Gold Capped: Gold-making resources for auctioneers
by Basil Berntsen 
Nov 18th 2011 at 9:00AM
The best resources for making gold are not a very well kept secret. These sites and utilities are used by most serious auctioneers, and anyone looking to start making gold, even if only casually, would do well to learn how to use these.
The Undermine Journal
The Undermine Journal is first on my list. It is a site that does a lot of things, but most importantly, it shows you the price for any item on any realm. You can look back at how the price and supply for sale changed over the last two weeks, and you can see all the auctions of any competitor by clicking on their name. You can also compare prices on your realm to prices on other realms or the other faction on your realm.
The potential for research here is limitless. Any time you're looking for a new market, the first question you have to ask is whether there's enough of a gap between cost and price to support your margins, and seeing the answer to this question over a period of time is way more valuable than seeing just what's on the Auction House when you decide to check into it.
Also, the post activity heat map can tell you when you're least likely to be undercut, as well as when your biggest competitor goes to bed.
All this would be worth a mention today on its own merit; however, the editor of the Undermine Journal also has an excellent selection of updated posts from the gold-making blogosphere. If a blog is syndicated on the UJ, it's going to be fairly well written and usually on the topic of gold making. The syndicated posts can be found on the home page for every realm.
The Consortium
Next on my list is The Consortium. The Undermine Journal is a one-player kind of site, but some of the best advice you'll be able to find about making gold in World of Warcraft is from other players. The Consortium is a "EULA-compliant, drama-free and friendly community" of auctioneers with a friendly and helpful forum. It is to gold making what Tankspot and Elitist Jerks are to raiding.
My first stop there is the Quality Guides section, which contains up-to-date guides written and hand-picked by veterans. The guides vary wildly, and you'll find everything between profitable vendor resale routes and a complete guide to TradeSkillMaster. Unless you're very unlucky, at least one of the businesses they describe in there will work on your realm. If you get through that and want more, the general forums are the most active gold making forums on the internet, and this is where you can find resources like the shuffling spreadsheet.
Additionally, the chat room is constantly active and is a good place to connect with other people who play the game the same way you do. I drop in once in a while, and a lot of the forum heavyweights park themselves there while they do their business.
TradeSkillMaster
The next tool every newbie to gold making should learn is TradeSkillMaster. There are no other addons that automate as many tasks involved in crafting and selling as TSM does. There are other Auction House addons and other crafting addons which aren't replaced by TSM; however, knowing this addon is a required skill. Learning it will take whatever you can do now and amplify it by a factor of 11.
TSM lets you walk up to an auctioneer, click one button, and then spin your mouse wheel for 10 seconds to automatically intelligently post every single item in your bags. You don't need to look up what your competition is selling for. If it's above your cost, you'll undercut them, and if it's under your cost, you won't -- all without any interaction on your part other than spinning your mouse wheel.
It also lets you open your trade skill window, click one button to populate a crafting list based on profitability, and then automatically pull the mats from your bank, guild bank, and the Auction House so you can craft everything without constantly running around looking for materials.
I know this seems like an odd thing to put in the list of tools for new gold makers. It's not an easy addon to learn, and while it's designed as simply as possible to do the job, it's not a simple job. That said, anyone who wants to make any serious amount of gold would save much more time by learning TSM and profiting from turbo-injected auctions to make up the time it took them to learn it.
PTR, blue posts, and patch notes
Every single patch is an opportunity to triple your gold. This patch, for example, we're getting epic gems, higher item-level blue crafted PvP gear, and tradable Chaos Orbs. This information can be acted on before the patch hits to make money with very little effort. One of the best things to do when you're getting into making gold in WoW is to start filtering all the information you read about a new patch through the economics center of your brain. Reading blue posts and patch notes with a gold-making eye will take some getting used to but can provide a significant advantage.
Another good thing to do if you have access to the PTR is to copy over a character with some professions or visit some profession trainers. Even if you can't train them, you can see if there are new recipes or upgraded items available.
