Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Low profit professions: Part 2


Moving right along with tailoring. The rare spell threads are the same case with the enggy scopes, great to skill up with and therefore flooded under material costs. After that the only real profitable item to sell are the epic threads and nether bags. Nether bags have a great rate of sales, but an abysmal profit margin so they aren't a great market to focus on. That leaves only the epic threads and 26 slot bags to sell.

Unfortunately they have a week long CD and the chaos orb version is not worth mentioning as it requires 4. The 26 spot bags sell to a very select few people and slowly at that. When every tailor only has one decent item to sell (once a week) there isn't a huge margin for income, let alone profit.

Then we have leather working. This is a profession that has very little to craft much like tailoring. But unlike tailoring the epic leg armors have no CD on them which means that the rate of sales can compensate for the smaller markets. In addition to this there are the profession bags but those require rep from wrath that is not easy to max out without having done it previously. Also like tailoring, the blue leg armors are used to skill up very often thus flooding the market and dropping their price considerably.

Also with the potential for a massive flood of raw materials from TB crocodiles the prices on all LW items from cata can be subject to drastic price shifts making it difficult to get a handle on the market and prime times to sell and buy.

All in all there are still ways to make money without grinding even with these professions. It just requires significantly more effort and patience than the others. If these are the only professions that you have access to then naturally I recommend that you do what you can to get one of the more profitable ones leveled up. Either by leveling an alt that can grab you 2 of the 4 best ones or by dropping the lowest profit one you have and skilling it up the hard way.

Though the down side is of course that with only having low end professions the initial investment may be far too steep for your average player. If this is your situation then you'll have to do the same thing that any AH baron has had to do when they started. Find the most profitable raw material that you can farm, suck it up and get your hands dirty.


Thanks for stopping by!

2 comments:

  1. Nice little series, I liked it. Personally, BS/LW has been a pretty awesome source of income, netting me over 100k in a little over a month. However, the entry cost is fairly steep. You have to basically be selling one of every profitable PvP piece at all times, and even getting those patterns can be a drain. If you can only afford to get and craft one or two pieces, it'll definitely take some time to start seeing profit. I think they're excellent to branch out in to, but they are certainly not the best "starter" profession.

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  2. On markets and professions, I am finding that I may be creating markets. Lets face it, the addons and tools we use are no secret. I have found that I may be creating my competion.

    What I am begining to play with is lowering my fallback prices, to create steady markets that are not hugely porfitable, and therfore less attractive. I believe most casuals are not in competition with us intentionally, they are just passing tourists, look for the next "quick" way to make a "bunch" of gold.

    What I have found is my effort to maximize my profits, may be cutting into them by having my fallback so high that it appears to be a "Quick" turnover for those players, then it does not sell as fast as they want and then they just want to unload it, and the market is undercut to the floor, profit is minimal, competition goes away, then my fallback kicks in and it looks profitable again, and i am flooded with competition.

    Stok, what level would you say you generaly set your fallback too? 100gold? 50% markup? 300% markup. I am thinking 20gold or 150% mats as a general rule, whichever is greater. and 10gold on items under ~50gold.

    Great read as always Stok.

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