues are cut into stam and sold on AH, the rest are cut and vendored. This makes quality profit. This is not my favorite money making technique though.

So what do you do when your the guy that doesn't raid? You ABUSE the market. Check every single gem uncut, if they are 10g or more below a cut one then buy it and cut, then repost. About 90% of the time the gem will be about 30-40g from the cut one, and some are good ones, I bought 3 Majestic Zicrons today for 195g, cut and resold the 30 stam gems like hot pancakes at 265g. Buy all the uncut, cut them and resell. EASY AS HELL GOGOOGOGO
Leatherworking- What can I say besides craft leg armor enchants? You will literally make 100g per leg enchant. Check out which ones are selling, also follow your servers raid times and about 5 minutes after most raids are done start spaming trade "WTS (YOUR ITEM HERE)" and you will have much more whispers, as people are attentive after raids. What is also quite effective is making the 2 item level 200 backs, those make money aswell. Also spam trade about making full sets of things.

Tailor- One of my favorite ways to make money. BAGS BAGS BAGS. Have you ever leveled an alt and ran over to the auction house to buy bags? OF COURSE YOU HAVE!!! Everyone has that is why the demand is so damn high. My favorite consistant way to make gold with tailoring is to buying a stack of frostweave cloth for 5g, and a stack of infinite dust for 20g, just keep spamming trade you will get people to be interested. I will then turn into bolts, and then of course finally turn them into Frostweave Bags.
Total mats=
3 stacks of frostweave 15g
12 infintie dust- 12g
2 eternium threads- 4g
The total comes out to about 30g or so, you can sell these bags for 60-70g and these are like fricken insane sellers, these go just about as fast as flasks during raid times, except ALL THE TIME!!!
I B. Secondary Professions
"Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it." - Milton Friedman

Fishing + Cooking 1 and 1 in a bun- Have you ever wondered what those NUB CAKE MCGEES were doing in wintergrasp all the time? Well hell they were probably farming mats for fish feasts. On my server fish feasts sell for 50g per 5, 10g per fish feast, 200g per stack. If i run a fish bot (I am not promoting, nor am I suggesting that you use one) I can farm 5 stacks of each fish within an hour and make about 1000 gold every hour and a half including crafting time. What I also like to do, is find out specific class food, Dragonfin Angelfish is your friend. When I farm Dragonfin Angelfish I am in Dragonblight. I turn Dragonfin Angelfish into Strength and Agility food. Make sure to do your fishing and cooking daily every day, turn all your Dalaran cooking tokens into Spices if you have no more recepies and sell that on the AH, or use them to make fish.

I C. Gathering Professions- I have mapped out some routes i use, these are mutual between mining and herbalism, try to stay closer to mountains when you are mining though.
"Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes" - William Beveridge

Skinning is impossible to expand on, so i'll help you a little bit. KILL ANIMALS GOGOGOOGOGOGOGGOGO

II. Auction House Money- People often say buy low sell high, this is the exact thing that will make you rich in world of warcraft. You need to constatly keep an eye on all of the markets and get a rough estimate of each price. You need to watch markets that fluctuate, be very warey of where you are investing your money. If you don't want to spend time and money on this, go outside and play with a basketball, because you could use this for world of warcraft as in thing of real life. The world of warcraft market is very similar to our current economy that we live in. People use world of warcraft to test ideas they are using in real life. Using professions and the auction house will maximize the amount of money you have, control certain markets will also help. If you invest 50,000 gold to control the flask of endless rage market, but don't control the things that make it, your completely screwed. You have to always think outside the box. There aren't really many things to tell you about the auction house that you probably haven't heard already. But the buy low sell high concept is one i can't stress enough and is not used enough. Every single day I am racking in alot of gold that i have no use for, but i enjoy making it, i want other to experience the same exact feeling. To start using the auction house as a newbie, i would suggest something easy like buying a stack of saronite bars, and then post 5 stacks by the 1, and 3 stacks by the 5 for more than you bought the stack of 20 for, giving you small, but good profit for the 0 amount of work you did.

II A. DO WHAT YOU ENJOY!!!
This is essential, if gold making is not for you, and you just wanted a quick way to make gold, go kill the mobs in wintergrasp, I don't need to make a guide to tell you that. If you don't get a thrill, and don't enjoy the game for what it gives you, then you should try gold making, gold making and raiding aswell as pvp keep me upbeat and enjoying them game. If you enjoy gold making you can spend hours with professions and auction house and have no problem, if you enjoy pve, go do some random dungeons, nothing like a crusader orb every hour + enchanting mats. Lets say you enjoy pvp, thats cool to, do that! You can pvp for as long as you want and buy gems, it doesn't really matter if gold making is not for you, just always be aware that no matter what you enjoy you CAN make gold, and you CAN make a difference.

Thank you and I hope you enjoyed my wall of text, there might be serveral misspelings because i have been writing this for 6 hours and it is currently 4:02 AM, if you have any questions, concerns, or comments post here, or send me a private tell. Thank you and good luck.