A couple of days ago, I grouped up with some random people to do a quest with my WoW character Raelle. She’s a level 22 priest, and she’s the fourth character I’ve made, so I’ve figured out a few things along the way. In my party, there was another level 22 priest with a similar set of skills to mine, and she was commenting on how she never had any money. I shared some pointers with her on how to make money and realized how much I would have loved to have that info readily available when I started playing. So here goes, Tara’s Guide to a Profitable World of Warcraft experience.
You can pick up two professions for your character, and these fall into gathering and crafting categories. For example, Mining is a gathering profession, you find ore sites in the world and you gather ‘em up. Blacksmithing is a crafting profession, and it takes ore (and other goods) to make items.
1) Take only gathering professions if you really want to rake in the cash
I don’t actually follow this tip, but it’s something one of the fellow addicts I work with told me, and it’s very valid. Most players take crafting skills, and at the higher levels, these skills all start require elements from many different gathering professions. For example, Nhevya is a Blacksmith, and there are some recipes that take not just metal ores but leather. I need to buy leather from a fellow player. Crafting is a much slower way to make money because it costs a lot to make any good item. The return on your investment tends to be smaller.
My most successful money maker is Shaleyla, an Enchanter/Herbalist. Enchanting is sort of a “free” crafting profession, because it doesn’t need any gathered items, the materials it uses are gathered by disenchanting the regular armor and weapons that you find in the world. So I took Herbalism purely to make money and sell items. I just gather any herbs I see and then save them up to sell at the Auction House. Which leads to my next point.
2) Sell everything at the Auction House
With my first character, I only brought those items that I thought were really special to the AH. Don’t make the same mistake I did! Everything is useful to someone. Sell everything everything everything. Though there are some items that you do not want to sell on AH - those are items that cannot be used for anything. People call these things “vendor trash” - something that’s just good for making a few coppers. You can distinguish these because their name is in a light gray color in the tooltip. Just sell those things to the vendor. No one out there really wants to buy Gnoll Spittle or Troll Sweat. Err. I hope not, at least. But if you pick up a low level green item that isn’t useful to you, hold on to it! Sell sell sell.
If you choose to take a crafting profession (because after all, this is a game, and you might want to do that because it’s fun! That’s why I do it!), keep in mind the sell everything rule. You might be a tailor making a plain colored shirt and thinking, eh, no one will want this. Wrong! People love their varied colored shirts. Sell it! Anything you make that’s a green item should definitely get sold on AH.
You might be saying at this point, “But I have limited inventory space and the AH is so far away!”. I know I don’t like to go to Ironforge or Orgrimmar all that often. It can get inconvenient. So -
3) Buy bags, buy them early, and upgrade to larger capacity ones as soon as possible
Bags tend to sell for a lot of money on the AH. But really, it’s worth it. I have so much inventory room that I rarely fill up. I pick up everything there is and sell the vendor trash to the vendors and everything else at the AH. Every little copper counts, and some crappy pair of busted shoes might not be worth a lot, but over the course of the game, all those busted shoes really add up to some money.
4) Use Auctioneer, the addon that makes making money easier
Auctioneer is one of the addons I use that I consider essential. You can get it from the creator’s website here. Basically, what it does it track prices for you. When you go the the AH, this addon adds the option to Scan. This can take 10+ minutes, so I do it at the end or start of a session, usually. It goes through and makes a log of every single item and its price at the AH. Over time, it manages to build up a good database of what things are going for. Then, when you go to sell your own items, it can recommend a price that is consistent with the market value. Even cooler, if you turn on the advanced tooltips, you can see how much an item is selling for on AH at any time in the game. So you pick up some blue shield and you’re all psyched, but don’t know if it’s selling for 10 gold or 100. The tooltip can tell you.
There are other addons I consider awesome and essential, but I’ll leave that for a future discussion.
There are perhaps other more detailed systems of making money. If you want to really be “rich” in the game, there are more complex things you could do. But for me, these basic rules are what helps me. I just want to make I always have enough money to buy something better when I level up, and that I’ll be able to afford my mount when I hit level 40. Anything more isn’t necessary. So I hope this helps!
20 Responses to “How To Make Money in World of Warcraft”
Hi,
I definitely agree with all your hints, those are the definitive way to make money in WoW. I also did the same mistakes with my first char. Now I am a level 59 warlock and have got almost 1500g.
