Finding a Niche on your Server- Puzzled Part Deux?!

Hey folks! May today bring you many a happy hotfix! I got an email that I would like to share with you, as there are some great tips for the beginner goldmaker found within. A month and a half in to the gold game, and Mike is already passing up some folks that have been in the game for some time. 


There are a few highlights here, and he even reminded me about a few things that have been on the backburner of my gold making skills (looking for a niche on your server? it might just be listed below!). At the end of the email, I toss in my comments on the different markets listed and answer a few questions this reader had. Get a cup of coffee, pack up yer bowl (of cereal, kids), and read on!


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Hey Alto,

Mike here. Just wanted to say great job on the Puzzled article. It brought to light a lot of issues that I've been having. I'm new to goldmaking as in about a month to a month and a half of actually attempting it. But I must admit the first several weeks weren't that active because I was doing more forum and blog reading than actual posting. 

I've done the basics: I have an alt with his own guild parked in a major city for storage and is my main auction poster, I have an alt parked at one of the neutral AHs (although I'm curious as to which one is more profitable, if any?), and I had a decent amount stockpiled when 4.2 came out. I know you hate to farm but I also have a level 85 alt with mining and skinning that I farm with for an hour a day (when I can) to keep my stocks up in those appropriate professions. 

The professions I have covered are Tailoring, Enchanting, Jewelcrafting, and Blacksmithing. I also have an alt I plan on leveling one day with Leatherworking and Alchemy. I've been doing the Dreamcloth CDs every week (got about 2 and half stacks) and the new Hyjal dailies everyday on 2 different toons to maximize profits the day the professions are available. And I use TUJ like like it's a religion.

Been somewhat successful with about 30k gold to show for it. Top sells have been gems of course with enchants picking up speed. Belt buckles are something I'll be looking into soon when mats are more stockpiled.

Your post made me realize about the high and lows of markets. The volatile market was what I looked into immediately after reading the article and saw sure as day that they are susceptible to this cycle.

I've also tried to venture out into rather unfamiliar waters with enchanting by selling TBC enchanting mats but not much luck so far. However, I may have discovered something for someone that is having luck. Void shatter can be bought from the Shattered Sun Offensive vendor at Honored Rep level (which isn't very hard). Void crystals on my server sell for about 1g currently. The problem I'm having is that there just isn't a market for large prismatic shards right now. Maybe your followers could better benefit from this information since I can't. Of course if this is an old method disregard it.

Prospecting ore and milling herbs as I've both read and experienced can be very time consuming. So can buying and scanning the AH. My current schedule with both work and class simply doesn't allow me enough time to do all those things as much as I should and I feel it's eating into my goldmaking goals. I currently have Auctioneer and Auctionator and recently heard about TSM. What I'm asking is if the new addon TSM would possibly automate prospecting ore for me or buy materials off the AH once I set a certain threshold. If it doesn't then do you know of any that do? I'm also looking for an addon that enables me to open and loot all my mail with just one click instead of me having to shift-click every single one. And finally I'm also looking for an addon that could allow me to look at both my alts' bags contents and profession tabs.


If you know of any addons that have any of these functions please let me know. Again, great article and good luck in future posts and goldmaking.



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So, here's a few bullet points and my two cents:

•  I have an alt parked at one of the neutral AHs - Great idea for a few reasons. One, you get a chance to see what's moving from faction to faction (true blue "flippers" of goods. If you are a dirty dog, you might stealth snatch some goods. Being a true blue flipper watching both sides for the best profits.
• I farm with for an hour a day (when I can) to keep my stocks up in those appropriate professions- I love seeing this. Farming is a very viable way to get your materials, and is a great way to keep "vanilla'ish" stocks of materials on your AH.
• I've been doing the Dreamcloth CDs every week- Love it. If you have cooldowns folks, USE THEM! Any cooldown in any profession is an instant profit, and usually an instant sale (or using them yourself on some BoP's for craftables).
• Hyjal dailies everyday on 2 different toons - Once again, it's kinda like a crafting cooldown. Dailies are an integral part of making gold in WoW. Whether you are doing dailies for rep, gold, or unlocking items, you are not wasting your time by questing. And, it's not a bad grind....until your 30th day getting a friggin epic fishing pole.
• And I use TUJ like like it's a religion - You can never go wrong here. Raiders read up for hours, have specified forums, talk in vent/ts/skype for hours on their schedule to knock down bosses. Why is it strange for goldmakers to do this? 
• Selling gems of course with enchants picking up speed- Alot of folks have made an absolute killing on this patch, and it is still a great market for weeks to come! Keep it up!
• Belt buckles - I don't even need to say anything here, it's a great market. Not just the Ebonsteel, but the Eternal Belt Buckle as well. Don't forget the leveling folks out there, they gots golds too!
• TBC enchanting mats- Greater Planar Essence, Arcane Dust, and don't forget all them Primals and Motes! Great sellers, great markets!
• Void shatter can be bought from the Shattered Sun Offensive vendor at Honored Rep level- Know your server, know your prices. Some work, some don't, but it's a great reminder to check!
• Prospecting ore and milling herbs as I've both read and experienced can be very time consuming. What I'm asking is if the new addon TSM would possibly automate prospecting ore for me or buy materials off the AH once I set a certain threshold. If it doesn't then do you know of any that do? - I would love to tell you about automation, but it's against the ToS. There are programs out there that folks use, but if you really want to know, google is your best friend. Or, just buy a G15 Keyboard. Still "against" ToS (due to automation) though. It just might make you "feel" safer. TSM is a great addon though, I swear by it for glyphs, gems, and enchants. 
• An addon to open and loot all my mail with just one click- Postal is and always will be the best addon for this. Open your mailbox, one click (or if you go into settings on the addon, all you need to do is open your mailbox, no clicking needed- wait. That's automated.......kinda.

