Wednesday, December 30, 2009
The Legendary Ring
Someone mentioned last week that the ring is a nice upgrade for people who aren’t decked out in the nicest raid gear. That is true but how many people are dedicated enough to farm trash for a ring, but aren’t dedicated enough to raid and get upgrades?
On a different note, I wanted to explain the 80/20 rule a little better after a comment I received about yesterdays post. The idea of the 80/20 rule is 20% of your glyphs will make up 80% of your income from glyphs. For people who make all the glyphs by hand rather than with their add-ons, they need to focus on those 20% of the most profitable glyphs. For the rest of us who automate things, we probably play in more than just the glyph market (I do at least). We should figure out which market is the most profitable (be it JC, Inscription or whatever) and push most of our effort in that area.
Question of the day: What market (or area of your market) is most profitable?
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The 80 20 Rule - It will make you OVER 9000 Gold!
The thing that sets rich scribes apart from the scribes who don’t make much are the efficiencies that we gain along the way. For example, in about 30 min time I can craft and post half stacks of every glyph in the game, where most other newer scribes will take an hour or so to figure out which glyphs will sell the best and create and post just those.
Focus this week on where the 80% of your results are coming from… then focus on putting more than 20% of your effort here.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Giving Away Gold
If you read my last post, I talked about giving a gift to your farmers. I want to expand on this idea a little. If you ever hope to reach the gold cap, you need to worry about having repeat customers. Go back and read that last sentence again, it’s that important. Repeat customers will be your bread and butter on the way to the gold cap. Don’t believe me? Start tracking who buys what from your auctions. You’ll probably have several of the same M&S buying random glyphs from you, or the same people who respec every week who need the glyphs and buy them all the time.
Now to the title, Giving Away Gold… I am NOT condoning giving out your gold to bums and M&S, however I had one of my customers come up to me the other day. The glyph he needed was posted at my fallback price of 60g. He asked if I could make him a deal. I then gave him the glyph for free… yes FREE!
I know, I lost a 60g opportunity cost – but that is very short term. This guy will remember I gave him the glyph for free, and he will come back and buy more later. Now this wasn’t just some shmuck that bugged me, but I knew it was someone who was in a good guild and tanks, DPSes and PVPs. I donno if he’s bought from me before or not, but I KNOW he will buy from me again.
Business update… I made 12k over the weekend and broke past my 75k goal! On to 100k!
Friday, December 25, 2009
Goblins are not Grinches
Just wanted to remind everyone that just because we are goblins does not mean we can’t be kind and generous to our friends in the game. Do yourself a favor, send your farmers a Christmas present via in game mail. It’ll make them feel good, it’ll make you feel good, which makes business run smoother for both parties.
I hope everyone has a safe and fun holiday.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Put Your Stuff in Haris Piltons Portable Hole
If you’re in the glyph industry, you probably already have 11 Packs of Endless Pockets, which is the 32 slot inscription bag. I hear lots of people complain about the 32 slot bags not being enough storage, but it should be plenty of room for all of your glyphs. Currently in the game there slightly less than 350 glyphs (If someone feels ambitious you can go look up the exact number.) If you use 11 of the 32 slot bags, plus you backpack you have a total of 368 slots… more than enough for a full stack of every glyph.
What most people have problems with is where to put the rest of their junk. My first obvious answer is have a guild bank – but most of you already probably have one or have thought of this already. But have you ever thought of using the AH as your personal storage bin?
Typically what I do is I upload all my glyphs 4 bags (and a backpack) at a time to the AH. So at any given time my bank is empty of glyph materials. Unless you are working on a HUGE crafting session, this should produce more than enough bank space on one character to meet all your needs.
Question of the day: What is your creative way to save bag space?
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Wtf? Are We Seriously Grinding Trash?
But here’s the dealio… many people (some of my guild included) in a rush to get their 277 rings are farming trash in an effort to get it faster. Why? So they can get a lousy 19 item points on their ring. Yes I realize its best in slot for many people but it’s not like everyone won’t get it eventually. Seriously… we have like a year left in ICC. From the looks of it we have 4 months before hard modes come out too, which by that time we will most likely be exalted.
Grinding… just the thought of it makes me cringe…. That’s why I started playing the AH to avoid such painful tasks… I guess WoW is the wrong game for me if I hate grinding so much? Oh well, I’ll live.
