Introduction

Welcome to my second gold guide – Gold for Dummies!

Following the release of my first gold guide [Gold: A Gentleman's Primer] I got a lot of funny questions. In writing it, I focused on sharing my philosophy and methodology instead of specific ‘buy this, sell that’ steps. Nobody learns anything from those and they’re very quickly outdated anyway.

Rather than rant on about that here I thought that, for something different, I might include the bulk of my introduction into the short clip below.

Table of Contents

1 – [The reality - nice and simple]
2 – [The secret to having lots of gold]
3 – [Flowchart for Dummies!]
4 – [What's in it for you?]
5 – [Excuses excuses - These ones don't count]
6 – [Further Reading & External Links]

The Reality – Nice and Simple

I know, I know! You’re not here to actually ‘read stuff’ right? You’d like to be shown straight to the part with the magic formula. You know, the one that will tell you how to quickly make ridiculous amounts of gold? Human beings are funny like that. We naturally look for the fastest, easiest way to do something. Then we try to get away with doing even less than that, half as much maybe!

That’s why every day people waste money on weight loss fads, get rich quick schemes and – in Warcraft – paid for gold guides. The ridiculous thing is that ALL THIS INFORMATION is freely available on the internet already!

Stop looking for a quick and easy way out! Instead start simple and learn the basics then slowly work your way up from there. It’s not difficult and there’s plenty of people around – myself included – that will be happy to help you out as long as you’re trying. The only way you’ll get the hang of making gold is if you invest effort in learning how to do it.

What’s all that mean? In the simplest terms possible “If you want something, you have to try”.

What’s in this for you?

That seems like a stupid question right? Obviously there’s gold in it for you! What you might not realise is that you can get a bunch of other skills out of mastering the in-game economy.

From simple buy low, sell high strategies to learning how to get the best deal. From auction house price trends and fluctuations to factoring opportunity cost. These are actual skills that will help you no matter what you do in life.

So, even if the notion of investing time just to make ‘pretend money’ in-game discourages you, remember the more important lessons here.

The secret to having lots of gold

People ask me all the time for ‘the secret’ to having gold. After talking to a lot of people and observing their behavior with money I came to the realisation that a lot of people seem to be unaware of their ‘cycles’ with gold. When I tell say “Make gold each day, spend less than you make, let time pass” is the secret people actually are surprised.

Here’s a small chart I put together that might help illustrate how this works:

So what’s going on here? The idea here is that the journey to having lots of gold isn’t a fast one. Ask anyone who’s achieved the gold cap in WoW and they’ll tell you it’s all about routine routine routine! You need to do SOMETHING each day that’s earning you gold. This can be as simple as a daily quest or instance or as complicated as posting hundreds of auctions – it doesnt matter as long as your gold goes UP by any amount.

The next step is to resist going into ‘shopping’ mode and spending gold on magic beans is it more important than the stuff on this list?’.

Finally you simply need to maintain that routine. If you’re making 100g per day then that’s 700g you’ll end up with each week. Getting to gold cap, then, is just a matter of maintaining that routine. If you want your gold to increase faster then you simply need to modify your routine so that you get more gold from it. Simple right?

Flowchart for dummies

Here’s a fairly simple flowchart I put together. Although the information here is quite basic it should provide some direction to those of you that never seem to be able to get more than 100g at any time. You’ve probably been sporting that non-epic flying mount the last couple of years and are sick of it, am I right? :p

If anyone has questions about the suggestions in this flowchart post a comment and ask – I’ll be happy to explain my suggestions! If you think you have smarter ideas that’s even better, contact me and we can add them in :)

Excuses excuses – these ones don’t count

Why do people make excuses? They don’t want to lose face so their subconscious finds a ‘win-win’ that allows them to fail yet not have to take the ego hit. I thought it might be worthwhile going through some of the more common ones I see.

Always keep this in mind – excuses are not acceptable justification for mediocrity. Personal issues, obstacles and the challenges we face each day are there to make us work harder and succeed in spite of. If you just read that and thought “That doesn’t apply to me, I’m a special case” then I definitely mean you!

The type of people that inspire me the most in life are those that have used these obstacles. Used them not as a means of justifying their lack of effort but instead as a reason to excel and become extraordinary people.