As always, I love hearing from you folks out there and what markets you are hitting, what is working, what isn't, so on and so forth. Keep em coming, and you never know, you might be headlining the next post!

Part III- Cataclysm Rare Spawns- The Addon- NPC Scan

Hey folks! In Part I and Part II, I showed you the locations and drops for the Cata rares. For part III, I am covering two things.

One, it's the final part of the series, and two, this is my monthly contribution to Cold's Gold Factory. Cold's topic this month is Supplementary Addons, and this fits the bill.

If you are familiar with using addons, this is a breeze. Hit up curse.com to search around, or just click these links to download: NPC Scan, NPC Scan Overlay. Toss them in your "addons" folder, and you are good to go. Remember, you need both downloaded, one won't work. BOTH. If you use curse client, it will give auto updates, but in this case, either or is fine.

As for how to use it, well.....you really don't do anything. Install it, and just look at your map. Above, you can see that the minimap has a "colored" bar that shows the mobs "tracks", and basically the same thing on the "full map" (see below: 2,3,4,5). If you look at the lower left of the map window (1), you an see the names that correlate with the mobs.

Now go getcha farming on! Go ahead, you can check back tomorrow.

Got Mill? Milling Search Made Easy With TSM

Ok, ok. I know some of you folks stay away from TSM like the plague. And once again, I really don't blame you. It is definitely an add-on that I love to hate. For those that don't want to mess with it to "find" mats in the AH (when making glyphs), there is an easier way...

When you open up TSM from your Auction House screen, you can look to the right "window" that appears and mouse down till you see the tootip for "Shopping-Milling/DE/Prospecting". Now click.

Now you are going to see this window take it's place. See the little milling icon? Mouse over that, you will see the mini-window to shop for items to mill, then click. Directly below the "s" on items, there is an arrow to drop the menu down......

Once you "drop down" the menu, you will see a list that you can choose which ink you are searching for. With this "addon inside an addon", when you pick the ink, it will show:

Materials to Mill (Herbs)
Any Pigments needed for the ink
The ink itself










Now below you will see the exact cost per ink (it starts from the cheapest the AH has). If you have your "browse" tab on Auctioneer open, you will see a quick scan of every available mat, and if you are prone to seizures, I warn you to watch out, as they fly through the options very quickly. Now, you just have to click the "BUY" tab to purchase the goods at the price listed.

*Be extremely careful what you purchase and at what price, as you never know if someone jacked up the price on them.

*Below the information listed (what the item is and purchase price), you will see another small window with a bit of data for you: Total Spent This Session, Inks Bought this Session, and Average Cost Per Ink this Session.

Hope this little bit of info helps you in your Got Mill? needs, and help you rock out more Glyphs to sell in the AH. You might also want to hit up reselling the inks if there is too much competition on your server with glyphs....

Gatherer Addon- An Oldie But A Goodie

A bit back, when we got lucky [thanks Blizz] with the Whiptail spawns going crazy, I made a post (4.0.6- Herbalism After Hotfix) on my little route that I was making a killing off of. There was a comment that asked about what addon I used to get the "timer" on the spawns. Thanks to our little "Gatherer" addon, I was able to get some extremly accurate information on the spawnrates.

Upon a "mouseover", you can get a bit of information (this screenie is on herbs, but it works with ore as well). You can see the last time that YOU picked the node (not if someone ninja'd it from you), the distance, and what actually spawned at that point. The pic to the right shows what is in your "immediate" area, listing circles where the nodes have previously spawned (and in this pic, you can see an acual node respawn).

