Projects In WoW & Diablo 3 Gold Making

Odds of Winning WoW 60-Day Game Card

Capped By Cata Contest

Wes is still accepting entries into the drawing for the Free WoW 60 Day Game Time Card over at Capped by Cata in celebration of his One Year Blogging Birthday.  For complete details on how to enter for your chance to win the World of Warcraft 60 Day Game Card, be sure to visit the recent Birthday Contest Reminder over at Wes's site.  The odds of winning are currently 1 out of 3 and will continue to be updated over at Capped by Cata.  So be sure to take advantage of the great promotion Wes has going over at his site.

Auction House Junkies 9pisod9 #15 with R9sid9nt9vil

We would like to apologize for the extended wait for the latest release of The Auction House Junkies Podcast.  Wes was under some miserable illness and editing was delayed until he felt better.  Wes is feeling better and the wait for episode #15 is over.  Be sure to check out the latest edition of #AuctionHouseJunkies on iTunes, Podbean, or the Embedded episodes over at AuctionHouseJunkies.com. 

This episode we have special guest R9sid9nt9vil back with us for a second take.  You may remember R9s from The AHJ Lost Episode #13.  In Episode #15, we have R9s back with both Wes and I for a great interview and some great discussions.  Don't miss it.

Be sure to check out R9sid9nt9vil at Eviscerated.net and on the Rep Grind Radio podcast.  Rep Grind Radio has just released episode #6.

Late Carnival Entry

I would also like to call some attention to a late entry to the latest Gold Blogging Carnival here at Cold's Gold Factory.  Be sure to check out the latest addition to the Summer Adaptation Blogging Carnival by Epidermuss of Wrags To Riches.

Diablo 3 Gold Tips

The new site Diablo 3 Gold Tips over at http://www.diablo3goldtips.com/ is slowly growing.  Wes is also joining me there as we will write about ways to make money with Diablo 3 auction houses.  Whether you are going to be Pre-Ordering Diablo 3 or not, be sure to check out Diablo 3 Gold Tips and join the Diablo 3 gold tips newsletter.  We will be posting sporadically until we are closer to the Diablo 3 Beta release and we can be more accurate with our information.

Also Check Out The Gold Queen's Latest Mini-guide, The Teenager's Gold Guide. Goes perfect when paired with a MFC Guide or any other WoW Gold Guides.

Winged Guardian Giveaway | Authenticator Giveaway | WoW Gold Guide Giveaway

Contests and Giveaways

Right now there are a couple of great giveaways going on over at a pair of the top gold making resource sites.  Wes of Capped by Cata and Alto of Alto's Goldish Advise are both giving away some nice World of Warcraft swag.  Good things come in 3s, so I am adding a contest of my own.  Make sure to check out the links below and get your entries in before time expires.

Win a Winged Guardian (Flion)


My good buddy Wes (and co-host on the awesome Auction House Junkies Podcast) has just started a free daily gold tips newsletter over at Capped By Cata.  All you have to do to enter for your chance at the $25 new Blizzard store purchased mount is head over to Wes's site and sign up for his newsletter.  I myself use a newsletter here.  Newsletters are great for making sure you never miss a post.  They are even helpful for reading gold blog posts on your phone or your work email (If you can't read gold blogs at work).  Follow this link for more details on his contest and to sign up for Wes's newsletter.
Win a Winged Guardian Flying Mount


Win a Blizzard Authenticator

Another good bud of mine is in the giving spirit too.  Alto, author of the self proclaimed Best WoW Gold Guide Ever and co-host on the Addicted 2 Azeroth Podcast, is giving away a Blizzard World of Warcraft Authenticator.  All you have to do is follow the link below and leave a comment.  Hurry though, giveaway entries end this Sunday.
Phishing Scams and WoW Authenticator Giveaway


Win a Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery Gold Guide

Good things come in waves of 3, so I am adding a 3rd contest to the ones above.  My first World of Warcraft gold making guide, Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery, has been received well and is helping at least 52 buyers make gold selling my favorite Cataclysm craftable, Mysterious Fortune Cards.  So now I am going to give away 2 of these great WoW gold making guides to my faithful readers!

There are 2 ways to enter for your chance to win a Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery gold guide.  You can

• Sign up for my newsletter.  Make sure to confirm the verification email that will be sent once you subscribe and add my email to your white list or contacts to assure you will be getting your posts delivered to your inbox.  Already enrolled in the newsletter?  Well, you're already entered!
• Leave a comment on this page with an answer to this question, "What topic would you like to see covered in a blog post from the gold blogs?"  Topic ideas or direct questions either one are fine.  Try to be specific because other bloggers will check these comments for ideas to write about.  Coming up with a good topic, could find your name given credit in a future blog post either here or elsewhere.

Both the newsletter and the comments contest / giveaway will each award 1 winner.  So doing both gets you entered in each contest.  One winner will come from the newsletter and another will come from the comments.
Both the newsletter giveaway and the commenting giveaway will end at the end of the month and winners will be chosen at random and announced on July 1st. 

