7 Free World of Warcraft Gold Making Tips

There are few things you NEED to buy off the auction house to improve your character.

Look at it this way: There's virtually nothing you can buy off the Auction House that you won't get an upgrade for through normal play. Every gold piece you spend on a BoE weapon or armor piece is a gold piece not saved toward truly good purchases.

In BC, it wasn't really worth it for most classes to buy BOEs when first hitting the level cap. With Wrath of the Lich King, there are a few pieces worth investing in for a fresh level 80 character, depending on the class. Most of these are craftable, so you can usually save money by farming the materials or buying the materials and having a friend or guild member assemble them. Even if you have to advertise in /trade for a combine, you're gong to save money over simply buying crafted items in the Auction House. Know your class, and know what items are worth buying for it on hitting level 80.

In Wrath of the Lich King, you really don't need to spend any money while leveling a character. You may want to spend a minimal amount of money every ten levels or so if you're skipping dungeons to power level, and your quest reward gear is out of date, but this should be kept to a minimum. From level 68-80, the Northrend quest rewards should be sufficient.

If you're trying to save money, it's for those big ticket items, a flying mount, then an epic flying mount, those higher quality items mentioned above, materials to power level a crafting profession that will pay off with good perks.

It's also OK to buy item enhancements and enchanting materials for your gear once you do start getting epics. Be sure to only buy the raw materials, and have someone else do the assembly from your guild or friends list. WoW is a social game, and among the benefits of socializing are the economic. (Just make sure that you give back as well! Whether by trading services for tradeskilling or just helping people with a quest or instance.)

Here's a tip within a tip: Any time you're standing around a capitol city, say while in between battleground queues, go to the auction house and search for Netherweave Cloth. Buy all of the cloth that's listed for under 3g a stack, or 15s per piece.

Now, make it all into stacks of Heavy Netherweave Bandages, which vendor for 3g per 10.

See what I did there? I do this every day and make a small profit off of someone else's ignorance of the marketplace.

What did I know that they didn't? One, I knew not to get crazy undercutting prices on the Auction House. Two, I knew that bandages vendor for more than raw cloth, and how much that price is.

That's just one example of making a profit from price cutters. If you know the true market value of an item, you can often make a profit from speculation by buying and reselling underpriced goods.

It's also important to know the worth of items when you're doing any kind of grinding. Ideally, you want to grind on the same mob over and over again, so that you get the same trash loot drops, which stacks save bag space, and make for less trips to a vendor, and more grinding uptime for the items you're actually farming. However, bags do tend to fill up.

So, is that Brittle Horn worth more than that Dirt-Covered Fur? And is a stack of either worth more than the Stoppable Force? The vendor value of gray items can be significant, and if you need to clear bag space, it pays to know which grays have higher value than the others.

For the Auction House, I highly recommend the Auctioneer UI Addon. It's been one of the most popular mods forever, and there's a good reason.

For sorting out your junk loot, I like SellValue.

Two guys reached the gold cap. How'd he do it? Playing the Auction House. Capital gainers do well in WoW, just like in real life, if they're smart.

The first thing you need to make money on the Auction House, is Auctioneer. Don't leave home without it.

Here are some more tips:

Enchanting materials don't have listing fees. That means you get to ask a fair market price for them, and if some yutz comes along and undercuts you, you're out no money when the items get returned to your inbox.

If you are constantly getting undercut, then either there is a glut on the market for your item, or you have misjudged the current going price for it. In general, I won't list a BoE blue or green more than twice in a row if I'm getting undercut. I'll wait a bit then relist one more time. After that, the sucker gets disenchanted. There's no point in letting the Auction House fees eat away at your profit, and enchanting mats always sell. For patterns, I just wait until there's a lull in the market, and post when I can get my asking price.

The weekends are a busy time at the Auction House, and this can sometimes work for you and against you. In general, weekends are a good time to move big ticket stuff and a bad time to sell anything that can be easily gathered. Weekends are a good time to go bargain hunting, for a weekday resell.

One way to outfox the undercutters is to put one of an item up that you know will be undercut. Price it a bit above the normal market value. Now the undercutters will come along, and they will price slightly below you. You now list the rest of your items at a reasonable market value slightly below the undercutters.

