Time ???? Profit

Today's post is about comparing time to profit and what it's getting you. Also to show that you really don't need to have 8 hours of dedicated play time every day to make decent money.

In an effort to put my time where my mouth is, I'll use my own AH time figures per profession and how much I collect in my mail box thanks to them. All times and income are average numbers of course. You can use these numbers to decide if you actually do have the amount of time needed to get gold capped (in less than a year). Or if you have enough time to afford all your needs such as repairs, epic flying for alts, all the necessary items enhancements and consumables and still not be worrying about money. Or you can simply decide I'm a no life AH camper selling all my G to the spam bots ^_O.O_^

Also, over the next few days I'll be posting the essentials of what I have been selling. I'll be listing the profession, what I sell with it, and what my minimum sale price is per item (along with any profession specific strategies). If there happen to be any rare drop or out of the way purchased recipes, I'll list them along with their locations as well. Sort of a profession play by play or "How To" if you will, so stay tuned.

Ok, on with the show!


Profession/Time/Income

-Smithing: 40 mins a week, 8000 income
-LW: 30 mins a week, 3500 income
-Alchemy X-mute spec: 15 mins a week, 2500 income (including the cut meta's and daily epic)
-Inscription: 7 hours a week, 14000 income
-Enchanting: 4 hours a week, 14000 income
-JC: 7 hours a week, 21000 income
-vendors/misc: 10 mins a week, 200 income

Just under 3 hours total per day every day. Sound like a lot? Well that's because it is a lot! Good thing I'm not around for any of it. While all of that is going on, I am usually...

-Writing what you are reading (O hai there)
-Cooking and Eating dinner
-Playing a game that isn't WoW (Fall Out 3)
-Enjoying my morning coffee (instant human, just add caffeine)
-Doing my normal "just waking up, just got home from work, unwind before sleep" routines
-Waiting for raids to start (usually when I do my vendor jumping, Summon please!)
-Cleaning my place
-Researching something online game non game related (I do this a lot)
-Reading a book (yes people still do this. I know...scary)
-Browsing maintankadin or reading blogs (hi gevlon! hi tella!)
-God forbid actually WORKING (screw you I like my job)
-Watching a movie (no comment)

Now let me break it all down into time I ACTUALLY spend doing stuff on game and not while I am doing any of the above mentioned activities.


NOTE: Most of the long in game time comes from not having a large stock built up (or being able to maintain one) requiring me to prospect/mill/etc. all my own goods every other day.

-Smithing: 5 mins a week, 8000 income
-Leather working: 5 mins a week, 3500 income
-Alchemy X-mute spec: 5 mins a week, 2500 income
-Scribe: 2 hours a week, 14000 income
-Enchanting: 2 hours a week, 14000 income
-JC: 4 hours a week, 21000 income
-Vendor jumping/other: 5 mins a week, 1900 income (mostly pets, breaking eternals, and bags)


That comes to roughly 1 hour and 15 minutes a day. Sound a lot less "no lifer" or "24/7 AH camper Chinese gold farmer" to you now? The professions listed as 5 minutes a week have their time spent scanning a handful of items on the AH (less than 5 items usually), hitting the 'Create All" button, and posting time then changing characters. More than likely, this actually takes less than 5 minutes, but it's a nice round number for our purposes. And had I a better machine, my load/craft/post times would be far lower than they are, which takes up the bulk of this time. You'll notice that a few professions are missing. That is because I do not have easy access to a tailor, miner (titansteel cd), or engineer.

As you can see, if you have one of the listed professions, you can be making decent money with very little effort and a very small amount of the time cutting into your actual game play time. Granted, it isn't as simple as "scan, craft, post, profit" to start off with,but most of it is.

Once you learn your chosen market and your server's usual price range, it's all easy from there. The hardest part is the learning experience, after that it's just getting together the initial gold to get a good stock of things crafted to start up your own business. Keep in mind that the hour plus a day is making use of nearly every profession in game. So don't take my own hour plus time of AHing as what you should expect to need to spend. If you're very limited on play time and you sign on just for raids or serious arena matches, you likely have a profession you can use for only a few minutes a day to take care of all your needs for money.


AH giggle of the day!
As i'm working my way into the enchanting market I noticed that mongoose scrolls are being posted for a decent profit considering the general annoyance of getting all the mats. Unfortunately my enchanter only learned that trade once they hit 80. I asked a favor of a friend and they helped me run kara up to moroes to get the plan for it (100% drop rate).


We kill attunemen for lulz (no mount qq) and some fast voids from the drops. Down moroes and get the plan. I craft 2 scrolls with the mats I just got and 100g I purchased. Toss them on the AH for 450g each and BAM! 10 minutes later both sold for over 300g pure profit. So I think hey, this is pretty nice! I craft 3 more. And as of the following morning all 3 had sold for an even 500 each (475 after AH cut, the bastards!). Lesson learned? 20 minutes well spent is 20 minutes being well paid!



Thanks for stopping by!