Arcturis!

This evening I was mostly hanging out chatting, so I decided to take a fly around Northrend on my mining hunter. Normally I don't farm but it can be soothing when done for pleasure! I wafted through Zul'Drak, reminded of the old days when my shaman was a miner, and headed on through Grizzly Hills. On a whim, I decided to pass over the Alliance base, where the rare spirit beast Arcturis spawns.

My heart skipped a beat when I saw him there! I hastily switched to my BM spec, chugged a mana potion, and fumbled to find Freezing Trap on my unfamiliar bars. I failed and dropped a Frost Trap instead (freaking icy icons), pounded at the BM spellbook to find find Tame Beast and finally started the tame at the edge of my seat, praying it would work. IT DID! My first and favorite spirit beast is Loque'hanak, but Arcturis is a fine addition to my team.

Mechano-hog Mamba

I've sold two of the three Mechano-hogs I received in exchange for that bear, so today I went the old-fashioned route: spamming in Trade. It was very entertaining, especially the people who thought 5000g was a reasonable price for an item which costs over 12500 in vendor mats alone. There was also a particularly funny troll who viciously proclaimed that hogs are ugly and "anyone who wants one got it a year ago." (Obviously incorrect since I sold two in a week.) Upon inspection I noted that he did not have the Get to the Choppa! achievement. His opinion? Or jealousy? Methinks the lady doth protest too much....

:P

dear Bobbins

I am truly sorry you felt the need to be a raging twat on my blog. What you don't seem to realize is that this is a personal blog, not one that I intend to market as a treasure trove of gold-making tips. There is nothing wrong with those types of blogs - in fact, I read and enjoy them frequently - but that is not what this blog is about. This blog is simply a chronicle of my personal journey, which I hope is in some way enlightening to others and at the very least a record for myself to look back upon.

I love the free market. I've learned a lot and supplemented my previous economic knowledge by playing in and observing the World of Warcraft market. Watching Trade and the Auction House change is exceptionally fascinating and educational.

Nowhere in my previous post did I say I wanted to force anyone out of the glyph market. Nowhere did I say I hated this guy for doing what he is doing. Nowhere did I say I was NOT making a profit still (I make glyphs for the cost of parchment.....6g glyphs do not in any way hurt me). Nowhere did I say I was not making gold from Inscription right now.

You should brush up on your reading comprehension skills before you flounce through and boldly proclaim my blog needs work. Before you proclaim I "obviously don't like the free market" when - let me bold this for you - you read a post about my personal feelings on the matter, NOT about concrete facts of my strategy or response to this deep undercutter. Personally I'm with Markco and think that deep undercutting is an irritating and inefficient strategy for glyphs, BUT is easily outfoxed, outlasted and outgamed.

My parting advice to you is to go farm and do dailies. You are so crippling unobservant that I doubt you could make over 402,000 gold in two months, like I did. I hear Argent Tournament dailies can give you a couple hundred a day....

oh lawd

This guy is crashing down the whole glyph market because he's "tired of low thresholds." Wut? Does he even know what a threshold is? Because the only low-selling glyphs are the garbage ones that scribes make to level, and are barely worth selling because of that. So he....crashes the whole market. Uh huh.

This is one of those times I wish someone would toss Gevlon into a fiery volcano; his disciples are the most facepalm-worthy asshats.

Thanks for the 1000 pageviews!

sigh, not this again

Once again, some asshat is trying to shove people out of the glyph markets. All glyphs except a few of each class are under 5g. All of them. I know it's a scare tactic but it's so annoying; there's a lot more profit to be made for everyone when people aren't trying to be monopolists.

They also bought all my glyphs around 6g and under....lol. People who do this are so silly. They give me their money and I'm still making profit under their scare tactics.

73k to 220k gold in 10 days

Yeah, you read that right. In the last 10 days I made 147000g. How did I do it? My daily glyphing and jewelcrafting, some Titansteel transmuting and some flask-making, and on top of all of those were the item flips I detailed over the last week. I would never have been able to do it if I didn't have an on-the-spot working knowledge of epic item worth, how fast said items move and for how much, etc.

I flipped ICC strength rings, a Blood Queen's Crimson Choker, ICC plate shoulders, and a trading card game mount.

I also sold about 5 ICC leatherworking boots for 5k apiece.


