TL's Treasury Guide v1.0

[TeaLeaf]

How to Make Gold!
This topic keeps coming up again and again, so I thought I would try to put it down on paper.  Why me?  No idea, but I have sufficient gold for my needs, to pay my raiding bills, to supply all the flasks I use, to have epic flying mounts on my toons and all this without having to farm, so I guess whatever I'm doing works for me.  I hope it helps you make some gold too.

So, if you're interested in knowing how to make gold the easy way then read on.


TRADING
I tend to make my gold via trading - it's more interesting to me than mindless farming, I can talk to guildies and friends at the same time, I have no mobs to kill and more importantly I have yet to get a repair bill whilst sitting at AH.  

It doesn't matter whether you have items sell from instance runs, farming, crafting or simply buying and re-selling, all of the below rules apply.  The simplest rule of all is this one:

An item is worthless until somebody has bought it.

An item is worth nothing when it is in your bags or sitting idle on AH.  It is only worth something when it is bought and it is only then worth what they paid.  The importance here is that too many people sit on items and don't sell them.  Successful gold-making is all about quick sales, converting items into gold and then using that gold to make more gold.  

Psychology of a Buyer
When a buy sets foot into Auction House (AH) they go in with one single purpose.  They have a need (demand) for an item.  It might be mats for an enchant, for something they need to craft, or consumables, but they go there to BUY.  Buy means NOW, not tomorrow.  The need is NOW so they want to buy NOW.  So always set a buy out price.

Always set a Buy Out price

The Power of One
One is a powerful number and drives most of us to act without you even knowing it.  It is something that you will need to keep in mind every time you sell anything.  When a buyer walks into AH they want the item NOW that satisfies their need.  So it is almost always the BUY OUT (BO) price that people look at, not the BID price.  

When you go into AH to buy some Netherweave Cloth you will buy the cloth with the cheapest BO price, you will rarely bother to bid on some cloth that has a lower bid price but no BO price as you know that your need for it is now.  In any case, you also know that by the time the auction ends for something with no BO price, your earlier bid will almost certainly have been out-bid by someone else who camped the item, so you don't bother bidding and waiting.

So when you go to SELL an item, check the market prices (Auctioneer) and then place your item on the market with a BO price of 1 silver less than the cheapest BO price currently on the market.  People will buy it because it is cheapest.  They will not refuse to buy it because it is 'only 1s cheaper'.  So don't waste profit by undercutting by too much - people will not thank you for undercutting by 1G, so don't!

Never undercut the market BO by more than 1 silver

How Market Volumes Affect Price
The 1s rule tends, to work, but can come unstuck when someone has dumped  goods onto AH at well below market value, or below the value you want to get back from your sale.  You need to know when this is a problem or not.  

When an item sells in volume each day then typically a small supply of under-market value goods is not a problem.  When the volume on an item is lower, then under-market value items up for sale can affect your pricing strategy.  Let's do an example:

   Let's say you have come back from an instance run and have 3 stacks of [item]Netherweave Cloth[/item] to sell.  Auction House let's you see the price of the others on the market too.  Currently the average market value is 3g 52s per stack (20).  You also should be able to figure out that this cloth is in demand by high level toons, so the product will sell in volume.  So what price should we sell our stacks for?
2G 40s per stack - Ignored
Auctioneer's 'Appraiser' tab tells me that the cheapest on the market right now is 12s per cloth which is 2G 40s per stack, but there is no BO price on those auctions, so I will ignore them.  
2G 61s per stack - Ignored
I can see under Appraiser that there is a sale of 15 cloth for 13s 06c per cloth, but people do not like incomplete stacks on the whole and it is only one stack so will sell quickly and be gone.  Hence I ignore this price.
2G 70s -2G 89s per stack - Ignored
Appraiser shows me 12 stacks at this price range, but they will sell quickly and so these will be ignored.
2G 99s - Undercut
There is then a jump to 2G 99s per stack (14s 95c per cloth).  There is a lot of cloth available at this price and higher, so it is unlikely that if I price my cloth at a higher price than this that it will sell.  So I undercut this price and in this case by 1 copper.  I sell my cloth at 14s 94c per cloth giving an AH price of 2G 98s 80c BO.  It is practically guaranteed to sell, which meets the condition set by Rule 1.

