Analyzing the patch

Sorry for the lack of posts, but I need to start analyzing the upcoming Patch 4.0.
Lots of things are changing in my 2 main markets (JC & Inscription) and I need to be sure what items are changed to stockpile effectively.

I will download the PTR later today and will copy at least my JC/BS character (Paladin) and if that went well my Scribe&Alch char (Priest) will get a copy too.

Gold per ???

Hello everyone,

after yesterday's JC post and me catching up on blogs & podcasts, I got behind since school started 2 weeks ago, I start to think about this.

A lot of bloggers talk about how efficient they can be with maximizing the gold per hour.
I started to think about it, gold per hour is so limited in so many ways.
Gold(profit) per effort would be a better way of measuring how much gold you actually earn.

Example time:
Inscription is an awesome market, even when the prices can be disgustingly low, the items still sell at a decent rate.
On the other hand, Jewelcrafting, is simple cut & repost, fantastic selling rates and requires a lot less effort to maintain, due to the fast(er) selling rates.

The time(effort) invested in inscription is a lot more, but you (can) get more gold for it in return.
Jewelcrafting on the other hand can be done in a few minutes, collecting mails & reposting/cutting is faster and more efficient.

After my most discussed post > Undercutting <, this made me even think more about the effort invested.
Undercutting with 1 copper and having to check the auction house more often to be sure your item sells (due to high competition, ah bots, campers, whatever reason), requires a lot of effort to keep your auctions going.
Your initial gold per hour is your crafting & posting time, but there's the auction/item posting maintaining time.

Would Undercuttin a bit more justify the thought to lower your auction maintenance and thus not increasing your effort to sell your wares and thus keep your gold/effort high?
This was the original thought behind that post, the effort in maintaining your wares by re-undercutting.

Jewelcrafting

Hello dear readers,

today I'm going to list my best JC gems and why I choose to not bother with the other ones.
Most of the Epic (rarity) gems seem to be decent, even though I'm far from having all the JC recipes, my sales are flying through the roof.
Today will be about my 3 best sellers: Cardinal Ruby, King's Amber & Majestic Zircon

Cardinal Rubies almost all sell really well, but I stick to the pure DPS/Healing ones:

• Bold Cardinal Ruby
• Bright Cardinal Ruby
• Delicate Cardinal Ruby
• Fractured Cardinal Ruby
• Runed Cardinal Ruby

King's Amber sells decently too, a tad less well than Cardinal Rubies, but certainly worth your time.
All King's Amber have selling potential, however I currently am only selling 4 of them:

• Brilliant King's Amber
• Quick King's Amber
• Rigid King's Amber
• Smooth King's Amber

Majestic Zircon has a decent sell rate, though there's a very small selection of designs for this one, at least ¼ of it is a decent seller.
Yet I sell two of these beauties so far, the other 2 haven't been doing well back when there still were blue gems.

• Solid Majestic Zircon
• Stormy Majestic Zircon

The reason for Solid Majestic Zircon might be clear to most of you, most tanks and certain PvP character use this as their default gem.
The Stormy Majestic Zircon has it's uses in PvP, to bypass resistance, a lot of classes have skills that are somehow magic based and thus the few gems that are needed to bypass the resistances could be mandatory in higher arena teams.

So this is the list of gems that sell really well for me, I'm easily able to invest 20k and get the 20k back within a week and even end up with more profit.
Gems are easy to flip, in abundance on (AV/PvP) weekends and quite fast selling.

That's it for today, keep your copper coins rolling.

Priority

Hello everyone, I know it's been a while since I've posted and all, but my new study started again and the life that comes with it (introduction weeks & lots of alcohol).

However I did manage to make some spare time to keep my AH game up, even if it was inferior to be noticed by the majority of the community.
I lost one farmer and two gem sellers, but one Saronite Ore farmer stayed loyal and is supplying me once again.

I made most of my money, if not all of it with my JC/BS character, buckles & gems are flying through the roof lately and it even got me to buy around 500 gems today which probably won't last me more than a week.
My inscription market will get boosted again today, because today I've finished all research and will have 100% of all the available recipes for that profession (yay).

While I've been studying and preparing for school I started to Snipe the neutral AH.
Because I wasn't completely paying attention I missed a few good deals, but I'm happy with the 1-2 copper deals I've obtained through those few weeks.
Those alone netted me about 10-15k profit, so it's time well spend (studying & gaming at the same time).

Also because I'm playing more casually I barely spend anything for raids or my achievement/rep farm trips and I noticed my gold increased by a lot more than usually.

All-in-all playing more casually only gave me more benefits (gold wise).
I have to play the market differently, stock up more, post at raid hours, somewhere in the morning and resupply during the time I have instead of the cheap (morning) hours.

For me the WoW market seems to be more alive than ever, casuals/socials getting upgrades in ICC is my guess and they are a large part of the community.


I'll try to bring more (good) info and post frequently again, I can't promise anything and I might become one of those weekend players/blog posters.

Undercutting the competition

Initially this guy might be right, it seems stupid of me to list 5 belt buckles each time I post and undercutting with 2g50s, but in one thing he isn't, I do not cancel and the next day they still all magically appear as gold in my inbox.

Why is this possible?
People see I've undercut them and cancel themselves, leaving me alone on the AH with my 5-10-15 or more belt buckles up, each in a different pricing range.
As the day goes by, demand changes and people will buy more/less buckles, because they PvP, got gear upgrades, want to get their alt some extra slot, whatever reason, they just sell day and night.

Because of this, I don't worry about who undercut me, QA will undercut them the next time I post anyway, all I care about is the cash rolling in the next time I log in.