/pat on the back

In-Game Calculator

WoW-Confidential posted about this in-game calculator addon! I always have Windows calculator open so this is basically another layer of convenience in my on-the-spot deal-making.

Once you flip you just don't quit

Late night score! Logged on to see someone selling Blood Queen Crimson's Choker in trade for 5000!! I invited them right away, they said someone offered 6k, so I ended up getting it for 7k. I've sold two of these necks for 15k and they are almost never on the AH.

I am on FIRE this week!



edit: Sold the necklace for a total of 15202g!

great guide to negotiating

Check out Saate's Guide to Making Deals, it elaborates and explains a lot of the strategies I use myself, especially when flipping items or selling things like Rituals of the New Moon through Trade chat.

I'm on wow.com!

I literally gasped/squeaked out loud when I scrolled down to see this today! That's my screenshot of me on my hippo! EEEEEE!

Of course I entered to win another one, and perhaps some other loot! \o/

risky business

I just picked up a Big Battle Bear for 25000g from a fellow freshly back to the game. However! My main already knows this mount, thanks to some fortuitous pack pickings by my boyfriend, so I'm gonna try and flip it. TCG mounts don't often come to my server, except for about 5 Blazing Hippogryphs. Hopefully I can sell it for 40k+.


edit: Got an offer for 50000. Double my money!

Master Craftables List

Check out this great post from Cold's Gold Factory!


"Since there a lot of people working on Loremaster Title, I decided to create a Master List of All Craftable Items that are used for quests. I took out the professions specific items that are easy to make yourself to get new recipes, the EPL Writs, and Silithis Tactical Turn-Ins. So these are items that can sell to Loremaster wanna-be's as well as to levelling alts."

Link here!

MOAR flipping!

I'm in a flipping craze today.

I just bought 2 more Ring of Rotting Sinew for 5k each, gonna sell them for 6-6.5k. From another guy I bought a second Raging Behemoth's Shoulderplates for 4100g; earlier I sold them for 6500, and the others on the AH are 9000g+.

My hilt sold for a 700 gold profit. Not bad for 2 minutes in trade.

Hilt flip again

Snagged another Battered Hilt through trade, this one for 6000g. Right now the bid on it is at about 6800g, so not a huge profit but still worthwhile.

I understand why some people turn Trade channel off, but I never could - I would miss out on the best deals I get. Whenever people start linking certain legendary weapons or "anal" I make generous use of the "Report Spam" and the ignore features. Then it's back to scouring for more stuff to buy!

grrr

As usual, I went into GDKP thinking I wouldn't buy anything....and spent way more gold than I intended to do. -_- I grabbed:

2 Conqueror's Marks (last needed for my paladin's tanking set)
1 Icecrown Glacial Wall
1 Raging Behemoth's Shoulderplates to resell
1 Ring of Rotting Sinew to resell

Sold all the saronites I reserved for 2750 total. But then some guy was selling stacks of Titanium Ore for 150 in trade so I bought a ton of that.... :o/ Just one of those spending days I guess.


edit:
Sold the ring for a 3500g profit, and the shoulders for a 3000g profit. Whoop whoop.

borderline spammers

(Cross posted to JMTC forums.)

There is a guy who posts over 8 pages of Infinite Dust singles every day. Now, I know varying stack size is fair play in the AH, but with THAT MANY auctions it's freaking maddening trying to find the bigger stacks. -_- I've complained through tickets twice now, and I hope they're looking into it.

The reason I opted to report to a GM is because I have heard that people posting Iceblade Arrow singles have received warnings not for scamming, but for spamming. That many pages of a single item can be considered disruptive (hell, it's disruptive enough for me to report it) and GM intervention can be called upon.

I really hope they ding this guy. >:(


Have you ever been formally warned for something like this? Or have you brought the wrath of the heavens upon a foe?

oh my~

In four days I have gone from 73k to 140k gold. 67000 gold in 4 days. :) Hawt.

QQ

"My" farmer got banned. =( About a week ago I noticed he hadn't logged on in a couple days, I suppose Warden caught up with him. He and a couple other bots have not been around, so the AH is back to hosting one page of overpriced herbs. For some reason Eternal Life is still available at normal prices (Frozo?).

Thank goodness I stocked up. "Buy everything, even if you don't need it right now," is a great rule to AH by! I have 3 guild bank tabs of IoTS and a mailbox full of herbs, plenty to last me until the next farmer surfaces.

yay!

