On Buying a Mount

so, you're coming up on 40, 60 or 70 and you want to buy a mount. for many players, getting their mount is a pretty defining moment in their character's career. for some, it also a major trial. why? because getting a mount ain't cheap. oh sure, the mount itself isn't terribly expensive; 10-200g and it's yours. but buying the riding skill? yeah, that part sucks. are you going to have 90g to train apprentice riding at level 40? 600g for journeyman riding at 60? how about 800g for expert riding or even 5000g(!?) for artisan riding at 70?

now, if you've already got a 70 running around outlands and you're playing an alt, chances are that funding your alt's lvl 40 mount is going to be cake. but what if it's your first character or your getting on towards 70 and eying your flying mount or your just flat out broke. how are you going to scrape all that gold together?

a lot of my guildmates, especially those new to the game, seem to find themselves in this boat. so, I thought I'd put together a rough guide to making gold in WoW.

Professions

one of the best ways to make piles of money fairly easily is to have a gathering profession. mining, skinning and herbalism are great sources of income. the trick, of course, is that you have to actually sell what you gather - that means no crafting profession (or at least putting it on hold until you buy what you're saving up for). sell what you gather in the AH or by advertising in the /trade channel. get a feel for market prices by looking in the AH first and price accordingly. I usually try to sell things in full stacks (20 ore, 20 leather, etc.). some things sell better than others. for example, for herbalism briarthorn sells quite well (it's used to make healing potions) while bruiseweed often doesn't sell worth crap. check your auction house (AH) to see what sells and what doesn't.

if you want to really make the most of gathering, take up two gathering professions. mining/skinning or herbalism/skinning works best as you can skin many of the mobs you kill and pick up herbs/ore as you run around questing. you must be level 5 to train professions. I recommend starting as soon as you can and practice your profession every chance you get - it sucks to get to a new zone with higher level ore/herbs and not have the skill to gather it. don't be that guy...

Vendor Trash

get the biggest bags you can early on (buy them from the AH or directly from players that have tailoring) and pick up everything you can when you're out killing mobs. sell all of it. food you don't need, items of poor quality (gray items) and anything else you don't think other players will want should be sold to a vendor. you might be surprised how much some of this stuff is worth. vendor trash at level 70 is often worth 2-3g each(!). over time, you'll get a feel for what trash is worth hanging onto (gray weapons and armor) and what isn't (fish oil, delicious cave mold, etc.). if you run out of room in your bags, toss out lower value items to make room for higher value items as you come across them until you can get to a vendor and cash out. I'll talk more about this below, but most items of common quality (white items) have some potential for use by players and should be sold in the AH instead of vendored. these are crafting materials ([Spider's Silk]), spell reagents ([Light Feather]) and the like. not all of them are useful, but looking through your local AH should give you an idea of what sells and what doesn't.

Crafting Mats

as you're out and about laying waste to the countryside, you'll come across a lot of common (white) and uncommon (green) items. many of these are used by players with crafting professions to make things. since these items generally can't be bought from vendors, there's a pretty good market for them. examples are ore, stone, leather, herbs, gems, spider silk, certain types of fish, certain potions and so on. some of these items sell really well (some gems you might find in your 20s and 30s will sell for 1g each) and some of them hardly sell at all (peacebloom? meh). as always, check your local AH.

BoEs

throughout your travels you'll be picking up green (and blue, if you're lucky) quality items that are Bind on Equip (BoE). items that are BoE can be sold to other players (as opposed to Bind on Pickup, which means only the character that loots the item can use it). weapons and armor are the most common examples of BoEs and there's a very fluid market for these in every server's AH. an item's value is usually based on it's stats and abilities. understanding the value of an item at a glance is something you're just going to pick up over time. there are all kinds of variables involved (which stats does it have? if it's a weapon, is it slow or fast? is it a twink item?) and I'm not going to get into them here. as a place to start, though, you can either ask around or check the AH for similar items to see what they're selling for. if it looks like you can sell an item in the AH for more than the item's vendor value, toss it in the AH. if there doesn't appear to be a market for that item, either vendor it or have it disenchanted - see below.

Disenchanting

characters with the enchanting profession require materials to do enchants. they get these materials by disenchanting green or better quality items in various essences, shards and dusts. there's nearly always a market for enchanting materials and, unlike nearly all other items out there, there's no auction listing fee for enchanting mats. you literally cannot lose money by listing mats on the AH over and over again if they don't sell the first time. now, I don't recommend enchanting as a profession if you're trying to make money. it's a *huge* money pit to level it up. what I do recommend, however, is to have access to an enchanter that can disenchant (DE) all the crap greens you pick up that you can't sell in the AH. you can go about this in a few ways: 1) take up the enchanting profession yourself (ugh), 2) talk to your guild enchanter about it, 3) ask around in the /trade channel for an enchanter that will DE for you; expect to pay them for their time, or 4) create an alt to be your enchanter. I recommond option 4. create a new character, get them to level 5 (not much more than an hour's work), run them to a major city and have them learn the enchanting profession. your alt can now disenchant items up to level 50. mail all your greens to this alt, melt them down and mail the mats back to your bank alt to put up in the AH (more on bank alts below). to DE items higher than level 50, you'll have to level up enchanting. it's probably not worth it at that point, but at higher levels the vendor value of green or better items is often pretty good. so, just vendor whatever you can't sell in the AH (or look into options 1-3).