Don't forget to sign up for the Cold's Gold Factory Free Daily Gold Tips Newsletter and get my tips straight to your email inbox.  (Great for those of you who want to read at work, but have websense blocking your computer.)

Ideal Alts Series | Building A Better Bank Alt

Hagor

Building A Better Bank Toon

My good friend Wes of The Auction House Junkies Podcast ran a nice series on his great World of Warcraft gold making site CappedByCata.com.  Wes's 3 part series was on Building a Better Bank Toon and covered an area that a lot of players forget about.  There are some interesting ideas in the comments as well of those posts.  So if you haven't read Wes's series yet, make sure to check it out.

Wes's Building A Better Banker Series

• Part 1: To Level or Not to Level?
• Part 2: Choosing the Best Class
• Part 3: Professions?

I had left a comment on the original post asking what was a bank alt.  It was a serious question as I don't consider any of my alts to be a bank alt. 

Cold said...

I'm confused a bit.

What's a bank alt? I don't think I have one.

I have 9 characters that are all levelers, crafters, and gatherers. They all list items on the auction house, gather mail, etc. They mail items to each other. They have multiple guild banks for storage.

I guess the closest thing I have to a bank alt would be my Twink I am working on. Since he's just a liquidator of guild overstocked items at the moment.

Ideal Alts

Then I realized that I haven't had a bank alt character in quite some time, or at least what I would consider to be a bank alt.  I thought about the idea more and realized that while I do have 10 characters that all contribute (well the twink isn't a contributor, so 9), they all have specific functions.  They all operate as a link in the chain that runs the Gold Factory.  When I look at the alts I created, I know that I could have done a much better job of tweeking out their roles with better combinations.  Many of the reasons for certain combinations have changed, as Blizzard is always making changes.  So a once great combination, may not be the most wanted currently.

So I am going to be starting a new set of posts here at Cold's Gold Factory on some ideal combinations for your alts based on specific functions that they perform.  Some of the posts will be based off my current characters.  Others may highlight a great combination for those of you looking to start leveling some alts.  What to do with alts? is a very common question I am asked.  These posts should help to steer some of you with ideas and roles.

So check out Wes's post at CappedbyCata on Building a Better Banker and come back tommorrow for the first installment of Ideal Alts.  I will be talking about an Ideal Alts : The Dungeon Farmer.
See Ya Then!

-Cold

PS:  Hagor says go check out Goldgrub's Goblin Academy.  An All*Star Staff of bloggers and podcasters waiting to teach young goblins and new players in World of Warcraft.

***************

Ideal Alts Series

• Ideal Alts Series Intro | Wes’s Building A Better Bank Alt
• The Dungeon Farmer – An Ideal Heroic Farming Alt
• The Collector – An Ideal Vendor Flipping and Pet Selling Alt
• The Herder – An Ideal AoE Farmer Alt
• The Low Level Dungeon Farmer – An Ideal Alt For Farming Low Level Instances
• The Solo Raider and World Boss Killer

Auction House Junkies Episode #9 Is Out

Auction House Junkies Episode #9

The ninth edition of our gold making podcast is now live on iTunes, Podbean (podcast host site), and the embedded site player at AuctionHouseJunkies.com.  This is a special episode as it is Wes's last episode as a single man and he will be returning to us a married man.  Yes, Wes of CappedByCata.com is off the market ladies.  Congrats on the big weekend, Wes!  We sure to visit the Auction House Junkies site and leave comments for new show topics or ideas over on the Auction House Junkies Episode 9 post.

Here's a list of just some of the items we discuss on this excellent episode. 

• More Goodies from Patch 4.1
• Glyph of Frost Armor
• Icy Prism Cooldown Removal
• Return of the Crusader Enchant
• Wes's new Capped By Cata Consulting
• Wes's real life job change - better for blogging!
• Do you need to be gold capped?
• Book of Glyph Mastery & Snowfall Ink Sales
• Overstocking & Bank Decay
• More Lazy Obsidium Shuffling
• Farming
• More Tanking Stories!
• Tons more good stuff

We wanted to push out an episode before Wes is gone on his honeymoon, because as Stewards of the Gold Making Community, we didn't want to keep you junkies waiting too long between episodes.
Enjoy the Show!

Auction House Competition | Rift Effect

Auction House Competition and Maturation

The Gold Queen had an interesting post recently titled Staying The Best, which discussed the maturation of the auction house markets and how should we combat the extra competition coming from all of the free gold making resources currently online.  It's a nice article and worth a read, but I must say that I disagree.

In my opinion, what we are seeing is much more of a great divide amongst the players.  There are far more buyers than sellers and with the changing times, there are less and less sellers.  A look onto my auction house shows much of my competition is gone.