Gold update: as of 11:30pm last night I was up to 61,000.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Chuck Norris Sells Glyphs of Anal?
You may laugh, and you might not believe me (no screen shot so it never happened am I right?) and I can’t say that I blame you, I’m not sure I believe it myself.
So this is what happened… the anal [link item here] jokes were going around, and some Chuck Norris jokes were going around. My immature side got the best of me and I joined in with “anal Chuck Norris?”
Then I thought… I have a captive audience made of mostly M&S who are reading each and every anal joke that comes across the screen… so the next thing I type is…
“/2 anal [glyph of whatever] now on the AH! Chuck Norris already bought 3!”
And you guessed it… glyphs started selling… and I kept spamming. I’ll have an updated total gold amount for you when I log on later today, I’m estimating it to be up to 60k already.
Also a bit of a house keeping note, I’m planning on blogging every Monday – Friday now and I’m considering creating a YouTube channel for Warcraft gold making if I see enough interest in it. Please leave me a comment and let me know.
PS just updated the gold total! 60k now in the guild bank and some change to spare!
Monday, December 21, 2009
Yellow Snow Sells Glyphs!!
Today’s topic is advertising. You may think that advertising won’t make a difference in your sales but you’d be surprised. A little /2 spam from a bank alt WILL draw attention to the AH.
“/2 Fire sale! All glyphs in game now on AH!” or “/2 Buy one ink get one FREE! Or buy them half price on the AH”
Every time I spam the AH I noticed that things start selling almost immediately. The /2 spam does two things.
1) It reminds the M&S that he has gold in his backpack that he has to spend before he logs off
2) It reminds the lazy raider who didn’t get the right glyphs yet that he needs to do so.
Give my advice a try this week… watch how your sales come rolling in!
p.s. Guild bank already up to 57,000g!!
Friday, December 18, 2009
Woot! Just hit 50,000g!
Yes, that's right, last night about 5:37pm EST I crossed the 50k threshold.
I'm gona keep at this at least till I hit the gold cap... maybe longer who knows?
But meanwhile I'd like to thank all of you who read the blog and the community for giving me great ideas to actually make money.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Real Life Strikes again...
I now have about 50 stacks of Snowfall ink… I can’t sell it well on my server, cards don’t sell well… the new glyphs won’t sell… crap I just can’t get rid of it? I’m considering crashing the market and listing them all at 60% below market cost… anyone’s thoughts?
Thank you for those of you who expressed concern for my Grandmother last week. As odd as it seems, the gamming community did reach out and helped with their emails, notes and even roses and candles mailed to me on my server. It was all appreciated.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Gold is Absolutely Meaningless
It really puts things into perspective. The point of today’s blog is to make sure that your priorities are straight. Make sure you keep real life > WoW. After all, at some point your gold won’t be usable and Azeroth will be no more, but your family will be around until the day you die.
Friday, December 4, 2009
How to sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman with white gloves...
Lets break apart the sentence... selling a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves. Pretty much your selling something that is discussing, not useful to someone that will probably make a mess on themselves and end up looking retarded.
Practical real world (of warcraft) application... your most profitable glyphs are going to be the most useless peices of crap that people should not buy. You are not going to sell many of these glyphs however... maybe 1 or 2 of each type every week - but they WILL sell and they WILL give you more profit than any others, simply because there will be less competition to sell these glyphs.
With 3.3 getting ready to release in the next week or two I'd recommend stocking up on herbs/inks and pulling your glyph supplies up to +2 or +3 of your normal amount. Be ready camp the AH for the first day or two after the patch, as this is when you'll make the majority of your 3.3 profit.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
35,000 Gold from Buying Weed?
I promised I’d keep my personal life to a minimum on this but I’ve had a rather eventful last two weeks. I got the keys to my new home Nov 23rd and I started moving in! that with all the family thanksgiving obligations and not having internet at my new home for almost two weeks made it hard to play WoW… no WoW, no blog.
But I’m back and heading twards the gold cap.
Recent developments one of my farmers sent me an in game mail to let me know he has too much gold and won’t be farming for now. That’s it for the last two weeks though.
Start stocking up glyphs and mats for 3.3!
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving!
I've spent the last few days moving out of my old apartment into a new house, and I don't have internet yet (except on my phone).
I will start posting more when my internet is up and running. Everyone enjoy the time with your family and friends!
