While I don’t want to deter you from choosing the professions that you want, I will say that if you want to make a bucket load of gold with your professions choosing Enchanting or Jewelcrafting is highly recommended. While both are expensive to level it is more than worth it in the end.   

  Basics of enchanting profiteering

Disenchanting   

Disenchanting is an awesome way to make alot of gold and falls under 3 catgories:   

• Disenchanting own gear
• Purchasing items to disenchant
• Crafting items to disenchant

Disenchanting own gear   

This includes all unused gear that you pick up from quests, farming, running dungeons and raids.  Disenchanted materials can then be sold on the auction house.

Purchasing items to disenchant   

This is a simple method that involves purchasing items off the auction house for a value which is less then their disenchanting value (you will need auctioneer and enchantrix mods for this). Then all you do is disenchant those items and relist enchanting materials for profit. The best part is these materials canbe listed for free on the auction house.

Items that I normally look for include armor and weapons from level 73 for the highest profit margins.   

Crafting items to disenchant   

This method works in conjunction with any crafting profession and involves creating cheap crafted items then disenchanting those items for a profit. Most crafting professions have an item or two that you can craft and disenchant for a profit. This is where enchanting works great with jewelcrafting. For example a jewelcrafter can make inexpensive stone guard bands, disenchant them and make anywhere between 5-15 gold depending on the server economy. Jewelcrafters have a lot of items that can be crafted very cheaply in order to make a proft from disenchanting.   

Enchanting as a service   

To take full advantage of this profession as a service you will want to have as many of the enchanting formulas as possible. This will keep players coming back to you to get their gear enchants and more importantly keep you making gold. The best part is most of the rare enchants can now be purchased  for dream shards in Dalaran or acquired via reputations.   

Every time you are in a major city, link your enchanting service on the trade channel while you go about doing your daily routine. You will usually be able to pick up some extra gold by pretty much doing nothing.   

  Basics of jewelcrafting profiteering   

Crafting to disenchant   

Simplistic, effective and repetitive. Crafting items to disenchant links back to what was mentioned above for the enchanting profession. You find materials on the auction house for an item that is uncommon or rare within jewelcrafting, craft that item, have it disenchanted and have the value of the disenchanted materials be greater than the costs for inputs. With regards to jewelcrafting there are a few items where this model works really well. For example the stone guard band  mentioned above and the shadow might ring have great disenchanting levels for the price it costs to craft them, especially if the market for buying eternal earth and eternal shaodw in bulk is low on your server. Other lower level items such as the sun rock ring, crystal citrine neck and crystal chalcedony amulet are very inexpensive especially if you are also prospecting because you will have heaps of uncommon gems to use. Determing which of these items to craft will obviously be based on the material costs on your server.   

Prospecting

Prospecting is an awesome way to make gold. You buy saronite and cobalt ore and break it up into gems using prospecting. You then scan the auction house and look for the best items to cut. The profit margins are usually between 150%-300%. One thing to note and watch out for is to make sure your server can support the constant influx of gems you provide. If it can, just keep buying ore and breaking it up. I know servers are starting to get flooded and now I can’t sell the gems as fast as I buy the ore so I only buy ore once a week or so.

Buy uncut gems to cut   

Look on the auction house for cheap uncut gems. For example I normally check out cardinal rubies and if the price is right compared to cuts such as Bright, Delicate, Fractured or Runed cardinal rubies, I’ll purchase a few and normally make between 20-40 gold per cut once sold on the auction house.   

Jewel crafting as a service   

Similarly to enchanting, if you have a large number of jewelcrafting recipes than you can offer your services in a capital city to generate easy revenue.   

Trade skill proft maximization addon   

I recently came across an awesome addon called ProfMax which utilizes auction house scan data to determine price profit margins on your trade skill items, bringing them up in your tradeskill window.   

ProfMax calculates buy prices for materials and sell prices for crafted items to make calculations for potential profits.   

The best thing about it is it quickly determines which is the most profitable item for you to make, instead of you wasting time scanning the auction house.  Make sure you check it out!  

Other useful links:

• Enchanting leveling guide 1-450
• Jewelcrafting leveling guide 1-450

Hey guys,

We all know that gold is a vital component of WoW and is needed for pretty much every aspect of the game. From leveling your character’s skillset and professions to buying mounts, gear and consumables. Every WoW player is always looking for more gold. Unfortunately farming for gold tends to be unbearingly boring and time consuming. Furthermore a lot of WoW players only have a limited time they can dedicate to playing and would like to spend that time doing the fun things in the game like raiding and pvping. For this reason a lot of players opt to buy gold online.