Questing

should be obvious, but questing is a great way to rake in the cash. this is especially true for those level 70s trying to put away 5000g for an epic flier. all those quests that you haven't done since you hit 70 are now worth 7-12g each on top of whatever the original quest rewards were because you get gold instead of xp for completing quests once you hit the level cap (i.e., 70). aside from the direct monetary rewards from questing you can make some good money off quest reward items, too. if none of the rewards are useful to you, get into the habit of picking the reward that has the highest vendor value. in general, 2h weapons sell better than 1h weapons, weapons sell better than armor, plate sells better than mail, mail sells better than leather, etc. when comparing similar items. quest rewards are almost always BoP, so you're only choice is to vendor them or disenchant them if you happen to be an enchanter (gods help you).

Cloth

all humanoid mobs (including most undead) have a chance to drop some type of cloth when you kill them. cloth is used for first aid (everyone should have this secondary profession - even healers) and tailoring, primarily. the only source for cloth is mobs, which means there's a good market for it. all the cloth you pick up that you don't use for yourself (you've been leveling up your first aid, right?) should go directly to the AH. as with other crafting mats, try to sell it in stacks of 20 and check the market for current prices before you post. prices can fluctuate pretty wildly, so it's best to check each time you put up new auctions.

Farming

when all else fails, there's always farming. farming is the act of deliberately going out in search of stuff to sell. you can farm mobs or crafting materials. farming mobs usually means killing humanoids and undead. they drop cash, cloth, decent vendor trash and seem to have a slightly higher chance of dropping BoEs. if you're a skinner, beasts are also a good choice to farm for leather. farming crafting materials means running around one or more zones putting your gathering professions to good use. so, running around looking for ore to mine and herbs to pick. this isn't all that viable until you have a fast mount, but it can be a good (if dull) source of income.

once you get close to 70 you have a couple new options for farming - rep items and primals. many outland mobs drop items that can be turned in for rep with the various factions. for example, [Mark of Sargeras], [Unidentified Plant Parts] and [Arcane Tome]. these items tend to sell very well. outlands mobs and resource nodes (herbs, ore veins) also have a chance to drop motes, such as [Mote of Fire]. 10 motes of a given type can be combined into a primal (e.g., [Primal Fire]) and these, in turn, are used in many high level crafting recipes and are always in demand. they sell quite well, ranging from 3-30g each depending on the type (fire and air tend to sell the highest, earth the lowest).

Helpful Addons

there are two addons for WoW that I highly recommend to aid you in your money making efforts. they are Auctioneer and Gatherer. they're both made by the same developer and you can download them individually or as part of a package from the auctioneer website. installation and usage instructions can be found at that site. in brief, auctioneer helps you manage your auctions in the AH and, most importantly, helps you get an idea of what any given item is worth on the current market. gatherer keeps track of all the places where you've found various resource nodes (ore veins, herbs, etc.). this is helpful when you're out farming for resources as you'll know exactly where to go look for nodes instead of wandering aimlessly. both addons are far more complex than what I've just described; check out the website for all the gory details.

Auctions

sell low. if you use auctioneer, it will give you an option to price your auctions 5% lower than the nearest competition. I tend to go even lower than that; 10-15% lower then the currently cheapest listing. it might seem counter-intuitive since you're trying to make money, but look at it this way: if you price your stuff lower than everyone else, you have a much better chance than they do of selling your stuff. if you price it the same as everyone else, you don't stand out and you may not move your auctions as quickly. everytime you have to re-list an auction because it didn't sell, you lose deposit money. making *some* money is better than making *no* money. lastly, always always *always* list a buyout price on your auctions and list them for the longest time possible (24 hours/very long). speaking for myself, I hate to wait for an auction to finish both because I want instant gratification and because I don't want someone else coming along at the last minute and outbidding me. so, I nearly always use the buyout option when I'm shopping. if you don't provide a buyout price, you're missing out on a lot of potential buyers.

Bank Alts

this suggestion isn't going to help you make money so much as it's going to make your life easier. create an alt character that you only use for storing things long term (BoE items you can't use yet, crafting materials you want to save for later, etc.) and for doing all your AH business. park this alt at a mailbox in any of the major cities. I recommend either IF or SW for alliance, Org or TB for horde because in this cities the mailbox is right next door to both the bank and the AH - less running around. anytime you're out and about and you pick up something you want to auction, mail it to your bank alt. at the end of a play session or even every few days, log into your bank alt, grab everything out of the mail and go do business. keep all the proceeds from your successful auctions on your bank alt and think of it like a savings account. dip into when you need to, but try to let it grow. that's your mount fund right there. if you really want to do up a bank alt in style, level it to lvl 5 and train enchanting. that way your bank alt can DE all the greens and blues that just won't sell on the AH. remember that mail is instant between characters that belong to the same account. so, you can transfer items between your bank alt and your main character(s) with no waiting time. if you're a pack rat and want to keep everything that might even potentially be useful, make more than one bank alt! it's cheaper than buying more bag slots...

so... does all this stuff really work? let me put it this way. every character I've ever had that has reached level 40, 60 or 70 has had mount money ready to go by the time they ding'd. I've also funded two epic flying mounts and currently have the cash laying around for a third if I wanted it. that right there is over 15,000g. it works ;)