Because you know that a lot of cloth sells each day, then for this type of item you can afford to set your price slightly higher and still sell the item quickly.

In a low volume market (like for example the market for [item]Solid Star of Elune[/item] then you should just undercut by 1s and make sure the item sells.

Maximise your profit by adjusting your buy out price to take account of market sales volume

Know When to Stay Out of the Market
This one is kind of obvious.  Sometimes you'll come across auctions in a volume more than will sell quickly and at a price which is clearly lower than the proper value of an item.  You have two choices here - either stay out of the market temporarily and re-enter it when the volume of cheap items has gone, or buy out the competition and then put the items back up for re-sale at a mroe appropriate price.

Either Stay Out or Buy Out when prices are lower than you know the market will support.

We've already said above that it is important to have some idea of the market volume (i.e. the number of those items that sell in a typical period) when considering how to price an item for sale.  Equally important is the auction period you choose.  If you set an undercut price and use a 48 hours auction period then the chances are that someone will undercut your auction price during that period and your item will then fail to sell.  Always set your items to the shortest available auction period (currently 12 hours) as it minimises the chance of you being undercut by enough people to stop your item selling.

Never Auction Anything for More than the Minimum Period

Auctioneer
All the above seems to include a lot of figures and calculations which will put a lot of people off, but what if there was an an addon that could do this for you automatically?  Go and download Auctioneer Avanced Suite and USE IT.  Run a scan once per day, go grab a coffee whilst you wait the 20 mins it takes.

What does Auctioneer tell you?  It gives you a histroical record of the price that auctions are selling for and records changes in the price over time (price trends & variability/sensitivity).  For example:

   Right now it tells me that the [item]Chaotic Skyfire Diamond[/item] sold for:

308G two weeks ago
264G one week ago
194G three days ago
125G BO today, 95G bid.

The mats cost for that item is about 90G, so you can see it is no longer profitable as more people have obtained the recipe and supply comes up to meet demand levels.  So stop making it because the trend is down at the moment and you don't want stock of it that then does not sell.

Auctioneer also has background scans where you can set criteria (such a minimum profit) to look for Re-sale, Market Value and Disenchant bargains.

Enchantrix
Auctioneer has a wonderful addon that tells you what an item is likely to disenchant into.  So if you see an item for sale for 10G that has a 98.5% chance to disenchant into a [item]Large Prismatic Shard[/item] and a 1.5% chance to disenchant into a [item]Void Crystal[/item] then buy it and get it disenchanted as it is free profit.  Auctioneer has an automated scan that can run in the background to look for Disenchant bargains and you can set the criteria it looks for, like minimum profit from the disenchant.  I tend to only look to buy TBC items for disenchanting as these give the items that are most in demand by players on Aszune.

Buy TBC items where they give a sufficient disenchant profit.

Many windfall profits are available simply by doing a bit of 'in advance' reading.  The PTR notes for forthcoming patches and the 'Undocumented Changes' lists that appear on many popular WoW forums prior to a patch going 'Live' are a mine of useful information.  Look out for new recipes spells or craftables and the materials that they will need.  When then patch goes live the demand for these items will be much higher than supply, so prices will go up significantly.  For example:

   A recent patch removed the 24 hour cooldown that enchanters had to transmute a [item]Nexus Crystal[/item] into a [item]Small Prismatic Shard[/item].  Having read about this change I bought several hundred nexus crystals and paid anything up to 2G per nexus.  Post patch I can turn 3x[item]Small Prismatic Shard[/item] into a [item]Large Prismatic Shard[/item] which sells for 22G or so.  Mats cost up to 6G (for 3x Nexus), so minimum profit is about 16G per LPS.  

This was possible because I read the PTR notes - most people do not, so you are ahead of the crowd if you do!

Always read the PTR notes and the list of undocumented changes - then act on the information as soon as possible.