Further Addons that increase efficiency:
-Igor’s Mass Auction (a real time saver)
-Auto Profit (instantly sell all those grey items to a vendor)
-AH Mail Collect (autocollect all your successful auctions)
-(for gatherers) Autobuff (sort of always useful, but also autobuffs your minimap gathering tool) and of course Gatherer
My real money maker: Recipes!
Take your time and consult http://www.thottbot.com for all those boe non-faction-based recipes sold by vendors throughout Azeroth. There are vendors which are definitely hard to find but which give you considerable profit with high demand recipes (e.g. enchant gloves: +5 herbalism, bought for a few silver from a vendor somewhere in Ashenvale; sold for 7g in the AH).
So whenever you are leveling in an area check those vendors and sell those recipes in the AH. The preparation (looking up the recipes, check the AH-medians from Allakhazam and thus calculate profit and AH prices) may take a while, but it is definitely worth it. There ist not much you can do wrong, for most of the recipes are sold relatively cheap and because the AH fee ist calculated from vendor prices, you don’t have to worry about losing too much money either when they are not sold on the first auction. Someone will buy it in the end. However, recipes that sell for 5g may be an issue when considering the AH fee.
And yes, English ist not my native language, so please overread certain issues concerning grammar and 1 on 1 traductions from German.^^
I believe it’s understandable and I hope this helps.
Hmmm, what do I do with all my money now…^^
Have a safe day
Ashejira
Good comment. I actually also use the recipe selling trick, but thought I’d keep that in reserve so I could continue to make my gobs of gold without seeing a sudden flood of the enchanting recipes or cooking recipes that I like to sell appear on AH!
But there you go, one more tip.
And no worries, you are very understandable, your English is great.
nice advice u should go public on wowo with this stuff thx 4 making it free
I’m having trouble finding the AH mail collect. Help anyone?
I read these and they are good but I found another way, I am an enchanter and i find that selling the enchanting mats is also a sufficient way of making money. The other day i made over 100g just sellig some of the essences in my 20-slot enchanting bag. I put all of my Greater Nether Essences up for a 6g buyout each and my Greater Eternal Essences up for an 8g buyout each…only one essence in each auction, not stacks, and found that my mailbox was full of gold from this. I also found that some of my auctions went over buyout price… If you are trying to make some money for something i suggest making an enchanter, and getting a friend to run you through instances (power leveling you) until you are high enough to grind for some greens, blues, and possibly purples to DE in Outlands. This isn’t a long process if you are smart, and it should make you alot of money.
Email me if you have any comments/questions..etc
Aritashi-Dragon Maw
60 Balance Druid
hi im kinda new to wow and i always struggle when i want that brand new blue sword or somthing really good that i need, but then i look at the bottom of my bag and see like 1g or 5g so ty 4 the money making tips they will help im sure and anyone that wants to add me to frends on wow can feel free im on blackrock that is my realm i hav a lvl 20 dwarf rogue called snakealot pronounced (snake-alot) and also just started a new guy lvl 12 gnome mage named iceycold pronounced (icy-cold) if u hav a char that can run me through low lvl instances plz add me and talk to me
p.s ty 4 makin tips free they will help heaps from jake
I just leave a char in SW (an alt with enchanting). I just buy cheap greens with him from the AH, dis them and sell them for a profit. I do this like two times every day, and I never have to farm for gold again
My mate told me about it from here: http://www.disenchantingforgold.com/
i know a better way. find someone thats selling say a blue staff. for instance you buy it for 10g then u sell it for 12g.it may not be a big difference but it will make u a god profit once u start doing it allot
POTAOES RULE!!!! (Just like wow)
hey dude thouse are some awsome tips add me to your friends list and maybe some time we can do an intance or something ohh ya by the way im a rogue his name is Zertkisha.
Peace out dog!!!!!!
I love these tips, and your right, they totally work. BUT.
I see these tips repeated all over the web, and sadly, though they can get you pretty far, I don’t think they are going to get me 5000 gold for my flying mount with out either mindless farming or a veeeerrrry loooong time (unless i am doing something completely wrong). So, if anyone could share some endgame ways of making some cash for flying (not sure if the above posts are TBC or not…) that would be great.
I use enchanting to make a lot of money. Check out my website for how.
