WoW Gold Wiki dot Com

Before I start, I want to emphasize something. If you want to make a ton of gold in WoW you have to do work, and you have to do it consistently. I’m not saying you have to work hard, because you don’t? This is easy. You don’t even have to work a lot, 15 minutes a day is sufficient if that’s all the time you want to put in. However, you have to be consistent and keep at it every day.

Its all about execution and follow-through. A lot of people skim through a guide and think they learned something but then fail to follow through and take action. So read this over, then read it over again, and then download the add-ons you need, and get started making gold.

The Guide

• There are many ways to make gold in WoW:
• Grinding
• Tradeskills
• Questing

However none are as effective as “Reselling” or “Buying low and selling High“.

This strategy can be applied to any MMORPG, I started doing it in Everquest years ago, it worked well for me back then and it has worked very well for me in WoW as well. I have made somewhere in the ballpark of 80,000g in the 7 months that I have been playing WoW spending only around 30 minutes per day on average buying and selling.

I sold a good portion of that gold, and the rest I spent on friends, and myself. I was able to keep all my (and a couple of my close friends) characters in the very best blues and purples as I leveled them (I had all the BoE tier 1 epics from molten core in my bank when I was in my 40’s), buy mounts at 40, and epic mounts at 60, power level all my trade-skills to 300 in a matter of hours, even powerlevel many factions through turn-ins of BoE items purchased in AH. Allowing me to buy other races epic mounts among other rewards. I got all 1,200 tickets for darkmoon fair in an afternoon buying all the turning mats on AH. I also was able to create an army of twinks all decked out in the best gear, and best enchants money can buy. And I still have so much gold I don’t even know what to do with it. And the best part is that it was so easy! I laugh every time I think of someone grinding for hours on end to make a few gold .

Let’s start!

Tools

*Installation of addons:

In order to install any of these mods in warcraft all you have to do is unzip them into:

C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\Addons

or wherever directory you have wow installed, that is the default location though.

If the addon does not appear when you log in to wow, you probably do not have it unzipped into the correct location. Check and make sure it is in the addons directory. You can then check to see if WoW sees it by clicking the “Addons” button from the character selection screen - You should see them listed there, and they should have a checkmark by them.

If you get an error saying that you do not have enough memory to run the mod, then do the following:

Log into warcraft and at the character selection screen click the “addons” button, then in the upper right hand corner notice the box labeled “Script Memory(MB)” I believe the default number is 48, change it to a few MB higher than what it is set for , say 128MB for example. Then click OK and try to log in again.

Addons:

Auctioneer

Download the newest AuctioneerClassicSuite: http://www.auctioneeraddon.com/dl/#preview

Auctioneer is included with many UI mods already, but if you do not have it, go download it, it is the single most important tool to have for making gold in WoW. Auctioneer scans the Auction Hall and records all of the items and their prices into a searchable database for you. This allows you to do two things:

1. Spot items that are listed for too low of a price
2. Buy said items and sell for a profit.

Installation: Unzip the package so that the “auctioneer”, “enhtooltip”, and “stubby” folders reside in your

C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns directory.

This is what the Auction House windows looks like with Auctioneer successfully installed:

CT MailMod

Download the newest CT MailMod here: http://ctmod.net/downloads/

The CT Mail Mod allows you to auto-open all the mail in your mailbox. Very handy when you are dealing with 100+ emails a day with gold from sold auctions, items to re-list from expired auctions, and items from new purchases.Simply click “Open all” and it will automatically open all your mail and put the items into your bags.Your mailbox will look like this with CT MailMod installed:

LinksList

Download the newest Linkslist here: http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/

Linkslist stores clickable links to every item that is ever linked in public channels or on people that you inspect. It is very handy for getting links to rare items to add to your Shopping List. Configuration options are available via the “/linkslist” or “/ll” slash commands.

Macro Keys

I have the following macro keys set up:

/auctioneer broker 500

/auctioneer broker 100

These will allow you to quickly check for buyouts with a 5 gold, and 1 gold profit respectively. These macro buttons can be pressed even during a scan and if you see something worth buying you can stop the scan and buy it. (if your sitting at your PC) The number is in silver so 100 = 100silver = 1 gold.

Here is how you create a macro for those who don’t know:

(from the main menu click macros, click “New”, give it a name and icon, then in the commands box type the “/auctioneer XXX” command. where XXX is the number of silver”

General strategy

READ THIS ONCE NOW, FINISH READING THE GUIDE, THEN READ THIS SECTION AGAIN.

The general idea is to scan the AH, buy the items which are listed below the average selling price, then re-list them for a profit:

1. Make a level 1 character
2. Give Him/Her a catchy name
3. If you have enough money to do so at this point, go ahead and buy some 14 or 16 slot bags. If not don’t worry, you can work your way up to that when your rolling in gold.
4. Park yourself in AH
5. Open up the auction window
6. Uncheck the categories: Container, Consumable, Projectile, and Quiver as things in those categories generally do not produce good profits and just slow down your scans.
7. Press the scan button and wait for it to finish.
8. For the first few days the best thing to do is scan with Auctioneer as many times as you can through the day at different times. After a dozen or so scans across a span of 2 or 3 days auctioneer will begin to accumulate enough data to give you somewhat accurate pricing information.
9. Once you think you have enough scans to have good enough pricing data you can start searching for good buys:
10. I search for good deals 3 ways:
11. First: I do my Manual Searches(This is the first thing I do when I log on) I will go into more detail on this later, Basicly I dont use any addons I just manually search for certain items. I will discuss what I look for later on in the guide.
12. Second: I run a fresh scan.

