I know people are always doubting if my business model in wow really works. What I am doing it to keep stuff at a high price at the auction house and never undercut anyone. In fact my prices are often 5-8 times higher than normal and people often write me nice mails that I am crazy … but what can I say … it works!

How does it work?

During the Burning Crusade, my good friend Terrantal and me decided to take over the Auction House for Arcane Dust. It was quite a stunt back then, think we invested 17k gold, which was a lot back then and at least I could not have lasted 2 more hours before I was bankrupt. With tons of Enchanting mats in store I posted auctions with 2 price ranges. One expensive one and an even more expensive one to make my other auctions look cheaper than they were.

Weird enough, the expensive auctions sold more often than the cheaper ones and soon we expanded to other branches. Today’s posted auctions value around 900k gold buyout.

This can work with nearly every product, that has a low auction fee or if the you can afford to have the item at the auction house for a very long time and still make profit.

For example

• Enchanting mats, fee: 1 silver for 48 hours
• Glyphs, <2 silver for 48 hours
• Recipes, < 10 silver for 48 hours
• Companion Pets, very low fee for 48h

Glyphs are a perfect example, since they have low crafting costs, their auction fee is next to nothing and the profits are huge. Another of my favorites are Blood of the Mountain, I buy them for 500g and resell for 1650g. It may take a while to get them sold, but if you do the math I can have them at the AH forever and still do profit selling them.

If you like to do old content, these turn out to be extremely profitable. For example Molten Core drops quite a number of recipes, e.g. Healing Power, Spell Power – which are the highest ones you can put on heirloom weapons. Illusion Dust (22.95g per 1) and Greater Eternal Essences (99.50g per 1) from green items and the above mentioned Blood of the Mountain. A single run can easily yield 6k gold if you are not in a hurry to sell items – 1 recipe 3950g, 1 Blood of the Mountain – 1650g, 3 Greater Eternal Essences 300g = 5900g without gold from bosses and vendored epics.

No Mass Sales

Of course selling items en mass is unlikely this way, but the auctions you sell will be extremely profitable. There are a couple of things you need to keep in mind. You need to be persistent, if you have only energy to do these things short term you won’t get happy doing it. You cannot afford to slack with these auctions, since you will only sell when:

• the competition pisses of buyers
  e.g. 1000 auctions of 1 dust, no one likes to click 60 times to get a stack of cheap dusts, or to skip through 20 pages at the AH.
• the competition slacks
  e.g. cheap stuff has been sold out, forgotten to repost stuff
• someone who is leaving the realm buys out expensive stuff to transfer to the new realm to get around the gold cap
• you are the only one offering a special product
• you have customers that are lazy
• you have customers that don’t care

This happens more often than you may think. There are days when you log on and have sales for 5-10000 gold waiting in your mailbox and you get this fat grin on your face. There is a quite a number of players who worked this business model successful themselves. You should really try it out.

You can probably earn a little more by crafting items yourself, getting enchanting mats cheap and fast but I prefer the lazy man’s approach and don’t waste time with that. Just buying stuff cheap then put it expensive on the Auction House.

The Story so far

If you have followed previous posts, you know that I had already 2 Million Total gold acquired in February and I took the opportunity of this post to create a new summary.
Since the last post in February I gained roughly million gold for a grand total of 3,110,276 Gold since the achievement system came live. This was 1145 days ago, averaging 2695 gold/day.

Total Gold Acquired: 3110276g
Gold Looted: 293015g
Auctions Posted: 863157
Time spent retrieving these auctions: 287,72h

Here are the other stats:

Related Posts

• Total Gold Acquired: February 2011, 2 000 000 Gold
• Total Gold Acquired: October 2010, 1 400 000 Gold
• Total Gold Acquired: August 2010
• Total Gold Acquired: March 2010
• Total Gold Acquired: November 09

Lately I have been repeatedly asked if I already breached the 2 million total gold acquired mark. As you may know I specialize in overpricing stuff and prefer to sell 1 auction for 100 gold, than 2 for 50 gold. It is not the quick sale I am aiming at, but the lazy, unprepared customer who doesn’t care a lot what he pays for and wants item xy right NOW.
The launch of Cataclysm has given my price model a huge boost, even expensive materials do not seem expensive compared to some of the normal prices we see these days, at least on Ravencrest.