Thanks to a helpful guildy ICMaH now supports WoWhead links and tooltips! Next up is some graphics for the site.... What to pick, what to pick?

what do I like to see?

"Posting [Glyph of _____) (3) bid 70g, buyout 70g (No other auctions up)

...times 100. On one glyph alt.

*cackle* I love maintenance.



Oh yeah, and I finally have all my minor glyphs! Now to do about two more weeks of major research and I'll be completely set for Cata. :3

ugh

This past weekend has marked the end of an age for me. About 5 other people have suddenly decided to start selling ICC leatherworking boots...which wouldn't be a problem if they undercut by reasonable amounts instead of 800g.

I've decided to just sell off the boots I have at discount prices and only make another pair if the other crafters get bored and leave. Unlike with plate boots, leather/mail boots move slowly no matter what the cost, so you might as well sell them a bit higher. The average Quick-buck Chuck doesn't get that, and wants to sell them fast...even if he is losing money by selling the boots at less than material cost.

As a healer I like to tell people, "You can't heal stupid." You can't reason with it, cajole it, or get frustrated with it either, so in the face of mass stupidity the best course of action is to bow out.

my first hilt flip

I've never seen a Battered Hilt at a decent "flipping price" before, since they go for about 7.5-9k on my realm. Two days ago, though, I picked one up for 5000 off a fellow who was probably excited to be getting epic flying from it. I just sold it today for 7300g - another lesson in patience for the determined auctioneer. :)

GDKP again

Yesterday's "undergeared" GDKP did fairly well. We didn't do PP or BQ, but we got a DBW and a 3.7k split. Pretty good!

Today's run was even better, we one-shot heroic Marrowgar and heroic Rotface, and got a friend's Shadowmourne PP quest done. A Mr. Moneybags came along and bought up about half of the loot that dropped, which contributed a lot as well! The Shadowmourne friend volunteered to pay 1k per Shard once he can get them, which is quite generous. That G will go into the split each run. Our split today was 7840.

Sadly I'm not sure if I'll be able to do runs next week, since my birthday is on that Monday.

poor again QQ

I've been trying to get a Blazing Hippogryph mount for a while, but the last one I saw was the same week I was buying my Crimson Deathcharger. Among some chat in guild tonight, though, someone linked it and asked, "WTF is this?" I rushed to transfer gold to my richest toon and bought it out for 120k. OUCH. I have 73.3k left. =( But it was worth it. Time to get crackin' on gold again... Glad I bought so many supplies this week or I would feel even worse stocking up for Tuesday.

buying spree

Oi vey, I spent a LOT of gold the last couple days. The deals just kept rolling in! I bought a truckload of gems, Saronite Ore, Titanium Ore (to prospect), Primordial Saronite....argh! Painful to see that 220k go to 195k but I know I'll turn a pretty profit.

Gold capped again.

After dipping down to ~110k on June 24 I am back up to 216k today, July 15. It has taken only 3 weeks to make 100,000 gold, an improvement from my initial 4 weeks. Go me!

It should be noted, I also spent a decent chunk of change this month. I bought a Battered Hilt, a Kirin Tor Ring, a Grand Ice Mammoth, and several expensive pieces in GDKP (to keep, not to flip). If I had saved that gold I would probably have about 250k right now....but it's easy enough to hit that over the next week. ;)

whoot

Heroic Professor Putricide 25 down tonight! We are now the #3 Horde guild on the server! We also continued "Alt LK" and I got my terribad hunter a Kingslayer title. :) Great night for raiding, tomorrow is Heroic Halion and next week is Heroic Sindragosa!

facepalm

I made a couple Heartseeker Scopes today hoping to get rid of some of my Twilight Opals. Calculating the mat costs, they are worth about 37g. I stupidly made 4 before checking the AH - where tards are selling them for 20g. ._. Thank goodness I didn't make a full stack of them - guess it's time to cut and vendor those damn opals though.

Advanced Beggars

We have all seen beggars in World of Warcraft before - usually the lowbie in Orgrimmar yelling, "HI CAN I HAVE 1G PLEASE" or even whispering you specifically looking for some free cash. They are generally reviled by all and reported for spamming or put on ignore.

But how do you deal with the beggars who have "graduated," so to speak?

