Wednesday 24 April 2013

What's Been Selling This Week?


It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted my weekly sales pics and 2 very slow weeks they were too! This new job is really cutting into my energy to actually play the game right now, to the point where I don't even relist my auctions some evenings.  But I made a bit of an effort over the weekend & did a whole bunch of crafting so hopefully this current week will be a bit better.

As you can see, the Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp continues to sell well even though I've picked up some competition on the other 4 types of +300 buff foods. I've managed to maintain the price at about 80g each & I have 2 or 3 regular customers.

week ending 22nd April
The Mysterious Fortune Cards were an after thought when I was crafting on the weekend - I saw someone barking in trade so I listed a whole bunch quickly & just watched him sell my cards for me! The best thing is, my cards were 15g-ish whereas his were at 12g but he'd listed them only in stacks of 20. I listed mine in singles & 5's and sold out in about 20 minutes!

I've stopped selling my Living Steel this week too - the prices have dropped below what I'm prepared to sell it for but not quite low enough to take a gamble on flipping it. I know the new weapons will be arriving soon but I've never had much luck with that kind of stuff so my risk-averseness (is that even a word? lol) has kicked in. I'm playing it safe with Living Steel Belt Buckles instead although again, the prices have dropped a little bit.

The crafted PvP gear is still selling fairly well & the Leather/Mail stuff is holding its price nicely. The Cloth armour isn't doing so well but as I've stocked up on Windwool Cloth all at less than 30g a stack, it's still making some nice profits.

The previous week (when I completely missed a post!) was perhaps my worst week in 6 months. I let my auctions lapse on the Wednesday evening & didn't log in again until late on Saturday. Add in toothache again this week & I'm not sure next weeks report is going to be much better unless the stuff I crafted over the weekend moves!
week ending 15th April
In other news, I did get an unexpected invitation one evening last week - Marcus Ty asked me to join him on episode 3 of his podcast, the Journal of Marcus Ty. It was great fun - we chatted for maybe 40 minutes before we even started recording & then another 30 minutes or so afterwards too! If you are new to goldmaking, I definitely recommend having a listen to Marcus - he tends to focus on teaching the basics & explaining stuff that I certainly take for granted. It seems common knowledge isn't actually that common these days!

Also, for those who are interested, the screen shots above come from a simple little addon called MySales which you can find on Curse.com. I know TSM Accounting has something similar but this one is just so neat & simple, it suits a screenshot better I think.

Image - Floating Market, Bangkok © Nev 2005
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Sunday 14 April 2013

Help Richard Harlow See Again - pt 2


A couple of weeks ago, I published a post about Richard Harlow aka @demonicric - a WoW player who is legally blind but still manages to play his warlock using various addons & a lot of determination. I made the mistake of including a bit of a rant in that post which didn't start the drama but sure as hell didn't help either! I have a feeling all the drama has turned some people away from this fundraising so I wanted to do a second post to highlight Richard's plight & ask everyone to find it in their hearts & pockets to make a donation now, regardless of the personalities involved in the drama that has been raging on Twitter.

Just this week, Richard made a guest appearance on Eviscerated Gaming Podcast Ep 45 - the guys over there are 100% behind Richard's attempt to raise funds for special medication which has the possibility to restore some or all of his vision so they devoted the whole show to his interview. No segments, no crazy news stories & no Electronic Education music either, just 36 minutes of talking to Richard about how all this happened, how he manages to play & more importantly, why this money needs to be raised.

There's a whole host of other podcasts highlighting Richards fundraising too - he made a short bumper explaining it all but I'm very behind in my podcast listening so I can't list them all, I'm sorry.

I first heard Richard talking about playing blind on Hearthcast a couple of years ago - I'm pretty sure it was one of the very first podcasts I ever listened too & I was fascinated by his courage & endurance then. Listening to EGP last night, I was reminded just how strong the human need to win is - he could have just accepted it & hidden himself away from most of the world but no, he is out there - fighting for others in similar or worse positions than himself & I'm sure he will win this battle or there is no justice in this world.

If you would like to donate - the fundraiser page is here
There is a deadline for this too - just 19 days left but after a fundraising event last night which raised over $4000, he is so close to his target, I have great hope that if we all chip in, he will make it.


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Monday 8 April 2013

What's Been Selling This Week?


As expected, my sales have slowed down this week as I've started a new job. I was hoping I could sneak onto the Remote AH now & then but in an open plan office with a boss sitting behind me, I haven't even tried! I was only cancelling/relisting once during the day anyway but I messed up my auction timings too so one evening I got home to find they had all expired!