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The Boringestive Buisness Update... EVAR!!!
The first thing, I’ve noticed a lack of competition lately. Prices have been higher, I’ve been undercut less and don’t have to repost as often.
Secondly, with the addition of my 3rd farmer, and my large stock of inks, my spending on inks has now “normalized” a bit and thus my income/outgo is less spiky between posts.
Finally I’ve made sure that I always have 5 glyphs in stock, rather than 1. I’ve noticed this helps a lot.
So there’s my blog for the day. Be sure to check out the drama between Gevlon and Marco. /popcorn.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
In Game Porno Naked Blood Elf Pets?
He makes the argument that buying a pet for real money is stupid, as it only serves the purpose to show others what you have, or to keep up with the Joneses as it were…
Now I agree with him, spending $10 for a virtual pet is a bit silly and I would never do it.
But then I wondered, what if Blizzard sold naked blood elf pets that got it on when they got close to another blood elf pet? How quickly so many people who would not spend real money for a pet would change their minds…. Think about it for a moment if you will.
Dalaran would be an unsightly porno hub for all the socials, 12 year olds who have their moms credit card number, perverted old men, and about 75% of the rest of the wow population.
Now you can’t argue something like that would be funny, and if you don’t laugh you must have a very strong moral objection to it. But how is this any different from a dancing panda? They are both just pixels moving about on your computer screen. They are both out in virtual public for everyone to see.
My opinion is that more people think cartoon sex is fun, or can make you laugh, than a stupid dancing panda.
In the end, this argument is stupid as there will never be any porno pets in Azeroth, and “fun” is different for each and every player of the game. For me, I’m gona spend my ten bucks on a pizza for dinner.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
FAIL BLOG of DOOM and Death!
During the last 5 days, I’ve kept the guild bank at a solid 21k gold… however I’ve bought enough herbs to mill and make inks that ended up filling 1 ½ bank tabs.
Also thanks to this blog, one of my viewers is now one of my farmers… which helps SOOOOOOOOOOO much. The less I have to camp the AH for herbs the more playtime I get, and the more enjoyable this is for me.
I’ve found that if I treat getting to the gold cap as a chore and just do it to get it over with I feel burnt out at it, so I’ve taken a little more relaxed approach and work on things only as I have spare time or want to mess with it..
Sorry for the short blog, that’s all I have for today. Feel free to leave comments or questions below, as well as any topics you may want me to discuss in a future blog.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Printing Gold – Part 2
In the last post, I went over Auctioneer, KTQ, Altoholic, Skillet, Postal and MailOpener. Today I’ll cover Keyclone, QA2 and a secret add-on.
Firstly, the most anticipated Keyclone. I want to start off by saying Keyclone IS NOT an add-on. It’s a 3rd party, pay for, application that was designed to send key presses to more than one program at a time. It has many other features besides the key press function however I don’t use these. I use Keyclone for two things mainly:
1) Multiboxing – I have two accounts and when I level my toons together I needed something so I could hit keys on both toons at the same time
2) Milling – On my herbalist account, I set up every key to a milling macro. I then will play on my other account and hit my macro over and over and over – thus milling all of my herbs without cutting into my play time!
Keyclone is not against the TOS for Warcraft as there is no automation involved – you press a key and the program receives the key press – that simple. If you search on www.dual-boxing.com you should be able to find where a blue said it was okay.
Next, QA2. This is what I use to post all of my auctions. It’s been debated which is better, QA or Auctioneer for posting, I personally like QA more because it is more user friendly to set up and configure, and it posts much faster. Finally it has a cancel function that cancels only auctions that have been undercut. This is very useful for people who like to post more than once a day.
Finally the surprise add-on! I consider organization my biggest time saver, especially when I have so many add-ons controlling my markets. I use BankStack to automagicly organize all of my bags. You may think “well that’s dumb I don’t need that, what difference could it make?” well let me tell you… When I pull 1000 glyphs out of the mail I have more than my 11 glyph bags with 32 slots can handle. Rather than posting some of the glyphs up, then pulling the rest of my glyphs from my mailbox, I click “auto stack” and boom… all of the glyphs get stacked up and only take up about 10 glyph bags. Saves me time, saves me headaches. VERY, VERY worth it IMO.
Question of the day: What do you find to be your most important or most used add-on and why? Doesn’t have to be gold-making related.
