Okay really quick thing for MOP planning

The ilvl monster should be on your radar as potentially your biggest money maker.  Keep an eye out for info from the PTR beta about this.

There are a couple things to look for:

1. What is the ILVL required to que LFD heroic dungeons?
2. What is the ILVL required to que the LFR raid zones?
3. What can you craft that has and ILVL equal to or greater than than one, or better yet both of those barriers to entry?

This will be a staple money maker in any market, People will PAY for the gear the gets them through that door, and into LFD and LFR...

Second thing to look at is what is best in slot pre raid gear you can craft... if you can craft BiS gear that is also above the LFR minimum it is a big winner.

Crafting profesions. How to set priority for MOP... Part TWO Jewelcrafting

Okay so its even harder to not get excited about jewlecrafting with the new mounts that have been data mined.  Wow Insider suggests it could be a million gold mount, the Onyx Panther.  Though nothing is certain, it is pretty clear that this thing is going to be supper expensive.  And flaunting the gold I have may be just the point of making one.  Though I prefer the other 4 Panthers to the onyx one, the colors are so rich and primary, and the black one is well, just not as eye catching as say the BRIGHT RED or BRIGHT YELLOW ones.  If you have not seen them, get out from under your rock and look em up on MMO Champion or Wow Insider.

So why or why not to level JC in early Cata.  Most of the reasons from yesterday apply here, but I am not going back to review them and copy here, I am going to make a fresh list.

Why Jewelcrafting will be my second priority:

1. My #1 raiding toon is a JC
2. The Profession bonuses are great
3. The sooner I can start doing dailies the soon I have more cuts for profit,  convenience and helping guild peeps, fellow raiders etc
4. If I can prospect ore and cut my own gems I can save a ton of money in the long run
5. It is indirectly a gathering and crafting profession, You can make gold by just prospecting for gems and neve cutting any of them for sale.
6. It has seen some great changes that lower risks and is looking like it will see more changes to make it a more balanced profession.  ATM its all about prospecting for red gems for profits, and minimizing losses with the rest of the cuts and such... Check out this post at JMTC on why it will get more balanced.  Lower risk is in the lower vendor value of the gems and there by the lower deposit cost on the AH
7. Its not just Prospecting and cutting gems,  Rings and Necks for raiding and PVP or for DEing to craft enchant mats... (a second post on strategies for this comming soon, maybe later today)
8. It is key to a successful ore shuffle market
9. There are some initial reports that all chanting mats will be tradeable to others, Like the current maelstorm shatter, but the other way around.  Final implementation of this is still up for confirmation and such, but if we get the dust --> lesser essence --> greater essence --> lesser shard --> greater shard --> crystal shuffling will be a big time sink, but a potential mega profit
10. Jewelcrafting has long term staying power.  There are 5 things end game players need/want.  Helm glyps, shoulder inscriptions, legarmor/spellthread, enchants and gems.  Of those items 2 are from vendors, leg enhancements need 2 professions, and then there is enchants covered yesterday and gems.  End game players need up to ~15-20 gems for their gear.  It meats the high volume requirement for a great business.  And it will be valuable througought the expansion like enchanting at volume. 

Okay, why is JC a monster in cage and you would rather some one else tames that beast.

1. PVP cuts + PVE cuts + jewelery + Ore + gems + other incidental mats.  That is a lot of different items to manage an inventory on and keep track of in an efficient manner.
2. The shuffle is a well documented and highly effective gold making strategy, you will have competition
3. AH deposit costs?  Not sure how this will be in MOP, but you have to figure it in to your selling price
4. Slow aquisition of patterns and cuts via the daily quests for tokens as well as the new JC proffesion gems (I will buy mine on the AH and spend tokens on cuts or jewelry paterns)
5. Profit per item is lower than some other profession, but it is covered by extreme volume, that means a lot more crafting time and post or cancel/post time at the mailbox.
6. The market will be strong at first and almost certainly see a sharp decline as more people get into the market
7. Due to volume of sales, and volume of players and the daily, weekly reset and weekly weekend cycles it can be a real roller coaster ride.
8. Gems stack both raw and cut and there are a lot of them, but the jewlery does not stack.
9. There is a lot of planning that can go into the market, however my experience is that this is a profession better run on an "on demand" crafting schedule.  So I dont like it by who that selling strategy is time consuming.  By this I mean buy your ore cheap and prospect it, but when it comes to crafting, you look at volume in the AH vs. popularity of cut and profit per gem to decide what cuts to make, then craft and post them.

Okay, so that is potentially a possitive not too.   I love auctionator for this, the UMJ has a great page that can help you too.  Because I like to precraft more and do a quick post in the 20 minutes before raid time with stocks precrafted and prepositioned for quick post cycle, I do not like this profession as I dont like to precraft that many gems and cuts and stuff. It is an even bigger inventory of items to manage when you get it in full swing... Though it is still a great profession and can be a monster money maker at many levels of market involvement... You do not have to cut every cut and post every thing in the AH every time.  What I did was go the AH w/ acutionator, scan a gem to cut, inferno ruby for example and then cut 5 each of the 2 most profitable cuts and post them.  Then search maybe demonseyes and do the same, though I might only cut 3 each of the 4 most profitable cuts... and post them and then the next gem color.  It could be a little or a lot of time in the AH depending how many gems I was listing.  I did this because it was such a volatile market and I was not fully commited to it, though I did gross about 250K from just this market strategy in the 4.3 gold rush event.