Total Gold Acquired February 2011

As you can see at the Summary below, the new solo abilities of my Enhancement Shaman provide a great income. At times I ahve 6500 gold looted per 7 days. Doomwalker, Kazzak, Black Temple, Magtheridon, Serpentshrine Cavers, Tempest Keep, Molten Core, Zul Aman, Karazhan provide a huge source of Gold looted for relatively small effort. Add in a few epics to vendor and the occasionl recipe (have one on ah for 30k gold atm) makes it quite worth the effort!

Another thing I have been doing regularly is daily quests for guild xp and gold as side effect.

Also I find it kind of interesting to see that Glyphs sell much better still than I could ever have imagined with the 4.0 Glyph System. Of course Blackfallow Ink is expensive, but I made all my Glyphs before the change and still earn a good 5k a week jsut by selling my old stocks. Illusion Dusts / Greater Eternal essences seem to have turned into decent money makers and the market seems to be pretty much dry at all times.

My 11000 remaining Infinite dusts haven’t sold that well, yet. But I suppose I’ll be able to sell them “soon” as their price combined with cosmic essences and dream shard is slowly starting to rise.

Anyway enough for that, here are the updated stats. don’t forget Daisan and Myrddin breached the 214748 g mark, after which the gold amount turns to -214748g and slowly rises up to 0 and then displays as normal. Myrddin is listed at 170307 total gold acquired, meaning 214748 + 214748+ 170307 = 599803g, from previous posts you can easily verify that. The same goes for Daisan who adds up having 534885 total gold acquired. Finewares, my original sales alt, is 700g short from breaking the display, too.

Total gold acquired per character

• Myrddin: 599 803 g
• Daisan: 534 885 g
• Gregorius: 180 858 g
• Slanty:  157949 g
• Katya: 31 835 g
• Exorial: 121 781 g
• Finewares:  214 002 g
• Myrddin – Magtheridon, Horde: 103 707 g
• Stormfront – Ravencrest, Horde: 53 825 g

Total gold acquired: 1 998 645 g

By the time I finished polishing up this post I probably breached the 2 million   Also you’ll notice some chars missing, Pathfinder for example my 85 druid alt, since he earned only 12k  and is below the 30k gold threshold. Also I was busy in playing the auction house before the achievement system came live.

Here is a screenshot statistic tabs:

Statistic Breakdown

• Total gold acquired: 1 998 645 g
• Average gold earned per day: 2 469 g
• Gold looted: 217 310 g
• Gold from quest rewards: 102 858 g
• Gold from auctions: 1 667 167 g
• Total auctions posted: 750 051

The last summary has been done on october 15th, 128 days ago and I made 597 296 gold isnce then, 4666g/day on average.

Related Posts

• Crazy Sales
• Total Gold Acquired: October 2010, 1 400 000 Gold
• Total Gold Acquired: August 2010
• Total Gold Acquired: March 2010
• Total Gold Acquired: November 09

A rather interesting feature is the statistics tab under achievements. It is a fine summary on your character’s stats and makes it very easy to track your gold flow.

People know that I made a lot of gold andare curious about the amount of gold I currently have. It is not as easy to say and thus I sum up the grand total once in a while.

2 Year Breakdown

This seems like the perfect day for some math. As you may know, half the blog is about gold and farming. I enjoy making gold, not that I really need any more gold, I actually enjoy the process. It keeps me motivated to run Molten Core even for the 100th time or makes me idle in idle in Zul’Gurub or SMV waiting for Doomwalker to spawn.

As half- messy I hardly ever throw stuff away and at some point I find someone needing the items I gathered little by little and can make a huge pile of gold. If you are persistent enough you can make most things more valuable than most players expect.

Zul’Gurub Coins and Bijous for example, gathered them one by one each run and stockpiled 70-90 bijous of each color and 200+ coins. While  I usually prefer to keep those things because one day I NEED them, the announcement of ZG removal turned them into pure gold.

