Guild Mum

I have become a bit obsessive about gold making recently. When my Dad died in March, he had about 40k gold on his characters. We used to have a laugh about him spending 400g on mats for an enchant and I would tease him ruthlessly about the implications of spending 1% of his gold. Dad made his money from a variety of ways.

1. He would always collect absolutely everything from every mob that he (or anyone in his party) killed and then sell it to a vendor, or post it on the auction house. Every little green that his alts collected would be sold or disenchanted and the mats sold. All the useless claws, fangs, tails and things all sell. While I was farming my raptor I would collect all the junk that dropped too and vendor it. I made 75g per hour farming raptors and selling the stuff that some people would leave behind. Admittedly it is a bit easier to do with 22 slot bags in each slot and a mammoth I can call up to vendor stuff to, but it’s not hard to get bigger bags and fly to sell your stuff every so often.

2. He used his transmute, crafting, etc. cooldowns at every opportunity. There are add-ons that help you track them so you can do this.

3. He made a bank character and gave it a guild of it’s own to store things. Anything he didn’t vendor or that he wasn’t sure would sell at a particular time he would send to the bank alt and put away in his bank.

He learnt all these things from me, but because he had more time to play (he spent most days in WOW for most of the day - nerf retired people) he made better use of the information and more gold.

Once I’d got over my initial spending spree when I got my hands on his characters I felt guilty at wrecking his fortune, so decided to work to get it all back. When he died, I had about 7k gold over my characters. Now, I have about 60k over his and my characters. I bought a mammoth, a choppa and I had my Ulduar gear crafts done when runed orbs cost 1k a piece and I bought 12 of them along with 12 Moonshroud. I also have bought 2 greatness cards for me and funded my husband and son’s dual specs and just bought another Nobles Deck for Barkie’s upcoming warlock.

So how did I do it? Well, I’m not going to tell you the whole thing because a lot of my readers come from my realm and I don’t want to completely wreck my market. I post about 400-500 auctions a day. I have an almost automated system. I spend about an hour a day, maybe 2, crafting and auctioning. But by far the biggest contribution to my gold making is that I have READ, extensively. There are many, many sites and blogs that will tell you how to make money. Here are a few….

Greedy Goblin is one of the most famous of gold makers and a legend in the blogging sphere for his forthright views. I take a fair bit of what he says with a pinch of salt. He plays his way and I play mine, but he does have some great ideas on the gold making front and is remarkably skilled at it. He recently did a string of articles about how to make money using any profession - tailoring, alchemy, etc., not just glyphs. He also did a wonderful one about running Ulduar in blue gear which I think I mentioned before.

The 100k WOW Gold Challenge is a fairly recent one. This guy so far has been playing 15 days and is up to almost 21k. While I’m not too keen on the layout of his blog site (too many adverts for me), he does have some good tips and some interesting stuff to do other than the traditional crafting routes.

WOWenomics is a great resource.

There are so many ways to make gold. I wish I had more time to follow some more of them, but my 2 little bankers are flat out. Barkie and I are branching into enchanting scrolls and I am tempted by leg armor enchants (spellthreads and stuff). Some folks I know make a fortune from belt buckles. Others craft bags - there’s a great market for these because people are always levelling alts and want more room. Jewelcrafters have fun too. I know a guy who makes lots and lots of cash from the Gem market - he’s famous on our server for it.

So next time you’re feeling a bit strapped for cash, take some time out from playing, do a bit of reading and get yourself making some gold.

Do you know, just thinking about it - to me making gold is the same as raiding well. You take the time to learn how to do it and you go and do it. It’s natural to me. My quest for knowledge and my love of reading are so satisfied on the internet. I can easily lose hours once I start following links on people’s blogs. I have 145 blogs or interesting sites in my google reader. There’s a mix of fun reads, priestly resources, money making, comics, general information of WOW. Barkie keeps trying to talk me into making some REAL money out of my WOW habit and I think one day I might just try it, but when I do you can bet that there will be NO “buy your WOW gold” here sites - unless it’s ME selling it

Go to some of these sites, go the the places they link to. I just added another one to my feeder by following a link from one I just posted. Read, Learn, Profit.