Now we are gonna hit a little bit on how to use the "gunk" of the addon. In your chat pane, hit up a /gatherer to pull up your available options, which should look something like this:

If you click on General, it will pull up this screen. To have the settings like I use, you need to have the "Display nodes on WorldMap" checked (highlighted in yellow in the near upper left of the window).

Next, you will need to go to the Minimap on the left side, right below your General options. Here, you will need to click [or check] the "Display nodes on Minimap" option. This will allow you to see nodes all over the place. If you are using the addon and see any glitches upon clicking these, go back into your /say or /chat and use the command /reset. This will reset your UI and will allow you to use full capability.

There are a few other options that you can use, however I prefer to keep the simplicity for only the things that I use, I am sure folks that use this will add in comments if there are other options that they enjoy (and a how-to) in case I missed something.

Now I am guessing that there are some folks that are thinking "It's not worth my time to gather (mine or herb), I make more at the AH". Well, if you enjoy sitting at the auction house all the time and don't get out in the real world, well, that's your perogative. As of late, I am enjoying getting back into the game, and after an hour in Twilight Higlands picking Jasmine and mining Elementium Ore and Pyrite, I hit 2200g (pending auction sales) in 60:02 minutes. Without going into further detail on that (I know, you guys probably miss that), even fighting a drood "bot" (i think at least), I still had no issues hitting the over 2K GPH.  =)



Goldmaking After Darkmoon Faire- Alto's "How To"

First off, I want to thank everyone that commented on yesterday's post. It was a very tough decision, and the winner is......Well, I can't tell you yet, I said Wednesday! I also wanted to thank Brouck for his post dedicated to me, "The Best Blog (post) Ever!". It means alot that someone cares that much to post something like that. Alright, with that outta the way, Let's rock on!

With the end of Darkmoon, we have a bit of time before the next one. What does this mean for us AH PvP'ers? Alot. See alot of people are gonna burn up their stock of their singles, because they want their gold back in their pockets. I can't blame em, and we are here to make some profits.

"Duh Alto, we know that already. How do I make gold? Get to the point already!". Ok. First off, you are going to want to hit the AH and open up your BUY tab. Now make yourself a nice and pretty Shopping List:

*Edit- Thanks to Syn in comments for this addition- To make it a more specific List with Auctionator you can also type: Quest/of embers,Quest/of the winds. it will come up with only the cards because it searches the quest category of the "of whatever" name.

of the winds
of stones
of embers
of waves
Earthquake
Hurricane
Tsunami
Volcano

Now I hope you added these to your new shopping list. If you didn't, go back and do it again, because to do this right, you cannot miss any of them. Got it? Good.

Now in this example, you can see that every single card is up for grabs. Nice. A full deck. Let's add em up quick and compare to the screenshot above.






Lets just round up a few gold and say 15K instead of 14923g (i didnt add silvers...). And how much is the full deck going for? 29K. The card? 10K cheaper at 19K. Now you do the math....see all them zero's? 15K investment, maybe a week on the AH, and you are looking at an easy 10,000g profit. "Ok Alto, your math is jacked again, that's a 14K profit". Gimme a minute to explain...

Now don't get me wrong, you might sit on this for a few weeks, or it might sell in a day. You might /2 it up and sell it in trade with something like "WTS Hurricane Deck- 5K cheaper than AH- my loss, your gain". Or not. Completely up to you.

Now all you have to do is keep posted on the different decks, and go from there. Before you say "This don't work on my server". Tell me which server you on, because I will check. It does. Now you might not have all the cards for one deck available right at this moment, but you can always snatch up a few now and change your list to "Needed Darkmoon Cards" (yes, I have one like that in case you were wondering). Obviously, there are some decks that are not worth the "flip" here, they might be lopsided, but I hope you got my point here. Now I have done this before and hit on it in a post, but this tosses a bit of more detail for ya'll.

By the way, this is great to do for the "old school" decks as well, and save them for the week before the faire to sell off (even the day of) for the folks that pay to turn in decks or that are buying the cheaper darkmoon decks to turn in for rep.

Now I gotta ask, how did your server look after checking? Some great deals out there, huh? If you don't see anything, either you need a new script on your glasses, you need glasses, or someone beat you to the punch...But I have a feeling that quite a few of you will see some great profits out there. Lemme know!

--Alto vs. TSM-- Who threw in the Towel?