Never Buy Anything For Re-sale Unless........
.....you know what it is used for and the demand for it.  Auctioneer is a database that records information - it is not intelligent!  So if people try to bend the system by posting auctions for outrageous prices the 'market value' shown might be higher than the 'real' value of an item.  When you see an item on sale for a lot more than you think it is worth, it is usually put there to push the price record up.  There are loads of items on AH that Auctioneer will tell you are available for a really cheap price.  For example:

   Right now you can buy for 79s 10c a pair of [item]Resilient Leggings[/item] and Auctioneer tells me that I can resell them for 13G 65s and make a wopping 9G52s profit after charges.  Unfortunately this is a L28 cloth legging item - how many L28 toons do you think there are on Aszune?  Loads?  Not many - Aszuen is a mature server with a huge number of L70 characters, so a L28 item is not going to have loads of people queing up to bid on it unless it is a twink item.  So ignore it, do not buy it.  The Auctioneer records are quite likely wrong in this example and pushed up deliberately by someone who has put a pair of [item]Resilient Leggings[/item] on AH for a stupid price to make the AH scanners think they are worth more.  

So don't trust Auctioneer absolutely, always do a reality check on something before buying and know how many people are likely to buy the item you want to purchase for resale.

Do not trust Auctioneer numbers blindly - they require a common-sense or reality check from YOU!

Work Your Professions
Make your professions work for you and seek out recipes for items that you know sell well and for which there will be an ongoing demand.  Also make your different toons work together.  For example:
   

• My priest alchemist can transmute gems from base materials which my hunter jewel-crafter can then cut.  Selling a cut gem usually realises more profit than selling the raw gem.  
• Cloth gathered from one toon might more valuable for another toon to use in Tailoring to make a craftable item for sale.
• BOE items are often better sent for DE than selling to the vendor (but check the vendor re-sale price as this is not always true).

Also seek quickly the recipes/patterns that will allow you to sell items with an 'ongoing demand', i.e. those that are likely to sell both now and into the future.  For example:

   Right now you can buy [item]Design: Potent Noble Topaz[/item] for 250G from AH, however the recipe easily makes me 80-100G profit each week at the moment.  It is one of the damage casters favourite gems, so demand for it will just keep on going.
 

Aim to provide 'ongoing demand' items and make the professions amongst your toons work to your maximum benefit.

Well, that's all for now.  The first draft of my guide to making gold the easy way is complete.  None of it is rocket-science and none of it is 'my idea', I'm simply stealing it from others who already do it - but sometimes it helps to collect the information in one single place!  

I hope the information helps you make your gold as having the gold always makes the game more enjoyable and fun is after all what we seek when we play WoW.

If you have any comments or ideas to add to this guide then feel free to post them in this thread and share with others!  

TL.

PS.  I made about 93G whilst writing this article.  I had Auctioneer's BottomScanner running in the background and bought several (L60+) items for disenchanting and resale of the shards/arcane dust.

[Niel]

Here here TL
 
I myself set myself a target a few weeks ago when i discovered that with a bit of extra work that the JC trade could be made to pay off......i have overshot my target by a long way and now i'm actually giving up trading as i have more pretend gold than i could ever possibly need.
 
Most nights at 23:30 server time plus and minus an hour there is a flow of people looking for gems/enchants etc for the lovely new upgrade they just got and they want them asap......provide the service they need
 
Trade in things you know well.......if you intend to move into other areas then study hard before jumping in......you can be sure there are other traders who know the market a lot better than you do.
 
If you're bulk dealing in a type of item ( in JC i usually have 3-500 gems listed at any particular time )......add the competition to your friends list...and their alts......and know what they tend to deal in......and be aggressive where needed by keeping an eye on the listings and undercutting repeatedly until they surrender and go away. In bulk sales its not about making the most profit out of each sale....its about making sure that its you that gets the sales and limiting the oppositions sales......the less they sell the less interested they become.
 
The undercut by by 1S advice is the best ( TL has done it to me many times :crying: - but its easy to do it back )....theres no need to undercut by more. People just find the lowest price item and click-click-click
 
Sometimes it pays to buy your oppositions stock.....if they keep undercutting you with the same item by unlisting and relisting it and the price gets to a point where it is lower than the normal sale price....buy their stock and relist your stock back at the highest price........obviously timing may be critical with this kind of move and its best only to do with stock where there is a high daily turnover.
 
If you trade in items that have a regular weekly price cycle....ie in JC the prices are always lower at weekends........then buy all your materials at the the low point that will last you through the week.
 
In the 10 mins i spent typing this i have had sales of ~790G .....its raid end time and its great

[gijs]

nice guid TL,
 
Wil try to uphold it if possible...to much Gold is never a bad thing