11 Ways to Profit With Auctions in WoW

Making money with auctions in World of Warcraft is not difficult. There are two keys: know the market, and be patient.

1. Download Auctioneer. It's an essential tool, for both keeping a record of the market, and for determining what's currently available at under the normal price.

2. Don't rely completely on Auctioneer. The market changes with patches and even fashions, and what sells for a lot of money at one point may not do so for ever. If you see six of an item, all at bargain buyout prices compared to old data, there's probably a reason for it.

3. Watch upcoming patches. Temporary changes, such as festivals and the war effort, can change the price of trade materials overnight. Wool cloth saw a price increase of 400% after patch 1.9, due to the War Effort. Anyone who bought wool in bulk beforehand made a huge profit.

4. Create a dedicated auctioneer character. Even with three auction houses per side, it's a complete waste of time and effort flying and hearthing your main in to the capital cities. An auctioneer also has their own storage, and won't be wasting bank slots your main character can use.

5. Start small. A profit of 3 silver doesn't look worthwhile, but it's 3 silver you didn't have before, and it'll turn itself into 6 silver later, and so on upward.

5. Time your auctions carefully. Habits vary from server to server, but there are always patterns. Maybe trade goods sell well during the week, when regular players are online, and rarer crafted items and drops over Friday through Sunday, when the weekend warriors are on.

6. If your auctioneer is an enchanter, pay careful attention to what can be disenchanted. There's often a steady income stream to be got from disenchanting low to mid-level green items and selling the products.

7. Watch for regular customers. If one guy keeps buying your nature protection potions, then maybe you can arrange a deal with him, so that he buys directly from you, and no longer goes looking on the auction house for prices that might be lower than yours.

8. Use your main to supply the auctioneer. You'll get useless green items all the time on your main. Don't sell these to vendors, send them to the auctioneer character, and sell them. Even if you sell low for disenchanting, or disenchant them yourself, you'll still make more than from a vendor. If your main has a tradeskill, you can probably sell some of the products. Potions from alchemy, and very likely the upcoming jewels from jewelcrafting, are good for this.

9. If you can, create a character on the other side (Horde or Alliance, if you're Alliance or Horde), and watch the auction houses there. The Auctioneer addon will help you track those prices. Prices can vary hugely, especially on paladin and shaman gear, which is valuable on one side, and worthless on the other.

10. Be very patient. Some high-profit items won't sell for weeks. World-drop epics are notorious for this; I've had one listed and re-listed at the weekends for for eight weeks. It eventually sold, though, netting me a profit of over 170g in one shot.

11. Advertise on the trade channels. It doesn't cost you anything, and if someone's keeping an eye out, you can have an immediate sale. When you're doing this, spell properly, and don't be afraid to make recommendations. "Perfect for your Shaman!", or "Ideal for Protection-specced warriors!"

World of Warcraft contains plenty of opportunities for your character to make a lot of gold.

Posted by Drew Shiel at July 11, 2006 10:47 AM

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This was really helpful thanks!

Posted by: Corbet at May 22, 2007 6:16 PM

That's 12 "ways" not 11. lol

Posted by: at September 16, 2007 7:42 AM

A great article - thanks. You're right about prices varying between realms. I play many realms and every server is its own market.

Cheers
Marcus Ty
http://www.wowgoldmastery.com

Posted by: Marcus Ty at April 5, 2008 3:54 PM