Not sure what is next, but there is more comming in this series.  Likely it will be inscription or mining.

The House Always Wins (3rd post today)

Okay, simple concept that makes its own post.  Since my next post will be on my thoughts for JC.  This series of posts have an underlying thought process as part of how I value professions, I thought it reasonable and necessary to cover it separately.

Its something that I learned a long time ago while learning Real world investing strategies

DOLLAR COST AVERAGING

In real world money markets, the idea is to keep buying stocks regularly at whatever price they are at, since you get more for the same investment when prices go down and that averages with your purchases at a higher price.  Basically every month, or paycheck invest the same amount of money into the "market" "fund" "stock(s)" of choice without reguard for the value of the stocks at the time.

How it has successfully been applied in WOW AH PVP... easily summarized in 2 points.

1. Buy everything under your threshold
2. Sell everything above your threshold

and enhanced by 2 more:

1. Post or cancel/post often
2. Diversify

Okay, sounds too easy, and yeah it quickly gets more complex.

BUYING:

1. Manufacture mats (the ore shuffle) for lower cost
2. Shop the AH 2-5 times daily, with the early mornings and late late evening often being your best times.  It has to do with the level of buying and selling activity.  Generally the majority of players buy what they need as they log on to play durring their play time early to mid evening.  Then at the end of the day they empty their bags into the AH... rather they spent the evening questing and random little things, or an evening spent largely farming... it usually has lower prices at those times because they post it all at the end of the evening and its still there in the morning.  As you play with this you may find nuances and anomalies on your server on the daily, weekly reset and weekend cycles. As well as affects of the time zone of your server and players that do not share that time zone.
3. If you are buying everything and have more mats than you can use, lower your threshold, if you can not get what you need, find another source, or raise your threshold, but in any case make sure as you change your "buy" thresholds, you change your sell thresholds too.
4. Find a farmer for you to COD mats
5. Offer to buy your friends of guild members just leveling items for a fair price that you can crush to enchanting mats for example

SELLING:

1. Again run a post or cancel post routine 3-6 times a day
2. Never sell below your threshold
3. Set your threshold to sell above the mats cost by maybe 5-50gold or more depending on the amount of competition and deposit costs, and how much you value your time.  Setting it low will get your more sales.. setting it high will get you higher profiit margins, or in some cases, you will never sell your goods.
4. Posting early evening is important, and 1-2 more times in the peak population times and once more before you "go to bed"/"log out for the evening"
5. Dont compete with the undercutters if you value your time, if you sell nothing, and everytime you are on you are undercut with in minutes especially by the same person, its time to find a market that you have less competition in, or forget all the good advice, and go for the advance techniques of war and server AH market domination

Post or cancel post often:

1. The more you post and pay attention to sales, undercuts, expired auctions and volume the more you can start to limit how often you do this and focus on the just doing at the best times for the least investment of time for the most gain.
2. Almost certainly you will be undercut, you combat this by undercutting them back

Diversify:

1. How I did this is I sold belt buckles, ALL CATA scroll of enchanting, leg armors, a few gems, as well as a few other fun items.. I did many other things, over the process of learning, transmutes, vendor pet, other vendor items etc...

It really comes down to how much time you want to invest, or how much gold you want to make, but in Las Vegas they say, "The House Always Wins"  That is the best example of dollar cost averaging I can come up with maybe...

here is a mathed out example:
Dum Dumbs require 3 Things, 4 Somethings, and 5 Morethings to craft
You buy Things for 5 gold and under
You buy Somethings for 15 gold and under
and you buy Morethings for 50 gold and under

3 Things = 15 gold
4 Somethings = 60 gold
5 Morethings = 250 gold
Total cost is 325gold
Sell theshold can be set to 325 and max 600... undercut by 5 gold

And you will always make gold  even if you never sell for more than 325... because you buy at 5, 15 and 50 gold and under.  That is your MAX cost for mats, but when you figure in average cost, you may find that your actuall cost on avearge is 4.5gold, 13 gold and  47.5 gold.. okay so if thats your average cost your average profit is 22gold at MINIMUM, and that is if you only ever sell at 325... In my experience, sometimes you will not get sales on and item as someone undercuts you to 324, but as they get bought out and then yours sell the market resets to a higher price, it cycles.. and that is why I suggest 3+ cancel post routines a day... once you learn how, you can do it in about 10 minutes depending on how many items you are selling. maybe like 5 miniutes to cance post 100 items.  10 minutes for 300 items, and 20-30 minutes for 1000+ auctions...   if you are short on time, just post. and cancel collect mail later.

The only thing not covered here so far is working in crafting time.. You can do things a couple ways here, and the risks and investment vary by how you do it... On demand crafting and buying or stockpiling, I prefer stockpiling since there is more money in it, but more risk too with the stockpiles... For me, since the best selling times conflicted with raid times often, I precrafted and stocked up, to reduce the amount of time needed to post when it conflicted with raid times... and it broke it up into various activities... Buying, posting, crafting, stocking etc...

BE THE HOUSE, WIN THE GAME!!!