What I am talking about specifically are people who know you, know you are rich, and try to raise prices of items in order to make you pay more.

This is one of the most annoying and infuriating issues I have been dealing with, because these people are members of my guild.

I have been raiding with my guild for almost a year now and am healing officer. I am social and "loud" and like to chat. People know that I'm wealthy - not least because two weeks ago I bought Reins of the Crimson Deathcharger and loaded the guild bank up with 50k gold (the other 50k went to the Shadowmourne bearer), gold which is paying for repairs for the rest of the expansion. I run GDKPs weekly which guildmates attend. My money is not a secret.

What happens, though, is people see that money and think to themselves, "She has so much, I bet she doesn't mind if I ask for a bit more for ___." The problem there is that I didn't get my cash by being ripped off.

The more pressing issue at the moment is game cards. I've regularly bought cards in the past from guildies for 6000g. Last week my boyfriend's account ran out and I have been trying in vain to get my hands on a card, mostly hampered by people using smirky smilies on our forums and saying, "Well maybe you should offer 9000...."

Frankly I would rather quit than get gipped out of my money by greedy "friends."

I think it is very important to stand by one's price and stick to it. Letting a "seller" try and strong-arm you out of a price is a recipe for disaster and gives the impression of being easily manipulated, an impression that, as a goblin and a female, I definitely do not want to give.

Sadly this attitude has become so common and so frustrating in my guild that I am considering quitting. Unfortunately there are no other end-game raiding, female-friendly guilds on my server (the horror stories I've heard from other women are depressing). I'm not sure what to do right now. I cannot afford a server transfer, and I cannot afford to buy time with cold hard real-life cash. (I am not so financially fortunate in the real as I am in WoW.) If I cannot play with my boyfriend, I don't want to play at all, either. In this case, it seems, the beggars have "won."

Thanks!

Yesterday I emptied out one of my glyph alt's mailbox, and pulled out 850g in one go! I usually get that over the course of a few hours, not overnight!

I use Postal to empty my mailbox so I didn't see who bought them all. I think someone wanted to price reset and bought out an assload of competitor's glyphs to do so. I have noticed some of my glyphs going to fallback price (70g) or even undercutting higher at about 90g, so this is a good thing for me on two fronts.

Doing I quick scan I see that the previously mentioned undercutter with the 25g ceiling is nowhere to be found on the AH. He must have gotten bored or dumped all his stock, and someone noticed and decided to price reset. It feels good to see glyphs at 34g, 70g and 90g again!

Addendum: The guy who contacted me before, whispered me today and confirmed he had done a price reset. He encouraged me to buy out glyphs to do the same but it just isn't my style unless there are 2 glyphs up for 3g. I don't want to do anything on a mass scale.

today's GDKP

Today's run was definitely better. We did H Marrowgar in 2 tries, something we hadn't done before. However, right before we were ready to do H Rotface, a key dps D/Cd and we wasted about 20 minutes finding a suitable replacement. I got rather snappy after I accidentally pulled the boss with my treants.... though I apologized once I had cooled down. After that things went remarkably smoothly and we one shot all of the bosses up to Sindra. I wanted to take a shot at her but we had been running for 3 hours and people were tired, so I wrapped it up. Looking forward to what we can do next week.

The split today was about 4200 gold per person.

blah GDKP

Just finished today's run about an hour ago. Slacking dps and some very questionable pug healers meant we had a 1% PP wipe and didn't even attempt BQ. About a 3000 gold split....half of what I expect tomorrow's run to net. Still, I got my split, a Marrowgar's Frigid Eye for 5k (to flip), and some Primordial Saronite to craft with. It could have been worse!

I am trying to make Sunday's run a more progression-oriented group with Saturday as an alts/pugs group. There is one unreserved spot tomorrow as opposed to the eight open spots today, which makes a huge difference as well.

leatherworking for ICC, and being polite

My primary alt is a leatherworker and a skinner. Skinning is mostly useless but I like having it around to convert leather and as a time killer when I'm in the dungeon queue. I do not have a blacksmith, and my tailor is level 65 and therefore doesn't have access to ICC crafting recipes. I hate not having a BS but I am disinterested in leveling another character before Cataclysm, so for now I can only /sigh whistfully at my guildies selling crafted boots (apparently they just fly off the shelves).

