Profession overview: Smithing & Leatherworking

Just like tailoring and enggy, I decided to merge these three professions into a single entry as they're both niche professions. Each one works in a very small market with low competition and high demand. Each one will have it's own section in this entry.

Leather working

Pros:
- Easy to maintain
- Low competition
- Easy money with material conversions

Cons:
- Skilling up can be a nightmare depending on material costs
- Materials can be hard to stokpile


Best sellers:
- Mammoth mining bag
- Traveler's trapping pack
- Twilight leg armor
- Pristine hide


Overview:
Leather working is a profession that has a great balance between maintenance, profit, and supply. The mining bags (requires sons of hodir rep) are going to be your top seller and with very little competition. I typically buy plain borean leather at 20g/stack and sell the bags for 150g each. The rare cata leg armors I go as high as 280, but you'll have to really watch your server's leather market to get a good idea of where to price. Also be sure to keep an eye on the price of arctic fur as the epic level WotLK leg armors are still selling daily for me. I get at most 150g for the NR epic armors with a material cost of about 70.

As for how many you list, I've found that 3 of the bags and 3 of the leg armors works best. As for the hides I only list two at a time in singles because, well, I can't get enough leather ever to be able to sell the hides as is. Make sure to check what will get you the most profit between raw mats and items and not just the highest price tag. 500g profit from a 500g sale is better than 100g profit from a 2000g sale.

Black smithing

Pros:
- Extremely consistent rate of sales
- Low competition for lower level enchanting rods

Cons:
- Leveling cost can be steep
- Large competition for buckles


Best sellers:
- Ebonsteel belt buckle
- Adamantite rod
- Arcanite rod


Overview:
Belt buckles are going to be nearly impossible to keep in stock, I can never stokpile two stacks of them. I go as low as 260g but they're usually in the 330 range with a max of 400. I typically get the ele bars at 8g, pyrium at 20, and earth changes daily so keep an eye out for them. After that are enchanting rods from arcanite up to titanium. These may be difficult to work in due to shortage of TBC metal, but you can use that to your advantage.

Try to control the price by stokpiling the cheap materials so that people can't find them so easily and you can charge up to 200g per rod. I always list these in sets of 4 as that seems to be the right balance between lost deposits and rate of sales.

Also if you have an alchemist, you can cut the cost of arcanite bars down to almost nothing by xmuting your own bars. Thorium bars and arcane crystals are typically 1g each any day of the week which makes the arcanite rods cost 2 minutes and not cost me gold in any noticeable amount.


One tip that applys for each of the gear professions is the pvp gear. When a new arena season starts Blizz has stated that they'll be adding in new crafted gear. This will be a high demand market for the first few weeks of the season so be sure that you get your share of it.


Thanks for stopping by!