Progress, Barking and Fortune Card Fortunes!

Well, it's took about 3 and-a-bit weeks, but I feel life I've finally started making progress.
After getting Jewelcrafting and Inscription up high enough to be useful I've managed to make about 10k profit!

I've finally managed to Flip a couple of Living Embers i purchased from Trade and made a few thousand profit - Got a bit edgy after I saw the price of them on the auction house go 1000g below what I paid for, but I held my nerve and it paid off in the end. I know it shouldn't have worried me too much, but when I had spent about 50% of my gold reserves on the investment and saw the market sink like that I was worried to say the least!
Anyway, back to the professions - I've not done too much with jewelcrafting yet - I've been watching The Undermine Journal to see whats going to be the best to make. Other than that, I've just been doing the daily, and should have enough to buy something useful tomorrow!

Now, for the big revelation of the week... NEVER underestimate how much of a difference barking in trade does!
After a light-hardhearted attempt to break the Mysterious Fortune Card market before my last post, I saw that my main competitors were no longer listing or barking, so I went in full throttle and
I managed to sell around 1000 over the weekend, making around 4g profit on each. My main problem was keeping up with the demand - as soon as I made some, I had sold them.
After a while all the reasonably priced herbs on the auction house were gone, so I asked on trade to see if I could enlist the services of a farmer and get them to COD to me for a reasonable price, but as of yet I've had no luck. Luckily I don't mind doing a bit of farming!

Most evenings I've been on my Death Knight farmer touring Twilight Highlands and Uldum whilst watching TV and posting all the herbs and Volatile Life (which is also tediously expensive on my realm at the moment) to my scribe, making fortune cards and Darkmoon cards with the burning embers I got from milling.
I've not got round to making macros for my MFC barking, but I've just been basing my pitches on the silly arguments people are having on trade and Saying "Why buy gold when you can WIN gold" after a gold seller spams.


Right! Reader Participation time! 
What barks do you use? Are you scripted or do you just go with the flow?

Progress Report - Week 3(ish)

 

Hmm.. First off, MySales appears to be missing some of the things I've sold this week, including two Schematic: White Smoke Flares (sold by Wind Trader Lathari in shattrath) I sold for 600G each! 

With my tailoring I've started making and selling PVP stuff, which seems to be one of the few markets on my server that isn't already flooded with stuff. Over the last week and a bit I've been more-or-less the only person selling the Bloodthirsty Fireweave Robe on the AH. I was doing quite well with Embersilk bags, until somebody started listing them at about 50% of cost, so I'm currently waiting that out. 

Since starting this blog and actually working at making gold my total liquid gold amount has stayed relatively stable - I think I'm somewhere near 18k at the moment, but most profit I've made has been pushed right back into the business, so I think I'm probably sitting on around 10k worth of goods and mats at the moment, which is a definite increase since last week. That's been another thing I've had to get over - just because my total gold amount hasn't changed doesn't mean I've not made any money.

My Paladin alt dinged 75 today, and so I've literally just finished getting him up to 525 Inscription. I've made a few Mysterious Fortune Cards just to test the water, but a little bit apprehensive about things at the moment as I know at least one person has been barking and using all the tactics that I would be using (such as paying someone to gather herbs for me by COD, etc) to make gold, so I'm currently watching their pricing and when they post before trying to move in on the market.

I think the biggest change for me recently has been getting in the habit of buying crafting mats when the price is cheap, rather than when I actually need stuff. I know this seems like an obvious thing to most accomplished goldmakers, but it slipped under the radar with me until recently. I can now fully appreciate snatch lists!

Oh yeah, whilst I'm here I must make a recommendation to anyone wanting to know how to set up TradeSkillMaster. Here is a thread on The Consortium forums with a complete tutorial on how to set it up - It no doubt saved me hours (if not years!) of not knowing what I'm doing!

That's about it for the last week I believe! I'm going to get posting a bit more regularly once I'm finished leveling jewelcrafting and get a few more bits worked out. Most of my time recently has been so focused on getting my pally up I've not had time to do some proper auctioneering. I'm looking forward now to just getting on with stuff without the feeling I should be doing something else!