Now please don’t get me wrong here. I am not saying that players should go out and buy gold online as there are risks involved such as getting your account permanently banned if you are caught by Blizzard and also the chance of being scammed by dodgy gold sellers. All I am saying is that the option is out there for players who have limited time to play to remain competitive in the game through means such as gold buying. I myself have never bought gold before but I was interested to do some research on who the big players were in terms of gold sellers, who was most reliable and honest, and who was the best value for money.

Below I have gathered some figures on gold prices from 12 of the most popular gold seller sites I could find. Attached to these is a link user comments relating to that particular gold seller site.

Please note: These figures where gathered on 15th of February 2010 so there might be a slight change to gold prices if you look at them today due to market fluctuations. Figures are based on gold prices available to the Blackrock Horde US server and are in US dollars.

Based on my research and the user commentsI have read, I personally believe that the 3 gold sellers that stand out in regards to honesty, efficiency and security seem to be:

• Guy4Game, Susanexpress, Wowgoldpig.

They may not necessarily be the cheapest but I would prefer to pay a little extra knowing that I am getting professional service. If I ever do purchase gold online I will be using one of these sellers.

My research also leads me to believe that you should stay away from the following gold sellers as they are scammers or very unreliable.

• VgoldSeller, wowmine, dgamesky.

If you have any comments or like to share your experience with a gold seller please do so below.

Zuggy from ZugGaming.com asked me to review his Gold Mastery Guide, and kindly sent me a copy. Normally I don’t concern myself with guides but I thought that this was a good opportunity to have a look at one and actually see if they are worth the investment.

His Gold Mastery Guide contains gold making secrets that he has used throughout his years of WoW play. For those of you that are interested in checking out a free preview of his guide go to Zuggy’s site here. His preview guide contains 5 videos to get you started in increasing your gold balance. The videos include a look at utilizing the auction house and your professions, where to grind and what daily quests to do, and power farming including 30 minute farming routes.

I must say that just by checking out these free video guides has taught me how to think about the game in a new way. In other words it broadened my narrow view of how I can make a lot of gold fast. To be honest I really didn’t have that many ideas in the first place, and thought that farming and doing dailies was how most people made their gold. But I hate farming with a passion and only resort to doing it when I am really low on gold. Before checking out Zuggy’s Gold Mastery Guide I had no set strategy in making gold. My gold collecting would pretty much consist of mining saronite and titanium in Sholazar Basin once in a while and accumilating honor points in bgs and Wintergrasp to then buy epic gems and sell them on the auction house. I guess this is the reason why I never really had much gold on any of my characters. But most of the time I could get by, and instead of being bored out of my brain farming I could focus on the things that I enjoyed in the game, like PvP.

The one thing I can say that Zuggy’s guide has taught me is that farming makes up a small amount of what you need to do to make tons of gold. What Zuggy really focuses on is how you can make your gold through your professions and the auction house. His teaching method is very simple and comprehensive. He breaks down his strategies into easily understandable sections and provides real life examples of scenarios to reinforce his strategies. He doesn’t just provide you with a list of items to farm or a few farming techniques that you may have not been aware of, but explains how players can take his strategies and adapt them to their specific server’s economy.

I have to admit I was quite surprised to find out how simple it actually is to make large amounts of gold. The funny thing is that most people don’t realize that there is no gimmick or secret method to making gold. Its about developing a plan and focusing on speed and efficiency when implementing that plan. Zuggy stresses that the key to making gold is maximizing your time. We all want to do all the cool stuff when we play WoW, not spend time farming. So maximizing the time you dedicate to making gold is the key.

By stepping through Zuggy’s guide over the last few days, I was able to develop my first gold making strategy that centered around my character’s professions (enchanting and mining) and utilizing the auction house. I found the auctioneer information particularly useful as I was not familiar with all the features of the addon or how to best use it. I also changed my perception of enchanting from being one of the worst money making professions to one of the best. Zuggy’s tips and resources allowed me to map out my farming route (which is between 30-40mins and makes me about 180-250g) for part of my daily strategy. Pretty much everything from where to go, what route to take when I get there, and things I can multitask while I’m there. I then conclude my daily strategy with what I have learned in exploiting the potential that enchanting combined with auction house strategies allows you to do. My next step is to now analyze my current daily strategy and see how I can make it more efficient by improving my speed and hence total gold per hour. I also plan on creating strategies for my other characters centered around their professions.

For those of you out there that are interested in simplifing your gold making process while at the same time minimizing your time farming and grinding, I hope I have provided you with an unbiased view of what Zuggy’s guide can offer you. This guide is definitely not your standard 50 page e-book that offers you some tips and quick strategies, it is a comprehensive piece of work with over 1Gig of video tutorials and numerous pdf guides. In my opinion the personalized support and continous updates makes this a worthwhile investment. Zuggy offers one on one support to all his gold guide members via email. So if you have any questions, concerns, or need clarification on something in his guide he is more than happy to help out.