It's Not What you Know, It's Who You Know!



As you all know, I try to keep updated on as much information that I can. This post covers some of my favorite spots to hit for the top scoops in the WoW world. 



The Undermine Journal

 TheUndermineJournal - Your go-to resource for gold making. Even if you play EU servers, still a ton of great information on checking profession crafting, checking "new to you" schtuff you find in the AH for actual server prices (don't rely on wowhead for this, TuJ is a better resource)

wowhead.com

 WoWhead - The juicy goosey for checking items. Anything and everything you see in-game will be listed here. They have great links to new "blue" dev posts (wow forum GM's), PTR notes, and don't forget to check the "comments" on individual items, as they can be very informative.

MMO Champion

MMOChampion - Just what it says it is. The "champ" for finding the scoop on what's happening in MMO's...yes, that includes WoW. Great tidbits of general wow information, great forums, highly recommended (although I don't spend much time here, I should read more...)





The Consortium



The Consortium - Sick. Just sick. Great forums for all information on WoW. Sterling (site "boss") has some unreal posts. Amazing overall site. Very helpful forums, a shiz-ton of information, better than any of these listed for gold making tips. Been a long time "moocher", but try to get there now and again to help out folks that ask questions. Love it. Put this one on your favorites fur shur...

worldofwarcraft

WorldofWarcraft.com - Duh. The home away from home. Although they wont give you too much "insider" information, there is plenty of love there. I recommend to have this open on a tab at all times for you AH lovers. Log into your bank toon (I believe you need at least a level 10) and use the AH function. You can see your sales, how much you have sold, etc, etc, etc. Great if you are at work and cannot log into WoW.

WoW Insider

WoWInsider - Used to be great for Goldish information, but not so much anymore. Still good content.



Warcraft Econ

Warcraft Econ - Great interviews for folks that have hit the gold cap. If you are at 500K or 1mil, you definitely need to get ahold of these folks.


Just my Two Copper


JMTC - It's Not Just a WoW Gold Blog....It's a Community. Check out the Forums, a whole lotta stuff happening there constantly. And if you want even more, check out the IRC chat. JMTC hosts a friday evening "gold chat" that is a must see, where you can ask your gold questions to folks in the know!

Altos Goldish Advice - You know this guy. One of my personal favorites. Don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feed to get the latest and greatest scoops (see, now you are thinking ice cream, huh?). For those that don't know, you can get my daily posts emailed to you this way. Just type in your email address (don't worry, it's secure. You won't get spam, and no one sees your email, not even me!).



The list can go on and on. Oh, and of course my blogroll to the lower right side of my page (for the latest and greatest- if you are a blogger and don't see yourself on there, toss a comment below so I can add you!).

So for all my fellow goldmakers, did I miss one that you are partial to? Is there one that I missed that you frequent? Holler so I can add to the list!

Alto's "How To" For Finding a Farmer on Your Server

To answer Ian's question from a few days back, I am going to cover how I "attempt" to get/keep farmers. Note the attempt part. The reason I use that word is that I don't know many folks that keep them for an extended period of time. Why?

* Farmers get banned
* Farmers transfer servers
* Farmers find someone that pays better than you
* Farmers quit farming
* Farmers forget about you






I am sure there are more, but these are the top reasons to "lose" them. Of course, we all know that there are bots in this game. Although I am not sure of exact numbers, I can safely figure that there are quite a few that are in game....Bots work in mysterious ways. From seeing plenty around over the years, and from talking with folks that do, I have a few numbers for you "from their side of the world":

I would guess around 20% of bots toss the "farmable mats"  in the Auction House (i.e herbs and ore) that probably another 20% get sold in /trade, and the rest are used by one of the farmers' other toons, sold in their guild, or shuffled through other accounts and "burned up" (either prospected or milled).

Let's look at a few different ways to pick one up.....

*There is the /who in a farming area (twilight highlands, uldum, etc.), then send a tell. If they are botting, they are probably afk and won't answer you, or they are a "human" farmer and they are doing it to relax (and don't want to be bothered). I don't recommend this one....

*There is the "spam trade" to find one, which is another I don't advise, but might work. You can use a macro for this, but if you think spamming Mysterious Fortune Cards is boring, you will really hate this. And others will hate you too. People will block you, report you, or just plain out ignore you. Once again, not my cup of tea.

*The Auction House.....When you see someone with 50 stacks in the AH, as you are buying them, send them a tell offering THE SAME PRICE YOU ARE BUYING THEM AT. Don't try to lowball, as they have a reason for farming. To make gold. If you are buying them for 40g per stack, and you buy them at 40 from the AH, you are paying 40g for them. Offer them to COD or to "friends list" you (and you add them too, with a comment of what mats they sold, the price % of AH, and date), or even to sell in person at the 40g. Please tell them the actual amount you are looking for too. If you ask for COD's and turn half of them down, you will lose your new pal quicker than you can say COD. Make sure you have the gold to pay them. No matter if they COD 10 stacks, 100 stacks, or 1000 stacks, make sure you have the gold to pay. And don't make them wait. As soon as you see a COD in your mailbox, BUY IT. Don't tell me "I don't have room". Bullshizzle. You do. Just pay the full COD, you take one stack. Do that with each and every stack. They have their gold, they are happy, and you have a "mini bank" in the mailbox to hold your purchase until you have room. *Make sure when opening the stacks in each mail that you don't hit CTRL and click, as you will send em right back to them....I know from experience on that one....the CTRL key and SHIFT key are pretty close to each other....

