Start with the BEST. Finish with the MOST IMPORTANT!
Okay, so I started a series on Professions, and I covered them all. So if my opinionated views on the best were first, and I have covered all professions, what is the most important? I will get to that, but first a random thought.
I remember reading a comment from “Blue” (GC maybe) about a very effective/fun/creative solution to server population woes and economy impacts with small, large, medium and the imbalanced servers where 75% or more of the population is on one faction. It crossed my mind that whatever solution they implement, could have massive impact on server economies for the better or worse, depending on your current position, great for casuals, and more competitive for the goblins? Who know, it was a pretty ambiguous suggestion of a design goal that we could see almost no warning on, it just happens one day where you AH is merged w/ all Ahs on your Battlegroup? It is a direction to make WOW regionally more “One World” to ensure the masses can be entertained and that WoW remains their game of choice as other games continue to copy, be original or take down the giant. To my rough recollection it started with “server battlegroups” for PVP queues, has grown to include cross realm raiding, real ID, battlenet tags, challenge modes and more to come in MoP. It adds the value of strengthening the community, and crossing boundaries that used to be clearly marked by what server you were on, then what battle group for PVP, and now? Well the sky seems to be the limit largely on what they will do.
Okay, done with random thoughts and on to IMPORTANT THINGS!
1. Be a student
2. Be consistent
3. Be patient
4. Be persistent
It is a lot more HOW you play the AH game that will account for you gold piles, rather than the professions you use. Profession, especially certain combinations can have huge impact on potential, but they are not profitable without consistent time invested, market analysis, continuous review, process improvement and looking for new markets. The FOTM markets will get saturated and you have to move on to a new segment. Though there is not any profession that is (currently) level to 525 and profit. You have to get mats, reprocess mats, craft, market, cancel, post, collect mail, manage crafting queue, manage inventory, watch market prices fluctuate up and down on an hourly, daily weekly, weekend, raid reset and patch cycle and react accordingly to buying and posting habits and price thresholds. Massive inventory for massive events, modest inventory for maintenance, playing in niche markets, getting camped, fighting with or fighting off competition, considering posting and reposting fees when marketing, the time it takes to get one sale and how that time is valued. I could go on, the point is clear, there is a minority of players that are server top 10 ranked in raid progression, there is a minority of players that are gladiator level PVP monsters, and a minority of successful goblin millionaires.
WHY?
Simple we do what other do not in thick and thin, all the time, every day, adjusting strategies successfully bases on a multitude of information sources, and a little bit of luck sometimes.
LUCK: Luck is when Preparation meets Opportunity
You can not get into the epic flip market until you have the capitol to do so. So don’t say, “If I only had 300K, I could buy and flip epic pieces and would have millions like you” It can be perceived that those who make lots of gold on flipping epics or getting an EPIC world BOE drop are lucky. I got an EPCI BOE in early cata. Sold it for 30K, reinvested that into more herbs and more darkmoon cards/trinkets. I created the “Luck” I have, I planned it, I sacrificed for it, I engineered it and sometimes I made really bad bets. I could have figured some of them out prior to the event that led to me losing my tail on investments, such as the price crash of Volatiles, however, patience paid off, I bought almost 150 Tankards of Terror from the Halloween event, and I am still getting sales on them at 200-500% profits. Lucky? No, I risked around 75K gold in buying those, so far I would estimate, I have made 125K+ back on that investment, and still have more to sell. Did you notice how long ago that was? OCTOBER! I have been holding that inventory of over 100 of those things (and diminishing) for going on well over 6 months now.
Are you new to the game, and intimidated? Good, I made the point I was looking to get across. OR? You thought you were doing well, and now you’re not so sure, and wonder what you can do to improve.
Pretty simple, you have one of 3 options:
1. GO ALL IN (not recommended)
2. Start small, and grow slow and steady
3. Something in the middle
By all in on #1, I mean you attempt to copy a market strategy from someone else or develop your own and start trying to list and sell every single one of the glyphs and other inscriptions crafted items. Or maybe try to sell every single cut of all qualities in the JC market and do the shuffle. Few could do this as they would not have the capitol to affect a market entry on this level. But there are glyphs and gem cuts that are just not worth the time to stock, market and will probably never be profitable.
Go small, in option #2, would be to enter in to say just the purple PVE cuts of rare gems after market research to find the most profitable and then grow to the orange and add more colors and cuts and PVP items too then moving onto the Enchanting and Shuffle market followed by adding in the alchemist transmute for meta gems somewhere in the market growth. This will allow you to start seeing profits and not have a lot of risk. Learn to manage addons and systems you will use for a long time in market analysis and reaction to events slowly as you go.
Be a student – I mentioned this early on, by this I mean keep reading this blog and or others as they come and go, and follow other news sources on web sites forum, patch notes and even friends you play with.
Be Consistent – At the very minimalist approach to time invested this will require a couple things. Regular AH scans, and regular posting cycles. A minimalist approach could be: Weekly AH scans on Raid reset and only weekly posting on the same cycle. This could be a HIGHLY effective minimal time investment for things like, belt buckles, gems, enchants and enhancements. Only post once a week for the raiding crowd. A strategy like this would only then need to figure in source materials and crafting times. Since your cardinal materials are also going to run a higher cost at your posting time, you would want to find at least one other time when materials cost less. This is better spread out over several snatch scans throughout the week. This is a minimalist approach, and could provide a steady income with minimal time invested due to the consistent nature of the strategy, or it could fail completely with competition undercutting you and continuously posting more goods during your 48 hour window. It is a higher profit window of opportunity, so it is likely you will have more competition, and possible you will have less, since many of your competitors could be too busy with their raid schedules to camp you.
Be Patient – With the above suggested method, I would need about a month to really see what did and did not work. And then another month to try new strategies, and another month to refine strategies, I would not expect overnight results or data that could be evaluated.
Be Persistent – See last note on patience. It is almost the same thing, however, I have yet to find any info on someone that had a windfall cash influx that amounted to anywhere close to a million. The best windfalls I have heard of are actually the GDKP players that are getting paid to “Carry” other raiders in the GDKP bid run. Even that is not a windfall really. It comes from months of gearing up to be in a position to “carry” others.
So in summary I can say the most important profession in the gold making is summed up in a single word.
HABIT!!! If you have it, you will eventually have the gold, if you don’t, you will eventually find an excuse as to why you don’t have the gold.
Amusing excuses (maybe), from those that don’t have the gold.
1. I am too lazy
2. You are lucky
3. You are stupid
4. I don’t really need that much gold
5. What would I do with all that gold?
6. I Don’t really care about gold
7. My raid leader pays for repairs/gems/chants/flasks
8. I don’t want more mounts/pets/gold sink items
9. It is too hard
10. It takes too long
11. I hate addons
12. My computer won’t run well with addons
13. I don’t know where to start
14. I need more gold to get started
What’s the best excuse you have heard, or even used? Maybe you are using that excuse now. What is stopping you from making the gold?
Why are you reading this blog? To get better or to get started? Or something else?
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