    Then I check my ‘/auctioneer broker’ macros to see if I see anything good.

13. Third: I check the ‘Search Auctions’ tab in AH search for:

    - Buyouts with percent less 80% and minimum profit 50silver

    - Buyouts with percent less 50% and minimum profit 1g

    - Bids (short / medium) with percent less 80% and minimum profit 50s

    - Bids (short / medium) with percent less 50% and minimum profit 1g

    I have the 4 searches saved so I can run them all quickly in a row.

    As you begin to make more money you can search for higher profit items only as the

    smaller profit items will not be worth the effort then. For example musually search:

    - Buyouts with percent less 90% and minimum profit 2g

    - Buyouts with percent less 50% and minimum profit 5g

    - Buyouts with percent less 25% and minimum profit 10g

    - Bids (short / medium) with percent less 90% and minimum profit 2g

    - Bids (short / medium) with percent less 50% and minimum profit 5g

    - Bids (short / medium) with percent less 25% and minimum profit 10g

    Then if I don’t find many items in those searches, then I fall back to my lower profit searches and pick up a few more items there.

    You can tweak these numbers and percents as you see fit those are just what I do.

14. Buyout all the good deals, and then head to the mailbox to pick them up and come back and re-list them for more in AH. Read the rest of this guide for exact guidelines on what to buy and how to sell. You have to use common sense and some guidelines when choosing what to buy. In general when you are just starting out stick with low level(<lvl29) blues and greens which you can acquire for 5g or less, and which have desirable stats. Enchanting mats are also great to start with since they have no listing fees.
15. When you start to accumulate a lot of items (I usually have over 100 items in AH at a given time) it is helpful to leave the expired ones in your mailbox until you are ready to re-list all of the items at once. This will make it so that you only have to empty your mailbox and list items once a day, rather than every time you are at the mailbox. This will make your life a lot simpler once you have a large inventory.
16. Run these scans as often as you can, because the more you scan the more money you will make. I generally scan 3 times a day on weekdays: Once when I wake up and let it run while I shower. Once when I get home from work or while I eat dinner, and once right before I go to bed. Scan more if you can, remember it only costs you about 30 seconds of your time to log in and start a scan you can go do something else while it scans.
17. Always keep your character either at the mailbox, or in front of an auctioneer, that’s why you made a lvl 1 alt for this so that you are always ready to go when you log in.

Specific Guidelines Buying

• Run scans as often as possible

  The more scans you run the better your data will be, and the more deals you will find.

  Also scan at non-peak times to find delas that others miss. Scan many times durring peak time if you can because many items get listed every minute.

• Bid on Tuesdays before the servers go down

  Get your bid in before the server goes down on items with short or even medium durations left and you will have a better chance of winning them.

• Scan late Sunday night/ early Monday morning

  These are one of the best times to pick up some cheep deals because everyone lists all the items they found over the weekend late Sunday night or early Monday morning. Not only are there a large amount of items for sale, but lots of competition so people list their items cheaper undercutting each other. This is great for us because we can buy up the under priced items then wait till a better time to sell them for a profit.

• Sell on Sunday

  Sunday is by far the best day to sell. For some reason a lot of people do their AH shopping on Sunday. Maybe it’s just because more people log-in on Sundays so more items get bought, but whatever it is Sundays are great for selling items. I always have a mailbox full of gold by Monday morning.

• Make offers to people auctioning their items in the trade channel

  If you see a particularly good item in a trade channel that you know will sell well make the seller an offer that is lower than what you know you can sell it for in AH. I usually offer anywhere from 50% to 75% of what I can sell it for depending on the item. Don’t waste too much time haggling with them, just make them an offer, and if they refuse don’t worry about it there are plenty more deals to be had. Also many times a seller who has rejected my offer will message me some time later and ask me if I still want the item for what I offered because they have not had luck selling it and they just want to get rid of it.

•   Manually searching for items

  Here is where you can really make some money, after you have done the auctioneer thing, and all the good deals have been bought up, there are some other actions you can take to ensure maximum profits. And this is where I make a lot of money so pay attention. I was bored one day with doing the same old auctioneer scan thing so I decided to try something new. I decided to find something that I could buy up for cheep that I felt was undervalued. While power leveling my rogue one day I noticed that the biggest help in my killing power was having the best daggers I could get for my level, I also noticed that a lot of people make twink rogues. So I went to AH and bought up every green dagger between the levels of 5-19 and having ‘of agility’ and ‘of power’ since these seemed to be most desirable for a lowbie rogue. They were selling anywhere from 5s to 50s on my server. I re-listed them all for 1g 99s, every time I was in AH I would buy up all the lower priced daggers than mine. Mine began to sell.