“LOL it’s just a game, I don’t take it seriously”

Gotta love this one! What the person is aiming to achieve with this one is devaluation of the topic. The only reason they’re not succeeding is because they’ve actively chosen not to. If they decided to be uptight and serious like you then they could EASILY be better than you. If they wanted, that is.

I think the key thing here is that – whether you take the game seriously or not – you should respect your own time. If you’re spending time in the game toward building a character then you owe it to yourself to use that time effectively.

“I can’t make much gold because I don’t have as much time to play as others”

As of writing this guide (August 2010) I’ve been focusing on real life stuff a lot more than WoW. I’ve cut back raiding and basically login once in the morning and once in the evening to cancel/repost auctions.

Even with just this I bring in around 2k worth of sold auctions on a bad day. The time excuse is something people use to make themselves feel better.

“My server’s prices are screwed, it’s very hard to make gold here”

I hear this one a bit, actually. You can break that sentence down and apply the simplified version to any server or market as “Prices fluctuate so it’s tough to know what to do and when”.

A common trap that beginners fall into is that, having read somewhere that [X Item] sells well, they check the Auction House and see how much it sells for. If the price at that specific time or on that specific day isnt a good price they make a judgement on that one instance.

So remember! Before declaring that the world is out to get you it’s a good idea to monitor prices for a while across a variety of professions. Chances are very good that there’s profit to be had, you just need to find what’s going to work for you. The [Undermine Journal] is an amazing utility that records hourly prices for specific servers. You can also see stuff like material price versus market price so it’s very handy!

“My server is camped 24/7 by bots, I have no opportunity at all”

This one is similar to the ‘prices on my server are screwed’ excuse. The main difference is that instead of the ‘economy’ being the problem there’s now a physical obstacle, a demon if you like – those damned bots!

It’s the same solution – prices fluctuate from hour to hour and day to day. You can be assured that there are normal people making profit on your server! In extremely popular markets (trainer learnable enchant scrolls come to mind) it’s not uncommon for competition to be so fierce that people will fight it out for as little as a few gold profit per sale.

Watch markets, choose less popular items and take a broad and varied approach and you’ll overcome this.

“I don’t have epic flying yet so I’m too slow and can’t compete when gathering.”

Ahhh this one is dangerous! It’s a totally correct statement but amazingly limited in scope. Really this excuse only explains why it’s more difficult for you to do one specific thing!

You can still make gold in many many other ways! Old world and burning crusade materials sell very well and you’ll find much less competition farming those. There’s also plenty of other ways to make gold that don’t involve flying!

“It’s your fault, Saate! If you did a better job writing these guides I might have a chance.”

That’s a pretty fair call. Your feedback has been duly noted :p

Further Reading & External Links

As I’ve alluded to throughout this guide there’s an amazing amount of quality guides out there. To wrap things up I’ll list some of my favourite ones here for you. If you haven’t already seen the other guides I’ve got here on the subject they’re probably also worth checking out.

WoWConfidential – Kraklin’s Guides

Kraklin is a good friend who has put together some excellent guides on his website. Here’s a couple of the best for you!

• Vendor Items to Flip For Profit – Maps and Routes
• Enchanting 1-450 Leveling Guide
• WOTLK Enchanting Guide
• Auctioneer – Snatch List Tutorial
• Inscription Gold Guide

Other Sites – More guides and blogs of the best!

These are a collection of great links to sites and guides I recommend for further reading. The best way to keep learning is by watching what the experts blog about so get stuck in!

• Anaalius’ Hunt for Gold – Anaalius posts regular tips on making gold. He’s made many hundreds of thousands of gold and knows his stuff
• I Drink Your Milkshake – A warcraft millionaire, excellent posts and insights into making gold
• The AH Pile – Stokpile made in excess of a million gold. He has great guides on his site and is an excellent example of how fast you can make gold when you adopt a multi-market focus
• Goldproject’s Guide for Beginners – Very relevant to this guide. Check it out for some good starting tips
• Khaas’ Guide to building a list of regular auctions
• Khaas’ Guide to the SlyProfits AddOn

Need Help? Have questions?

If you’ve read the guide, checked out the links and still have questions that you can’t figure out then feel free to leave a comment with them. Like I’ve mentioned a few times there’s loads of information out there and chances are that someone here can point you in the right direction. Google can probably do the same thing faster, too, so be sure and search there as well!

As always any other additions, feedback, comments and ideas are welcome! I hope you’ve enjoyed this guide :)