How to Make Gold in WoW

I was "listening" to a conversation in the general chat in the Eversong Woods the other day. The topic was regarding how hard it is to make money (gold) in the World of Warcraft. My first reaction was, "WTF???" Making gold in WoW is pretty easy if you're willing to invest a little time and effort. But that's the key, you have to work at it a bit and the raid is calling.

Basically your gold making boils down to three things:

1. Find or loot stuff to sell to a vendor
2. Find or loot or make stuff to sell to players (either directly or on the Auction house)
3. Do quests for the cash rewards and sell the quest items you don't use. Unfortunately the cash rewards don't really start to get interesting until you hit the Ouitlands, and they're pretty decent in Cataclysm.
   
4. Daily quests fall under #3, but with a good routine you can do upwards of 200g an hour just by doing them.
   

And that's about it. The trick, if it can be called such, is in finding the stuff that sells well and the quests that are worth doing. There's stuff to be found pretty much anywhere once you leave the starting areas.

For example, in Stormwind certain vendors cell certain limited quantity items that sell on the Auction House for way more than you'll pay for them. An example is cooking recipes. There is a "Master of Cooking Recipes" in the inn on the east side of town. Grab some of his recipes for silvers and sell them for gold on the Auction House (AH.)

Check all the vendors in any area you enter. Some of them sell other limited items and some of those items sell for quite a bit on the AH. Why should some player spend the time to travel to some vendor to buy something which might not even be in stock? It wastes a lot less time to just buy it off the AH.

With the exception of the poor, deprived Night Elves all the low level areas have plenty of herbs, ore, and beasts to skin. Actually, the Night Elves are only lacking in the ores.

Gathering your Gold: Grab two of the three gathering skills (mining, herbalism, skinning) and start the gathering. By the way, make sure you sell everything you gather, including the ruined scraps and the rough stones, on the Auction House. Never sell any of it to the vendors. Not even the scraps.

Some areas, such as the Blood and Night Elf areas, have bird type beasts that will drop "small eggs" when slain. The eggs sell well at all times, but especially well for the Winter festival for all those egg nog recipes.

Prices: Also, make sure you check the current prices for your gatherings before you post them for sale. Prices vary from server to server and from time to time. For example, one day a stack of 20 light leather might sell for 35 silver, but a day or two later it might go for 2 gold or more.Just store it until you like the prices.

By the way,the low level ores (eg: copper & tin) sell a whole lot better than the low level herbs. In my experience, anyway. Skins always seem to sell well.

Now, go and gather (and install) the Gatherer addon. This makes notes on your game map everytime you find ores or herbs. Eventually you'll have your own mining map. Anytime you need cash you just do the rounds, grab a few stacks of ore or herbs, and sell them.

By the way, here's a page that will show you how to install some other WoW Addons. Check it out.

Speaking of WoW Addons, another one that you really need to get, if you're going to get serious about earning lots of WoW gold is Auctioneer. You'll want to download the full suite, which combines the advanced and classic suites.You'll be able to find tutorials on that site and there are plenty of youtube videos which will show you tips and tricks.

Pretty much every monster (mob) in the game drops something. Even if it's only through your skinning skill. Also, every monster shares certain drop tables, which just means that it has a chance to drop something interesting beyond the vendor junk.

But most of what drops is vendor junk, especially at the lower levels. At very high levels the vendor junk is actually worth something and you'll make a fair amount of gold selling it to the vendors.

Keep an eye on what drops, though. At any level, outside the starting areas, you might find items with white names (rather than grey.) Linen cloth is an example. Anything and everything with a white name (or green or blue or purple(!!)) should be sold on the auction house, if you're not going to use it immediately.

Linen cloth is used for basic 1st aid and in basic tailoring recipes, so it's in pretty high demand. it drops from any humanoid type mob (including undead) and sells well.All the cloth types sell well. Wool cloth is a hot seller and the prices are usually pretty high. You can use WoWhead.com to look up mobs that drop wool cloth, or any cloth, and farm them until boredom sends you back to the battlegrounds.

Any new expansion, such as Cataclysm, will introduce new gatherables which will sell very well and for very high prices at the beginning.

What also sells, though not so fast, are the armor and weapons with white names that you'll find. Sell them on the AH too, you'll get significantly more than you will selling them to a vendor.

By the way, something that really helps is to have an Auction House Alt. This is a character that does all of your selling. Do your rounds of gathering and looting and then send it all to your auction house alt to sell when you have the time. 

if you watched the auction house long enough then you might know that one trick is to buy low, either from vendors or right off the Auction House, and sell high. This is one of the ways to avoid endlessly grinding away for herbs or ores or skins or killing monsters hoping something drops.

There are a number of vendors throughout the World of Warcraft that sell items in limited quantity, as mentioned above, or there's only one vendor that sells it, or there's only one vendor for the item AND the item is limited (such as the throat piercer knives, from a vendor in Tranquillen.)

One example is the Prarie Dog Whistle (to summon a Prarie Dog pet.) This item is only sold from a vendor in Thunderbluff, which means that the Alliance side can't get it, unless you buy it and either mail it to your Alliance alt (if you're not on a PvP server) or sell it on a cross faction Auction House, such as the one in Booty Bay.

There are also some vendors that only appear on occasion, such as those in the Darkmoon faire. A couple of these guys sell gems, motes, and other items that sell well, and for a lot more than you'll pay for them. Many players camp those two vendors and grab items as they appear. You can look up an addon called "free refills" which will do that very well and save a lot of clicking.

Here's a few other thoughts to ponder.

Buy it all: You've just spent an hour grinding and collected a few stacks of linen cloth (or adamantite ore.) You mail it to your mule, access the auction house, and find that there's already a pile of linen (or ore) selling for a fraction of the usual price. What to do? You have three options.

1. Cuss a bit and sell it at the reduced price. Too many players do this.
   
2. Hold it until the price goes up (and it probably will)
3. or... buy it all and resell it at a better price. This works best if there isn't a ton of stuff at the lower price.
4. Some players will create a personal guild for the guild bank space. Just create a guild and kick everyone else out (it's nice if you give them the scoop first.) By a few bank slots and the you'll be able to buy up lots of low priced stuff to sell later.
   

Cook it then sell it: If you've bought up your cooking skill consider selling foods that buff your stats. Raveger dogs, for example, with their agility buffs, sell well. Certain basilisks in Terrokar forest drop Chunk o' Basilisk which cooks up into Blackened Basilist. This food adds 23 to spell damage and 20 to spirit and sells quite well for a nice price.

In Cataclysm Spirit is more valuable to some classes than ever before, due to mana issues. Int and Spirit foods might sell well.

Fishing for gold: Certain fish sell quite well since they're used in interesting recipies or with certain crafting skills. For example, Firefin Snapper, Oily Backmouth, and Deviate Fish all sell very well. Don't forget to fish the wreckage pools that you'll find from time to time.

Take notes: whenever you find a group of mobs, through your usual questing, make a note (I use a spreadsheet) or what and where and what dropped. Youi'll eventually find several areas which aren't hard it that you can farm for the drops.

Good Luck!

PS: There are a lot of ways to make gold in the World of Warcraft. The Massive WoW Gold Blueprint takes all of the above and adds a huge amount of info and detail. You should have little problem making hundreds of gold quickly, even if you're brand new to the game. Experienced players will be able to take this and run.He's an example:  I did a 30 day speed run, using those methods. That's starting from scratch, with nothing, The results weren't too bad.