The Changing WoW Player Base

Along the far end we have players that are well educated on gold making tactics and on the other end we have completely clueless players, but the majority of players still fall within the two extremes.  I believe that most players are stuck in the middle.  They are no longer a completely new player, but are not advanced to the gold making strategy.  And it is within this middle area that the absolute majority of players reside and will remain.  The new players are constantly replaced by other new players, where as more veterans are leaving.  And it is these veterans that are most likely the ones playing the auction house on all of our servers.  Are these veterans being replaced by new veterans?  It hasn't been the case on my server at all.
Have the players as a whole learned the proper ways to make gold on there own?

As a whole, I say No, but there have been more players that are educated and know how to process information on the auction house and our gold blogs, but those tend to be the players that have been around a while. These players may even have graduated to being free thinkers who can develop their own strategies.  The thing is a lot of these informed players are bored or quitting all together.  Games like Rift have stolen a few players away as I have discussed in my very popular post on The Current State of World of Warcraft.

On the other end are a slew of players that are still clueless, have no idea how to think freely, and need sites like MMO Champion to cover a topic, so that they can copy the tactic, not adapt it to their server’s market, follow the rest of the lemmings, and utterly fail because they have no clue how to process or relate the given tactics to their own market on their own server.  Remember the report on prospecting Thorium Ore and how that was a major market price crasher on Thorium Ore once people realized that every copycat was trying the same strategy?  I snatched up a ton of cheap thorium ore and processed it down various much more profitable gold making avenues. 

I believe it isn’t so much that the majority of players are making more gold by sound auctioneer strategies, but the ability to gain gold by doing normal activities is much easier. Just think of linear quest chains, reduced mount costs and early level requirements, the lack of as many wipes and repairs with the easing of the difficulties of many lower level dungeons, etc.

So its easier to get gold, there are fewer major gold sinks out there, and the old gold sinks are now much cheaper (mounts, etc.)

Goodbye Competition
In the last few weeks I now have a third of my competition across almost all markets. These competitors may have turned to auctioneering as a new way to play World of Warcraft, while currently they are bored with even that and have moved on to try other games.  The result is less sellers, less auctions, and less competition.  Let's see how long it takes for others to capitalize on the fact that there are less competitors on the Auction House lately.  These findings are the exact opposite of what the Gold Queen was reporting.  I understand that all servers are different, but as a whole some changes may appear on other servers in a little more time.  Maybe your server just hasn't caught up yet.

Wes of Capped By Cata and Auction House Junkies reported a similar finding in his article: The Rift Effect: It Will Make You Rich.  It is time to re-examine those old markets you vacated due to competition.

So all power to RIFT and any other games that come along.  They tend to steal our compeition away and leave more gold for us to make from the World of Warcraft auction house.

Anyone else finding less and less competition in one or more markets?

Guest Post: CappedByCata

A Guest Post from CappedByCata.com


First of all, I would just like to say a very special thanks to Cold. He has been very helpful in allowing me to branch out with my blog and obtain new readership, so I do very much appreciate it.

I wanted to return the favor with a guest post here at Cold’s Gold Factory.

Mining will never be as profitable as it will be at the beginning of Cataclysm.

Yep, that’s right. The start of Cataclysm will lend itself to some insane demand in the terms of Ore needed for crafters in Cataclysm. Expect prices to be in the hundreds of gold for a stack of the new Ore.

So what does this mean? Besides the fact that you need to be mining, there are a couple of ways you can take advantage of this niche. Once prices sky-rocket, a lot of people who dropped mining for raiding professions will quickly pick it back up and join in on the gold rush. Not wanting to go from Node to Node all the way until 525, they will look for any shortcut possible. This shortcut is where you come in.

The only other way to level up mining besides hitting a node, is to smelt. What this means is people will be willing to pay a premium for ores such as Mithril, Gold, Adamantite, etc in an effort to cut out a few of those nodes that will be in heavy competition. If you can already have a stock pile ready to go, you will be able to net yourself a very healthy profit.

Time really is Money

Gathering professions will once again be at their peak come Cataclysm. Having a Miner ready to go at the beginning of the expansion will make you an insane amount of gold if you’re willing to put in the time. Me personally, I’m taking 3-4 days off work simply to Mine. Sure this may sound a little extreme, but I know the Ore will never again go for as much as it does during those few days. People will be racing to get those realm first achievements, and it needs to be your goal to take the most advantage of those people as possible. If you spend those first couple of days leveling up, exploring new content, trying out new dungeons, etc, then you’re selling yourself shorts of the profits that will be available in those few short lived days.

So take advantage, friends and line your pockets, guild banks and bed sheets with shiny shiny gold.

****************************************
 
Thanks Wes for the guest post.  I agree with you and I already have been stocking up on ores.  I myself am focusing on the uncommon (green) ores that give a skill-up each smelt:  Silver, Gold, & Truesilver.  In my opinion these will be the most realiable for power leveling miners.  If you plan on mining, I highly recommend getting to max skill prior to the gold rush of Cataclysm.  I also expect to see a rise in the sale of Mammoth Mining Bags as well.  Thanks again.
 
Anyone else interested in guest posting, or swapping guest posts, either shoot me an email here or a private message over at The Consortium.