Where to start?

Kammler recently wrote that it seems most of us are writing mostly for each other. In other words each entry is more of an "advanced only" level of understanding and doesn't offer much in the way of help for anybody really getting into (or back into) the AH game. Lets be honest, if you read my last 10 gold posts you won't really know what I'm going on about more often than not if you aren't already experienced in it to some degree.

Today I'm going to give a handful of tips for people that already are familiar with the AH game, but only on a smaller scale. So if you're literally just starting out this will be useful to you, but still requires a small amount of knowledge of the AH game. Or if you happen to just be returning to the game this will be perfect. The idea here is to write up something that can be useful now and not something that requires large amounts of planning ahead.

If you're already having success working your market of choice but want to improve how well you run it or just want to expand, read on. I will be covering not only what to do, but how and why as well. Note that the how's and the why's are the most important in the long term, but the what's are the things that you can do now to make gold now. Now mind you, I'm not going to say go sell this and that because if you haven't figured out that you should sell something, I'd venture that you're beyond help. If you need some suggestions on things that are profitable, check out the list. It has everything that I sell for a profit, just pick something that you can craft and see if you can turn a profit on your server with it.


Diversity is king.
Getting the most obvious out of the way first. More markets means more gold. Period. You want to have access to as many different crafting professions as possible so that no matter what happens to one market you'll have another to fall back on. Right now the best ones to have are JC, enchanting, and xmute spec alchemy. JC does the shuffle, alchemy makes the meta gems, and enchanting is plain awesome on it's own in addition to having a place in the shuffle. Do note though that currently, alchemy is 99% worthless if you don't have access to meta gem cuts from JC.


Patience is a virtue.
When supply starts to thin out, don't jump ship immediately or raise your buying price just yet. Give it a day or three to see if it returns or evens out and you can save a lot of gold.


The hardest part of making gold is not spending it.
I think that about sums it all up. You may read of other big time AH barons talking about buying 40 boe epics for their alts off spec and donating 200k into their guild bank from time to time. I know I'm guilty of doing my (more than) fair share of wasteful spending on stupid things I don't need. The simple version is this: you are not us. You do not have a million gold to throw around as you please.

Don't take this as an insult because it's not, just something very important that you need to realize. If you want to make gold for the 100 mounts achievement then go for it. Just don't spend your bank total of 50k on three mounts because then you'll only have to start all over from the beginning. And starting up is the hardest part. Spend your money as you wish, but spend it wisely and always keep a decent sized reserve to keep making more.


Keep learning more.
Obvious point is obvious. The more you know and the more you learn, the more you can open up new markets and gold making opportunities that you didn't have before. If you're reading this, you're already in the right place.

Above all else, know your resources. Check out all of the gold blogs out there, a lot of them either have a list of everything they sell or talk once a week on what has been selling well for them. Look into them and pick out what you're able to craft. Then go through the AH and see if there is any profit to be had for you in that market.


Craft everything.
Once you have a decent amount of gold saved up, you can start to invest into certain items that have high profit margins but low rates of sales. Not necessarily things like a mechano hog as that's a very large investment, but things like twink enchant scrolls or crafted mini pets. These different niche markets all sell consistently for great profits but they tend to take a while to go through. But when somebody with a lot of loose cash is looking around for a mini fel reaver, don't you think that it should be you selling it to them?


Take it one day at a time.
If you're low on gold and you can't bank roll a massive stokpile and the ability to plan ahead this is what you really have to do. Only buy materials as you need them to craft only what will be turning a profit today and tomorrow, not next week sometime. This is the best way that you can save up money and avoid investing in the wrong thing at the wrong time.

The main idea here is to keep making gold in multiple markets without extending yourself too much. If you only have 20k or so then the last thing you want to do is invest 20k into enchanting mats. Even though you'll eventually make a profit on them, all of your other markets will come to a halt because you can't fund them any longer. This will also give you the added benefit of learning your markets inside and out which is absolutely imperative for when you really want to go big.


Profits margins > big sales.
When deciding on what to sell always go with the highest profit margins. That is, the total sale minus the price you spent on materials. If you buy a raw gem for 50g and sell it for 60, that's a 10g profit margin so you would be better off selling a 10g gem for only 30. This is the best way for you to start off when picking a market.


Farming is not free!
This is something that you need to get in your head right now. Here's a link to a perfectly written post by Gevlon that sums it up completely. If you do not agree with this or are just unable to get through to yourself that the flower you just picked up is not worth zero gold then there is no way that you'll ever get a decent amount of gold together without spending your entire week farming. Fact. I cannot emphasize this enough, everything has a price even if you didn't pay it. The point of playing the AH is so that you don't have to work at a very boring and repetitive task for 5 hours for a meager 400 gold. And if you want to counter with "well I didn't spend any gold to get it so how is it not free" you are still wrong. You're wrong, wrong, WRONG!


Thanks for stopping by!