I have become decently adept at using my leatherworking to make money - no small task, since it is often labeled the worst money-maker of the gear-making professions. I don't craft leg armors, because I find them tedious to sell. Instead, I have always specialized in crafting high-end raiding gear. Through most of ToC I sold wrists and some chest pieces for great profit, but recently I've found them to be too difficult to move. Same with Ulduar recipes - I used to make a decent 1500g profit off of leather belts but the last one I crafted took a month to sell. So what do I focus on now?

• BOOTS!
  I sell 1-2 ICC boots a week - on high-traffic nights (Tuesday and Sunday) I've even sold out of all my boots in the span of an hour. I keep one of each in stock with spare mats to craft more if necessary. Since I am the only person selling these items on my server, I aim my price higher than that of my blacksmithing brethren. BS boots cost approximately 4k to make and sell for 5k-5.5k. My boots also cost approximately 4k to make, but in trade I sell for 5.5k flat out, and in the AH they are listed for 5.7k bid and 6k buyout.
  
  About half of the sales I make are through a bid. Make sure your bid is an acceptable price to you, because I guarantee you, people will bid in an effort to save that 300 gold. Make your buyout price your dream price, and the bid price your standard price - you'll never be disappointed.
  
  
• Crafting while sitting around.
  I never link my profession in trade and advertise that I'm crafting. I simply keep an eye on the chat channels and jump to help people who are looking for a LW to make gear. While waiting in a DPS queue this can be up to a 500g profit just for sitting around and clicking "craft." The average tip is 100g-200g.

But what about that other thing in the title today? Polite? Manners? Barf!

To be a good salesperson, you need to be polite. It's a requirement. Even if I get the most obnoxious dude ever trying to argue mat price with me, I am still polite - not only because that dude might bitch in trade if I tear him a new one, but because it's good practice.

Being polite and using a lot of emotes like ^^, :), :D, :3, /hug, /cheer, and so on, will get people to like you and remember you. I've had several instances where even if people turned down my price, they came back later and had me craft or bought from me because they remembered my good attitude.

A little helping of wit doesn't hurt either, especially for deflecting trolls. Someone once tried to pull scare tactics on me, insulting me and saying, "I'm going to post naked goat pictures all over your forums."

"Go for it," I replied, "I love draenei!"

"If a draenei ****ed you, what kind of babies would you have?"

"Why, little trolls with hooves of course."

Surprisingly, this got a chuckle out of them, and they left me alone. So keep a smile on your face and a laugh up your sleeve - in my experience, it's always beneficial.

epic gems

After the orgasmic nature of the gem market the last two weeks, it comes as no surprise that a crash had to happen eventually. For the past 5 days there is nary a raw gem to be found on the AH, except for 160g+, while cut gems have plummeted to 120g for primary colors. :( I'm still making a profit by buying gems through trade but it blows!

Oopsie!

I'll be honest and tell you that I don't pay much attention to my server's glyph market. It's fairly common practice among scribes to watch one's competitors, add them to one's friend list, and watch for patterns to determine who is whose alt. This allows one to post after they log out, decreasing the chance you'll be quickly undercut.

I don't cancel/relist, it is too time-intensive for me, so I do a waterfall posting. I post, wait 1-2 hours, come back, post again, so all my glyphs stay up. The only time this is annoying is in the morning when all my glyphs have expired, but for the time I save it's a small price to pay.

However I've never really watched other folks. Before the ban wave there were a couple persistent glyph-bots on my server, but once they were out of the way profits steadily increased. Lately I have noticed my auctions getting undercut more frequently but again, I didn't really pay attention...


...until I got a whisper on one of my glyph alts from an unknown rogue. Apparently there is a new fella in our market who is posting all his glyphs at a max of 25g, even popular glyphs that can sell for 70g or more. Rogue fellow was combating it by buying all his 20g auctions and relisting them for higher (something that I consider too risky to do). I did a quick Auctioneer scan and indeed, his highest price is 25g. Ouch.

I am simply going to keep undercutting by 1c. Profits are still okay, and my hunch is that this deep undercutter is either going to get bored, or is going to run out of gold or, more likely, materials. A couple herb botters are active but I have a huge backstock and am still buying herbs daily at the right price. My cost to make is about 60s so my minimum to sell is 70s.

