Today I'm going to give you a sort of time line of my history playing on the AH. I'm doing this so you can trace your own steps against mine and have a rough comparison to where you are, could be, should be, and going to be. Of course I am in no way perfect and don't work at your pace, but as to an idea of the stepping stone process this should be helpful. The idea of this post is just that, to show that you don't start instantly with a market share of everything. Rather that everybody needs to start somewhere.
In TBC I started my farming for epic mount money and the mats to make my super rofl-copter. I got the money by farming primal airs in Nagrand with the engineering toy and was making up to 30g per primal I got. Since I could get a decent amount running around on my 100% mount (since a flier was only 60% speed) this wasn't a terrible thing, but obviously not that fun. Then I went to the isle of QQ on a pvp server that the alliance owned whenever I needed more for gems and enchants or just some extra spending money. This was definitely not fun at all, but it was all I knew how to do for gold.
Fast forward to wrath where I rerolled JC and LW to replace enchanting and engineering. I got a few of the nice rare gem cuts which, along with the profession changes, ate up all of my questing money and whatever I got from selling enchanting mats I got from DE'ing quest rewards. Most of my money now was coming from when I'd cut a handful of gems and sell them now and again. It made me some decent money, I mean nothing spectacular, but it covered my expenses. I built up a few thousand gold to hold onto while slowly increasing my list of gem cuts. I could finally stop doing all dailys (minus the JC quest) and I didn't need to farm a single thing thanks to my small gem business.
I got interested in inscription eventually and started reading Gevlon's blog about how he was working it and gave it a shot. I was wondering how they could make money when I'd see a dozen pages of glyphs at 3-5 gold each. To my surprise I was making a good 2k every single day from the word go. Sadly it took me about 90 minutes for ONLY inscription. This was mostly because I had no clue about what addons to use, how to scan only glyphs in the AH, how to post them all faster, etc. I was still a noob basically.
I was still also cutting rare gems now and again with the help of somebody that had all the cuts that I didn't have. They were selling loads of them and making almost as much as I was with far less effort. So instead of saying 'oh they must just be lucky' I got into to later on. I got all my addons sorted out and figured out which ones were for what and so forth. Now I'm all sorts of high tech, cutting my posting time in half, and was filthy rich with my 10k gold.
I was then realizing that I could make a lot of money effectively and I decided to get the red dragonhawk I've always wanted since level 10. I farmed baron's mount, grinded out sha'tari skyguard rep all while keeping my auctions current. Then it came time to buy the expensive mounts and spent every last gold I had and got the 100 mounts achievement. Out of morbid curiosity I totaled up how much I had spent, from hard currency to emblems, SKS, and the time I could have been farming if I decided. It wasn't a pretty number to see in the red.
I figured that if I could get that much gold in a month or so that I could do even better. That's when I really started to work my JC and started investing into epic gems and stocking up on more rare gems. With a semi-decent bank roll from my glyph trade I was able to buy a large number and only waited a week for the money come back in as profit.
Once I had worked my way into the gem market, I started reading other gold blogs and more of the greedy goblin. I found other tips on things that sell a lot like belt buckles. When I needed one I would buy the mats since they were ALWAYS a good 20g cheaper than a crafted one. So I would think "only a retard would buy one of those" still having a bit of faith left in the general intelligence level. Heh I was wrong on that one. This is when I started to fully realize just how impatient and ignorant a lot of people could get and that they would spend a ludicrous amount of gold on things priced triple the material costs. Once I had accepted this I started to be less conservative with my buying and selling which increased my profit margins greatly.
I brought my BS/Enchanter over and started making buckles then decided to craft some enchanting rods while I was at it. This is when I really started to branch out on my own. I would go through all my profession skill windows and look at all the things I could make that weren't gear. I'd look at them and think "do people actually use this crap? Apparently they do. I used lil' sparky's workshop to give me a list of average AH prices of them and glanced at the materials needed. Then I'd total up the mat price and craft a few to sell if it looked profitable. Some worked, some didn't. But the point is that I was learning and exploring on my own and not from somebody saying to go do X, Y, and Z then just following a guide book while not understanding what I was doing.
I started remembering all the vendors that sold various specialty things and decided to fly out and try to auction some. I sold some vendor pets, a few engineering mats, and a bunch of profession bags. I started to leave a toon that I stopped playing parked out there to buy more every now and then which gave me another market to work in. Around now is when I had a large stockpile built up and started my bankers guild and bought 2 tabs for it so all my bankers could have access to it without having to juggle mail all the time. I dedicated one for inscription goodies and another for all my excess gems and miscellaneous items.
A while later I get into enchanting scrolls and bought another bank tab. I filled the new tab with enchanting mats and vellums then went to town. A good 30% of them sold for under material costs, some I even just dropped. But the ones that did sell are still selling VERY well. So my first walk into that market wasn't pretty, but it wasn't a loss either. In fact being my first major market start up, it was extremely messy in all honesty since it took up a lot more time, space, and money than inscription did.
And now we come to today. Here I am with hundreds of thousands of gold, loaded with mounts and epic gems and still gunning for more. What should you take from this? That anybody can do it and nobody needs to be farming forever. Don't let yourself be stuck in the mine or knee deep in the mud picking flowers. Get out there and don't work your ass off, just be clever. Pay attention and don't get stuck in the 'my friends all farm and do dailys so I should be doing the same thing.' It doesn't take a genius to work the AH, only patience and an observant mind. If you just can't be bothered then you can't be bothered and will spend hours stuck doing a boring grind to get something that you can "just farm for free."
Don't be that guy.
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