As you can see I split up the sales to different characters, nothing is worse than getting whispers by people that do not want to pay your price and even isnult you when you don’t want to give them free stuff. Also it is not really an advantage if you suddenly have 5000 expiring auctions while raiding

Total Gold Acquired

• Myrddin: 270 732 Gold
• Daisan: 446 946 Gold
• Gregorius: 154 691 Gold
• Finewares: 154 838 Gold
• Exorial: 115 165 Gold
• Slanty: 116 760 Gold
• Katya: 7 032 Gold
• Myrddin (Magtheridon): 101 849 Gold
• Stormfront: 33 336 Gold

Total: 1 401 349 Gold acquired

As you can see Myrddin has negative statistic and Daisan is back to positive values now. Once you breach 214k gold and you earn 1 gold more the number changes to -214k gold. Each additional gold gain you rise up to 0 and then again to positve values. You can check Daisan int eh previous Total Gold Acquired Posts, he was at -34k the last time.

Example:

Daisan 18946 G + 214 000 + 214 000 = 446 946 Gold

In December 2009 I started a new test with Stormfront, basically starting gaining gold with no outside help on a new realm. After having gained 30 000 gold ina  few weeks I pretty much abandonded the project though, with that much pocket money you can start nearly everything.

Anyway here is the Statistic Breakdown

• Average gold earned per day: 2 080 G
• Gold looted: 176 266 G
• Gold from quest rewards: 76 734 G
• Gold earned from auctions: 1 138 800 G
• Auctions posted: 655979

If you consider that it takes 60 seconds at least toretrieve 50 mails, then you’ll realize that there is much persistence involved.

Related Posts

• Crazy Sales
• Total Gold Acquired: February 2011, 2 000 000 Gold
• Total Gold Acquired: August 2010
• Total Gold Acquired: March 2010
• Total Gold Acquired: November 09

Ok, how much is it?

As you can see Myrddin and Daisan have negative statistic values now. Once you breach 214k gold and you earn 1 gold more the number changes to -214k gold
Then each gold increased the number back to 0.

If you look at Daisan he gained 214k and then from -214k to -34k = 394k gold.

Here is a screenshot of the latest sales:

Summary August 2010:

• Total gold acquired: 1 289 315g (old 966109g)
• Average gold earned each day: 2 045g (old 1964g)
• Gold looted: 162 266g(old 112020g)
• Gold from Quest rewards: 74 324g (old 65175g)
• Gold earned from auctions: 958 821g (old 783381g)
• Auctions posted: 551 410 (old 463689)

As you can see I mostly improved on looting gold. I kind of got tired of all the spam in Dalaran, so I decided to camp in SMV, and just look out for Doomwalker, Kazzak and Azuregos.

I have completely abandonded Glyphs since it just takes forever to put them up and retrieve the mails. Likewise I started to slack with Infinite Dust since it takes equally long to auction them.
The amount of gold I have now makes it kind of pointless to put a lot of effort in earning more and I focus on lucrative stuff only.

You can find the summary for March here.

Related Posts

• Crazy Sales
• Total Gold Acquired: February 2011, 2 000 000 Gold
• Total Gold Acquired: October 2010, 1 400 000 Gold
• Total Gold Acquired: March 2010
• Total Gold Acquired: November 09

I have cut down massively posting glyphs and enchanting mats, sparing me 3000 auctions per 48 hours. On the other hand it means that even doing only minimal AH Business it is merely impossible to not gain masses of gold these days. Often I am even to lazy to relog alts to send materials and rather buy them expensive on the auction house.

Income March 2010

The gains of the last 4 months have come mostly from looting gold and lower level items players need to advance their trade skills. It seems atm that this gives out the most profit for least effort.

Enough talking! Here is a screenshot of the characters statistic achievement tabs.

Summary March 2010:

• Total gold acquired: 966109g  (old:800713g)
• Average gold earned each day: 1964g (old:2149g)
• Gold looted: 112020g (old:80222g)
• Gold from Quest rewards: 65175g (old:56708g)
• Gold earned from auctions: 783381 (old:660548g)
• Auctions posted: 463689 (old:377604g)

You can find the summary for november here.