Given that, I'm still quite happy with my sales this week - not quite the 'ramping up' I was hoping for but hey ho, life happens!


I've added screen shots of the top 2 pages of My Sales this week - I thought it might be interesting to see some of the stuff that didn't make page 1. Living Steel Belt Buckles are selling pretty well - in fact, faster than I can make the Living Steel so that market will dry up a bit for me soon. I was tempted to buy some Living Steel when it was around 400g mark but I decided against it for now - the belt buckle market isn't as high volume as I would like to be able to turn the Living Steels around quickly.

I've definitely picked up some competition in the 300+ buff food markets - I'm still dominating the Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp but all the others have dropped off, I've tried buying up the cheap stuff but there's too much for now so I'll hang on to what I've got, pick up the super cheap stuff & just focus on the Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp.

In making my Mysterious Fortune cards, I've ended up with loads of Starlight Ink. Yes, I know I could make Darkmoon Cards but I've never had much success with those & I don't have many Scrolls of Wisdom so I decided to sell some of the Inks - just to see what sort of market was there. Bear in mind that I'm only buying the very cheapest herbs at a max price of 30g a stack, so selling Starlight Ink for 70g each or more is nice, especially as my Mysterious Fortune Cards are selling themselves too.


By far my biggest gold making market right now is the crafted PvP gear - both my Tailor & Leatherworker are still doing their daily cooldowns for the new patterns & I'm adding 2 of each new item every day. I'm still managing to pick up Windwool Cloth & Exotic Leather for around 30g a stack & I have over 200 stacks of each right now so that will keep me supplied for a while longer!

The Flasks market this week has sucked! Very few evening opportunities at anything over 50g which is way too close to my crafting price so I've been hanging on to most of them for now. I did make a few leg armors this week, just to test the market. Once my Leatherworker has finished her daily work orders on her farm, then I'll definitely be back to planting Songbell Seeds for the Motes of Harmony.

Enchanting has been going well this week too although I have slipped a bit on crafting scrolls - I thought I could buy the enchanting vellum from the vendor on the Travellers Tundra Mammoth so I took my priest back out into the wilds to do some questing but then it was way too much hassle to get the vellums so I let it go for now! I keep forgetting to use my banker in Ironforge to send some in the mail too. D'oh!

So there we go - Nev's fairly casual approach to selling stuffs this week.


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Image © GarryKnight under Creative Commons licence

Saturday 6 April 2013

Old Markets Gone Bad!


This month's topic for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival is one that many of us can have a chat about. If you've been making gold in-game for a while, there are bound to be markets that have died on you or that you've given up on. I know I have a few but I've narrowed it down to just one market.

Name one of your historically profitable markets that is now defunct and what can we learn from that old market?

I think you can probably guess from my header image which market I chose for my topic this month - yup - vendor bought cooking recipes! I stumbled into this market within a month or two of starting to play WoW. The Pilgrims festival was in full swing as I started leveling my 2nd alt & accidently found the cooking recipe vendor in Stormwind when I wanted to add Cooking to her profession list. I had a little bit of gold then from selling turkeys I'd picked up whilst questing so off I went to the cooking trainer to get started. Except I didn't find the cooking trainer - I found the recipe vendor so I bought the recipes anyway, having no idea that I didn't really need them to level my cooking.

It was one of those serendipitous moments when I accidently bought 2 of the same recipe so I just threw it on the Auction House - I followed the existing prices & just undercut by a few copper. I think it earned me about 6g back then and it took me a few days to realise it as I was busy questing & leveling & didn't check my mail! Needless to say, I quickly ran back to the AH to check some of the other cooking recipe prices & a fledgling Goblin was born! I think I made maybe 500g from just those cooking recipes in that first foray into the AH.

Fast forward to the next Pilgrims festival a year later & I had a few more alts on the go & a level 80 too. I'd been dabbling in the AH but not in any serious way. I was in a busy guild, chatting, dungeons, raiding a bit all took up my game time so although I was never short of gold, I wasn't racking it up like some goldmakers. That inspiration/necessity came later & is a different story! So for this 2nd festival, I remembered the cooking recipes & looked up on Wowhead to see what other recipes might be out there. 

The Stormwind vendor was always the easiest to get to - my bank alt lived in Stormwind but my 2nd or 3rd alt was working through Outland - I'd regularly pop over to the Allerian Stronghold in Terokkar Forest & pick up 2 or 3 of each recipe & post them back to my bank alt. This year, I raised the prices & some of them were selling for 30-50g. I loved this market - the Stormwind set cost about 1g & sold for 15-30g each - all the time!

