Monday, November 29, 2010

Vanilla Materials Flooding the Auction Houses!

So we are all probably aware of the auction house dumping that's going on at the moment, it's currently flooded from level 80 players doing all the low level quests and all the alts taking gathering professions to aid levelling. I've read a lot of posts recently on forums and comments on blogs about vanilla materials being a lot cheaper in Cataclysm, this maybe the case, and I suspect they will be cheaper. However, they won't be as cheap as they are now.

These alts won't be below level 60 for very long and all the level 80 mains will have completed these quests soon; probably before Cataclysm goes live on the 7th. I'm going to take advantage of this. The demand for all of these materials will be the same as they were in Wrath of the Lich King, I don't see that changing much.

An example would be Mageweave Cloth, until recently, stacks of Mageweave were selling for around 15 to 20 gold on this realm, at the moment stacks are sitting at 7-8 gold and over the weekend they were as low as 2-4 gold per stack. I've invested close to 12000 gold this past week in goods for Cataclysm alone.

A lot of players, once hitting 85 won't want to keep both of their gathering skills, dropping one or even both professions for the extra benefits the crafting professions give, selling these materials back to players could yield some tidy profits. I'm planning on the same thing for my Gnome Priest, dropping herbalism for Engineering, I also plan on using this alt for guild alt runs so Mining will have to go at some point as well. There may be risks attached but I'm confident I'm going to pull in good profits over the course of Cataclysm.

Doing something similar yourself? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Pan  

Monday, November 22, 2010

Bag Wars

So with the release of The Shattering this week comes another great opportunity to make some gold, a LOT of gold. Armies of alts will soon be pouring into the auction houses in the first few days to grab their levelling supplies.

I'm one of these people myself, I personally can't wait to roll out a Gnome Priest and check out the all new 1-60 levelling experience, but just like the release of a new expansion, the starting areas are going to be a wash with players ravenous to get levelling. So instead of diving straight into the grind I think I will hold off for the first day or two and get comfortable in the auction house.

Low level Potions, Elixirs and Food are all going to sell very well I think, but the biggest market is going to be without a doubt, bags, namely Netherweave Bag's. This is my chosen target market and competition will be fierce, but I'm confident I will do well.

I've been stocking the materials needed for the the bags for about 3 weeks now and currently have in the region of 800 to sell. Nertherweave Cloth on my realm has a steady supply and I've been picking up stacks of it for between 2g-4g and crafting them into the bolts needed for the recipe. These bags sell regularly on this realm for anything between 5-9g. Not a lot of people sell them because they think the profits are to small, however I expect the prices to jump close to the 20g mark for a bag come The Shattering and with a character usually taking between 4-8 bags this should yield some hefty profits.

You could stop there and fight the competition, but a touch of market control for the materials needed to make these bags might eliminate competition even further, and this is something I'm going to have a play with in these first couple of days. I will be keeping a close eye on the Netherweave Cloth market and making sure the prices remain high and also ensuring any left over cheap bags from the night before are bought out. I feel like such a bady!

Good Luck to anyone doing something similar and feel free to share your Shattering auction house ventures in the comments section below.

Pan

Saturday, November 20, 2010

The Night Before Cataclysm.

I've been looking around for a few weeks now at different blogs within the gold making community, specificity at what can be stockpiled and what is going to sell during the Cataclysm expansion. There seems to be a large amount of information going around about this, but what about the few days leading up to the expansion and those final few hours before it goes live.

Most of the people I've spoken to about the launch seem to have opted for the digital pre-sale(myself included.) I have a feeling there's going to be a lot more people hanging around the major cities and at the edge of the new zones this time counting down the minutes until their experience bars reappear and they can once again head off into the unknown; instead of hanging around outside game stores and shouting “For the Horde!” And this to me screams opportunity!

I examined the items I have stocked over the past few weeks getting ready for this myself. Besides the obvious food and flasks, I also stocked about 100 x Swiftness Potions. My reasoning behind this is pretty simple and comes from the experience of playing a character that doesn't have any built in speed boost ability. I recall a lot of occasions while levelling in in Northrend of Hunters, Paladins, Druids and Rogues that JUST beat me to that quest mob I needed. This in turn left me me standing around waiting for re-spawns...it's annoying...VERY annoying. With hindsight I would have taken some of these potions with me and more to the point I would have paid for them.



So for those few hours before the expansion kicks in, I'm going make myself a cheeky little chat macro to advertise these potions for about 10g each and at the same time make sure (if possible) I'm the only person selling them on the Auction House.

It takes 1 x Briarthorn & 1 x Swiftthistle to make the potion and there is usually a very limited supply of these herbs on my realms AH selling for around 2g each, so a healthy profit margin too (if you can get them.) Combine buying those out and some casual farming with a Paladin that has Herbalism has netted me in the region of 300 of these potions to try and sell off. If I don't sell all of them they will still sell easily over the course of the expansion for around 5-6g due to their value to raiders and Pvp'rs.

Pan.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Greetings To the Gold Blogging Community!

Well I finally decided to do it. After a few weeks of humming and haring I decided I would poke my nose into the World of Warcraft gold community. So, this is my Blog and boy is it empty at the moment, but “Good News Everyone!” I already have some posts in the making, covering a variety of topics that should keep me busy for the next couple of weeks.

I have some goals for this Blog, mostly depending on its success and my writing skills (which I'm working on and I apologize profusely in advance for my poor spelling, grammar and down right horrid typing skills.) I'm posting these goals for a couple of reasons, firstly being to inform people of what I'm up to and what I'm planing and secondly I think this is a perfect place for myself to list these goals and make sure I remember them. So, here we go over the coming months I hope to:
  • Stick to a posting schedule, at least once a week.
  • Get involved with the community.
  • Use some design skills I have packed away to create a custom design for the blog.
So there we go, that's the plan. It's not much but I'm not going to bite off more than I can chew...yet.