The funny part, though, is this guy was rattling off whose glyphs alts he thought were one person's. He grouped one of mine with another guy, but he did manage to get B. and my scribe together. lol! He also said he was going to try and price reset and not post until 8....so now that I'm done posting I'll try and come back in an hour or so and cancel/repost to get prices back up. Can't really hurt to try, eh?

How I GDKP

I've been running gold runs on my server since December of 2009. During this time I've streamlined my process and gained valuable experience as a raid organizer and leader. Here are some of the things I do to make my runs go smoothly:

• For ICC, always do signups in advance.
Generally the more intelligent and watchful folks browse the realm forums (generally) and will sign up for your run. A forum post also allows you to lay out your rules and requirements so you don't have to repeat yourself over and over. A forum post also has a sense of legitimacy that advertising a gold ICC in /2 does not.


• For ToC, always always always pug through Trade.
At this point most high end raiders don't even have alts that need ToC, so I've found that pugging brings in sometimes up to 1k more from this raid.


• Make lots of macros.
I have a Vent macro, 2 rules macros for ToC, 2 rules macros for ICC, and various informational macros for questions from people. It saves me insane amounts of time typing the same things over and over.


• Always post your rules in raid chat.
This is a security for your attendees. GMs have been known to distribute gold/loot when a master looter disobeys her chat-stated rules. They can look at the logs to determine this - so for everyone's safety, type rules out instead of voicing them over Vent.


• Attach your name to your run.
Ex: "Jigglybutts' ICC25 GDKP!" When people see this week after week they know that people trust you with handling money consistently and fairly.


• If you're going to skim, let it be known.
Taking gold off the top in secret is underhanded and unfair. I reserve all Primordial Saronite drops and take my fair split from my runs, but I have never reserved any other pieces, nor have I taken any on a whim. Another fellow on my server reserves the first two BoEs - but I find it more fun and profitable for everybody if all gear is bid upon. The point here, however, is honesty. No one will trust you with their money if you are caught stealing (and believe me, you will).


• Gold Raid Manager is a popular addon for tracking bids, the pot and the split...
...but I found it obnoxious and confusing. I do all my bidding by hand and keep my own records of winning bids and totals. Several other attendees do as well, to keep their own tally (see point directly above). Try the addon; if you don't like it, know that it's okay to do things your own way.


• Do bids while clearing trash.
Master Loot all items to yourself and trade to the winner. This can build trust as people receive items from you, and as they trade gold for the actual item instead of trading and waiting you to ML to their character. WARNING: Do NOT do this with quest items such as Festergut's Acidic Blood or Rotface's Acidic Blood, or with the item Precious's Ribbon. These items will become permanently bound if you do so. (Thanks Azzur for pointing this out.)


• Bonus Tip: Turn loot to Uncommon before fighting Precious, so you can Master Loot the shirt if it drops! (Credit again to Azzur.)

Botters, how do I love thee?

Let me count the ways....

Botters are annoying, especially to legitimate farmers. They are unstoppable forces that cannot be competed against. No matter how hard or how long you farm, you can't beat them. For a real, player farmer, they are irritating, even rage-provoking. For a crafter, they are your best friend.


Ripples passed through the gold-making community about two months ago when, suddenly and across many servers, herbs, ore, and leather disappeared from the Auction House. Prices soared from 12/g stack of Saronite Ore to 36g or more per stack. Casual scribes were forced to give up the market, faced with an absence of supplies for their business. What happened?

A little sleuthing digs up that Blizzard released a new version of Warden, their anti-cheating program, and broke or blocked many if not all of the prominent botting programs. For farmers, this meant huge profits from material-hungry crafters. For crafters and buyers, it meant a massive market overhaul starting from the ground up. It took several weeks, but eventually the increased price of mats bumped up the prices of crafted items. From what I've seen prices have stayed high since then as people get discouraged and abandon the markets.

Today, for the first time since the ban wave, I saw Saronite Ore for 12g and 13g a stack. Huzzah! In the last two weeks I've lowered my snatch numbers from 20g to 15g for Saronite, 15g to 9g for Tiger Lily, and 25g to 15g for Adder's Tongue.

From buying so many items I know that there are approximately 2-4 botters on my server and a few more seem to have showed up. Great news for me - since I am one of the most diverse and large-scale sellers on my realm, I snap up their mats, process them, and profit. As more people quit the game before Cataclysm I predict that in the coming months my profits may increase based on more crafters leaving the game (I have already seen this happen in the epic gem market). For now, I'll continue to buy and sell, and tip my hat to the botters that make a good crafting market possible.