I am feeling that you guys are ready for another deathmatch. This time, I am getting in the ring with TSM. This addon called me out around a week ago, and I took the challenge....Let me explain:

I have been using Auctionator for basically all of my buying and selling for quite some time now. I have hit a few posts on my what's and why's of doing this, for instance my "Alto's Ritual" post where I covered what I use which addon for (if you haven't seen that post, go check it out, and then come back and finish here, as there are some similar "conversations" you will see).

Recently, the blogosphere was lit up with a new addon called TSM. As always, I am up for trying new things, and this was one of them.

So I went to curse, downloaded the addon and installed it. Blah. What the hell? It said I needed to download more "suites"....if you used this, you know what I mean, as it probably happened to you. So I downloaded them, reluctantly, already frustrated with the hassle of not an all in one download (addons are supposed to be easy, right?).

I was expecting an easy user interface. Call me dumb, but it is far from it. I had some Ink of the Sea left over, so I tried again. After clicking some things (not really sure what, I think it was when I smashed my head on the keyboard a few times) I finially saw something other than a blank screen.  Blood dripping down my forehead....And this ----------->

Finially, I was getting somewhere. I did the logical thing, I hit Craft Next with a killer hook. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Oh shit! Something happened. I made a glyph! Woohoo! Happy days! What's that? Another glyph made? Cool! Really slow in between, I am beginning to think this program is as lost as I am...

As this is happening, I suddenly see a barker for Mysterious Fortune Cards selling in /2 Trade. So I immediately run to the AH and post. I am down to 50 in my bags, but I just milled a bunch of Blackfallow Inks, so I tap my mount (Traveler's Tundra) and buy up 100 parchments. Ok. This tripped me out, thinking something was jacked on Blizz side...I get 40 of common, 50 some of light, 30 of another (dont remember right now)...you get the picture. Then I realize that this is some part of TSM, like an auto vendor "pull" function. I think....

So I take care of the cards, now back to TSM. So I do the same "head mash" on my keyboard to get this to work for me again, and what happens? I start making glyphs. Again. It crafts a few of each glyph, slow as molasses. On the second set of three (where did this 3 come from anyway?), I decided to go back to my good ol' Auctionator to finish crafting them. I threw in the towel.....you win by default TSM.

In conclusion, good ol' Auctionator did the job for me, crafting around 70 glyphs in about 10 minutes (including post time). Now if you add in the 15 minutes I spent on TSM making 6 glyphs, I see that I shouldn't have taken on TSM, that Auctionator should have.....

My lesson was learned. Time restraining, I will not get in the ring with something again "blind". I will make sure that my training fits the fight. I promise to have a rematch with this wonder called "TSM".

"BE WARNED, I WILL BE BACK! I will destroy you and make you make me GOLD! Be afraid, be very afraid!" I said to this addon, who has beat me senseless, battered and bruised me....as I walked away from my computer cowering.....

Now you must excuse me, as I have to figure out how to explain the multiple keyboard dots and minor bleeding on my forehead to my wifey. Any suggestions? =)

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As always, feel confident on posting a comment. If you have seen any sites that have great TSM "training", holler out! If you hit it on your blog, let me know!

Alto vs. OreCrusher- "The Death Match"

Ore Crusher. It is a fairly new addon, so I figured to test it out a few days back (a blog hit on it, but I can't recall who or where I saw it- if it was you, holler in comments please so I can give you credit. *Edit- It was over at Trading With Zoxy- OreCrusher- Prospecting Addon). As I was writing this, midway through I took a break to read up on blogging, and Smudger did a post on his blog, The Warcraft Corner (and I hope you check it out if you haven't yet). He mentioned that he isn't a big fan of spreadsheets, and this addon basically does all the manual work of the ones that are out there. After using it myself, I was amazed at how quick it worked, and I love anything that can shave time off my daily "ritual". Can you blame me?

Now for all you folks that have been doing this shuffle for quite some time, you already have a good idea of the gold that can be made, and estimate your profit, correct? If you answered kinda, we are in the same boat....

Using this addon (or the spreadsheet that is floating out in the blogosphere, Stede at Venture LLT has a great one) takes 100% of the guesswork out of your profits, if you sell the uncuts, if you vendor, if you craft and D/E, if you transmute to Shadowspirit Diamonds, what-have-you.

Here is the addon. Not much to do, other than to enter in your cost, your # of stacks, then click "Do It". That's it. You are done. Total time, 2 seconds. Now there is a catch, you have to have your AH scan up to date. Either Auctioneer or Auctionator is fine, just do a scan and it will use the most recent information available. Ez peezie, right? 

