ULTIMATE MONEY MAKING GUIDE

This is how I made my money. I’ve been playing this game since the first week it came out and I’ve never made an alt…this guide is truly the path I took from lvl 1-60 (with a few modifications here and there as lessons learned from my mistakes!) There’s hundreds of ways to make money in this game. You be a gatherer the entire time, selling mats and make money. You could do nothing but manipulate the Auction House and make money. You could grind areas that are known to drop rares and epics and make money. There’s tons of ways, this is just my way. Enjoy!

Phase One – Levels 1-40 “Hunting and Gathering”

So you’re just starting World of Warcraft, you’ve picked your race and class (gnome rogues ftw!), and you’re at the point where you get to pick two professions. You might say to yourself “oooh I’m a rogue so I’ll get leatherworking so I can make my own armor!” or “I’m a warrior so I’ll get blacksmithing so I can make my own weapons!”…OK just stop right there n00b! Lemme tell you a little secret about all those cool crafting professions…

***With the exception of a handful of items per crafted profession, you won’t make money! And hey guess what, those few items that are profitable are pretty much unattainable at lower levels!***

I hate to rain on your parade so early on, but it’s better I tell you up front than watch you waste what little gold you earn trying to level up your crafting profession. The problem with crafting professions is that you fall into the trap that I like to call “Skill Leveling Fever”, where you will do whatever it takes to raise the skill of your profession. Some of you will say “Ya Gen, but that’s why you take a complimentary gathering profession so you can farm your own mats”. This is true, but you will VERY quickly reach a point where the materials you require will be unattainable at your character’s level. And what are you gonna do, wait until you can farm them yourself? Hell no, I know you better than that! You’re gonna go run to the AH and start buying materials for the sole purpose of leveling your crafting profession. Welcome to the poorhouse!

So instead, pick two gathering professions. The cool thing about gathering professions is that you start making money right away…walk up to a mineral vein or a plant or a dead animal and grab those mats! It’s 100% profit! And since you are going to be spending a LOT of time running around doing quests and killing animals…it only makes sense to take advantage of gathering professions. Mining and Herbalism are the biggest moneymakers, but since they share the minimap, I usually will pick mining or herbalism and then pick up Skinning.

The one negative thing about gathering professions is you’ll find your bags fill up VERY quickly. Don’t worry, the first thing you’re gonna buy are 14 slot bags. These things cost like 2g50s on my server, which you’ll have after selling like 4 stacks of whatever you got. Buy 4 of these 14slot bags, you’ll need the space! At this point some people make alts that sit near the Auction House and they mail all their mats to the alt. This is a good idea for some…to me it would drive me nuts having to mail stuff all the time 

Also, items with grey text are vendor trash, meaning you sell them to a vendor. ALWAYS pick up the vendor trash…at your level every little bit counts. If it’s WHITE text, that means it’s used in a profession somehow. Hold onto it and see what it’s worth on the Auction House. If you can sell it to the vendor for 25s but sell it on the AH for 50s…you’ve just doubled your profit! Don’t laugh at 50s profit either…do that 1000 times (which you will do this 1000s of times in this game) that’s 500g!

You should be making more than enough money to pay for new skills, updated armor and weapons, gryphon flights, stupid noncombat pets (hey I love em too!) etc. But keep in mind you are working towards two things when you hit lvl 40:

1. Buying your mount, which is going to cost you 90g
2. Preparing for your first crafting profession, which will take money to level and buy schematics/patterns/recipes/etc.

You cannot enter Phase Two until you have purchased your mount and have like 100g in savings. Trust me on this one Very Happy

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT PHASE ONE:

Q: Gen, you are a god among gnomes, and handsome to boot. But if you tell everyone to take up gathering, who will buy the materials we’re gathering?! If there’s no money in crafting, nobody will buy our materials!

A: It actually makes a perfect circle…”lowbies” gather the mats, while “highbies” buy the mats and make crafted items (we’ll discuss highbie strategy in a bit). These highbies in turn sell their items (for a profit) to other highbies and lowbies who NOW have money to spend (because they’re not wasting all their money trying to level up crafting professions!) It works really well like this.


Q: Gen, you are kind, intelligent, and have abs you could wash clothes on. My character is lvl XX, and I’m a lvl YY Crafting Profession and a lvl ZZ Gathering Profession. And I’m BROKE! Should I drop my crafting profession and take up a second gathering profession?

A: It depends on several things. If you are already close to lvl 40, you might as well keep the crafting profession…UNLESS it’s really low level (like <125 or something) then ya drop it like a bad habit. If you are relatively low level but have a mid-level crafting professions, I would still drop it and take up a second gathering profession. You’ll end up making much more money by the time you’re 40, which is the real goal of this guide.


Q: My materials aren’t selling! The market is flooded with them and I keep getting them returned in the mailbox!