Related Posts

• Total Gold Acquired: September 09
• Crazy Sales
• Total Gold Acquired: February 2011, 2 000 000 Gold
• Total Gold Acquired: October 2010, 1 400 000 Gold
• Future of Zul’Gurub remains unclear

(note: the picture is quite big, give it some moments to load)

Summary November 2009:

• Total gold acquired: 800713 g
• Average gold earned each day: 2149 g
• Gold looted: 80222 g
• Gold from Quest rewards: 56708 g
• Gold earned from auctions: 660548 g
• Auctions posted: 377604

I shifted my sales a bit, as you can see from the previous post

http://www.myrddin.de/2009/09/01/total-gold-acquired-september-09/

Here are the changes since the last post:

• Daisan: +72655 g
• Exorial: +18730 g
• Slanty: +1722 g
• Gregorius: + 49650 g
• Myrddin: + 100530g
• Finewares: +15433 g
• Myrddin, V2: + 25552 g

As you can see I mainly focused on Daisan and Gregorius for income, basically only enchanting Materials. glyphs are a nice income, but it just takes too much time to put all the glyphs up all the time. Also parking my alts in instances for BRD and Scarlet Monastery summons did not really boost sales. I logged my Myrddin (the orc shaman) on Magtheridon only 3-4 times the past few months, it is really too easy to make gold there.

Even now, with the recent disenchanting changes, there is still lots of profit to make with Infnite Dust and other enchanting materials. The buy cheap, sell expensive tactic is still working like a charm.

Related Posts

• Crazy Sales
• Total Gold Acquired: February 2011, 2 000 000 Gold
• Total Gold Acquired: October 2010, 1 400 000 Gold
• Total Gold Acquired: August 2010
• Total Gold Acquired: March 2010

Daisan, Level 80 Paladin

This one started out as Alternate char to farm old instances (mostly to farm Zul’Gurub for Mounts). For that reason she has “high looted gold” (considering she is a newb Level 80).
Daisan is also selling old enchanting materials (Dream Dust, Illusion Dust, Greater Eternal Essences, Large Brilliant Shards and lower), popular glyphs, cooking recipes and the like.

TGA: 54127g

Exorial, Level 80 retired DK

This char was planned to become what Daisan is now. An alt to farm zg, etc … But I found DK’s realyl unflexible and not fun to play, so I retired her as soon as she hit 80.
Exorial is selling epics, blues, profession recipes, basically everything that costs high ah fees.

TGA: 80350g

Slanty, retired Mace Rogue

Slanty is my Scribe. He is selling nothing but glyphs ( 34.50g bid & 39.50g buyout) and all inks ( 5.25g & 5.75g).

TGA: 77418g

Gregorius, paused Warlock

Arcane Dusts and Infinite Dusts are his only business.

TGA: 69015G

Myrddin, World’s Best Enhancement Shaman (just kidding!)

As you can easily see Myrddin is my Main Char. With 46000 g looted and more dailies than on the other characters. We used to farm Kazzak, Doomwalker, Magtheridon, Outdoor Dragons, Zul’Gurub, Ahn’Qiraj, Onyxia, Karazhan and the like to get our looted gold up fast.

TGA: 80945g

Finewares

Finewares was my original sales character. I prefer to have sales on other characters than my main to avoid the whispers of players that want you to sell stuff cheaper, etc. But at one time Finewares just had no more capacity for all the materials. right now he sells only Greater Planar Essences and Greater Cosmic Essences.

TGA: 90131g

Myrddin, V2!

Magtheridon seems to be a pretty good sales test environment. High Population PvE, highly PvE advanced Realm. I started this Orc Shaman about 1.5 years ago. Secretly I would like to reroll another Shaman as the old Myrddin gets somewhat old, but I’d never leave Borked Guild, the best Guild in the world! So he ended up as Test Char for crazy AH Tests. I hardly pla yhim anymore though, so there is hardly any profit worth mentioning. He sells everything mentioned above, enchanting materials + glyphs.

TGA: 64455g

Summary:  At September 09 I am at roughly 516 441 total gold acquired since the introduction of the achievement system. This is roughly 120 000g more since July. Don’t forget 300 000 auctions posted since 3.0 translate into 100 hours spent alone to retrieve mail in the best possible case, due to the 50 mail per 60 seconds limit.

There are several posts about the strategies used to get this done in the earning gold category. More posts to cover all aspects of my moneymaking will follow as I have time to write things down. I am sure you’ll find some useful advice or some tipps for your own auctions!

Related Posts

• Total Gold Acquired: March 2010
• Crazy Sales
• Total Gold Acquired: February 2011, 2 000 000 Gold
• Total Gold Acquired: October 2010, 1 400 000 Gold
• Cataclysm: Emblem Conversion explained