Sword of Azeroth

Part One – Addons and tradeskills

Greymonkey has urged me to post some of my strategies for using the Auction House to grow funds.  As 3.3 and Cataclysm looms around the corner many folks may be wondering how they will afford to continue in progression raiding or level their new worgens . Unfortunately for some, in-game funds may be limited.  As a good master I will share with you some of the tricks I’ve picked up along the way but not all; some things you just have to figure out for yourselves. /wink

I strongly suggest folks interested in using the auction house as a means to make gold download auctioneer.  This add-on has been very helpful to me, especially having so many toons and bank toons I’m working with.  I also suggest advance trade skill and lil sparkys workshop.  Now that you have all these cool new add-ons you’re probably wondering  how they all work.

Auctioneer has a ton of great features which is extremely helpful to those of us who use our trade skills as a means of income.  Use the SCAN feature at least once a week.  Either run SCAN as you’re getting ready for work in the morning or before bed late at night but make sure you scan.  Personally I only scan once a week but you can scan as often as you like!  The scan will take all the information on the auction house and save it to memory.  This will allow you to know the going rate of everything currently listed on the auction house.

After you’ve scanned, when you log onto any of your crafting toons, lilsparkys workshop will tell you exactly what the current auction house price is for any of the craftable items you have.  Remember this is only based on what auctioneer has seen and does not help determine if anything has actually sold at that price, but it is a good starting point for research. So for a few moments of your time you have an idea of what you can craft and how much it’s currently being sold for.  Now you can decide what you want to sell to earn gold.

Anything you can craft is often times your best money maker.  Let’s take jewelcrafting for instance, I say this because my main toon is a miner/jewelcrafter.  I can open my tradeskill window at any given time and see what gems are listed on the auction house and for what prices.  I can take this a step further and see what is actually selling by either looking to see what gems I’ve previously listed and for how much (this information is stored in auctioneer under the  bean counter  tab)  or by simply looking at other peoples auctions to see if anyone is buying up or biding on the items listed.

I’m also able to use the same information to see the prices on titanium ore/bars, saronite, titansteel etc by opening my mining tradeskill.

I use this information to determine what I should gather/craft in order to make gold.

No matter your professions you can use the same concept as I described above.

Remember items that you would spend an hour to gather materials for and craft will sell and make you a profit.  Even those silly little pets engineers can make!

Using your profession to its maximum capabilities is the first step in making yourself a nice little nest egg.

So to recap

• Scan frequently with auctioneer.  (scanning on one toon per account is all auctioneer needs)
• Check your tradeskills with lil sparky’s workshop  (this includes secondary trades like fishining and cooking.  These items also sell)
• Choose an item or two to craft to compete with the market
• Farm the mats to craft those items (sometimes the materials are just as valuable as the craftables, i.e. titanium ore)
• Post your items at a competitive price on the auction house
• Sit back and wait for your auctions to sell

Freebie tip: If you’re just starting out and really don’t have any gold or limited time to invest you can try pvp.  I know a lot of folks will avoid pvp at all costs however doing a few battlegrounds, even the daily battleground everyday will give you honor points which you can then turn in for epic gems.  Epic gems can be cut or even sold for a nice profit.

Freebie tip: Loot everything and sell everything.  One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.  You’d be amazed at the going rate for green gear on the auction house.

Freebie tip:  I usually list items on the auction house in limited quantity and for a short time.  So if I’ve cut ten bold cardinal rubies I’ll list 3 of them for 24 hours.  If they don’t sell I’ve only lost a small deposit and can relist for another 24 hours.  A lot of times folks will wait to purchase items until the time window is short, or they will bid on items when the time is short.  Listing items on the auction house for short time frame can work in many cases. It also helps for those who love to undercut. If I get undercut I’ve only been undercut on 3 items instead of 10.