Now for the main gunk of my post. I had to find out how accurate it is to real-time. Now we are all aware that to get an accurate number is extremely tough, especially when Blizz has the "drops" or "procs" of prospecting is all based off random numbers (or RNG), so I can understand where this can be off, but I wanted to see how far off it is. Now this is not meant to hate on the program (I can only imagine how tough it is to program something like that, and how much time was invested), I just want to know how accurate it is. So here goes:

For my comparison, I used the magic number, 100. Not that it can disappear, or pull a rabbit out of it's hat, but just because it works. And just in case, I did it twice. Two seperate sets of 100 stacks prospected. Now you are probably thinking that's quite a bit, it must have taken a long time. Well, I was surprised when I timed it.....

100 stacks. Almost 23 minutes. Now it seemed like an hour, but it wasn't. So, I got a screenie, got a count, and started fresh with a new 100 stacks for Test 2.

 Here are my results:

ROUND ONE

Dream Emerald: 4

Ocean Sapphire: 9

Inferno Ruby: 7

Demonseye: 3

Amber Jewel: 3

Ember Topaz: 7

Jasper: 91

Zephyrite: 103

Carnelian: 101

Nightstone: 97

Alicite: 106

Hessonite: 103

601 Greens

33 Blues

Now this is very close with what I have been estimating, 6 greens per stack, and 1 blue per three stacks. So nothing new here, and extremely close, give or take a few greens. So far, so good. 1st round, I call it a tie, what about you?

ROUND 2

Dream Emerald: 2

Ocean Sapphire: 7

Inferno Ruby: 5

Demonseye: 8

Amber Jewel: 3

Ember Topaz: 9

Jasper: 96

Zephyrite: 111

Carnelian: 80

Nightstone: 98

Alicite: 110

Hessonite: 104

599 Greens

34 Blues

Damn. Still extremely accurate. Now I am not necessarily looking at the exact amounts "here and there" for the greens or blues, but just going off the overall numbers. I am extremely surprised how close blizzard has this random number thing down. Fairly even across the board. Once again, I feel that round two is a tie as well.

Now I also did a comparison with the D/E'ing side of OreCrusher, and it was basically a tie as well, however I only compared Carnelian Spikes and Jasper Rings, so it wasn't a "complete" competition, so I cannot judge, however.....you guessed it, very close.

*Edit- Kammler, from Kammler's Korner updated some info in the comments below (to read his whole comment, check below):

"Also, the projected number of crafted items is not visible, and neither is the raw gem data except on the main page. For example, the data I just generated for 10 stacks of Obsidium suggests 9.6 Carnelian and 9.6 Jasper. The Transmute button says I should expect 6 Greater Celestials from the Carnelian Spikes (at a rate not disclosed per unit) for a total of 284g, and 2.8 Hypnotic Dusts (again, rate not shown) for 19.60g. Now I know the Carnelian Spikes take 3 gems each so I should produce 3 total. But it isn't shown in the data. It would be helpful to determine "what if" I sold the DE mats from two units at a high enough rate to get that return--then I could bank the extra 3 Carnelians for later.

Similarly, the Jasper Rings show a predicted 10.8 Hypnotic Dusts (total only, 75.6g) and 1.2 Greater Celestials (total only, 56.88g). I know it takes 1 Jasper per ring so that must be based on 9.6 rings. But the totals are not shown so I can't run any other models--its all based on the lowest price listed in the AH."

Now only one area that I seen was WAY off, the transmute Shadowspirit Diamonds....(I am sorry to say I did not get a screenie of the addon's estimate, but it was 74. I ended up with 64. Now that is a 2500g difference. Out of the 30 I did, only 4 procced as 3's, the rest were 2's. And yes, I am transmute spec, so I will be trying it again to see if proc's get more on my side...). With this round, we are about 15ish percent off. But I won't hate, because I think that I had bad luck there.

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Overall, this addon comes highly recommended if you are looking for an estimate of what prospecting will give you (at least for Obsidium- I cannot speak for the others). Now after adding and subtracting, I saw that there was just shy of 1200ish gold difference on the price it listed (for just uncut) between the two rounds, but 10ish percent is still close in my book, and it beats guessing.....this addon is definitely staying in my bag of tricks. If you prospect, I imagine this will be of assistance to you as well. Ok, now for some questions for you reading this...

Are you using this addon? What do you think? Are you as happy as I am with the results?

JMTC Carnival - How You Can Make Gold With Limited Playtime

This is my monthly post for JMTC's Blogging Carnival. If you aren't familiar, take a few and go over there to check out some of the previous month's posts. Great information there, so go read up!

I feel that alot of the raiders are (for the most part) left in the dust when it comes to AH tips. So you don't have a "capped" profession. You barely have enough time to log in, hit the AH for your pots/buff food before you are late. Again.

