The Legendary Ring

Good morning guys. I think Wednesday is going to start being our “post raid activity” day. Last night we grinded trash again… for 2 ½ hrs…. gahhh… I haven’t killed trash as much as some of the rest of my guildies but I’m up to 3690/12000 honored. I’d say about half of my group is already in revered, and a decent amount of people on our server are exalted… just insane imo – if the ring was legendary it might be worth this extra trouble, but as it is we’ll probably be in ICC for another 10 months. The rest of the raid was boring, after the trash we one shot every boss, no one died, raids are too easy qq.

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?

The 80 20 Rule - It will make you OVER 9000 Gold!

Many of you have probably heard of the 80 20 rule before. In a nutshell, it says that you get 80% of your results from 20% of your effort… which means that 20% of your results come from 80% of your effort.

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.

Giving Away Gold

I hope everyone had a great weekend, and I hope even more of you have the day off work (I sure wish I did.) However on to today’s topic, 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!

Goblins are not Grinches

Merry Christmas everyone! Just a short update, I’m currently at 65,000g. I’ve spent so far in the last week about 5000g on herbs and 2000g on gems and enchants for my main raiding toon. So that gives me a total of 22,000 gold for the week… defiantly my best week ever.

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.

Put Your Stuff in Haris Piltons Portable Hole

In case you don’t get the title, 3.3 introduced a new 24 slot bag that Haris Pilton sells called the portable hole. At 3000g (125g per slot) it shows how important bag space can become for some people.

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?

Wtf? Are We Seriously Grinding Trash?

Rep grinding… everyone hates it… well I guess I shouldn’t say everyone, I’m sure there is one idiot who likes it (the same idiot who likes to eat paste in grade school). As much as I hate it, I enjoy that it separates the lazy M&S from the rest of us. It also is designed to give rewards over time to the players.

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.

Chuck Norris Sells Glyphs of Anal?

So last night I had a RECORD one night of sales… I sold a total of 450 glyphs in one night! How you may ask? Chuck Norris and anal jokes.

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!

Yellow Snow Sells Glyphs!!

Well, yellow snow might not sell glyphs, but it defiantly sells beer as you can see from this youtube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNs_F4E1CNk.

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!!

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!

Real Life Strikes again...

Nothing big to note… as much as I prepared for 3.3 real life showed itself to be more important than WoW. I still did make a decent amount, about 12k last week. I’d rate that as a larger than normal week… HUGE if you consider I played less than 3 hours during the last 7 days.

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.

Gold is Absolutely Meaningless

As I started up my glyph machine early Saturday morning, unknown to me, my grandmother was being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. Shortly thereafter I received a call that she didn’t have long. Suddenly making gold and selling glyphs didn’t mean anything. I don’t even recall leaving the computer but when I got back later that night Warcraft was still up and my bank toon was still at the mailbox.

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.

How to sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman with white gloves...

Tommy Boy, one of my favorite movies of all time. The line from the title though holds very true to the glyph industry.

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.

35,000 Gold from Buying Weed?

That’s right interwebz. I’ve passed the 35k mark from my glyph business all from buying weeds, milling, inking, glyphing and selling. Although not so much in the last week.

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!