Weekly update and progress report

Well, its been a week since my last post, and things have been taking a little bit longer than I first anticipated. As soon as the Living Ember that I have on the auction house that I purchased for 5000 gold sells for 7000 I will finally have over 20,000 liquid gold.

So, what have I been doing? My Paladin alt is now sitting at level 66, so hopefully by this time next week I should have another 2 max level professions. In regards to that I've been doing a lot of thinking about whether to go Alchemy or Inscription. I've been watching the auction house and The Undermine Journal quite closely to work out which would be the most profitable, and at the moment I'm defiantly more inclined to go inscription. No change of plan on taking up jewelcrafting though - a feeling that was enforced by this post over at Capped By Cata.

On the auction house side of things I've had a few decent flips with things like Living Ember (flipped about 3, with 2k profit on each), rare pets and rare recipes.

I've set up a snatch list of a load of enchanting mats, ores and cloths by looking on TUJ for the cheaper end of the price spectrum. After a bit of hunting around I found spreadsheets for enchanting and tailoring professions, and used my snatch list prices for those. In regards to actually making and selling stuff I made a few netherweave bags, but have held off selling any more as the market is quite flooded at the moment and they are going for about 5G each, which is roughly the mats cost at the moment, so I'll hold out until the market picks up. The profit margins on tailored PVP gear seems quite good at the moment, so I've crafted a couple of bits, but sales seem quite slow, despite there currently being little competition. Powerful enchanted spellthreads have also been slowly moving, but not quickly enough for my liking to be honest!

The enchant scrolls market on my realm seems to be rather volatile too - I've not made much mainly because I've still got a bit of a backlog of bits that I crafted a few months ago, and also because I'd rather get my head around the market (and get a few more formulas) before I dive in. I did make one Lavawalker scroll as based on TUJ data they sold quite well, but that's not gone yet either.

I think my main problem at the moment is inexperience with markets. I've been out of the game for a while and I need to get to know them again, but that's something I'm working on by watching the auction house, watching TUJ and just generally getting to know my professions a little bit better.

Anyway, enough of that! Hopefully my next post will be a little bit more interesting and insightful than this rambling inconsequential rant!

That awkward first blog post....

Hello! I'm Jim and welcome to my gold blog! Yes I know the name is unimaginative, but I thought I'd keep things simple!


Who are you and what do you want?!

Well, I'm a wow player and have been (on and off) for a few years. I had an interest in gold making for a while, but if I'm honest I lacked the enthusiasm and patience to follow things through. Now after returning to the game after a few months off I've decided to give gold making a proper go.
Hopefully me writing this blog will help me take making gold a bit more seriously and also help others who are just starting out on their own quest for profit by being in a similar situation!


So what IS your situation?

I have 2 level 85s - A Warlock with tailoring & enchanting and a Death Knight with mining and herbalism, and I'm currently leveling up (at 50 as we speak) a Draeni Paladin for use as a jewlcrafting and alchemist alt.
I have around 15000 gold spread over those three characters, plus 2 bank alts with a couple of hundred gold each. My bank alts also have a guild each - one with 2 tabs and one with 3.
When I was leveling up herbalism and mining I put everything I gathered into one of the guild banks. This was just before Cataclysm launched, and I was determined to make some money out of the influx of new alts. Judging by what I still have left in my banks I managed to sell about half of my stash, which should come in useful for power leveling alchemy and jewelcrafting.
My other guild bank has one tab filled with random enchant mats, one with random things like Small Eggs that I was selling for Winter Veil, and one with quite a bit of cloth in.


OK, so now what?

Well I'll post on here with gold making methods I've been trying, whats been working and what hasn't been. I'll also be asking for other peoples opinions and advice on gold-related topics and issues, as well as making regular updates to my own personal financial status!
I think that just about wraps it up for my blog introduction. Hopefully this will be the first of many posts, and the blog is useful to at least myself!

Thanks for reading!
-Jim