When someone sorts their Auction House searches by price, the sort is based on the minimum bid. That means if you have a lower minimum bid, your item will show up first, even if your buyout price is higher. Of course, you don't want to take this too far: Never set a minimum bit at a price you aren't willing to sell an item for.

In general, crafting supplies sell for more than the finished goods on the auction house, with few exceptions.

Crafting professions should be taken for the benefit they provide your character first, and for their money-making potential last, if at all.

The bottom line is in most cases, the raw materials sell for more than the finished goods. There is no value adding process in WoW, like in the real world. People will pay more for the raw materials so that they can reap the rewards of the top end crafted goods, than they will for finished goods.

So, if you can sell your stacks of raw leather for more than your leather armor, why make the armor?

However, some items are profitable. If you can buy the materials for significantly less than the finished goods sell for, you can make a profit.

The main reason to level professions in Wrath of the Lich King is to reap the benefits of the various perks for each. These perks have been reworked extensively in Wrath of the Lich King, and this post on Wowhead has a very nice summary.

My opinions and experience with the professions follows.

Alchemy gives you two ways to make money, by selling your transmute cooldowns, and by creating various consumables.

Alchemy has the advantage of being a fairly cheap crafting skill to level, though the perks are a bit weaker compared to some others in Lich King. Many of the potions are profitable, even at lower levels.

All in all, it's a decent profession, though perhaps a bit middle of the road nowadays.

Blacksmithing is a huge money sink. It is an expensive profession to level, and often the materials are worth more than the finished product. If you do manage to gather all of the materials for a high end recipe, it's at the cost of other activities that are more profitable.

If you buy the materials and manufacture your items, then you are engaging in speculation that could go either way. Many people will simply have a friend craft the item rather than paying AH markup.

I rate Blacksmithing pretty low on gold making potential.

The goggles are now somehwat sub-par in Lich King, compared to what's available by other means. However, if you're a soloist, you can still make good use of them.

One item you can make a bit of gold on is the Overcharged Capacitor, which is a recipe you get early and which is used in a quest in the Borean Tundra. It's also used in an Engineering specific quest.

Engineering will do little to boost your performance in Lich King, but has some "fun" items now. I'm considering dropping it, but I'm going to wait until Ulduar is released in patch 3.1 to see if any changes are made to bring it up to par for raiding. If you're casual, and you're already invested in the profession, then keeping it to see how it shakes out is probably a good idea.

You can make money by doing enchants for people, but this requires you to stand around a city and advertise in the /trade channel. <<---- THIS IS NO LONGER TRUE IN LICH KING!

You can now buy Vellums which are made by Inscription, to enchant into sellalble scrolls. If you have spare enchanting mats, this is a viable way to make money. It's also nice to be able to make a little money now while leveling the profession.

The best way to make gold with Enchanting is still to disenchant green and blue drops you get from normal questing or grinding, and sell the enchanting mats. Remember, these have no listing fee, so they're pretty profitable.

You can also grind lower level instances and disenchant the drops. I was making about 100-150g per hour on my Druid by farming Scholomance solo over one weekend. It's not the fastest money, but somewhat fun. <<-- The prices for old world materials have dropped somewhat. But, if you're farming old instances for fun, you can still make a fair amount on enchanting mats and cloth drops. These are perennial AH favorites.

From what I've seen, blue quality gems tend to go for a small markup that may make Jewelcrafting worthwhile.

Also, as with disenchanting, prospecting ore for gems can be profitable as well.

Armor kits and leg armor typically sell well, and for a fair profit. These are the way to go to make money with Leatherworking.

As with Leatherworking, the spellthread leg enhancements sell for a very nice profit.

These are the only thing I do to make money with my tailor, as they have a very good mark up on my server, so it's pretty safe to buy the mats without fear of losing money on the deal.

The gathering professions (mining, herbalism) can be good money, but you MUST have an epic flying mount to compete.

Lich King update: Nothing has really changed here, except for a spike in the prices of metals and herbs, and even leather, in Lich King. Part of this is due to new Death Knights power leveling professions, part is due to the introduction of Inscription, and part of it is because the new Leatherworking buff items are very nice.

