by Basil Berntsen

Every so often, I get asked something to the effect of “What’s the fastest way to get 10,000 gold?” It’s usually asked by someone who is perpetually poor in game and is looking to get a BoE or some other sort of reward that costs gold. The fastest way for me to get 10,000 gold is to log in and check my mail. My daily haul is many times that and scales based on how much time I have to craft, list, and relist. This isn’t a useful answer to someone who lives paycheck to paycheck, though. So what advice would be helpful?

First off, if you’re below level 85, get to level 85. This nets you quite a bit of gold simply from quest rewards and vendoring gear you acquire. If you’re already level 85, the first thing you need to do is identify how much money you can make per hour running 5-mans for valor points that you can use to sell BoEs. On my realm, I could sell a BoE costing 1,650 VPs for about 10,000 gold. That means every valor point I earn could be worth 6 gold, which makes the 150 points I get from a 5-man worth 900g. I can do seven per week per character with the requisite gear. Also, every trash kill and boss kill has a chance of awarding you with valuables, including enchanting mats (if someone can DE) and BoEs.
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by Basil Berntsen

Patch 4.3 will bring with it the ability to shatter Maelstrom Crystals into Heavenly Shards. This is unsurprising, as we have been able to shatter or transform the epic enchanting mats from other expansions. At this time, it looks like it will produce two Heavenly Shards per Maelstrom Crystal, and since it’s not disenchanting, it’s unlikely to be affected by the guild perk. This is going to be an opportunity for people to make some money, as well as provide a much needed sink for these Maelstrom Crystals, which have been piling up of late.

The market for Heavenly Shards is a little odd. In case you’ve forgotten, you can make one from 16 Elementium Ore and 8 Obsidium Ore. Despite this being “common” knowledge, the price for these enchanting mats has a consistently high profit margin. Maybe it’s because of how long and annoying it is to turn ore into shards, or maybe it’s because of the large volume taken by the popular enchants this expansion.

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by Basil Berntsen

I’ve often downplayed the “buy low, sell high” aspect of the money-making game, instead focusing on using trade skills to create value and profits. There is, however, a lot to be said for brokerage. It can be much riskier but has a very good profit per hour when you win your bets. Unlike a game of cards, though, the odds are not stacked against you.

There’s one key fact that can stack the odds of brokerage in your favor: People charge less for items in a trade window than others would pay on the auction house. The best strategy to take advantage of this is to buy low and sell long. Why long instead of high? They actually amount to the same thing, but the key here is that instead of immediately trying to find some buyer who will put more money into a trade window than you, you list the product on the auction house.

The auction house is the great differentiator between people looking to make a quick sale and those willing to wait for a high margin. If you see someone selling something in trade chat, chances are that no matter how much they’re asking for, they’re expecting a low-ball offer and are willing to sell somewhere in the middle. So what is it about the AH that makes stuff sell for more?
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by Basil Berntsen

Trade chat is simultaneously one of the most overused and underused tools in our toolbox. Non-auctioneers sometimes use it almost exclusively because the addon-free auction house is intimidatingly badly designed. Gold-making pros sometimes get so wrapped up in their own business that we miss out potentially profitable chats.

So how can you use trade chat to profit?
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by Basil Berntsen

Enchanting Cataclysm gear takes Hypnotic Dust, Celestial Essences, Heavenly Shards, andMaelstrom Crystals. I’ve spent the last week making and selling scrolls, and this has led to the discovery that these materials are not currently being used in the ratio they’re being made. Celestial Essences are, by far, the bottleneck.

This is not a scientific fact, but I sell a lot of scrolls, and that means that my materials use is probably a representative sample of my market’s actual materials use. If you simply look at all the enchants at ilvl 300 and up, the ratio of materials used will be different than if you look at a sample of actual market data. Actual market data will include the fact that some enchants sell better than others. One could, however, take a look at Wowpopular.com’s enchant list and weigh each recipe by the number of stars they give it to get a general idea.

That said, let’s look at the best and cheapest ways to make Celestials.
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by Fox Van Allen

There are a slew of new-for-patch-4.2 items currently available on the auction house. New BOE gear from Firelands. New tailoring and leatherworking patterns. New blacksmithing plans. Living Embers. New PVP gear. They’re all — at least in theory — high-demand items. After all, given players’ insatiable lust for better gear, customers should be lining up around the (virtual) block to be buying all this stuff.

But on many servers, they’re not. The demand is clearly there, but markets are struggling to function.

What happened? Why did the market break? What are players doing wrong? And how exactly are you supposed to play the market with these new-for-4.2 items?
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by Basil Berntsen

Glyph pricing has ignited more internet arguments than any other topic in the WoWblogosphere. Everyone has their own method, and there’s always someone who gets offended by it. There is no actual right answer, just basic economics.

The goal of any glyph strategy is to make gold, and the only sensible way to measure gold making is by calculating your profits per hour. The glyph lifecycle is herb > pigment > ink > glyph. There can be a lot of hours in that, so let’s look at the best way to squeeze some gold from them.
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by Basil Berntsen

Being good at making gold in WoW is more than simply finding a gold tip online and executing it on your server, along with everyone else who read the same article you did. One of the most important traits that will help you get past this is perception — being able to distill facts and data into patterns that you can use to prepare for similar situations in the future.

I’m not talking specifically about predicting the future, not even trying to capitalize on “copy-paste tradeskill development.” I’m talking about something much simpler than that: making money when a patch is released, for example. If you pay attention, you’ll notice some things happen every single patch. If you can figure out what they are, you may be able to take advantage of them and make a decent profit.

Almost every single patch brings with it new content, and this usually means new gear and more people coming back from time away from the game. For example, in patch 4.1, we had two new 5-mans added. A bunch of new gear was equipped by a bunch of existing and new players, and all this gear has to be gemmed, enchanted, and otherwise improved. All this adds up to an increase in demand for a variety of products.
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by Basil Berntsen

Everyone who gets into the auction house to make tons of gold immediately assumes that it’s done by buying low and selling high. Seems simple enough, and it’s one of those chestnuts that we’ve all heard Wall Street types talking about. Brokerage takes no trade skills, no addons, and it feels like making money from nothing.

A lot of what I’ve written about for this column has focused on how to use trade skills for profit, but the truth is that brokerage really can be a profitable use of your time. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but assuming you have a solid understanding of what you’re doing, you can use it to good effect.
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