State of the Union: Glyphs

I'll make it clear right now, I am very late to the party in terms of glyph-making. A lot of people got filthy rich off of this earlier in the expansion; by contrast, my scribe was first created about 2 months ago. Feeling there was still money to be had, and that if it failed it would still be a good learning experience, I dived right in.

At first I was very hesitant to use addons. I'd dabbled in Auctioneer before and I did regular scans, but anything beyond that was a scary jungle of command lines and Skillet buttons. And honestly? I still don't use Skillet or KTQ, holding a deep mistrust of Auctioneer's market data accuracy. What has revolutionized the way I post (in all markets) is Quick Auctions 3. I won't bore you with the how's and why's, since there are many excellent guides out there for this addon (Yumfries' on Youtube helped me immensely), but this is a must. have. addon. No if's and's or but's. I was ACTUALLY posting glyphs by hand before I figured this out, and on the scale glyph-making must be to be profitable, that is not an efficient, feasible, or sane way of going about things.

About two weeks after I started making max-level glyphs, the 2nd version of Blizzard's Warden came out, and the Great Bot Holocaust of 2010 occurred. Ore, herbs and leather vanished from the AH and prices for raw mats skyrocketed. Some influential crafters farmed mats or had their own stock that kept crafted prices down for a while; however, they have inexorably crept higher in price, sometimes by 40g (cut epic gems). Only in the last two week have bots slowly begun to trickle past the new security and back into the game.

After 10 days of scrabbling for mats, I was almost ready to give up on glyphs. Fortunately, at around that mark is when I found "my" botter. For a while we did face-to-face trades at great prices, but nowadays I usually let him post on the AH so I can see if he undercuts someone for even less. He's also a great source of Frost Lotus and Eternal Life - but his primary items for sale are Adder's Tongue, Goldclover, Tiger Lily, and Deadnettle.

I've been buying huge numbers of herbs from him for a couple weeks. To give you some stats, as of this posting I have:
6128 Adder's Tongue
2000 Tiger Lily
3528 Icethorn
1174 Deadnettle
389 Snowfall Ink
3140 Ink of the Sea

Of course,these numbers don't take into account the other herbs I have used crafting Runescrolls, offhands, cards, and glyphs.

With this huge stock in my bank, I got to work. After mass crafting about 10-20 of every glyph, I split them between two special glyph bankers decked out with 4 Pack of Endless Pockets. I do a Summary scan with QA3 and refresh my glyph stocks about once or twice a week. I do not cancel/relist. Instead, I do a "waterfall" posting strategy. I post in the morning, and then every few hours whenever I have time I simply post again. If no one has undercut me, my glyphs stay up. If someone has, I undercut them with MORE glyphs without wasting time running back and forth and refreshing the mailbox. Having a large amount of glyphs is what makes this method possible.

I realize by now this post is probably getting boring, so I'll end with a few tips about glyphs.

o Post for 12 hours. This way you can get your stock back without worrying about canceling.

o Find a farmer/botter who can supply you with lots and lots of cheap herbs. Having a "warehouse" of herbs can and will help you tough through AH dry spells.

o Oh, about that warehouse.... Get a guild bank. Hell, get two or three. When you start buying a lot of herbs and turning them into inks, you're gonna need the space.

o Know your market. If you're sure Glyph of Sunder Armor never sells even if it's listed at 45g, don't craft it.

o Post quickly after resets. When your glyphs are the only ones on the AH, people will have to buy them. For example, my server had a 24-hour downtime last week. Since then glyph prices has doubled because I posted at my fallback, and undercutting has been descending slowly from that point on. A formerly 5g glyph is now an average of 23g. Yay!




STATS
o 1000 - 4000g per day from glyphs
o 3 private guild banks
o 1 scribe, 2 posting mules
o approximately 1 hour per day posting; milling/making inks completed in windowed mode while doing other things

intro!

Hi, and welcome to my blog! In this space I'll be chronicling my gold-making adventures in World of Warcraft, the strategies I use, the deals I make (or get), and anything else that strikes my fancy; I'll try to keep it on-topic but I can't make any promises!

To read a little of my gold-making background, check out my Profile over on the right.