There are links there to make more money, but the tip on my website is free.
http://www.nicksin.net
I am currently a level 70 shaman on Chromaggus and not me but ALLOT of people in my guild have their epic fly’ers, or nether drake. So i keep asking “whats the best way to make money for my flyer?” and everytime i get an answer its “Do the daily quests!” there are allot of daily quests to do every day making you 11-24g each quest and i have found this to be very effective in making gold.
So combine doing daily quests with your proffesions and you will have loads of gold coming in.
It took my friend 2 months to get 5k gold from doing daily’s, not bad considering he doesent play much or use proffesions.
One more tip for those who are selling a lot at the auction house: create a “mule.” This is an alt character you create who basically lives at the auction house. While you’re out questing, you can mail all the stuff you collect to your mule, who can sell it for you and mail back the gold.
It’s a real time-saver!
So glad I found this, Tara. Why? Because I’m broke!! Training in being a paladin always takes my money.
1) I picked blacksmithing as my first profession. I find it very annoying because I never have all the materials I need! I only manage to get things done with Shanti plays with me (he’s a dwarf and mines) so he makes me copper bars. But even then, he needs them too and I have to wheedle some out of him (in exchange for wool cloth or whatever).
My other profession is enchanting. So far, disenchanting is not doing much for me. I just think about the money I could have made selling.
2) Shanti is an AH whore and has slowly sold me on it. I’ve begun selling things I make there, although he told me only to sell only “green” items there. What do you think? I sell the stuff I make blacksmithing there but most stuff I still sell at any random vendor.
3) Thanks for the bags tip. I will definately check some out at the AH sounds like it is a good investment despite the initial high cost. Some of us don’t have friends who give them sacks for free!
4)I did add the auctioneer add-on (and tons of others as well - so glad to have people who knew this stuff to tell me!).
Natica, the reason you aren’t making so much money ith blacksmithing and enchanting is because they are both crafting. While you can still sell your crafted products, it takes a lot of money to get the mats to make them because you don’t have a gathering profession. I would suggest ditching enchanting and taking mining, enchanting generally doesn’t generate income because it usually free with mats tips appreciated. If you took mining, you would level your blacksmithing faster and metal sells well, especially seeing as some metals go for 30g a stack, mining itself can also get you some money. I don’t really see why a pally would need enchanting, usually mages/warlocks take t along with tailoring. However, to make more money you can also drop blacksmithing and take skinning or herbalism.
Those are also gathering professions and along with mining can also make a lot of mula, but if you do do that then be aware that lionheart executioner will never be yours, you can always get an arena weapon though, which deals the same amount of damage
Armons is right. You really can’t take blacksmithing without mining. It’s not sustainable. In general, with the crafting professions you make money selling your left over mats (materials), not really from most of the greens you are making. Very few crafted items turn a profit.
Grey items are vendor trash - they have no purpose except to sell to a vendor and give you a bit of money. Don’t try to auction those. Shanti is right, you really only want to auction greens and above. You can also auction mats - ore, herbs, enchanting dusts, etc.
Would just like to say, i have read some comments and people are saying they cant find AH Mail Collect. I would like to help those people.
It took me a while to find it, because i always use http://www.wow.curse.com but it wasnt on there.
So here it is. Go on http://www.wowinterface.com
It is on there. And i know the person who first said the addon put AH_Mail_Collect well it isnt that its AH MailCollect. So that is the easier way to find it. So there you go. Will post again if it takes time to find an addon so it can help other people find it easier and faster.
Thanks, Add me if you are on realm Eonar. My name is Warlocksrule. I am a level 44 warlock hoping to get to 47 at least by the end of the easter break =D
Some good tips their.
I found out myself that by choosing to gathering profs u rake in the money so much faster. It may not be as fun, or on the odd occasion as useful, but it leaves more time for questing etc.
My first toon i ever made was a Tauren hunter. The profs i chose were mining and engineering. Altho the engineering was very usefull for making my guns and ammo, with my latest character, i had 30 gold by lvl 20, and 200 gold by lvl 30. The proffesions i chose were skinning and mining. Both of these are easy gatherers and bring in so much cash. This was on my Night Elf hunter (Aldronak on Jubei Thos)
Just a note to anyone who mite be thinking they wuld rather hav fun crafting things, u can always un-learn these gathering skills at a later level, and use the gold you made from them to lvl up a crafting skill
Hav a good 1
Hi, Lots of people say by the time they are level 60 they are running out of action bar space..That is so untrue. I have a 60 warlock and he is only using the bottom left action bar and the default one at the bottom.