*Use the best option. /2. When you see someone in trade chat saying "WTS [Cinderbloom] 40g [Stormvine] 35g" You likely have yourself a farmer. I send a tell, saying "will buy all you have, invite". Purchase all they have. If you are looking for a farmer, make sure you have gold. Not on another toon, where you have to make them wait, but on the toon you are on right now. If you say "I will pay 35 for cinderbloom, and 30 for stormvine", you are losing out. My guess is if you see that tell, that price is less than AH, and to show "face" with them, don't try "dickering" the price down. Yet.....

Ok. You have picked up a farmer for your herbs now. Anytime I find a new farmer, I always /inspect them, and see what gear they are wearing. For the main fact that I like to "gift" them. They are giving you a good deal on items, and you want to return the favor....Another thing that I do to EVERY farmer that I buy from, whether it's a one time deal or a consistent seller, I send an in game mail to them afterword (normally a day) and toss them 100g, with a letter saying "Thanks, keep them coming!", or if they don't speakie da englash, then "More, More, More!" or something to that effect. This is one of the ways to keep one, or to get one excited to continue the friendship and transactions.

Hope this helps you getting and keeping a farmer. If you skimmed through this post and are only reading this part, I will hit on the most important part of the whole post: Be good to your farmer, and they will be good to you!

"How to" Decide What To Sell- Enchanting Scrolls

Great response so far with the questions folks! Thanks, and keep em coming!

The first one that I am going to cover will take a few posts, but we will start with deciding what scrolls to sell in the AH. She mentioned checking TuJ already, but also wondering the best way to check the others that aren't listed there.

Well, there are limited spots (15) on TuJ that cover only the "Current Profitable Scrolls". If it so happens that most are unobtainable for you (rare drops, or you can't hit up Twilight to get your new recipies), you don't have the capital for purchasing Maelstrom Crystals (which will change now with the 4.1 vendor), or you are lower level and have zero access to all of these, we gotta go "old school" and check manually....Well, not really, we are still using an add-on, Auctionator.

To get the ball rolling, get to the auction house. Pull up your buy tab on Auctionator, and type in "Scroll of". As long as you have a bit of data behind you (with recent scans) you will pull up both the current auctions, and auctions that aren't up for sale (see left). This will assist you in snatching up markets that there are currently zero auctions for "X" item.

Upon scrolling down, you will see the "top end" scrolls that are available. Now this won't pull the average sales like TuJ, it will give you an idea of the current market and the prices that they are currently listed at.  Now obviously, you are not going to want to compete with 10 other auctions for "X" item, you will want to craft and hop into the lesser supplied markets here, you can feel "kinda" safe to work in when there are only a couple (as in one, two, or three) for sale.

Now just open up your Enchanting tab, use the search function (to the right of "All" on the top left of the screen), type in what enchant you are choosing, mouse over the mats needed, get your cost, and if there is no competition, I generally price scrolls at double to triple the mats cost. *Now if you are competing, then you just need to undercut them, and Auctionator does that for you automatically. =)



Now if you want to get technical, you can reset your Auctioneer data, scan twice a day for a week, and get a "recent" baseline for prices, then check your tooltip to see how many have been seen, what they have sold for, etc. Another option here is to set up a "shopping" list in Auctionator and add the scrolls there manually, and keep tabs on the ebb and flow of the prices.

For the time restricted, you can just skip over that last paragraph and only use my top "pictured" examples, they will more than provide you with enough information to decide which enchants to sell. Now stop reading and get to selling!

Don't forget, if you don't have auctions up, they won't sell. Make sure with your scrolls that you are utilizing a 24-48 hour auction, and don't fret if they don't sell right away, enchants normally sell within two days of posting for weapons, three days for 2H, and up to a week for gear. Although at current times, this might be a bit of a slow market for most, when Blizz announces new content (i.e 4.1 coming soon), the market will pick up considerably, then drop once again between content releases.

Best. Post. Ever.

After seeing these bracers linked in Org last night, my first thought upon seeing it was to post on Blizzards' knack with naming certain things in game. Here's a little list of the top contenders:



  For those that are worried about dropping the soap, this one is a must have.....










I guess these are the first Dr. Scholl's made available to WoW.



 
 Now this isn't an item, but I had to add it anyways.....





I can't speak about this one.....it's a rule.





 Mine looks sad. I need a hotfix Blizz, stat!

I take it the "fixed" version is an epic.....

"Caution: The surgeon general of WoW warns that viewing this belt is equal to 29 orgasms."  Well, it's kind of a quote....

I take it that his father was drunk when he named his baby wyvern, and with a name like that, did you expect anything better in life for the little guy?

I really hope you got a great visual with this one....

You are still thinking about the skid marks, huh? Hahaha. I had a bit of fun on this post, I hope that you all enjoyed it! What ones have you seen that I missed? Or do you have a better caption? Holler. Show me your funny. =)