How do you go from just making a bit of gold, to starting to work towards gold capped?

First off, level some alts. I have 4 max level garrisons running (with a 5th about to come online). That means I have 4 level 3 salvage yards feeding me items. 4 sets of treasure missions. 4 piles of herbs and ore. 4 toons making epics every 7-8 days.

I have 9 garrisons total. Sure, only 7 of them have mines and profession buildings, but that means I also have 7 sets of followers running missions. Lucrative treasure missions. I have all these alts with the ability to go and do quests or pick up treasures.

Now obviously, this takes a great deal of time (about 1.5 hrs a day) to check and “process” all these garrisons. (Process is the phrase I use to describe clearing and resetting missions, gathering resources, and setting work orders.)

Crafting Epics-

I spend a majority of my efforts on alts getting them to the point where they can run work orders and daily crafting cooldowns. This means that every 8-10 days they can craft an epic item, or every 15-18 days craft an upgrade item. These still sell fairly well and consistently make money. Tailors are especially good at this because they can make bags, which always sell, and generally sell very high.

Ore Shuffle –

The ore shuffle is a strange idea that I reserve for “middle managers” because it takes a great deal of time, several professions, and knowledge of the markets to actually make money on.

Currently the ore shuffle is as follows:

Send Ore to your Blacksmith/Jewelcrafter. Make Blue Items. Send blue items to your enchanter – disenchant for dust/shards. Sell dust/shards – or create enchant scrolls and sell those.

Trade Skill Master –

It’s a weird program, but very helpful. Go ahead and download the addon from your chosen addon site and then download the desktop app from TSM’s site. This requires you to sign up for their site, but it’s worth it to use the apps.

I use the Main addon, Accounting, Auction DB, Auctioning, and WoWuction modules. This gives me some tools to list and most importantly – data on the values of items.

Setting up TSM can be a pain. Once you get the addon installed and the desktop app up, you have to set the desktop app up to pull data for your server. Then you have to set up groups inside the game addon to sell your items.

First create an operation. This is located in the third button across the top, labeled options. (It’s the bolts one.)

This let’s you change how you post things. I have a single operation, because I just don’t care that much. It posts for 48 hours, in full stack sizes, with minimum, maximum, and normal prices all based on the data base.

 

 

Next, you need to make groups. This allows you to break all your auctions into sections so you only post certain items at a time. Add them to the group by clicking on the item in the left column and adding to the right. Items can only be in one group at a time. (Again, I am very lazy here. I have one for greens, one for blues and purples, and one for pets. At home I have a fourth for crafting mats.)

 

Now go to the auction house and you will find a ton of new tabs. Select the Auctioning one, select the groups you want to list, and click “Start Post Scan”.

 

 

 

 

Finally you have to confirm the posts. This screen gives you all the data you need to make a decision about if you should post an item or not.

TSM allows you to post dozens of auctions very quickly, which is vital while running multiple salvage yards.

Rare Item Farming-

There are a few kinds of rare items that can be farmed – but generally I focus on transmog and pets. Specifically in places like AQ20/40 are gold mines for transmog. Having a list or TSM can help identify the items that sell the best. Other good transmog instances are Dire Maul and Molten Core. There is value in raids like Kara, TK, and SSC – if just for the trash and pets.

Be aware of in game holidays and the pets and mounts that can be farmed from it as well. Some are fairly worthless – like Sinister Squashlings – but others are very valuable – like Widget and Birdman.

One final note for middle managers – be sure to watch patch and ptr notes. Track what’s coming so you can prepare and adjust. This is especially vital on expansion and large content patches. I made over 100k the first two weeks of Mists just selling bags to all the new pandas. I spent months before hand buying up netherweave super cheap and just storing it on alts.

These few steps alone put a player into a state of making a few k every day on average. It generally takes more time to do these, but the reward is also greater.