The Persistence of Time

Khaas | 25 January 2010 | Business as Usual | | 0 Comments

First, let me say I am already aware that this week’s motivational poster is completely unrelated to the topic. But what can I say, it’s been one of those kinda weeks. The search for gainful employment continues unabated, and as the end of the fiscal year is quickly approaching I am hopeful that my luck will change soon. Which brings me to my point, understanding time and timing is vital when you’re trying to make gold. One thing I think many of my fellow Goblins would agree on is that there’s a definite relationship between effort and time. If you’re anything like me you’re constantly trying to come up with new ways to maximize your earning potential with the least amount of time/effort. I’ve talked about it in passing before, now follow me as I waste time talking about time…

Gold Per Hour
Gold Per Hour (Or GPH as I’ll be refering to it hereafter) is an expression of how much gold you’re making in a single hour. It’s a simple concept to understand, but is in itself an imperfect metric for understanding your success. If you’re only playing one hour per day, then fine go with the GPH standard. But if you play for more, then you have to think in terms of your session. You have to consider how much of your playtime you’re allotting for gold farming. Once you’ve got that, you can start to maximize that time.

Obviously, not even those of us who aim for the cap want to spend all of our time trying to squeeze as much gold as we can out of the game (at least I don’t). I like to raid, run a heroic once in a while and talk to friends. It IS a game after all. That doesn’t make my time any less valuable however. Instead, I posit that limited time to collect gold makes your available time even MORE valuable. Which is why dear friends I always stress proper planing, here is where establishing a routine can be paramount in your success (more on that in a minute). The main point I want to get across is that your time is valuable, use it wisely and you’ll go far.

Effort Costs
Much like in real world business, making gold in wow does require some amount of effort. Traditionally, there are three ways to increase profits: reduce production time, effort (labor), or material costs. Essentially, you win if you can make something cheaper than your competition (even if you sell at the same price).

Before anyone gets a headache trying to wrap their head around this concept, let me provide a very simple example: If you’re making 3g per glyph, and your competition is making 2g per glyph, and you’re both selling at 5g each… you win. You’re making more money than him, and you’re both selling (obviously this example speaks primarily to lowering material costs, and not the other two).

Understanding the Effort/GPH Conundrum
Any level eighty can go do all twenty-five of their daily quests and end up with around 500g. The risk involved is minimal, in fact the only real risk you run is that others are camping the mobs you need or that you get ganked (on a PVP server). With enough patience and effort you know you can get that gold. That’s a bit different than say posting a Darkmoon Faire deck on the AH and hoping someone will buy it. In fact, you may relist the thing several times before someone buys it, if anyone does at all.

Risk is inherent when selling things on the auction house, that is simply a given. It’s something you’re going to have to square away with before you can get serious about making gold. Beyond that however, we learn a few interesting things. First, though you may be able to complete all twenty-five dailies in one hour you still have to wait till tomorrow to do more. In the case of glyphs, flasks, and other crafted goods you’re limited by supply and demand.

Some crafted items have a very low effort cost and high demand, for example an alchemist can create an epic gem each day with the press of a button. You can then list the raw gem for a quick turnover (usually around 100-150 depending on the gem) or you can cut it for a slower turnover at a higher amount of return. Here’s the question though, do you cut it or not? Again, uncut gems go fast: people grab them and get the gem cut as they need, whereas a cut gem there’s no guarantee anyone needs a Str/Crit gem right now. So, there’s definitely higher risk in cutting the gem, so it comes down to how much gold you stand to make if the thing sells.

My best advice here is this: Only you can decide if it’s worth it or not, but in either case I find it useful to toss a message in trade chat when unloading these limited quanity goods. It doesn’t matter if someone’s going to try to undercut you, because you’re only moving a finite amount of gems a day, even if you (like me) have multiple alchemists making gems each day. Personally, I sell them uncut. They sell quickly, and there’s some fierce competition for the cut variety.

Other items have a high effort cost and a high return, for example the Mechano-Hog. The problem with these items is that the amount of gold necessary to make these things profitable is honestly a bit daunting. Even the initial “at cost” value is a bit more than a lot of people are willing to spend on what is essentially a vanity item. These things tend to be a hard sell, both to me as a businessman and to potential customers. I never see many of these on the AH, and so I remain unconvinced that these things really move that well. I see these types of items as something you make one of, then post it till it sells.

My preference leans toward quick sellers like the twenty-two hour cooldown transmute type items, and high demand “low” to “medium” value items such as glyphs, flasks, etc. The essentials as I like to call them.

The Essentials
There’s a reason why so many guides have been written about making your fortune with Inscriptions: because it works. If done well, a scribe can make steady gold with minimal effort/cost. It’s consistent and can, on a good day, make 3K or more. There are tons of guides out there about this profession, so I’m not going to belabor the point. But let it suffice, it’s mentioned so much for good reason. You can keep a good stock of glyphs up, as well as making individual cards and decks for the Darkmoon Faire, and more recently the Fortitude scrolls which come in quite handy for raiders. The one problem with inscriptions, the other scribes. Seriously, there can be a WHOLE lot of competition in this market. If you go after this one, you have to go all out.

Alchemy can be a great source of income as well, Flasks and other consumables are always needed for raids. And they disappear when you use them, so you always need more! Which to me has always sounded like a good deal for an enterprising Alchemist. Again, competition can be tough here though.

Item Enhancements – Belt Buckles, Enchanting Scrolls, Armor Kits, OH MY! People need this stuff regularly, anytime a new patch comes out it starts all over again. Anytime a new arena season begins, it starts all over again. So during the course of an expansion you can make a killing by supplying much needed item enhancements. If you combine various professions over alts, you can make a killing. If you do that, and skip over gathering professions and just buy your mats from others (cheaply of course) then you have the makings of a real Goblin factory.

Again, the key idea is to minimize the amount of time you’re working on it. Gathering professions tend to take a lot out of your day, sometimes it’s the only way (really) so it’s nice to have an alt or two that can do it. But in the end it’s far more profitable to just buy it and craft away. You’ll be able to make more items to sell, and will in the end make more money with less time invested, which is a win no matter how you slice it.

The Bloodscalp Report
Glyphs are down atm, it’s that lull before Arena season starts and I fully anticipate it to pick back up this week. But it has exacerbated things slightly. The good news is that the Darkmoon Faire is coming to town, and I’ve been making cards/decks. It should go a long way in my ongoing quest for the Insane title as well as helping me line my pockets with some fresh gold. I’m really looking at some new markets now, and possibly investing heavily in their success. Here’s hoping I’m not taken to the cleaners for my trouble. In either case, I’m exercising some caution, and waiting till I have a bit more of a buffer to work with before I go all out on these new targets.

As you can see, though Glyphs are selling more slowly lately I am getting some good numbers when they do sell. So it’s not a total loss.