List of add-on downloads not found on curse.com:
Keyclone – http://www.solidice.com/keyclone/
MailOpener - http://20kleveling.com/JMTCforum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1403 (thanks Zerotorescue)
Have a great day everyone!
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Printing Gold – Part 1
Firstly I use Auctioneer. Auctioneer is very, very mediocre in its functionality. For every function that auctioneer has, there is another addon that will do it faster and better, with one acceptation – Snatch. That is the ONLY reason I use Auctioneer. I do a quick scan (if you don’t know what the quick scan function is you need to learn it, it’s a very powerful tool) and hit snatch, and buy up everything I want that is under my predetermined threshold.
Next, the most powerful tool I have, KTQ. I want to give props to Kevmar of “My Auction House Banker” (I'm linked to his blog in the side window) as he wrote this and literally saved hours and hours of work for me. KTQ works with two other add-ons, Skillet and Altoholic, to determine what glyphs you need to create and it queues them up inside of Skillet. You can then go to vendors and click the buy reagents button and you will purchase every item you need to produce all your glyphs.
Finally for today, I use Postal and MailOpener to check my hundreds of mails every day.
Printing Gold – Part 2 will be posted most likely on Thursday and will cover Keyclone, QA2 and what I consider the most important add-on I have (this is going to stay a surprise till then)
Monday, November 2, 2009
Gold Ca… I mean, Herb Cap?
I had somewhere around 500 – 700 stacks of herbs… now how the freak am I going to mill all these without dying of boredom?
I fired up KeyClone and macroed my mill macro onto every key on the keyboard. I then loaded up my other wow account and worked on leveling my death knight. He is my new project I’ve been working on for JC and Enchanting.
When all was said and done, I now have 3 bank tabs of inks… not too shabby.
Stay tuned, now that I don’t need to buy much I should break through the 20k wall this week.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Why Gevlon is Wrong, and Right
When I first started down my glyph making adventures, I figured out exactly what Gevlon was doing and followed it to the T. I noticed I made a TON of gold during the first 2-6 hours… and during the remaining 40-42 hours or so of my 48 hour auction I made next to nothing.
After spending some time I learned I have about 6 to 8 people on my server that I’m fairly certain use QA2. I’ve monitored their habits and notice they get on and on regular intervals undercut each other, and when the prices get low enough they quit posting that glyph and leave a hole in the glyph market.
Like any other sensible goblin, I reacted to my new found information. I installed and configured QA2 and started posting twice a day… right after the competition posted early in the day, and about 90 min before they posted later that night. Suddenly I noticed my profits dropped slightly during the first few hours… however I was now selling glyphs at a constant rate and I normalized my income at a higher average.
Obviously what Gevlon does on his server works for him, it also works for me on my server, but just not as well as QA. I guess the moral of today’s post is QA is better if you have a large number of scribes in your market, and Auctioneer is better with little competition.
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Weekend
Should have put the auctions on 48 hrs… oh well the break was nice and relaxing. I got on during my lunch break and re-posted everything.
Friday, October 23, 2009
The 20k Wall
Anywho I’m feeling well now. I’ve been trying a few things in the market that I will discuss later. I’m 100% sure my competitors have been reading my blog so I’m not going to disclose anything until I feel safe to do so.
I’m at the 20k wall. I was at 22k for a while, went down to 19, back up to 21, down to 15, back now to 17.5…. why?
After looking at what I’ve been doing, I’ve been investing into both the herb market as well as two other projects I’m getting started. It was the same thing when I hit the 10k wall. What will most likely happen is I will fill up bag space for my investments, and turn around and start using them and shoot up to 30 or 35k… I donno we’ll see if this is true or not.
In other news, Gevlon if your reading this bring your blog back to wow topics. I used to enjoy reading your blog daily… anymore its not interesting.
Tip for the day: Post your auctions before 7:30. A study of internet traffic was posted today and wow traffic peaks a few moments before 8pm EST and dips off quickly about 11pm EST.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
My New Stratagy
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Step 1 Buy Vendor Mats, Step 2 ???, Step 3 Profit.
I think my next business move will be to roll a DK on my 2nd account and lvl him to 60. I need to have an account for JCing and Enchanting, and I’d like to be able to prospect/de during raid downtime
I’m worried that doing this is going to cost too much to quick, however price of saronite is still around 17g on my server and the herbs have jumped from 17 to 40 and show little sign of returning.