  Within a week I had upped the price to 2g99s for of power, and of agility daggers, and was now buying up all the other alternative green daggers such as ‘of strength’ and ‘of stamina’ and was listing them at 1g99s. They always sell. The re-listing fee is negligible so I can list them as many times as it takes. In fact if I get an overabundance of a certain type of dagger, I usually just vendor them. Since I buy then for like 10s ? its better to just buy them up and vendor them and loose a few silver , and have someone buy yours for 2g99s instead. You are still making a huge profit.

  I then moved on to other green lvl 1-19 items following the same idea:

  Lvl 1-19 green cloth ‘of the eagle’; listing them all for 1g99s to 2g99s

  Lvl 1-19 green leather ‘of the monkey’ ‘of agility’ ‘of power’; listing them all for 2g99s or more. I can sell a +5+5 of the monkey legs or +4+4 monkey gloves for well over 10g a pair.

• Another idea I had that has worked well:

  lvl 40-50 green MAIL of the Monkey, Agility, Power. At level 40 hunters can begin to wear chain, this means that they need to upgrade all their gear starting at 40, so I buy up all the 40+ green mail gear that has good hunter stats and I re-list it for higher prices. If you keep buying up all the cheaper alternatives that get listed the hunters have no choice but to pay your prices, which they will because they are excited about getting to wear chain so they impulse buy.

• You can come up with your own ideas following the same idea, some that I haven’t had time to try are 40+ plate of the bear for warriors, or 40+ gear for shamans.
• It doesn’t really matter what item you choose as long as you know there is a demand for it and you are diligent in buying up all the lower competition and relisting them. You could even do this with rare or uncommonly seen trade goods etc.
• Items to search for manualy settings summary:

  Here are the settings I would suggest using to search with:

  - maxlvl 19, rarity uncommon, type armor/leather.

  run this search for “monk”, “agi”, “pow”, and “tig”

  buy up anything under a gold

  re-list for 2g99s

  realy good items list for closer to 9g, like +5agi +5sta pants, +4/+4 gloves etc.

  - maxlvl 19, rarity uncommon, type armor/cloth.

  run this search for “eag”

  buy under a gold, I usualy re-list for 1g99s

  - maxlvl 19, rarity uncommon, type weapon/dagger

  leave search box blank (cause we want to see ALL daggers < lvl 19 on ah.

  buy up all under a gold.

  If its “of agility, or of power” list it for 2g99s

  If its “of strength” list it for 1g99s, if its anything else do 1g49s

  - maxlvl 19, rarity uncommon, type weapon/1h sword

  leave search box blank (cause we want to see ALL swords < lvl 19 on ah.

  buy up all under a gold.

  If its a decapitating sword of monkey/power/agility/tiger list it for at least 4g99s

  If its “of agility, or of power” list it for 2g99s

  If its “of strength” list it for 1g99s, if its anything else do 1g49s

  - minlvl 40, maxlvl 45, rarity uncommon, type armor/chain

  run this search for “monk”, “agi”, “pow”

  buy under 2g , re-list 4g99s I also usualy just search for all epic gear and browse through it from time to time, I once

  found a 1,500g item for 200g once this way.

  Another one that I usulay do is

  - minlvl 2, maxlvl 39, rarity RARE

  Sort by lowest price first in the AH window.

  by doing min level 2, you eliminate all blue tradskill items(shards, etc) from your search

  as they are all lvl 1. Now you are left with all blue weapons and armor between lvl 2-39.

  Now just check the first few items on each page of results, and this is a great way to

  quickly pick out items that are listed too low! If you want to get even more accurate,

  you can break your searches down into smaller groups, sometimes I do blue lvl 2-19,

  then blue lvl 20-29, then blue lvl 30-39. The reason I break it down sometimes, is

  especialy on high pop servers with lots of items on AH it just makes it easier to recognise

  good deals if you know what level bracket yoyur in.

• Use caution buying 40+ blues; especially weapons

  Use a bit of judgment before buying up too many 40+ blue items. Be sure that you are going to be able to sell the item for a decent profit because the AH listing fees on 40+ blue items can be high. Some higher level blue weapons can have listing fees of several gold . So only buy high level blues if you know 1 )the item has a high demand 2) you will be able to make a profit even if you have to list it a few times because 2g a listing adds up.

