Making money in Azeroth, like any other virtual environment, is never as easy as everyone else makes it sound. Clearly it matters, or else there'd be no Goldsellers, no 'Earn 25,000 gold in 2 days' adverts cluttering up other people's blogs, and no need to hack anyone else's account. You need a certain amount of gold to repair, to travel, to raid, to train... but Blizzard knows this. They give you monetary incentives from questing, from bosses, they give you dailies which also reward you with reputation (and more ways to spend your money...) You can survive on this level indefinitely. However, most people don't want to. They NEED to consume.
Whether it's a mount, or the mats for a crafted item, or a rare BoE drop, we all have need at times to make money. So, by extension, we all have the need to grind. This is ultimately tedious, repetitive and can be very frustrating. This is of course the point where people give up and will bemoan 'oh I can't get X gold, it's just to difficult/boring/depressing/time consuming' and I would guess, in certain situations, where the goldsellers make their mark. Making money need not be that way, far from it. In fact you can make healthy amounts of money by doing very little. Take it from someone who does. So, in this first of what is likely to be several shoddily-produced guides, I will tell you how profit can be found, even by those of us who really can't be arsed.
Gordon is a Moron: greed, in this case, is bad...If, like my PvE server, the AH is the place to be, you would think you need to be pretty savvy to turn a consistent profit. You'd also think that some kind of fancy Auctioneer type addon will be a staple if you want to get your auctions to sell. Not so. Common sense and a little cheekiness is all you need.
I make a very good living from my Inscriber, as she levels to 450, selling the new Darkmoon Faire cards. My cards are NEVER the most expensive however, far from it. I will deliberately wait until someone else has the card I've made to sell and then undercut them, because given the choice between two items, it's unlikely anyone will buy the higher priced one. If I make a Nobles card (which are currently the huge sellers, most sell in excess of 1000g) I'll make sure I'm several hundred gold cheaper as well. The key to being a lazy moneymaker is understanding that greed is
BAD. Anything that recoups the cost of your materials and gives you summat extra is a profit. If you can do it consistently, you will make money. If you are the only person selling a card, or an item, don't try and make a fast buck, because you will increasingly be disappointed, and people will more than likely undercut you in the process.
After levelling from 1-80 in a week, Chaz realised just how much lemonade he'd drunk...Nothing on your travels in Azeroth should EVER go to waste. If you are out doing dailies the first thing you should do before you go anywhere is clear your bags. If you're questing leave all the junk you normally have with you back in the bank. Spend the time clearing your inventory and try and have one, maybe two slots completely empty, as the last thing you want to do is destroy anything while you are away from a vendor. EVERYTHING has a sale value, and often items you might not think would be valuable end up adding up to a decent sum. It really does help if you know what is used for professions as well: we all know Primals and Eternals are staples for crafting, but at the lower levels there are a lot of white items that can command decent prices by being part of a craft. Lazy profiteers know that a little bit of effort can reap sizable rewards.
Cloth is possibly the best way to make money by not really trying. It's a craft staple, it's essential for First Aid, and it's hardly difficult to find. On it's own it sells well on the AH: mageweave on my server especially is always in short supply and inevitably overpriced. As I've been levelling an alt it drops as a part of what I need to do anyway to progress, so once I had my First Aid skill covered it was lazy money in the bank. Of course, if at 80 you wanted to make lazy money this way it's hardly ideal to drag your behind back to the Old World, so you'd be better off stockpiling your Frostweave and AH-ing that. As a non-tailor my Druid can bring in a couple of stacks from the Dailies in Icecrown and Storm Peaks, plus those little nuggets of gold we know as Relics of Ulduar.
If your cloth prices are a bit depressing, there are alternatives to simple vendoring. Find a tailor (or in my case, have an alt with the skill) and send them all the cloth and have them convert it all into items that you can DE. This is proving very cost effective currently with silk and runecloth, meaning I am selling a good amount of mid-level dusts and shards. If you have a surfeit of Netherweave, the trick of turning them into bandages before vendoring them will still make you coin if the AH isn't accommodating. The last thing you should ever do is vend cloth. Cloth, like plastic bottles in the Real World, could be the key to a virtual fortune.
1977: The hair may have been dodgy, but the potential for future Quest Titles was already obvious...If you never learnt a profession when you began your life, shame on you! However I know there are a lot of people who didn't, or conversely the skills they have they simply don't use to their advantage. It may be time to do a little bit of work now, but if you do I assure you there will be lots of loafing and chocolate biscuits when we're done.
By far the two most profitable skills you can possess are Mining and Herbalism. Skinning comes a close third. There is a veritable goldmine of cash out there waiting for you if you do these, but it takes a lot of time and effort to do so, plus you are often in competition with numerous people, at whatever hour of the day or night you find yourself online. So, I suggest you forget jostling with the 45 people strip farming Icecrown and go retro.
At some point on your server someone will be levelling, and if they are (and they're reading the speed levelling guides) they will need raw materials. The chances are they're going to be the alt of a richer main as well, so as long as we bear in mind point one above we're not going to go mad with our prices once we've gathered. Go check the AH and see what ISN'T there. Whatever it is, that's probably a good bet for mining and herbing. Spend an hour in a lowbie zone, go pick up a stack or two of summat, stick it on the AH and hope for the best. Remember while you're there to kill mobs and loot everything. As a miner there are loads of caves in Azeroth you could spend time in where mobs drop all sorts of useful low-level stuff. Mining and skinning in some places = goldmine, same with skinning and herbalism. The trick is to find your niche first, and not to over-exploit it.
If you DON'T have a gathering profession, and you really don't use the profession/s you learnt and then left half-finished, you could do a lot worse than level a gathering skill to 450. This however could be classed as actual grinding. It may be time for a bit of stark reality...
There is a moment where loafing is not enough. Pass me that Chainsaw, Gandalf...There are moments when there is really nothing else for it. You have a couple of hours and the mental ability to farm, but you have no idea what to do or where. The farming spots your Guildies tell you about are crowded. You can't be arsed with running around trying to find a decent spot when you know at any point someone may come along and set up camp next to you.
So, go to an Instance.
Every Blizzard instance has something unique about it that can make you easy money. If you're a Skinner for instance, Uldaman and Shadowfang Keep are a very decent way at from 60-80 to pull in cash with Skinning. Maraudon offers mining and herbalism opportunities, or if you're feeling brave you could try running the Underbog or the Dark Portal (just don't aggro that bloke by the portal, ok?) Herbalism is pretty good in the Slave Pens... All instances have greens, cloth and the possibility of BoE blues. Of course if you're an Enchanter you can also DE all the Boss drops. It just needs a little bit of thought and you could still be pulling in some decent coin in
an area you have all to yourself. No fighting people for kills, no mob tagging, just you and loads of lovely golds. Plus when you're done, out you go, reset the Instance, and off you go again. I hope you remembered to empty your bags before you came...