Maximize your profits with more advice from Gold Capped. Do you have questions about selling, reselling, and building your financial empire on the auction house? Fox and Basil are taking your questions at fox@wowinsider.com and basil@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Nyold Nov 18th 2011 12:16PM
Thanks for the info, and I started looking at the TSM post as one of the commenters linked above. But I read briefly about it and this is the main problem (or tell me if TSM covered it too):
1. It seems to cover a simple buy mats -> craft -> sell cycle. What if I have multiple cycle such as buy mats -> craft item -> d/e item -> sell shard. How do I tell TSM that this is my aim? the crafted item itself has a pretty huge margin and sells way more than a shard, but the demand for it is quite low. On the other hand, the disenchanting process is a net loss but still the market for the shard is almost limitless. From TSM's point of view, it might not be the most sensible strategy.
2. To further complicate it, what if the crafter and the enchanter are two different toons, on two different accounts? Am I doomed? :P
Andrew Nov 18th 2011 12:51PM
I'm not sure where your issue lies. If crafting the item is a profitable action, TSM should queue it automatically. Then you just need to mail the items to your enchanter to DE. I used to do this all the time between my JC and my enchanter, except I had to manually queue the items I wanted; I gave that up when I realized there's a better market for the jewelry itself on my server than the dusts from it. :O
icepyro Nov 18th 2011 2:30PM
So... you are buying mats, crafting an item, disenchanting it on another toon on another account, and selling the dust for less than cost when the crafted item also sells, but you don't want to just sell that because you want your gold now so you can run out faster since net loss means it cost more than you are making?
Yes, yes you are doomed regardless of what addon you use.
And given that most addons only stick to at best one account at a time, I doubt anything will help you screw yourself over faster.
Now if they were on the same account, then you might be able to work it out. You can make multiple rules for TSM mailing, although I'm just starting to use it and haven't quite learned how complicated it can be yet.
I think the best way to expedite losing all your gold to unprofitable markets is to just "loan" all your gold to me for 30 days. If after a month you still feel some pressing need to make an overly complicated method of losing gold, I'll return it with interest and you can go back to it.
Nyold Nov 18th 2011 2:40PM
@icepyro,
I think you are the one missing a crucial point of Economics: market size. There is plenty of demand and margin from original mats -> dust. The intermediate product might sell for a nice profit but for a very limited audience. Say I can sell 2 units of it per week, and beyond that, it won't sell. But there is a huge opportunity to be made from the whole cycle of mats -> dust with hundreds times market size.
It's like if I can buy steel for $1000 and make a ferrari out of it for $1M. Nice margin, yes. But how many people buy that kinda car? Then I can repaint the ferrari to a honda and sell it for $10,000. Suddenly there's a huge market for it.
Now if you have $100k, what do you do? You make 100 ferraris. You sell 10 of those ferraris (because that's how much the market can absorb) and you convert 90 of them into hondas. Still huge profit from original steel investment. Saying "gold now vs later" doesn't work because this is all measured in demand per month. "Later" when people are ready to buy more ferraris I can always buy steel for cheap again. The only limitation here is my playing time and the supply of cheap steel.
Also there's complication that, with new patches and upgrades, the gear that can be sold becomes obsolete really fast. Hint: it's the pvp gear that gets upgraded quickly. It's as if every year they're coming with new ferrari model that renders the old one obsolete. Thus, in a year, there's only demand for 12x10 = 120 ferraris. Every ferrari that's made beyond that number needs to be converted to honda for it to sell at all.
If you are going to be snarky about someone else's stupidity, at least make sure you're getting it right first.
Andrew Nov 18th 2011 12:54PM
I like TUJ for a starting off point, but is it actually usefull for day-to-day pricing like Auctioneer is? I'm only using the journal to notify me when rare greens get posted on my server for my transmogging sets!
Basil Berntsen Nov 18th 2011 4:06PM
TUJ is infinitely better for pricing than auctioneer. Auctioneer history has to have been recorded by a scan, and TUJ scans periodically even when you're nowhere near an addon.
Andrew Nov 18th 2011 7:03PM
Hmm, good point. So the way to employ that data is to redownload the TUJ addon every time you log on to your character?
