Well, so far, it looks like you did what I did: Start searching on the internet for people talking about gold making. You've undoubtedly bumped in to 200+ ads for Hayden Hawke and various other gold guides promising unlimited fortunes (while also costing real dollars instead of WoW gold).
Believe it or not, there's actually a really great community of gold making experts that share their knowledge to help others, to learn from others and to have fun.
From my experience, just about everything you could ever want to learn about gold making is currently available on the Internet, for free. You just have to know where to look and I'll do my best to help with that.
1. Read Blogs and Learn:
Of course, you've found my blog and I hope you find it useful. Here are some other blogs that I've followed and learned from. Some are better than others. Take all of the information you get from any of these blogs with a grain of salt, however. Many people exaggerate their earnings. Other people claim the sky is falling with upcoming patches and such. Apply any advice against your own common sense and you'll usually do OK.
Here are some of my favorites.
Cold's Gold Factory (The Fortune Card Master)
CappedByCata (Cold and Wes do a great podcast called Auction House Junkies)
Trading With Zoxy (I love Brits!)
The Gold Queen (Another Brit!)
2. Get your Character(s) Ready:
To do your best at gold making, you'll realistically need to have a number of higher level characters with varying professions. If you're completely new and are working on a first character, then consider the following:
Start with a pair of professions that will directly benefit your character. Usually, people will match a gathering profession with a crafting profession. I'm not big on farming, but it will help you get through your first professions fairly easily. Here are the preferred pairings:
Alchemy - Herbalism
Blacksmithing - Mining
Engineering - Mining
Inscription - Herbalism
Jewel Crafting - Mining
Leatherworking - Skinning
Tailoring - Enchanting
For Tailoring, cloth drops from humanoid mobs. You can disenchant tailored items for enchanting materials so they work well together.
If you're a more established player with several characters and professions already, then you'll probably want to double up on crafting professions and buy your materials cheap via the AH. Farming is something I generally avoid all together unless absolutely necessary. I dropped mining on my JC so that she could pick up Inscription which is very profitable. Doubling up on crafting professions will also save you having to level additional characters which takes precious time.
My Top 5 Most Profitable Professions (as of the time of this post):
1. Inscription
2. Engineering
3. Enchanting
4. Blacksmithing
5. Jewel Crafting
3. Questing: The World (of Warcraft)'s Oldest Profession:
This is a fairly obvious tip. Questing will earn you a good amount of gold. Be thorough and complete as many quests as you can in a zone. This is especially important in Cataclysm content because at 85, quests pay out significantly more gold instead of experience. Clear Hyjal, Vash'ir and then continue on to Deepholm. Yes, some quests will be green, but once you're at 85, you'll be getting some pretty nice paydays.
Secondly, when choosing a reward item from quest givers, look at what each item can vendor for. If the item isn't an upgrade for you, then pick the item that sells for the most cash.
4. Farm As You Quest:
Another obvious tip. If you see something you can gather while questing, take the time and gather it. Sell it when you can on the Auction House which should net you some fairly good cash for a low level character. Pay attention to deposits and don't post more than what you think will sell. There's no harm in selling things at a slow pace. Deposits can be high on weapons, plate items and ore/bars. Be careful only to post what you think will likely sell.
Many people have easily earned all of the money required for everything up to Master Flying Skill simply by questing and casually farming.
5. Save Your Money:
Don't buy stuff if you can help it. Don't buy gear, collectables, materials for professions and other junk until you've reached 85 and have a steady stream of income to feed your cravings. Obviously, the whole point of having gold is to buy stuff. The whole point of gold making is to make more than you spend.
Ever see those people in real life who live on food stamps but some how manage to have a big screen TV and nice rims on their crap car? The "Make and Spend" mentality is what creates this situation. There are millions of players in WoW who share this mentality. You're here because you're trying to stop thinking that way.
You'll always get better gear as you quest and run instances. Buying upgrades are not required (until very end game when you're buying epic's from crafters and there's even a cost effective way to do this instead of getting gouged on the AH). In short, save your money.
6. Add-Ons
I use a ton of add-ons and find the game unplayable without them. Here are the gold making add-ons that I use primarily:
Essential:
1. Auctionator
2. Trade Skill Master
3. Altoholic
Optional:
1. Auctioneer
2. Gatherer
3. NPCScan
4. Bean Counter
Some of these are straight forward. Others are insanely complicated. There are guides out there to setting up TSM which I'd recommend you look at. Otherwise, you'll install it, shrug and ignore it. I don't even fully utilize it yet due to it's intimindating nature. I'm already hooked on deal finding and other features of TSM though.
7. Get in the Mind Set, Establish Goals and Track Your Earnings:
What's your goal? The Current Character Gold Cap of 999,999g99s99c? 100k so you don't have to worry about cash for a while?
How long do you think it will take to get to your goal?
Whatever your answers are, there are some great add-ons that will track your spending and earnings pretty accurately (I'll update this post with more information when I can regarding this). I'm currently earning about 30k a month after my spending eats away at everything. I've already bought master flying for 3 characters and other mats needed to finish Tailoring, Enchanting, Engineering, Inscription and Jewel Crafting. Realistically, my earnings were probably in the 45-50k per month range, but I can't know that for sure without accurately tracking my cash flow. I'll be finding and reporting on ways to do this more efficiently in upcoming posts.
Gold making is a mind set. Once you think like a gold maker, you'll find that you always have gold and are always looking for ways to make gold. Funny enough, the same applies in real life. Poor people earn money and buy things. Rich people typically earn money and buy things that continue to make them money with little to no effort.
That's enough for now. Thanks for stopping by. -GNS
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