I can't remember all the other recipe vendors but I do know I made good gold from this market right up to the launch of Mists of Pandaria. The new Cooking trainer & leveling method for cooking means that most players now level their cooking just standing in Halfhill. I bought a set of recipes from the Stormwind guy just last week - I was curious to see if there was any market left for them. A few have sold but only for 2-5g now - still a very good profit & still a reasonable market to try for some starter cash but for me, it's just not time efficient enough now.

So what can we learn? Well I think the most obvious lesson is that some players are just plain lazy or downright stupid! Think of all the cheap vendor bought stuff that sells for much better prices on the Auction House - gold bloggers have been writing about them for ages but there are still players out there who have no idea you can buy say, crystal vials from a vendor! But don't forget, I'm not even talking about limited supply items - those I kind of understand buying off the Auction House, there's a time element to getting them & for some players, time is more precious than gold. Nope, I'm talking about unlimited supply items just like cooking recipes!

There is still a small market here - some players like to have all the recipes & some prefer to level a profession as they level their alt so they do it using the older recipes & materials they pick up along the way. It's not a market I'm bothering with now although if you are just getting started, it may be worth a try. A 1g investment could net you 50-100g profit even if you have to relist them a few times.


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Old Recipe © CrissyAlright under Creative Commons licence

Monday 1 April 2013

What's Been Selling This Week?


Wow! Monday really does roll round fast these days doesn't it? It's time for this week's round up of what's been selling on my server although it's much the same as last week for now.

The week started off really well in the 300+ buff food markets but I've gained some competition over the weekend. I'm pretty sure they aren't making as much profit as I am though as I am checking the raw materials supply 5-6 times a day & buying up everything below my buy price. I'm up to 107 Ironpaw Tokens on my Rogue alt who is about 5 token swaps away from level 86 now. Almost all of the level has been via Ironpaw Token swaps and a little bit of pet battling so you can see just how much raw material swapping I've been doing!

I've finally started shifting some of the Living Steel Belt Buckles & a fair few Flasks this week. I still haven't converted one of my Alchemists to Potion Master - both are transmute masters so I really have to watch my Flask & herb prices to make real profits there. I did manage to grab 70-ish Golden Lotus at 28g each though so that has helped a great deal.

I also managed to get a whole bunch of Silkweed this week - with the ink price calculated at 5g per ink but glyphs still not doing well for me, I converted all the ink to Blackfallow Ink and made a shedload of Mysterious Fortune Cards. I have a little competition now & then but I'm holding my price to about 16g per card & I'm not barking in trade either.


Before Patch 5.2 went live, I was using my Tillers farm for Songbell Seeds & Motes of Harmony but now I'm doing some work orders to save time on reputations. I made 2 epic pieces and as you can see above, I finally sold the Gloves. That was a nice little boost to my profits this week.

But by far the biggest boost has been the new PvP Crafted Dreadful Gladiator items from Tailoring & Leatherworking. I'm picking up Windwool Cloth for a maximum of 30g a stack which equals 4 Bolts of Windwool Cloth which means that the most expensive Tailored PvP item to craft costs just 45g. As you can see above - I'm selling for way above that price!

The leatherworking items are showing huge profits too & holding their prices better than the Tailoring ones. I snagged 150+ stacks of Exotic Leather for 25-30g & also picked up 40 Magnificent Hides for 40g each. Even if I make my own Magnificent Hide using the non-cooldown method, my maximum material cost is around 75g so Nev is a happy girl when that stuff sells for 700g-ish!

I mentioned last week that I was going to dip into the enchant market - well as you can see above, only 2 different enchants made my top sellers list but I am happy to report that out of the 30 scrolls I made, they did all sell & at a nice profit too. I made a load more this morning and focused more tightly on the highest priced ones. It will be interesting to see where they land in my selling report next week.

The Ghost Iron Ore price on my server is slowing climbing too - over 55g a stack usually and as I haven't really explored the gems market yet, I'm wary of spending too much there for now. My Warrior Blacksmith is just fresh dinged 90 so she's not ready for Isle of Thunder yet to get the Plate PvP patterns & the prices on the Contenders Plate has been dropping too. She also doesn't have many Spirits of Harmony to buy the older Contenders patterns so I'm kinda stuck there for now. It's on my to-do list though - if I can bear to play her much!

Tomorrow I start my new job so I'll be a bit more restricted in my AH activities for a while - at least until I get to know what the score is as far as internet use is concerned. I'm pretty sure it will be a lunchtime only thing so I'll just have to make sure I'm super organised for my evenings.

Hope y'all have a profitable week, have fun xxx

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Market Stall Image © Futureshape under Creative Commons licence