Pascal's Gold Making Guide for the Economically Challenged

for ACTUAL gold making advice, visit actual gold maker's sites

So, you want to make gold. You've read professional gold maker guides by wealthy individuals who are probably way smarter than you, but you're still poor. My friend, I am here for you. I, too, was once a common peasant scrounging under the bridges of Undercity looking for a way to make gold. Now, I'm at least upper middle class.

If you're anything like me, you've read dozens of guides on how to play the auction house and make gold. They tell you "Anyone can make tons of gold, easily!" Well sign me up, you say. Then you read the guide and you're like, what even is this?

are these even words?

After attempting many times to learn how to make millions of gold like these pros, I realized that I just can't. Maybe it's not interesting enough to me, maybe I'm not good at figuring out the trends, or I buy out the wrong things, maybe I'm stupid. Who knows, but I've tried and failed enough times. I'm really good at killing monsters, though. Maybe I could try mercenary work...

I should have listened to you all along

If you know how to make gold, this guide is not for you. This is for those people who sometimes can't afford enchants. It could also be useful for people who aren't necessarily poor, but also don't realize they could passively be making gold for almost no effort with just a few simple steps. Now, when I say this guide is seriously simple, easy, and anyone can do it, I mean it - but that also doesn't mean you'll be a millionaire. Just, not poor.

First off, the simplest way to make gold is obviously to sell things. "Well, what things should I sell, Pascal?" you ask me, as if you didn't already know that. I don't know man, just things.

The problem with selling things is organizing them, and also pricing and listing them. The two biggest tips I have for solving these problems are:

1. Make a bank alt - either a new toon or a rarely played alt. Make a guild for him and buy some guild bank tabs as needed so you have plenty of space to put your things.

pictured: things

This should be self explanatory. Send all your things you ever get to your bank alt. A big fault some people have when they don't make gold is simply that they don't save their things. When I've spoken to people who say they have trouble holding onto gold, they say strange things like that they vendor everything. I have had the most random old world items, old mats, and pieces of gear sell for considerable amounts of gold. When you mindlessly save everything and then apply upcoming step number 2, you'll be making gold without actually trying! Now, when I say "gold", I mean like, maybe in the hundreds to possible low thousands depending on how much stuff you have and whether or not the stuff you stumble across is valuable. Remember, if you wanted a professional gold making guide, you're in the wrong place.

like "it's better than nothing" amounts

2. Download Auctioneer Suite. There are two download options, pick the one that says "suite" it's usually the first one.

This step probably seems familiar if you've ever tried to utilize a gold making guide. Here is the thing about auctioneer: you only need to know a few things for it to do everything a simple monster slayer like you needs it to do.

First off, auctioneer takes up a lot of memory and the suite adds addons that I'm not sure what some of them they even do. One is a mod that brings up a prompt to disenchant items if you're an enchanter, which is neat. Having a bank alt helps a lot because now you can turn off the auctioneer related mods for every character except the one designated as your bank alt!

When you first download auctioneer, you should probably do a scan to start cataloging the general prices of things on your server.

Hit the double blue arrow if you have a good internet connection, otherwise hit the yellow arrow button. Either way, go afk for a bit. It's not a quick process.

There, now your auctioneer has a database of the general price of things on your realm. Periodically scanning the auction house is a good way to keep up with the trends and averages of your server.

The colors you see are based off of the average price and current prices for items will show up as different colors based on how far below or above they are the average:

these numbers can be tweaked under "pricelevel" in configure

Head to the "Appraiser" tab on the bottom. If you just did a scan, all of these items will have been scanned recently. Otherwise, each time you go to list auctions, near the bottom hold alt and click the "Refresh" button. This will update the database on all of the current listings for the items you actually have in your inventory. On the side, you can choose items in your bag to pick what you want to list, and the addon automatically undercuts the items by a percentage. You can adjust that percentage in Appraiser under Configure, but the default percentage is pretty good. It won't, however, undercut items that are already severely undercut - it goes off of the average price.

If you ever find that your database of prices seems constantly off - items are seemingly always way overpriced or way underpriced - you can do a clear of all the data and start over. It's a good idea to do this every couple of months as prices will drop permanently as farmers get to work and content comes out. To do this hit the Configure button at the top, choose "Data Maintenance" and hit the "Clear ALL ScanData" button. You can clear a single item's data by typing "/auc clear [item]".

Once you have the grasp on these concepts, posting all your crap is as easy as hitting "post items".

I have been making gold like this for a very long time - I had my first bank alt during Vanilla. I periodically am able to corner a market that I can continuously sell items for awhile and get a good gold flow, usually utilizing professions, but all the gold I make is usually made through farming and effort rather than buying and selling.

I have picked up a few things about using the auction house, and the longer you use auctioneer and continue to hoard and sell your crap, the more you will learn, too. It would be irresponsible of me to let you leave without giving you a few warnings:

1. Don't post junk that is obviously useless and not valuable. If you keep trying to sell something and it doesn't sell, either save it for the future if you think it might become a demand again or vendor it. Remember: someone has to want to buy it for it to sell.


2. The automatic undercut doesn't uncut already severely undercut items for a reason. Don't needlessly destroy or aid in destroying the market on an item. If some jerk has sharply undercut something that has a decent demand, hopefully someone will buy them out or the items go quickly and you can start selling items for normal prices again soon.


3. Some items' values will probably never go back up. Learn when to accept that.


4. Don't flood the market. If something is in demand, it will get purchased. List a small amount of what you have, then go back later and sell the rest, or else the value could drop.


5. Prices fluctuate. If you know for a fact that the item you're trying to sell is valuable in some way, but currently selling for nothing, keep it in your bags and check it regularly.

If you've been having trouble holding onto gold, maybe this can give you a hand. Once you start to get used to using auctioneer and getting used to the auction house, maybe you can learn some of those advanced tips that actual gold makers use. Hopefully though, at the very least, you can afford those enchants, and maybe a repair mount or some pets. Good luck, have fun!