A: Ya that’s going to happen from time to time. Some days you can sell a stack of something for 1g, the next day the entire AH is flooded with stacks selling for 20s. It’s what I call the “Retard Factor”. The best thing you is get a general idea of how much stuff is selling for at that time, price your materials a little bit less that that, and hope for the best. Don’t throw your hands up in despair when someone undercuts you…it’s gonna happen. Just take your unsold mats and put them back on the AH…someone will buy them, trust me!

Phase Two – Levels 40-59 “It’s fine…learn 2 craft”

You’ve hit lvl 40, you have your mount (sure beats walking huh?), you’ve learned all your new skills, and you’ve decked yourself out in some fancy new duds. Now what?

Well, you *could* stick with your two gathering professions. They will still make you a lot of money, actually more money than in the first phase because you’ll know have access to higher level materials. If you don’t feel like busting !@#$%^&* trying to make money with crafting professions, stick with gathering by all means. You could stop reading this guide right now and have enough money to make you happy.

Still reading? Okay good let’s talk about your first crafting profession Very Happy

Pick a crafting profession that sounds fun to you. Don’t worry, it’s going to make you money (except maybe Alchemy…I’m sorry I *still* haven’t seen proof that you can make lots of money off of Alchemy). What your going to do is drop the gathering profession that doesn’t complement your new crafting profession. For example, if you want to take engineering, drop skinning and keep your mining. The one profession I do not recommend you take at level 40 (besides Alchemy) is Enchanting. Enchanting is a great profession but it’s not for the faint of heart, and it’s a #@%$! to level up. If you are dying to be an enchanter now, welcome to the poor house…otherwise try to hold off until you’re level 60 (we’ll be discussing that in the next phase).

Now that you’re level 40, it should be very easy to powerlevel your new profession to a certain point. Do everything possible to farm your own mats while leveling, it will save you a ton of money. This is important because you need your money for…

SCHEMATICS, PLANS, FORMULAS, RECIPES, ETC!!! These are what separate you from all of the other people taking up crafting professions. I see twenty new threads every day asking “how do you make money in leatherworking” or whatever, and people usually reply “you don’t take herbalism it’s a goldmine”. I’m going to let you in on a little secret.

It takes hard work and a LOT of time and gold to make money in crafting!

You will NOT be rich from a crafting profession just by learning what the trainers provide! You have to spend gold on schematics/formulas/plans/etc to make the stuff that people really want to buy. I’m not saying that every plan on the AH is going to be a moneymaker, but the ones that ARE moneymakers you’re going to have to pony up the cash. Don’t bother farming for them it’s a waste of effort just pay a reasonable amount for it on the AH.

Guess what? You’ve just put yourself above probably 75% of the other crafters out there! Why? Because 75% of WoW players either don’t have the gold to buy plans, or they refuse to spend money on them because “people price gouge on the AH”. Now instead of competing with 1000 engineers, you are competing with 250 of them…and out of that 250 there will be quite a few that aren’t as aggressive in making money like you, you sly dog!

http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Guides.Detail&id=216

So you’re just starting World of Warcraft, you’ve picked your race and class (gnome rogues ftw!), and you’re at the point where you get to pick two professions. You might say to yourself “oooh I’m a rogue so I’ll get leatherworking so I can make my own armor!” or “I’m a warrior so I’ll get blacksmithing so I can make my own weapons!”…OK just stop right there n00b! Lemme tell you a little secret about all those cool crafting professions…

You will NOT be rich from a crafting profession just by learning what the trainers provide! You have to spend gold on schematics/formulas/plans/etc to make the stuff that people really want to buy. I’m not saying that every plan on the AH is going to be a moneymaker, but the ones that ARE moneymakers you’re going to have to pony up the cash. Don’t bother farming for them it’s a waste of effort just pay a reasonable amount for it on the AH.

SCHEMATICS, PLANS, FORMULAS, RECIPES, ETC!!! These are what separate you from all of the other people taking up crafting professions. I see twenty new threads every day asking “how do you make money in leatherworking” or whatever, and people usually reply “you don’t take herbalism it’s a goldmine”. I’m going to let you in on a little secret.

Pick a crafting profession that sounds fun to you. Don’t worry, it’s going to make you money (except maybe Alchemy…I’m sorry I *still* haven’t seen proof that you can make lots of money off of Alchemy). What your going to do is drop the gathering profession that doesn’t complement your new crafting profession. For example, if you want to take engineering, drop skinning and keep your mining.

Q: Gen, you are a god among gnomes, and handsome to boot. But if you tell everyone to take up gathering, who will buy the materials we’re gathering?! If there’s no money in crafting, nobody will buy our materials!

A: It actually makes a perfect circle…”lowbies” gather the mats, while “highbies” buy the mats and make crafted items (we’ll discuss highbie strategy in a bit). These highbies in turn sell their items (for a profit) to other highbies and lowbies who NOW have money to spend (because they’re not wasting all their money trying to level up crafting professions!) It works really well like this.