/guild chat "Joe Shmoe's late. Again. Ugh. We will wait 5 more minutes"
/guild chat "I am at the AH getting buffs man, chill"
/guild chat "Sure you are...you forgot last time. Hurry up."
/guild chat "Gimme one minute, I gotta hit the vendor too"
/guild chat "Alright, I am ready"

Sound (or look) familiar? So you are limited time and you wanna make some cash. Not a problem. With or without addons, but I prefer if you get Auctioneer and Auctionator, as this will help you with my (now your) 5 minute AH plan...


If you don't have Auctioneer and Auctionator:

Ok. If you are new to the whole AH addon thing, then listen up. If you are a raider, then you already know how to install. EZ peezie, right? Ok. Do it. Now. Got em? Get em in there. You need to set up a "base" of knowledge. You will need to do scans of both types. On the main page, there is a Scan in the lower left side, this is the "full" scan. Do that. See the time left? Yeah. Go do something for "x" minutes. From now on, you can hit the little "fast forward" button on the top of the AH screen. See it? Ok. Use this every time you hit the AH. Feel me? Okie dokie. Done. After doing this for a week or so (prefer two weeks to get a good baseline- two months is better) you will have enough built up to start seeing trends. But at the very least, this will get you started.

If you do:
You have nothing to read here. Doesn't it feel good? But you do have to read below. Ok?

Now for the juicy parts. I am not a Cata raider (ok, back in Vanilla, I was da killa DPS in Molten Core and AQ20/40), so you can probably teach me alot about this area. But I know enough about what sells, and what I don't know, there is http://www.wowhead.com/ and http://www.google.com/ if you are stuck and don't know about a certain item we are looking at. Screenies incoming...

Here is my first example. See that stack of Savage Leather? (Don't forget to look for the Savage Leather Scraps too) Toss a bid on it. You might not win, but it's worth a shot. You can see from the left side of the screen, you just tab through to get here, and glance through the auctions. Anything in trade goods under 10% you basically can buy. Now Cata goods, Anything under the 30% threshold I snatch up. These are all 100% resale for you. Freebie profits. You should be looking at Leather, Metal & Stone, Meat, Herb, basically everything in Trade Goods will do.

Second example. Toughened Flesh. Now these are set for buyouts. They are cheap. Crazy cheap. Why? Supply and Demand. Now these images will be different from your server, but the idea is still the same. Snatch all these up. A hundo gold or so, and relist for 80% or above. What? You don't get 80%? Ok. See the 14% next to the price? Multiply by 7'ish to get near the 100% price scan. You feel me? Ok. relist at that price. Same if you pick up something for 30%. Go off times three of your price. You buy em for 20g? Should list for 60g.

You have a few options on how to buy these (remember, use your judgement on what to purchase, if you are just starting the AH game, only buy what you know. Or have used. That means if raiders use it, it sells). Alright. Either click and buy every one of them on this screen (i do not recommend), or use the reddish tab on the lower right of the AH window that says BUY. Now type in Toughened Flesh or whatever it is you want to buy. Click away, and in this case, I would buy to the 3g'ish one. Why? Markup. You can go and clear the AH of these, but that is a different post. You are limited here, and only have 5 minutes, remember?

Now here's the quickie on listing auctions. Here, you will be using the Orange (red) SELL tab on the bottom of the AH window. See it? Ok. Now list those toughened flesh's you just bought by draggin them from your bag into that little slot. Auctionator will automatically undercut the competition, and in this case, we went to the 3g group. So basically, out of the 80ish flesh's we bought, we should end up with a 200g profit upon sales. Now if you are inclined, I wouldn't recommend it, but you can buy out everything up to the 15g one, and be able to sell for quite a bit more profit. But once again, I wouldn't advise that right now....

Ok. I think you are getting the gist of the basics of the AH. After using it a while, you will fly through your buying and selling. You might actually start enjoying it, as you can make a quick buck here. After a while, you will get used to what items are sellers, and what aren't. Use your own experience in what you have bought and just stay in that market for now. What? You want more? I thought I was done? Ok. One more tip.

Look up two pictures. See it? Ok. Look at the left of the screen. See all them items I have listed? Those are recent searches on the Auctionator Buy Tab. Once you buy (or search for that matter) an item, it stays in there. So say those Toughened Flesh are selling good for you. Check daily on what's in stock by going to that screen and tapping enter. If they are low, buy em. EZ again, huh?

Alright. We are almost at the end of the post. If you have any questions about this process, or want more ideas, I am sure other readers will be posting extra information below this in comments, so make sure and check back a day or so later to re-read this post and the comments. You can always ask or email myself at altosgoldishadvice@gmail.com and I will work with you, maybe even hop on your server if you really need assistance. Sound good? Ok.