It seems like mining and herb nodes are much further apart in Outland than in Azeroth, and consequentially, you need to be FAST to beat the next guy to the node. If you've ever had an epic flier swoop in on a node you were riding for, you know what I mean.

Update: While there are some zones where nodes are closer in Lich King, the same rule of thumb applies: You need epic flying speed to compete.

Once you do have an epic flying mount, both mining and herbalism are very profitable, because crafting materials sell well.

One note on mining: Check the price of the ORE on the Auction House before making bars of metal! Adamantite Ore often sells for more than the bars, because it can be Prospected by Jewel Crafters.

In the case of Skinning, you don't have to worry about the epic flier so much. In fact, if you want to cut the competition, you can get a lot of leather by going into the Black Morass instance and farming the normal mobs inside. Update: In Lich King, leather prices are UP, Partly due to the new desirability of Leatherworking, and partly due to expansion inflation.

All three professions can be profitable, with the caveat of mining and herbalism having a bit of unwanted competition.

Miners and Skinners should use the Gatherer UI mod. It's invaluable in planning out your gathering routes.

Grinding mobs is a tried and true method of making money. You should look for mobs that sell items with a high value for the time spent on the auction house. Usually, this means farming one of the following:

1. Eternals
2. Cloth
3. Leather

Generally Eternals are good money, but not as big as farming Primals was in Burning Crusade. In Wrath of the Lich King, Eternals are much more common than Primals were, and this cuts into profits. Generally, Eternal Fire sells for the most money. The elementals that drop them drop high value vendor loot and cash as well. The trick to farming Eternals is to find an area that's not overfarmed, and that's not easy. This will vary from server to server.

Cloth prices are up in Wrath of the Lich King. Stacks of Frostweave Cloth were selling for as high as 40g a stack around launch, and have now seemed to stabilize around 20-30g a stack, usually on the lower end of things. It's a viable strategy to farm cloth for its own sake now.

As noted in Leatherworking, raw leather sells well. If you have two gathering skills, Leatherworking is a nice addition. As noted before, Leather prices are even better in Lich King.

Reputation items are for the most part OUT in Lich King, however, with patch 3.08, Relic of Ulduar can now be turned in for Sons of Hodir rep. If you don't have Inscription, you need that rep for your high end shoulder enchants, and there's no Sons of Hodir tabbard, so these things sell for quite a bit. It seems as if the drop rate has been lowered with the patch, though. If you can find a nice spot to farm mobs that drop these in addition to your primary farming target, do so.

Here's a guide to chosing a grinding spot I wrote a while back to teach beginners the basics.

There are two ways to make money questing.

I'm not going to delete all the BC specific stuff at this time. However, you should ignore it, as doing level 70 quests at 80 yields a lot less gold than doing Northrend quests at 80, because the bonus gold is based off the amount of experience you would have earned for doing the quest at your current level, which isn't much. However, the same principle applies. If you refrain from spending gold on your way to level 80, you'll notice a substantial gain from questing and from either vendoring or disenchanting your quest rewards. There are also more dailies than ever.

The first is to simply complete regular quests you didn't do prior to turning 70. If you do all of the quests in Netherstorm after hitting 70, that's about 2000 gold. I like to save Blade's Edge Mountains, Shadowmoon Valley, and Netherstorm. I don't go through and do all of the quests in one sitting after dinging, but go back to the zones when I'm bored with other gold making activities and knock a few quests out from one of the quest hubs.

The second method is to do your Daily Quests. These involve everything from Cooking and Fishing dailies, to Dungeon and Heroic Dungeon dailies, to PVP and faction specific dailies. Basically, these are quests you can do over again once per day each, up to 25 total as of patch 2.4. The advantage here, besides the gold is that you can also gain faction with certain groups, which provide rewards including unique mounts and useful items.

I think that the new Isle of Quel'Danas quests introduced in patch 2.4 are the best available. There's a nice guide to them on WoWHead.

There's comprehensive daily quest info on WoWWiki.

I suggest you use Ligheaded UI mod to help with quests, particularly if you're going through skipped zones. (You'll memorize the dailies soon enough.)