Free Origami Flower

So, back in the spring I started getting annoyed with never having enough gold to buy gear for alts, shmancy mounts or even fund new spells for my toons. It was back then that I started looking into WoW goldmaking (buying gold was utterly out of the question). I trawled through countless blogs and forum posts, looking at the 5 figure "gold gods" with envious eyes. I started with roughly 2000g and started implementing the ideas I'd come across. At the end of a couple weeks, I hit 10k. It grew hugely from there. I kind of slacked off on a lot of what I was doing for a while, but still managed to grow my little WoW empire to nearly 300k by the fall. It might sound nuts, but it's utterly doable, even on servers with a ton of competition. Warning though: if you thought you were addicted to WoW starting out, it's only going to get worse from here on out. Seriously, it's horribly addicting. But fun!

By the way, the attached image is from right after the last patch in WOTLK (where they added prime glyphs) showing my glyph seller's bag holding around 63k. I'm rarely on that toon, and other than low level alts barely old enough to walk safely through the northern barrens, she was holding the least amount of gold. I'd post other pics, but I'm on the laptop and this is the only screenie I had showing gold amounts.

In reality, the places that I learned the most from were a couple of blogs and a forum. You can find the links for them by googling the names mentioned.

First we have Hit the Cap! by Tella. Hers was probably my favorite, but sadly she doesn't really update much anymore. There's still some excellent information on there, especially for beginners.

Second we have Just My Two Copper. This is the blog run by the illustrious Markco, updated daily as far as I know, with a stunning amount of quality tips and content. Markco covers so much about the art of wow goldmaking, spanning different methods and different playstyles. As much as I enjoy Tella's writing style, Markco has by far given the most valuable information. No joke, I wouldn't have мейд squat if I hadn't found his place.

And we have Gevlon at the Greedy Goblin. I've learned a lot from him, as well. His method of goldmaking involves cutthroat undercutting and maximizing gold per hour and efficiency. Be warned though, Gevlon is not for everyone. His ideals rub a lot of people the wrong way. There's a lot of good information there, but don't expect a warm, helpful blogging persona.

Beyond the wealth of information listed in the blogs I already mentioned, I've taken the time to write a little bit of information myself. Here are some ways to build up some easy starting gold and get yourself closer to the empires built by the "big guys" on those blogs:D

The saying goes that you have to spend money to make money. However, you can't do much about that unless you have a bit to begin with. Here are some simple ways to build up a little gold before you start your journey to gold tycoon status.

Make a new toon:

This isn't really a strategy, but something to really bear in mind if you were already planning on making a new character. You would be amazed at how much you can build up just levelling and auctioning off everything you pick up. I have a level 24 character sitting on 1 thousand gold. I didn't farm, I didn't send her gold, and I didn't camp the auction house. I picked up herbalism and skinning as soon as possible.

Why did I choose this combination? I've noticed that herbs are a bit more abundant than ores around the world. Just in general. Plus, you don't have to keep a special tool in your bags to pick flowers. I did what I'd normally do when levelling. I never went out of my way to grab an herb. If it was in my path, I picked it. That's it. Skinning is kind of a no brainer. In the time you'll be spending cultivating your new toon, you'll kill thousands of beasts, and right clicking them twice after they're dead is super easy. It may not make a ton of gold at first depending on what your server is like, but do a search for hides and rugged/heavy leather and tell me that doesn't sound pretty sweet.

tl-dr: pick up skinning/herbalism ASAP, and auction off everything that isn't grey.

Cross faction vendor pets:

Owls and moths and kitties from the alliance, and dragonhawks, cockroaches, and snakes from the horde. Pick them up from your local city and throw them up on the neutral AH. It won't be a big profit, but it's a good one, and pretty reliable, too:)

Camping rare spawns: This one is a little tricky since Cataclysm came around. I say tricky mostly because I don't know of any good ones yet since I've been too busy levelling to look around for rare mobs that are worth camping. However, I'll give you the basics so that you can do something with it if you get the opportunity.

Basically, you're going to pick a toon you don't use very often. You'll also pick a rare spawn that you want to camp. Maybe this rare drops the [Uber Weapon of Uber Twinkingeventhoughtwinkingisobsolete]. Or maybe the mob drops a pet or even just a cool flavor item (think something like the Orb of Deception). Anyhow, you camp your toon in the mob's spawn area and log on every so often to check if it's there. A good way to minimize the time spent checking is to make a target macro.

Example: /tar MrRareMob /stopmacro [noexists] /w Yourcharactername > %T <

Log on, spam your macro. If it's there, kill it and sell the loot. If it's not, just log off for a couple hours and try again. Super easy to do, but it can turn out to be very profitable for you. I used to do this when the Dalaran Spellscribe was still around (a rare mob in Silverpine that would occasionally drop a very rare cat pet that sold for around 900g -- even on my low pop, backwater, crappy server). This is probably my favorite way to make easy gold.

Hang out at the Darkmoon Faire:

This involves leaving your toon in a specific place as well. When the Darkmoon Faire's in town, there are a few vendors hanging around there. Lhara sells a ton of trade goods for very cheap. I'm talking old world herbs, gems, leathers. She also sells some of the more current mats occasionally. I clean out her inventory every so often during the fair and sell everything I bought for a large profit. There's also a little orc child running around named Flik who sells frogs in a box. Pick a few of those up and experiment with selling them. If you're on a PvP server, it's worth buying a bunch when the faire is near your home city and selling them on the Neutral AH to the opposing faction who might not want to bother fighting your brethren for some frogs.

Be warned, though. This can become a super addictive playstyle! There were months where I did nothing but make gold. It's seriously the most fun I've had on WoW. Not everyone will agree, but there you go. Have fun!

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