What is your vision on this, am I just being ignorant, should I undercut less, but more frequent to get my competition away?
I'd really like to see what you guys think about this.

Blacksmithing

Eternal Belt Buckles, the market seems to be totally left alone, I'm the only one posting lately and people still pay up to 150g each at times (every now & then a competitor, but then I'm walling it back to 40g with about 40 buckles).

I'm always out of stock and my saronite farmer(s) at times say they just need a break or simply disappear after a few days of supplying me.

The same thing goes for Titanium Rod, my enchanting scroll market pretty much sucks, but I see a lot of these being sold, apparently there's a rise in enchanters lately, for what reason I don't know, might be interesting to find out.
I haven't tried to sell Titanium Plating yet, I don't know why, just doesn't seem appealing, but it probably has it's Arena uses.
Last but not least, Titanium Weapon Chain, selling once in a while, nothing special, once people have their Season 8 weapon they won't be needing a new one of this, might explain why it's not selling well.


Epic ICC crafts still sell from time-to-time, but that demand is declining, people just get into ICC and gear up that way (probably boosted by guildies).


That was pretty much my BS market, I'm slowly starting to have a grasp on the market, or part of it and I like it.
Occasionally a blue crafted item sells, but people seem to be wanting epics so much more (only purple items will get you into raids because of the higher ilvl; Yes #$@! GearScore addon, I'm looking at you !).


How profitable is the Blacksmithing market for you guys? Any tips on crafts I am missing?

Steady income, no excuse policy (part 2)

Yesterday's post was about the individual person him/herself. Today will be about helping a friend, a guild mate or yourself through them.

As a player who doesn't have the money to invest in materials and supply someone for craftables, you could offer your services to your guild mates in return for a small fee, using that as investment to get better recipes, your own materials or being able to just diversify your wares.

But as a fellow (rich?) guild mate and a good person, you can help the poorer while they are helping you!

Let them farm for you, anything can be beneficial to them, old content, new content, mining, herbing, skinning, enchanting, tailoring or whatever market you're participating in, they can supply you.

Another thing you could do to help them is let them craft the things you can't and give them a nice tip, that will keep them happy and maybe they'll suggest to do other things for you too, it will always be a win-win situation.

Another option is dragging them along in the Argent Tournament dailies, they are all done faster together than alone and they will see it's decent (daily) income too. You'll be happy because you finished this faster, the other person is happy with the gold he just racked together.

Next time if you see someone whining about not having gold, offer them to supply you with materials.

If you're the one who's struggling with gold, consider supplying someone you know, do your dailies and find your niche market, but the most important thing is diversify!

Steady income, no excuse policy (part 1)

People are still complaining they don't have gold and use more excuses for it than you could imagine.

• "I don't _ have_ as much time as you do"
• "I _have_ to raid, so I can't make gold all the time"
• "I _need_ epic flying to make gold, else it's too slow"

Seeing the pattern there? People blame others for being able to get gold so 'easy', but basically they are too lazy to bother making gold themselves!

People don't need to raid, but want to, they don't need to have a lot of time, just spend it wise and you can make gold without ever leaving town too, so all of that are just excuses to cover their laziness.

Daily quests might be boring, but they are the best way to ensure anyone of a steady income, every single day.

Effort has to be put into something to be able to reap the benefits from your hard work, without the will or the right attitude to make any gold, you will never be able to get any.

Which concludes this first part of this post, there's plenty of gold around, you just need to be willing to do the effort to make it. Time is there in abundance, it all depends how you plan & execute the things you do.

Book of Glyph Mastery

Now is the time to stack up on these sweet books, in cataclysm a lot less people will be able to farm them effectively in WotLK content and a lot people probably will be interested in the new Inscription system that will be implemented alongside with Cataclysm.

But if people are lacking glyphs they won't sell, which is why they need the books, 57 of them, each person.
You can't have enough of these books, if you don't want to bother with the glyphs, bug the ones crafting them with your ridiculous prices on the books.

Don't forget to stock up on herbs, any kind of herbs, vanilla, TBC, WotLK, stack them all up, they will rise in value and a lot.
The Ink Trader will most likely disappear, so easy ink conversion will be no more, materials will become more expensive, which leads to more expensive glyphs, or just another inflation and a lot of Scribes not bothering with it anymore.

You're never prepared enough, your stock is never big enough and you will profit from cataclysm like no other.

Honour Bots, BG farmers and the JC market

At first I was disgusted by these players, I said and kind of still stand by something I said before; buying gems through honour ruined the JC market.
Yet this is how you can easily make profit and go from 1000g to 2000g in 1 day/week if you're willing to put some time & effort in it.

Since I've been on an investing spree lately I thought, whatever, time to buy up everything below a certain price, cut or uncut and relist or cut & list them at my own price.
I try to keep the gem prices above 110g, but this only seems doable for the normal gems (Red, Blue & Yellow), the hybrids go for a lot less and also don't sell as frequent.

Because of this, my total income from JC has exponentially improved, people seem to know my crafter a bit better and I'm mass buying anything I come across on trade, no matter how much they try to sell.
Gems will always sell at this point, so I can't have enough.

Both the rare and epic gem market have been attacked by me for about 1 week now and some people are disappearing due to my very frequent post, cancel/repost or a simple buy/relist and draining their supply.
I hope this won't be a short success just like my inscription market is/was.

After my success I wonder, are there any other people doing well in this(or any other) market around this time (approaching the end of WotLK).
And last but not least, what is your opinion on the honour gems?