Making money in WoW: The AH

Now its time for part two of how to make gold in World of Warcraft. Part one an be found here. This requires some initial investment, a lot of patience, and a personality that enjoys watching the flux of markets. Playing the AH now is a cutthroat business. Just remember one basic rule, no matter what the price you put on it, it won’t sell if somebody doesn’t need it. If it does sell, somebody needed it, and the price was good. Ignore the naysayer’s who in their superiority claim that it is overpriced( but use common sense, 2g for a stack of linen is rather stupid) and play the AH the way you feel you can do it.

First and foremost, download the mod, Auctioneer. This will save you a lot of time, and when you are out grinding you can get an idea of how much the stuff you have is worth, what does and doesn’t sell, etc etc. Spend some time learning to use it, and what it can do; it’s a really amazing mod. A note to be wary of, it’s not all knowing. Some people have learned to fool the mod by putting a few things up with extremely high buyouts to confuse auctioneer, and drop the average price so you sell lower then you should. Always do a visual search to make sure you are putting a competitive price up.

Playing the AH can be done either a little, or dedicating entire play sessions to it. The main part of playing the AH is knowing what sales, what doesn’t, what’s in high demand, and what isn’t. It’s similar to when looking for a grinding spot, except now, you are using what they farmed to make you money. I generally start off with ore/bars. Browse through the copper bars/ore first, look for what the highest price per stack is. Say 1g50s per stack of 20. Look for combinations of singles or other stacks that are lower. Buy these up; re-list for 15s lower then the highest price. Make sure it will make you enough profit to cover the AH fees. Double check the price before you buyout anything. Continue this all the way to Khorium bars. Check and see at each stage which is selling for a better overall price. Are stacks of bars/ores selling higher then singles? Can you buy out some eternium and fel iron bars, make felsteel and resell it for higher? Ore is one of the easiest to make money on, because 3 professions (blacksmithing, jewelcrafting, and engineering) rely on them to make items. Plus some alchemy recipes do as well. Since ore is so heavily needed, you can make a tidy profit doing this; even more if you have your epic flying mount and mine yourself.

Next are the primals and motes. I have several times turned 100g+ profit with these just by paying attention. For example, primal fires were selling for 32g a stack. I looked over in the mote of fire section, and found stacks of 5 selling for 10g a piece. It takes 10 motes to make a primal. I bought up all these, and some odd and end motes, made my primals, listed them for 30g, sold them all in about 2 hours. 10g profit per mote. Browse all the primals, look for the two or three that are always listed 5g below average, buy them up, relist them. If you find a lot of deals that are cheap, you can buy them all up and hold them till demand goes back up, just be careful of flooding the market. I bought up 2 stacks of primal shadows back when they dropped a lot. Saved them for a couple months till the demand was higher and the price was higher, made a nice tidy profit off them as well.

Look for epics/rares that are marked lower then average. This is a risky business, because sometimes they just won’t sell. Good ways to tell is look at the weapon, the stats, and think what class can use it, and what level. Remember that anything level 17-19, 27-29, etc is in high demand for twinks. Especially blues and epics. They will literally pay more then is even reasonable to get these items. I don’t dabble much in the weapon/armor trade, but do browse it once every day to see if anything jumps out.

You can apply this to any aspect of the AH. Cloth, herbs, rare recipes, or whatever you feel you know the most about. Keep an eye on the test server. When new recipes are released, get a character over there and list the materials for the recipes, buy them up, resell after the patch and you will make a good profit, if you are fast and the first. Some people hate to farm their own materials, and would rather just buy it off the AH. This is where we make our money.