I did buy a 5th bank tab today as I needed more room for herbs and inks I’m trying to store up. I’m back up to 1 full bank tab of inks w00t! Guild bank is down to 19k.
I’ve decided there is nothing “special” you have to do to make money in warcraft, you just have to want to get money. Hopefully over time my blog will help someone else get rich.
Tip of the day: list several copper rods or coal or something on the AH for 100g. do this every day for a week or so. Then start listing the same items on your main for 40g, idiots think they are underpriced and buy ‘em.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
The Gold Farmer
Him: “do you have your epic flying?”
Me: “yes”
Him: “do you want to buy gold? 10000g for $99”
Me: “no, but do you sell icethorn? I’ll buy all you have for 22g a stack?”
Him: “yes we sell that, come meet me in the dwarf start zone”
Meet him in the dwarf start zone should have been my first clue. The next 45 min. was wasted with me going out to Dun Mourogh (spelling?) and trying to talk to this guy who honestly didn’t understand me, but was replying all in macros. /sigh I should have went with my instinct.
I’m still sitting at 22,000g in the guild bank, and I’m just trying to sell off all my glyphs as I slowly stockpile herbs. The price is back up to 42g a stack, but I manage to get some every now and again for less.
I’m thinking about getting into jewel crafting, but I’m not sure yet. I kind of want to hit the 25k mark before I branch off and spend money to power level something.
Question of the day (if anyone cares to comment) What market should I try to branch into next, and why?
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Lower Herb Prices and Free Help
Out of these 12 or 13 friends, only 1 of them was being paid (she paints houses as a side job) everyone else was free labor. Everyone knew this said person was being paid, but no one complained, and everyone put in the same amount of hours… I thought to myself why? The answer, my friends know me well and like me and know that if they need help I’ll be there for them. But this brings up a great discussion about warcraft…
My guild mates and friends who craft things for me for free and spend time helping me on my side projects can’t know me to well as they have never met me. They know me as a lvl 80 dwarf warrior who has a red beard. They assume I will help them out when they need me (and I always try) but if I decide not to help them, it’s not like they are going to show up at my door or call me on the phone to make me feel bad about it. I’m not sure that I understand how trust is formed like this inside of a virtual game.
In other news I’ve been noticing herb prices falling back from their 44g/stack peak and they are back to about 25g/stack. I’ve spent the last 5 or 6 days re-stocking my ink and herb supplies and selling out of the glyphs I currently have made. My goal is to fill up all 6 tabs of my guild bank without touching my current gold reserve of 22k. We’ll see how this goes.
Friday, October 9, 2009
I hate MMO-Champion!!!
So we all know of the now infamous post by MMO Champion that turned every market on every server upside down. Let me describe how this has screwed up my server…
First Icethorn and Adders Tongue prices shot up from 16-18g a stack, to about 35-42g a stack! I was hoping this would be enough to stop the extra competition from moving into the market, but I guess I was wrong.
My farmer was banned some time ago, so I’ve been just buying herbs from the AH to make my inks. The day that MMO made the post, I had 2 guild bank tabs FULL with stacks of ink of the sea (or about 3920 inks). I thought I had enough to last about 2 weeks.
But this is where odd things started happening… glyphs actually rose in price… but this was short lived they came crashing down within the first 48 hours. I’ve watched as my average sale went from 12g to 9.8g…
This is the killer… glyph prices fell about 20%, as the cost of the materials went up about 110%.
I currently have enough ink to last me till Tuesday… MAYBE Wednesday…. I may have to do something very un-goblin like and bow out for a week or two till the dust settles from MMO and their stupid post.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
First post!
Today I'd like to talk about my gold making. A few months back I stumbled across a post by chance from Gevlon and thought to myself "Hey, I could probably do that!" and so I leveled my 60 alts tailoring up enough to start making netherweave bags.
Before to long, I was reading more and more blogs and forums about scribes who were making tens and hundreds of thousands of gold. I took another one of my alts and power leveled inscription.
So here I am today, making my own first post about my Warcraft life. I've gone from the person who mindlessly did dailys non stop to buy my first epic flyer, to the person who has epic flying on 3 alts, a chopper and 25k cold hard cash in my bank.
I'll will try to post at least 3 to 5 times a week, so check back often!