Here is where all your time spent doing those heroics is gonna pay off. Greatly. At a cost of 1650'ish VP's, It might take a few weeks to get up there, a week if you are hardcore, a few days if you don't sleep..... 

So you have extra Valor Points? You are in luck, and you are gonna make a killing from turning them in. You already know where the vendor is, right? Ok. What you are gonna buy are the boots. Any boots. *Edit- Anonymous commented below that the leather boots, Treads of Fleeting Joy, are the way to go!

They are BoE and will sell on the AH and in /2 by "barking" your wares. What? You don't know what barking is? Selling goods. You don't have to get fancy and make a macro unless you want to, but a simple "/2 Selling Epic BoE Boots. Your choice, 20K" or what have you.

Don't worry, they will sell. I personally haven't done this one, and I was debating whether to mention it, but I know a few peeps that raid (and when they aren't, Heroics ftw) that have flipped a few of these. "Free" 20K (ahaha....if you read my posts, you will understand...). Although, certain buyers will pay upwards of 50K for a juicy new set of i359s.


Remember, if you have any questions feel free to post below (and don't think you will be noobified for them, no question is a bad question). There are quite a few folks that are extremely helpful, and would be happy to give you advice on the subject. I hope you learned something, and if you didn't, well, it happens. The information is pretty basic, and alot of people already do this, but if you are not a crafter, and your time is just spent "flipping" items, you will still do great. Don't go too small, don't go too big. Never invest more that 25% of your total cash into one area at a time. Before you know it, you will be a big AH'er. Just don't forget to check back to the blog to get more daily scoops of whatever crap Alto is serving.....

Thanks for reading, now go make some cash!

Having Issues With Auctionator? 2.8.8 Download Available on Curse

FYI- For the past few days, there was a message for me upon login:

As with most messages that appear, I thought nothing of it. Until I logged into my AH toon, and Auctionator starting going crazy. I would toss an item up for sale, and get a completely different item on the bottom. Weird. So I decided to go to Curse to get the new download (they are safe, but you still want to have your security scrape the download, as you never know.....), and you can do it here: Auctionator Version 2.8.8

Version 2.8.8

• Fixed the bug with quoted items (exact match) on shopping lists
• Fixed the bug when there are more than 9 identical pages of the same item
• History now displays the average of the lowest and highest LOW price for each day
• Updated the internal list of BOP items so that auction price in tooltips for BOP cataclysm items now show BOP instead of "unknown"
• Continued updating the disenchanting tables
• Various and sundry code cleanup

Upon logging in with the new version, I see no major differences, but the correct item is now showing. Cheers! Until next time....

WoW Podcast- Auction House Junkies- Plus Alto's AH Guide for Scribes

We have all been waiting for the Tuesday podcast by some great bloggers, Capped by Cata and Cold's Gold Factory. And it was a hit. There is something about reading about making gold, then there is hearing about it. They covered some great information there, don't hesitate to check it out: Auction House Junkies Podcast: Episode 1. I know I am already a loyal viewer of both their blogs, and now of their podcast. I hope you do the same. Thanks Wes and Cold for the great information, keep it rocking!

Alot of the conversation revolved around "barking" the Mysterious Fortune Cards.

As you know from previous posts, they are (and will) be a great profit for some time still. The great thing about these cards is they are a constant demand. Let me explain. When you are gearing up, you have one slot: for a helm, for a belt, for a weapon, etc. (unless you are dual speccing with multiple types of gear, so you will have two slots). But you can see where I am going here. The cards can be used multiple times, over and over, and they are still "needed", so sales will be consistant.

I myself have made a ton of gold on these, and they are a consistant seller (in fact the highest seller- quantity wise) of all my items sold in the AH over the weekend:

On my server, there are currently 10-15 sellers in this market, so I have a ton of competition. If this is your issue, and you are looking for an example, here is how I work:

Upon logging on, I do my usual routine, check the mail, check the AH, post, rinse, repeat. I normally have COD's waiting in my box from my farmers (if I am lucky), and I always pick up all the herbs I can that are under 100g/stack (in my AH). That means that 5 inks I receive per stack means my sellpoint on the Cards is 20g ish (and you can see above my average sale over 161 sold was 23g), so I make my money back on just the Blackfallow. Then you have the Inferno Inks that can be made (instant profit). I sell quite a few of them as just that, Inferno Inks. 150-210g a pop. I am currently averaging around 120g per stack of ink that I buy (over the weekend stats- although MySales doesn't show individual, only per stack. Whether that is one or 20, which most are in 5 stacks). Now you can craft the Faire Cards, Scrolls of Fort, etc with them, but I do not go there much. If I have 10+ stacks of Inferno, I will go into them, but I don't see much profit on a per card basis (like I stated earlier with all the competition out there) unless you have luck, which doesn't seem to follow me....