Basil Berntsen Nov 18th 2011 8:13PM
TUJ isn't an addon, it's a website.
Andrew Nov 18th 2011 9:11PM
Yes, but they do package their latest scans into an 'addon' that makes that data directly available to other addons like OreCrusher2 and TSM.
Chairman Kaga Nov 21st 2011 12:11PM
Yeah, the TUJ addon is what finally allowed me to dump that steaming pile of fail that Auctioneer has become. Because TUJ scans every hour using the external APIs, their stats are way better than anything in-game scans can come up with. Plus I don't have to sit and wait on those in-game scans anymore, which take forever (and tend to break halfway through).
TUJ + Auctionator + TSM is the new king of AH addon packs.
One nice trick I pulled was writing a quick script to pull down the TUJ addon for my realm and install it, then made it a scheduled task in Windows that pulls 5 times a day during prime play time -- once right before I typically get home from work (so current data is waiting for me when I log in), and then periodically throughout the evening until I typically go to bed.
Andrew Nov 21st 2011 1:02PM
Chairman Kaga.........I'm drooling at the thought of that script. Possible to post it without breaking the comment system?
vlad_dracul2k2002 Nov 18th 2011 12:55PM
I currently use the Auctioneer suite. I'm thinking about getting TSM, despite the learning curve for it. Would I be better off removing Auctioneer or using them together?
Jwee Nov 18th 2011 1:11PM
You'd be best off with removing auctioneer, getting auctionator (much lighter then auctioneer) and TSM.
Auctionator and TSM rocketed my gold from 30k to 280k, and still rising.
It might be tough to learn to operate TSM, but once you get it - it's supereasy and superfast :D
Ominous Nov 18th 2011 1:08PM
Contrary to popular belief, you do NOT need TSM or Auctioneer.
There are other, simpler, addons.
It just depends what you're auctioning, how and when.
I've made several thousand an hour, using just Auctionator.
Get an auction alt and you're good to go. You can have just that one addon and do well.
Others, to add a bit of functionality, can include Bagnon and Postal (or equivalents), perhaps with BadBoy and LeatrixPlus - to keep you undisturbed.
Whatever happens, DO NOT feel that you must have TSM or Auctioneer.
Pick what feels right for you!
icepyro Nov 18th 2011 1:58PM
He specifically did not say you need Auctioneer (but trust me, do get something), but you did not disprove TSM.
I will agree that if you are not competing by attempting to have a specific supply on hand of crafted items made specifically to be auctioned, then TSM is not needed. I've gone the last 6 months sticking to my old way of crafting/etc because it was working fine, felt comfortable, and I was profiting. I just want to take a moment to say that I regret that decision because I make more gold now.
I also use several other addons that were not mentioned here because I dabble in various markets with various strategies and thus goes with what feels best.
And of course, you do not have to do any of it if you don't want to. Addons are not required to play this game.
Fox Van Allen Nov 18th 2011 2:04PM
A great list, but let me add this:
For those looking for a good US- and EU-friendly alternative to the Undermine Journal, check out AHSpy.com. I'm absolutely in love with the way that site threw together its at-a-glance Guardian Cub pricing page: http://www.ahspy.com/global/item/72068
Dan Nov 18th 2011 4:50PM
I use Auctionator, Skillet and LilSparky's Workshop and find those meet most of my gold-making needs. I tried TSM, but the UI was too user-unfriendly and the learning curve was just too much for me to bother. For me, the two biggest hurdles to making a TON of gold, as opposed to a lot like I do now, are 1) time and 2) finding a market on my (very large) server that isn't oversaturated.
Andrew Nov 18th 2011 8:20PM
Yes, but they do package their latest scans into an 'addon' that makes that data directly available to other addons like OreCrusher2 and TSM.
Andrew Nov 18th 2011 8:23PM
So long I've gone, so many posts I've made, and this is my FIRST mispost ever. o.o
giventui43 Dec 6th 2011 12:38AM
The Undermine Journal, your source for Auction House statistics and data in World of Warcraft.
wow gold http://www.bookwowgold.com