• Epic Items

  The same goes for epics, they generally have high listing fees, and the auctioneer data may be skewed because of a handful of overpriced epics that have been sitting in AH for weeks. Use caution when buying epic items. I would suggest that you only get involved with epics once you have plenty of experience and gold reserves on hand. Unless you are 100% sure that it’s a killer deal. If you do see something hat jumps out at you don’t hesitate to buy it. When I was just getting started I didn’t know a whole lot about the prices and values of most epics, but I did know that when I saw a Krol Blade for 150g it was an awesome deal and I snapped it up and resold it for over 500g. The most recent was a Ancient Scepter of Sue’Min I got for 200g, and resold the next few days for 1,200g

• How much gold to keep in reserve, how much to invest

  In the beginning buy up every good deal you see, don’t worry about having gold in reserve. As you start to accumulate gold however you will find that you cant spend it all because there are not enough good buys on AH to spend it on, at this point you will probably be buying items and mounts for your other chars, and spending gold on other things. Once you reach that point you should always keep at least several thousand gold on your AH char at all times, you never know when someone is going to list 100 nexus crystals for 199g a stack of 10. This is exactly what happened to me one day. I spent 1990g buying 100 nexus crystals that I assume were listed by some guildbank , and relisted them for 59g a piece over several weeks, and turned that 1990g into 5900g ? quite a hefty profit.

Selling

• Sell on Sunday

  Sunday is by far the best day to sell. For some reason a lot of people do their AH shopping on Sunday. Maybe it’s just because more people log-in on Sundays so more items get bought, but whatever it is Sundays are great for selling items. I always have a mailbox full of gold by Monday morning.

• Listing fees and durations

  Always list items for 24 hours, the fee isn’t that much more, it lets more people see the item, and it makes it so you only have to list the item once per day.

• Always use buyout

  Always Always set a buyout. If you don’t you will miss out on 99% of your sales. People want instant gratification, and also a buyout scares people into impulse buying because they feel that someone else could buyout the auction at any moment. With just bids and no buyout people know they have hours to think about it and often decide they don’t really need to spend all that gold on that item today. BUYOUT, ALWAYS! If you dont know what the item is worth, and auctioneer has never seen it before, then go google it and find the average price on allakhazams, or goblinworkshop, or some other wow item site!

• Stack size

  A lot of times I will buy up stackable items either in small stacks or 2 or 3 etc, or I will end up with stacks with like 17 or 18 items in them. This is not the best way to sell stackable items. I use the following guidelines:

  • In general if you have enough to combine into a stack of 10 or 20 do that because it is a nice even number and people can easily figure out if the price is good.
  • If you only have a few of the item (like 3 or 4) split them up and list them singly.
  • Some items are needed in specific quantities for quests or tradeskills; these are the exceptions where it may be beneficial to list them in those quantities. An example is nexus crystals are generally required in quantities of 3 for most high level enchants. So if someone else has them listed for 50g singly, and you have 3 for 150g, odds are your stack of three will be purchased because someone probably needs 3, and its less clicking for them to buy your stack of 3.
• 7’s 9’s rule

  I always list my items using 7’s and 9’s let me explain:

  If the item usually sells for around 10g I list it with a min bid of 7g77s and a buyout of 9g 99s. Never list anything for 10g or 20g etc, always 9g99s, 19g 99s Its only 1 s difference but it makes people feel like its 10g cheaper. It’s the same principal as all those TV commercials that sell stuff for $19.95 It just sounds a lot cheaper than $20 even though its not really. Psychology!

  Sometimes if the item is worth only 15g, but there is no competition in AH at the time I’ll list it for 17g 77s / 19g 99s. People see 17g and think ?17 is about the same as 15, and 19g is only 2 more g ? I really want it so I’m just going to buy it.? They just paid 20g for a 15g item that’s 33% markup. They probably wouldn’t have bought the item had you listed it for 20g/20g.

  Granted if you had listed the same item for 13g/14g99s they defiantly would buy it, but that is a judgment call you will have to make on an item to item basis based on how much competition there is, how much you paid for it, and how badly you need to sell it (because listing fee is high or whatever) personally I do not like to put myself in situations where I feel pressure to sell an item, and the best way to avoid that is to stay away from the higher level items whose demand you are unsure about.

• Undercutting minimum bids

  When most people search specifically for an item they sort the results based on lowest price first. The price is not determined by the buyout price but rather the minimum bid. So sometimes it makes sense to undercut the competitions minimum bid, but not necessarily their buyout. This will ensure that your item is at the top of the list and the first thing they see when they sort their results by lowest price. Be careful though never set your minimum bid below the minimum price you can sell the item for or you could loose money if someone bids on the item and the auction ends with that bid.

Auctioneer Basics

So people keep askign me what “percent less”, and “min proffit” mean and other things related to the actual auctioneer interface. Let me explain:

Minimum profit:

Min profit is the MINIMUM amount of money that you want to get as a result of reselling an item for the average price. example: you set your minimum profit to 1gold, auctioneer will not show you any results that it thinks will give you less than 1gold proffit upon resellign the item for the average price of the item.

so, if there is “sword of woot” in AH for 1g, and the average price according to auctioneer is 2g33s, then it will estimate a 1g33s proffit for yopu, and WILL show your the sword in your results. If the average price however for a “sword of woot” is actualy 1g75s, auctioneer calculates you shoudl make a 75s proffit. however your min proffit is set to 1g so the sword will not be shown to you in the results.

Min percent less:

Min percent less is the minimum percent lower the listed price is than the average price of the item.

kind of confusing but think of it like this, lets use easy numbers. Say you have a “dagger of 100 woots” in AH, and that the average price for that particular item is 10gold. Now lets just imagine that the dagger is listed at 5 gold. somethign that is worth 10g, but is listed at 5gold, is listed at 50% LESS than what its worth. Just like a sale in a store, with a 50% OFF sticker. So minimum percent less is basicly how much of a sale your lookign for :)

You might be asking: Why do we need both of these then? Why not just look for everythign with 1 gold profit or better and be done with it, why the % less? The answer is simple, a 1,500g epic listed for 1,499g.

It meets your 1g proffit requirment, but it certainly doesnt make any sense to buy it. high risk vs low reward, not to mention you will spend 20g (or more) listing it till it sells. So, by leaving your min profit of 1g, AND setting % less to something reasonable for that amount. again I will show you what I do:

- Buyouts with percent less 90% and minimum profit 2g

- Buyouts with percent less 50% and minimum profit 5g

- Buyouts with percent less 25% and minimum profit 10g

- Bids (short / medium) with percent less 90% and minimum profit 2g

- Bids (short / medium) with percent less 50% and minimum profit 5g

- Bids (short / medium) with percent less 25% and minimum profit 10g

As you can see now, I increase my %less, and I decrease my min profit.

So basicly I dont mess with anythign small, unless IM almost doubling my money, on the other hand, if im making 10g or more, I am only looking for a 25% return.

Example:

I would buy a 2g item if I coudl sell it for around 3.8g or more(90%, 2g)

I woudl not buy a 2g item if it would only sell for 2g50s. (25%, 2g)

Keep in mind that the search settings I use are based on the fact that I have a ton of gold, and dont like to mess with small stuff for small profits.

Ween you are just starting out better settings may be more along the lines of:

- Buyouts with percent less 90% and minimum profit 25s

- Buyouts with percent less 50% and minimum profit 90s

- Buyouts with percent less 25% and minimum profit 2g

- Bids (short / medium) with percent less 90% and minimum profit 25s

- Bids (short / medium) with percent less 50% and minimum profit 90s

- Bids (short / medium) with percent less 25% and minimum profit 2g

As you accumulate more gold, you can adjust the settings to somethign in between, and then when your realy rich you can do settings like mine that will not bother you with pocket change transactions!

I highly recomend you play with different settings, and think about what your actualy lookign for based on your goals. I could write a whole book on what is worth lookign for as far as min profit, vs %less, but its realy just somethign you have to play with and learn.

**How to start with no money at level 1 **

Just Use searches that will find lower priced items to buy!

(People ask me “what if i don’t have any money to start?” Well I say I started with about 1 gold.)

You should be able to start with even less. So after telling someone this … I started another char lvl 1 with 0 gold just to see how difficult it would be, I killed a few mobs on my way to orgrimmar, leveled to lvl 3, sold all the stuff I had collected and had 3 silver total ! So .. now what can I get for 3 silver and turn a proffit ?!?

I did a couple scans and then did a search for:

and ended up with this result:

Bam I bought up the 3 lesser mystics (that was a stack of 3, i accidentally chopped the 3 off), split them up and sold them each for 24s.

Now I was sitting at 72s, almost a whole gold at level 3 within an hour or two of creating the char.

Later I did:

Buyouts with percent less 80% and minimum profit 20silver

which yielded the following results:

As you can see there are several items here which you can buy for a few silver and make

a hefty profit, especially the heart ring which is a level 18 ring with +5sta .. a very nice twink item which will sell very well for 1g99s leaving you with a quick 1g79s profit.

so if I bought that ring and that cloak, I spend 27s, that puts me down to 45s, and I sell the two items for a total of 2g50s, I am now sitting at just under 3 gold. !!!!!

Keep in mind im only lvl 3 and have gone from 3 silver to 3 gold in 3 quick transactions.

That is impressive!

You can change the numbers till you find something, try lowering the minimum profit, or try lowering the percent less numbers a little until you find something that looks good.

Granted some argue that “You had 3 silver, so you didn’t really start the plan with no money” well … yes I did, I just took a few minutes to kill some stuff to get 3 silver. If you are not willing to do that then I dont think you are going to be very successful in dominating the AH with that attitude!!! (yes people nit-pick about this to me, I dont know what to say but, you might have to kill a few mobs .. boo hoo.)

Just recently I did another expirement, a buddy and I started lvl1’s on a server we had never been on before, and raced each other to 100g, He ran off and started collecting some start up money killing stuff on the way to Org, I however went stright to org, and ask for a 50silver loan in public channel, and said I would pay it back double the next day. I said im not begging, I am going to invest it, and you will get 1g back tomorrow. I had 50s within 30 seconds of saying that, and actually had several people offer me a few silver to get me started I took it all and added them to my friends list. Now having been in org for about 1 minute, and 68s richer(yep got 68s that fast) I headed for AH, …. long story short … I bought some stuff, sold some stuff, 2 days later I had just over 100g, and my buddy had 63g. I put in about 10 minutes the first day, doing some manual searches for low level daggers and swords to relist, and then ran a scan at diner, and ran one before I went to bed, ran one in the morning, and bought some stuff, listed it, came home from work, scan, buy, list. ran one more before bed, bought a few more things, listed it all, and by morning I had 100+gold. Im just good like that! Lol, l I just got really lucky with some NICE finds on AH that first day, IT has taken me as long as 5 or 6 days to get my first 100g before, so don’t expect to go make 100g in 1 or 2 days every time.

Important thoughts:

Auctioneer is in no way definitive or perfect at what it does!
It is simply a tool to HELP you sort through the 10’s of 1,000’s of auctions in the auction house. If you trust the scan results of auctioneer 100 % and buy up everything that it says is too cheep, you WILL loose money. The key is to use common sense to narrow those choices down to make smart purchases. I have had several people read this guide, run two or three auctioneer scans in a row and then proceed to buy up everything it tells them to. Guess what? they lost some gold!

Run lots of scans, and use some common sense in what you purchase. In the following sections I will try to give you a run down of what type of items I look for. As a rule of thumb just think about the item like this is it rare? does it have awesome stats for the classes that can use it?
No one is going to want a plate item with intelligence on it on the horde side, and conversely no one will want chain items with intelligence on it on the alliance side. Or I look at daggers and think .. rogues want agility or + attack power, so those are the daggers I buy. Caster gear with +int + sta at lower levels. and + spell damage at higher levels. You get the idea. In the beginning start small, and use caution till you get a feel for the market.

Introduction
This guide was written to help players enjoy the time they spend at the Auction House (AH). Every player of WoW will visit the AH many, many times during their gaming career. Why not get the most out of it? Spend a little less gold for the items that you need and get a little more gold for the items that you are selling. Do that often enough and those expensive materials for that high level enchantment will now be affordable. The advanced section is for those gamers that want to become traders on the AH and make some serious gold.

The basics of selling on the AH
In this guide I will be using examples of AH prices. A notation of 12/20 (17) means opening price of 12g, a buyout of 20g and an expected selling price of 17g. The expected selling price is your own personal opinion of what you think that item will sell for on that day. That number will become easier to predict as your experience grows. If you find yourself in a situation where you don’t know what something is worth then talk to a trusted group mate or guildee. If your friend from school plays on a different server his/her advice may be wrong as prices can vary considerably from server to server.

Never create an auction like 1/50 (40). Nobody will buy it out at 50, they will bid 1g and hope for a windfall. It takes many, many bids to move a 1g starting price up to around a fair price of 40g. You will likely end up selling that 40g item for 5g. You would be much better off listing it as 35/50 (40) particularly if the initial fee is high. The 35g initial price should attract some bids and then you can hope for either continued bidding or a buyout by some player with more gold than brains. Even an auction like 1/30 (40) can backfire on you. Buying a 40g item for 30g is attractive to players but a lot of them will try to bid the 1g and hope for the big score.

Try to bracket the estimated selling price when you set the initial and buyout prices. The example of 35/50 (40) is smart. The initial bid price is a little below what you think the item will sell for. The buyout is about 25% higher than the expected sell price. Always set a buyout since many players simply refuse to bid and will only buy items. If they need something now they buy it now. Not a smart way to buy but their loss is your gain.

You can see if other identical items are for sale on the AH by browsing. Many players just undercut the lowest price currently on the AH when they create an auction. Simple, but effective. The problem is that you may be entering a price war. You can often maximize your selling price by waiting until there is less competition for your item (More on this in the advanced section.).

The AH charges a fee for every item that you try to sell. You will see the fee listed when you place the item in the auction box. It varies, from nothing on nexus crystals to multiple gold for a weapon. Also the longer the item will be listed, the greater the fee. You will pay this fee immediately when you create the auction. If the item sells, the AH will charge you a 5% commission, and you will then get the initial fee back. That is why the item you sold on the AH for 100g shows up as 97g in your mailbox. Think of it as 100 – 5g (5% commission) + 2g initial fee = 97g. It is important to note that you only netted 95g even though 97g was in the mailbox. You paid the initial 2g fee when the auction was created. If the item doesn’t sell then it will show up in your mailbox when the time expires and you will have lost the 2g initial fee.

You can set the length of the auction as 2, 8 or 24 hours. A lot of items are best sold on the 24 hour basis. This gives you the best chance of finding a customer. The 24 hour fee is negligible if you are fairly certain of selling the item in that time period. Some items like player equipment have very high initial fees and are best sold on an 8 hour basis during a busy time on your server. It can be brutal to list an item for multiple 24 hour periods and end up paying more in fees than the item was worth. This is the situation for Darkmoon Faire cards on my server. I laugh every time I see a time limit of very long on a card that has a 2g buyout. Somebody is just giving his or her gold back to Blizzard. Be mindful of the time when your auction expires. Starting an 8 hour auction at 7pm means it expires at 3am. If you have a low minimum bid compared to the buyout then it may sell at minimum price.

It is an old saying in business that the secret to success is to “buy low and sell high”. That is very true for the AH. Most players make the mistake as thinking of the AH as just another NPC vendor in the game. It is not. The difference is that vendor prices are static and AH prices change over time. Recognizing those price cycles is very important. Some price cycles are predictable and you need to take them into account.

Each server has a varying number of players online at any given time. I will use North American servers as an example as they are the most common. In the early morning (2am to 8am server), the players are at a minimum. During the day the number of players is increasing. A lot of players start logging on around 4pm and the numbers peak from 6pm to 11pm. Why is this important? Say you were lucky enough to win a lifestone by rolling 100. When should you sell it? If you rush to the AH at 1am and try and sell it you will only have a few potential buyers online. You’d be far better off waiting until 5pm the next day and trying to sell it then. If everyone is off on guild raids from 7pm to 11pm on your server then you might try to list the item at around 5pm on a 2 hour basis. Seeing a short or medium time limit on an auction does tend to attract more bids.

Server load also varies on a weekly basis. Some players have a life and Friday and Saturday evenings are generally lighter load than other evenings. However, Saturday and Sunday morning and afternoons are busier than weekdays. Generally, it is better for selling when you have more potential customers online.

The basics of buying on the AH
Buying items on the AH for resale will be covered in the advanced section. In this section, I will be discussing buying items for personal use. Items that fall into this category are materials for enchantments, potions and equipment purchases. If you have no gold then you are at the mercy of the sellers in the AH. Without some gold on hand you are unable to take advantage of bargains that you find in the AH. Go farm some herbs, minerals, cloth or leather until you have made some gold.

Mats and potions are commodity items. They will have dozens or hundreds of that item for sale at any given time. The key to getting the items that you need cheaply, is to buy over time. If you are looking to buy 3 x nexus crystals for that uber enchantment then start looking at nexus crystal prices at least a week in advance. Why pay 60g each on Thursday when they are selling for 42g each on Saturday? If you know what nexus crystals are selling for on your server then you can spot the bargains and snap them up.

Potions are the same except you probably want to maintain a stockpile. If you are using 2 stacks of major mana pots a week then you should try to have (say) 8 stacks in the bank. This allows you to avoid buying them at high prices and stock up when a price war is ongoing.

You can sometimes spot bargains by looking at the quantity for sale. If the quantities of illusion dust for sale are 1, 1, 3, 4, 8, 5, 5, 7, 10 (when listed in order by price) then take a closer look at the 8 quantity. Its current bid is lower than the 5’s that follow. If the 5’s are fair priced then the 8’s minimum bid is a deal, it might be worth a bid or even a buyout if the buyout price is also a deal. Be aware that if the 5’s are overpriced then the 8 may not be a bargain. Even if you only need 6 illusion dust, it may still be cheaper to buy the 8 set and sell the 2 leftover.

Equipment purchases are different because they are unique and often expensive items. You will only be buying one in your lifetime. If you are leveling up your character and want a certain item then start browsing for it in advance. That way you will be able to spot the bargain when you see it. If you buy it at a good price and haven’t equipped it yet then you can still resell it if a BoP item comes to you while leveling. An expensive rare item for sale in the AH for 100/200 (150) may be an opportunity to make a deal. If the seller is online and close to you then you might send him a tell offering him 125g. If he takes the item out of auction he doesn’t have to pay the 5% AH fee. So a 125g selling price to him is roughly equal to 131g at auction. A certain 125g may be just what he wants at the time. Yes, you can hope for getting a deal if you bid 100g but low bids like that don’t often end up the winning bid.

You can see if an item already has a bid on it or not. If you click on the item you will see the amount that you will bid on the bottom of the screen. If that is the same as the current bid price then nobody has bid on that item yet. Some sharp player will have an alt place a bid on their items just to make you think that you should buy it out now instead of bidding. If you want to bump a bid up faster than the small increments the AH goes by then you can fill in your bid amount in the same box.

It is harder to find the right time to buy something than to sell something. Basically, you want to find the time when the AH has lots of items for sale but players haven’t snapped up the bargains yet. On my server that seems to be about 5pm, but I am sure that it will vary from server to server. At 5pm a lot of the prior day’s 24 hour auctions are close to expiring and you can buy at minimum bid instead of buyout. Also, the sellers will be creating their new auctions and an occasional deal can be found.

Advanced AH
Think of the AH as a mini game within WoW with gold as the scorecard. To many players, that game would be boring but to a few of us it is worth playing. The benefits are that your character will have the very best enchantments available at all times. You can use pots and oils to enhance your effectiveness. You can help your guild and your guildees with donations. You and your alts will be sporting epics and enchantments and using pots and oils and be wicked solo and very popular in groups.

What does it cost to win the AH game? You need a starting fund of about 200 gold and about 30 minutes a day of time spent in the AH. You have to be willing to take some risks. By spreading your risks around you lower your total risk. Over a few months you will see a solid return on your investment.

The skills you need to sharpen in the AH are knowing what the fair price at the moment for a particular item is and predicting where the price is headed. Once you reach that point you can easily spot the bargains and know when to buy and when to sell. It may take a week or a month of watching the pricing before you have the confidence to invest your hard earned gold. That is not time wasted.

The timing cycles discussed earlier are still applicable but now you have some larger timing cycles to track. You have to watch out for major holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, March break etc as they break up the raiding schedule. Less raiding means fewer consumables used but the farming continues steadily. School summer holidays means more farming. These all influence pricing as it is based on supply and demand at the AH. The Darkmoon Faire also can affect pricing of certain items when it is active.

Other larger changes in your server are also important. On a server that is just reaching Molten Core raiding, you can expect the prices on fire resist gear and pots to rise along with the mats to make them. A mature server with many high level players may have a strong market for items that appeal to alts. As I write this I am anticipating the changes from new instances and the importance of nature resistance. A trader in the stock market pays attention to the business cycle and the news. An AH trader has to think ahead as well.

It is almost impossible to be an expert in pricing of every item at all times. It would take hours each day just to track the market. You need to specialize. I specialized in herbs and alchemy, but any category of items will work. Every day or two, I take the time to look at pricing of key herbs and potions to see how they are doing. If I spot any bargains I bid on or buy them out. I have no idea about equipment, leatherworking, tailoring, mining, enchanting, fishing or cooking pricing. I only pay attention to some herbs and some alchemy.

As stated before the key is to buy low and to sell high. It works even better if you provide a service like turning herbs into potions but it can work with just buying and selling. You have to be much sharper on your pricing when you are reselling as the AH fees will wipe out your profits very quickly. I used to sell on AH with pricing like 9/16 (13?) and now I sell at 12/14 (13) because I know the 13 much more accurately.

The initial fee that the AH charges for listing an item can get expensive if a lot of your items fail to sell. You should be targeting a sell through rate of over 50%. At that level, more than 50% of your listed items are selling in 24 hours. If you sell through rate approaches 80% then your prices are too low. Some items like nexus crystals have no initial fee. Players go a little crazy with pricing in those cases. They have nothing to lose.

You also have to understand the quantity of each item that is being used each day. If you know that roughly 8 stacks of major mana pots are being bought each evening then it allows you to get a better price as a supplier of major mana pots. You no longer have to sell at the lowest price. Say that 13g is the fair price for major mana and it is busy time in the AH just before major raiding starts. Say I saw a price listing in AH of 7, 9, 9, 10, 10, 15, 15, 15. There is no need to undercut the lowest price. I would buy the 7g stack and offer 3 stacks at 13g and probably sell them. The 9g is not worth buying and reselling as major mana cost 45s a stack to put in the AH for 24 hours. Too risky to buy and sell for thin margin. If the pricing in the AH was 11, 15, 15, 17, 17, 17 then I might put 5 stacks up for sale at 14g. If the listing were 10, 10, 11, 11, 11, 12, 12, 12, 18, 18 then I would not try to sell that day. The key is knowing that roughly 8 stacks are what your server is selling an evening at this time.

You have to know your market. If the market only buys 2 of an item a day on average then it is pointless to offer 10 of those items for sale at one time. In fact, if you offer 10 on the market a lot of buyers will stop buying as they anticipate a drop in market price with such an oversupply in existence.

With few exceptions, items that are listed for sale by your competition will eventually be sold. Maybe they won’t sell today or this week, but eventually the owner will drop the price and dump them. If they get tired of paying 45s to list their major mana pots at 18g then they may dump 20 stacks on the market at one time at 10g a stack. Such are the ups and downs of the market place. If they are desperate enough in their selling prices then an opportunity may be available to you to buy and resell.

It costs about 20g to create an alt with 12 or 14 slot bags, bank and a couple of bags in the bank. That can hold about 100 slots. I highly recommend creating a selling alt. My main manufactures potions for resale and mails them to my alt. The only things my alt does is sell items on the AH and mail gold back to my main. It keeps things simple and reduces the storage load on my main.

You can also invest in a stockpile alt that holds stuff for the long term. Investing in a stockpile of an item can be risky. If the price crashes or even just stagnates then you lose. If artha’s tears or elemental air ever skyrocket then I am going to make a killing. Early in my career I stockpiled a lot of elemental items and did well on fire and earth but other items were dogs. Since then I learned to specialize more. The biggest risk I ever took was stockpiling 200 stacks of dreamfoil. Yes 4,000 dreamfoil or enough to fill two alts bags and their banks. I did well but sold out long before dreamfoil reached its current silly price on my server. I had so much gold invested in dreamfoil I had to delay the purchase of an epic mount for over a month. Sorry, I wont tell you what I am stockpiling at the moment but it wouldn’t help you very much anyways as each server is unique.

Stockpiling allows you to ride out the price fluctuations of day-to-day and week-to-week. If the price of dreamfoil skyrockets then I just use my stockpile to continue to offer major mana pots in the AH. When the price of dreamfoil crashes then I refill my stockpile. In a sense stockpiles is provide server stability on prices.

Conclusion
An average of thirty minutes a day can yield you thousands of gold in profit after a few months. Yes, you could kill mobs and sell the loot but you are probably pretty tired of that. If you think of the AH as a mini-game within WoW, then why not play the game to win? Some of the skills you acquire at the AH may benefit you in real life. Good luck and good profits.