FYI- Depending on how your server is, I have little competition on the Tattooed Eyeball, Notched Jawbone, and the Silver Inlaid Leaf, and they are quite good sellers, bringing in 2 to 3K per. So check your AH and post if the supply is not full of competition.

To put this in perspective of mass buying and selling, if you buy only 10 stacks of herbs (1000g investment), mill them, Fortune Card them, and Inferno Ink them, you are looking at a 1000g (minimum) profit. Now take that into 100 stacks. 10K profit. Now 500 stacks. 50K profit. See where this is going? It is a great moneymaker, and alot of us have easily pulled in hundreds of thousands of gold just from this flip. If you aren't in this group, let me ask. Why not?

For the fans of "The Openings", I am using a new style, this was MySales (addon) since Friday:

Utilizing Vendor (via Auctioneer addon) For Gold: A How To Guide

To start off, I just want to remind you to look to the left of this post, and click "follow" to be added to my blog. If you are new to the site, please take some time to run through some of my older posts. Feel free to comment and I will do my best to answer or reply as soon as I can. Enough of that....now, onto what you came here for:


Addons. Some people use them, some people don't. If you are one of the latter, you are missing out. On ease of use, on time saved, on goldmaking. What I am going to cover is utilizing the Vendor option in the  Auctioneer addon. Do you use it? Yesterday, I posted another ritual of patch/hotfix Tuesdays where I listed things that I do before/after server downtime. I mentioned there were things that I do that are habit. Well, here is one of them. It's basically a scan done by the addon that shows what you can buyout/bid in the AH that you can turn around instantly and sell to a vendor for profit. Now why people don't just vendor in the first place is beyond me, but I am sure that I have done that before as well. You go to your bank, fill up your bags, en route to the AH. You list everything, and at times, I guess you get sidetracked and don't look at all the prices of every item you sell. pfft. That is where Vendor comes in. Here's a screenie to help explain:

Upon hitting the AH, this is the screen that you are used to (I use both Auctioneer and Auctionator addons for my AH sales/purchases, each have their own greatness involved: I have a post a while back with some info on both, Alto's AH Ritual).
Start off with a fresh Scan, you can use the Browse tab located in the lower left side of the screen. When clicked, it will give you an estimated time for scan. Now go do something for 10ish minutes (like read through my blog or something). Upon return, Go to the Search tab (now we are on the screenie). On the left side of the screen, go to Searchers, now look for Vendor (highlighted yellow). On the top of the screen, you can see the words "Vendor Search Criteria". Underneath that, a shade to the left, there is a spot where you can type in your "Minimum Profit". You can then type in whatever you would like, but I leave mine default, 1c.  Back to the lower left of the screen, hit search. You will see a loading screen, then the items scanned will pop up (see? easy.)

The top few are ones that you will see quite a bit. I didn't get a screenshot until I was already purchasing a few (didn't plan on blogging about this at the time, so I wasn't thinking), then I decided it would make a great post, and that I had missed covering this yesterday. Anyways, you can see that this time, there are a few 4g profits, and a few 1g profits to be had. Just going off these, you can get a free 11ish gold (if you want to get technical, you can really buyout everything on this list, then vendor. I normally only go for the 1g and up, but you get the point). Now this happens quite often, so anytime you hit the AH (remember you need a fresh scan- otherwise it will grab old items), make sure to utilize this. Now all you have to do is highlight the item with your cursor, go to the lower right, click buy (another window will pop up to confirm sale), hit your mailbox, and off to the vendor (or just click your Travelers' Tundra Mammoth...). EZ Gold.

There isn't huge profits in this, but after time, this function can add a surprising amount of gold to your pockets.

Now there are alot of other functions that you can use (look above the vendor on the left side of the screen again), Arbitrage (for neutral AH), D/E, Milling, Prospecting, Resale, and Snatch can be utilized for great profits as well. Just remember too that I warned you about this.....

There are people that list some items for 10000g when the normal sell price is 10g. That WILL mess up the readings on Resale. It will show huge profits when in all reality, they are scamming the system (whether they know it or not). So watch what you click on when you buy. Take that warning seriously, as when I first started utilizing this option, I was hit for a nice chunk of gold. Out of sheer stupidity on my part. Lesson learned....Use my experience with this and please look before completing the sale.

            Oh, and for the fans of "The Openings", the auctions keep rolling in, here are a few recents: