If you’re a magic-using, cloth-wearing class, I’d recommend you at least take a look at tailoring. By leveling it, you get access to Lightweave Embroidery, one of the best level 85 buffs in the game for casters.

Of course, you can level tailoring on any character, and a lot of the craftables you make can be sold at a profit. But if that character can’t use the buffs from the profession, you’re missing one the key benefits to max leveling a profession.

Should I level tailoring?

Generally speaking, it’s hard to argue that one profession is hands down better than another. They all have their own unique advantages and drawbacks. And a profession that’s not especially lucrative or useful in one patch or expansion may wind up being the best in the next.

The tailoring profession is best leveled by someone who is actively leveling a character. The profession requires a lot of cloth. This cloth can be quite expensive to obtain at level 85, but leveling characters will routinely find cloth out in the wild.

The tailoring profession is best leveled alongside an enchanter. The two professions have terrific synergy. Tailoring requires you to craft a lot of gear that people aren’t going to be interested in buying off the Auction House. Disenchanting this surplus green gear turns them into enchanting materials, which is far more liquid a commodity.

Getting started

Obviously, the best way to level tailoring is to craft the items with the lowest cost to make that sell for the highest profit margin (or lowest amount of net loss). What items sell the best tend to vary from server to server. Still, some things hold more constant than others.

If this is the first time you’ve ever leveled a profession (don’t laugh — we were all there once!), you should know that the tailoring profession, like most non-gathering professions, is pretty poorly balanced in terms of leveling. In the early levels, you’re likely to find moreLinen Cloth and Silk Cloth than you can use while leveling. By the time you hit level 80 and are ready to leave Northrend behind, you’ll be frustrated that your tailor still needs tons more Frostweave Cloth.

Balance your leveling

It’s most efficient to pace your effort to level tailoring with your effort to level your character. This makes sense on a number of levels. You may as well be crafting things your character can use, and if your character levels faster than you level your profession, the gear you’re making will always be outdated. And, of course, by leveling in tandem, you’re actively getting the cloth you need from level-appropriate mobs. It just makes the whole process feel smoother.

• Tailoring 0-75 Level 1-15 humanoid mobs (Linen)
• Tailoring 75-150 Level 16-25 humanoid mobs (Wool)
• Tailoring 150-225 Level 30-40 humanoid mobs (Silk); level 38-50 humanoid mobs (Mageweave)
• Tailoring 225-300 Level 50-60 humanoid mobs (Runecloth)
• Tailoring 300-375 Level 58-68 The Burning Crusade content (Netherweave)
• Tailoring 375-450 Level 68-80 Wrath of the Lich King content (Frostweave)
• Tailoring 450-525 Level 80-85 Cataclysm content (Embersilk)

Priority 1: Craft Bolts of Cloth

While tailoring, you’re going to need bolts of cloth. Lots and lots of bolts. They’re the simplest and most useful thing a tailor makes.

As a tailor, there’s no reason not to craft bolts of cloth. They take up less bag space. They’re generally worth more than the component pieces of cloth you used to make them.

• Bolt of Linen Cloth Make these from skill level 1 through 50. Resist the urge to craft anything else until this pattern goes gray. You should have far more Linen than you need from drops alone, but in a pinch, Linen is almost always cheap on the Auction House.
• Bolt of Wool Cloth As soon as you hit skill level 75, drop everything and start making these. Keep making these until the pattern goes gray at 105.
• Bolt of Silk Cloth Start making these when you get to skill level 125. Keep making these through to level 145.
• Bolt of Mageweave Cloth You can make these as soon as you hit 175. Craft these through to 185.
• Bolt of Runecloth Start making these at 250; make nothing else until you hit skill level 260.
• Bolt of Netherweave You gain the ability to craft these bolts at 300. Making these should continue to provide skill points through to 325.
• Bolt of Imbued Netherweave Start making at 325. Make until it stops awarding skill at 340.
• Bolt of Frostweave Start crafting Frostweave at 350. Don’t stop until the act grays out at 375.
• Bolt of Imbued Frostweave Make this from skill 400 to 405.
• Bolt of Embersilk You can start crafting bolts of Embersilk at 425. It should continue to award skill points through to 450.
• Dreamcloth When you hit level 525, you’re likely going to want to craft gear with Dreamcloth, so it pays to start making it as soon as possible (500). Whether or not you want to wait out the week-long cooldowns or pay the premium price for certain types of volatile elementals is up to you.

Don’t take these bolts to the Auction House — hold on to them. You’ll need them to finish the leveling process. And if you make more bolts than you need, don’t worry. You can always sell the bolts on the Auction House later.

Priority 2: High-capacity bags

The one item that has consistently sold well throughout World of Warcraft history are bags. Everyone needs them. But not all bags sell. The only bags that sell to any reliable extent are those that contain a minimum of 16 slots. Profession-specific bags sell well too, so long as they’re 32-slot bags or higher. These bags frequently sell at a profit, so obviously you’re going to want to concentrate your leveling effort here where you can.

• Netherweave Bag This pattern is available at 315, though you’ll still be making Netherweave Bolts until 325. Keep making it until it stops awarding skill points at 330.
• Imbued Netherweave Bag Make these from 340 through to 350. You can get the Netherweb Spider Silk by leveling through Terrokar.
• Frostweave Bag Make these starting at skill level 410. You should generally switch over to making Embersilk Bolts at 425, but these bags award skill points to 440. So if you have excess Frostweave, keep going.
• Embersilk Bag If these are profitable to make (at 15 bolts each, these can be quite pricey), then you can grind these from 480 to 495.
• Hyjal Expedition Bag Early in the Cataclysmexpansion, these bags were made at huge losses just to finish the tailoring leveling process. Now that fewer people are leveling tailoring, these can usually be made at cost or at a profit. Just be aware that the market for specialty bags such as these can be easy to flood.

Priority 3: Bind-on-equip gear

Crafting bolts and bags put you well on your way to hitting 525, but you’ll still need to fill in the blanks along the way. For this, you’ll probably need to make green- or blue-quality bind-on-equip gear.

This is where there’s no right answer for the leveling guide. You’re going to want to try to craft whatever sells for the most profit (or usually, the smallest loss), but this can vary from server to server. You might need to do a small amount of research on the Auction House first. Thankfully, this is easy enough. I like to do the bulk of my crafting in the Auction House itself, so I can search to make sure the market isn’t already flooded with what I’m about to make.

Players who have already reached level 85 will have access to heirloom gear to send to any future characters they decide to level. Right now, heirlooms are available for your head, shoulders, cloak, and chest. Tailoring gear for these slots tends to sell especially poorly, since very few people are in the market to buy them. Focus your crafting efforts on the other slots: wrists, gloves, belts, pants, and boots.

There are some other things to consider, as well. Often, blue-quality gear will take the most effort and materials to make. But this means that few players actually bother to craft the gear. A surprising amount of blue-quality gear will sell for a profit, especially if it’s for one of those five non-heirloom slots.

Further, gear for twinks — characters who purposefully refuse to level past a certain point for PvP reasons — is always a popular seller. This gear is pretty easy to spot, even for beginners. Blue-quality stuff is more popular with twinks than green-quality stuff, because twinks only want the absolute best gear. Further, gear that has a minimum level requirement that ends in nine is popular with twinks, since they typically halt their growth at levels that end in nine. For a specific example, look at the Spidersilk Boots. They take more materials to make than their green-quality counterparts, but the extra effort is well worth it. They oftensell for around 250 gold, depending on your server.

Finally, a warning to the crafting novice: Before making something, check to make sure that item you’re about to craft is bind on equip, not bind on pickup. If it’s tagged as the latter, it will be bound your character and you won’t be able to sell it. Don’t waste time bind-on-pickup gear like the Robe of Power unless you plan on using it yourself.

Priority 4: The rest

One of the best ways to make money in WoW is to do what everybody else is not doing. That makes writing guides like this difficult. If everyone has the same information, then very few people who have that information will be able to make money off it.

That said, those who have the greatest success while leveling a profession will be those who have a little bit of creativity to find underserved markets specific to their server. On many servers, roleplay gear — that is, gear worn for looks and not functionality — tends to sell slowly but often at a profit. Shirts can be surprisingly profitable, but do your research first. And don’t list too many at once.

If you’re not a enchanter, don’t be afraid to make contacts with people in your guild who are. If they’re willing to lend a helping hand, you can always send them your excess crafted gear and have them disenchant it for you. Enchanting materials almost always sell better than the gear the materials came from.

And as a final note: Don’t be afraid to craft gear for yourself! While a lot of people level professions for the purposes of making money, that’s really only half of what the process is good for. Cloth-wearing tailors have access to some of the best gear possible for their class, if only they go through the trouble of making it. If you can get a skill point out of creating a better piece of gear for yourself, there’s really no reason not to.

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Every single content patch, Blizzard turns the tables on gold makers and, for a brief period of time, allows any player to make tens of thousands of gold by selling valor point-bought BoE gear. We’ve all seen the ads in trade of people looking to buy them or sell them, but most people focus on their own gear first and only think about selling them once they’ve gotten a few upgrades. Is this unwise?

What if I told you that you could get several thousand gold and still have as much valor gear at the end of the month as your guildie who didn’t sell a single BoE? It’s all about timing. The valor point weekly cap is 1,000, and in the beginning of the week that valor BoEs are available for purchase, the prices are extremely high. They stay high for a few weeks but quickly plummet as people start to use more points to buy gear for selling. They bottom out eventually when people stop having upgrades available for valor.

Easy gold for everyone

So how do you have the same gear as your guildie but have a few thousand folding gold? It’s simple: You delay your boots and bracers until last. The first boots and bracers you buy are sold to someone with more money than patience, and then you save some of that money to buy “back” a pair of boots and bracers for a fraction of what you made once you had everything else you needed. In the meantime, you were two upgrades behind everyone who bought pieces for themselves … but that’s also two more slots you could conceivably get a raiding upgrade for.

Every single level 85 character, even if they don’t raid, can cap their valor points each week. If you do raid, selling them will result in a slower progression of your average ilevel. If you take advantage of this early rather than later in the month, you can get some easy gold. And easy gold can buy you other, potentially more desirable BoE gear. Heck, with the price of enchanting mats and cut gems these days, you might get the best bang for your buck simply using the money for best-in-slot raiding enchants and gems.

AH or trade channel?

So you’ve decided to sell a BoE or two. How do you even go about this? The obvious way would be to advertise in trade channel with your price and the gear that you can access. This is popular because it’s risk-free and everyone else does it. Because of its popularity, though, you will find prices are lower here than on the Auction House. The advantages of trade are still pretty convincing, though:

• Risk-free You have points until you get the gold. If you don’t find a buyer, you can still buy an upgrade for yourself.
• Efficient It doesn’t matter if your buyer is a tank, a healer, or buying for an alt. All specs’ gear costs the same: 1,650 points for boots, 1,250 points for bracers.
• Cheap You don’t have to spend money to advertise in trade, and you don’t have to pay a 5% trade chat tax.

That said, when I want to get as much money as I can from a BoE, I never sell it in trade. I use the Auction House. Sure, it costs 5% of the sale plus deposit fees if you have to relist, but for one reason or another, people are willing to pay more on the AH. Your auction is there for as many hours as you paid for, and even if some insomniac raider is shopping for BoEs at the ungodly hour of 7 a.m., they’ll see your listing.

That said, there’s risk and inefficiency with this way of doing things. You have to choose the item you’ll be selling before you know the buyers for it, and if you’re unlucky with your choice, you risk having no gold, no points, and no equippable gear.

Mitigate the risk

There are a few things you can do to reduce the negatives of selling your cash cow on the AH:

• Bark your price in trade for a DPS queue or two before committing to the Auction House. If you get any offers that overwhelm you, take the money and run.
• Analyze the AH prices for all the different pieces of gear you could sell. This is particularly well done at the Undermine Journal. There is a lot more demand for plate, leather, mail, and cloth DPS gear than, for example, tank gear. But there are a lot of tanks, and if the market for the DPS gear you’re looking into is completely saturated, it may not be for a less common type of gear.
• Once you’ve listed the piece on the AH, bark a link to it in trade whenever you remember, and tell people that you’ll give them 5% off the posted price if they give you a chance to cancel it and trade them manually.

Auctioneers, watch out

One of the most satisfying things you can do while making money is actually buying low and selling high. It’s risky business normally but potentially very profitable in the beginning of a patch where large amounts of money are being spent. In this case, the best way to make money flipping valor-bought BoEs is to watch trade for good deals and sell them when trade is less busy or on the Auction House.

It’s risky business because the value of every BoE will eventually plummet. Riding the brink between trade and the AH always runs you the risk of having the risk of your entire stock being devalued from under your feet — especially because the increased prices paid on the AH are usually really only paid when you list the item for long enough, which goes directly against the requirement of a fast turnaround.

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Some things in life never change. Heart will always be the best band of all time. And gem prices will always spike after a new content patch, often by 100% or more.

The best way to profit off of (relatively) short-lived price increases is to stockpile ahead of time. While it’s clearly too late for that, there are still plenty of opportunities to profit off the rare gem market before demand dies down. It’s not too late.

Regardless of whether or not you’re a jewelcrafter, you’ve probably noticed that the market is going crazy. The red gems everyone wants are scarce enough to result in doubled (or even tripled) prices. And because people aren’t gemming red because of the cost, more folks are buying orange, purple, and to some extent even blue, green, and yellow gems. Why? Socket bonuses are pretty attractive, and if you’re expecting to have a piece of gear for only a week or two, why spend 300 gold, especially when you can get a decent boost out of a gem that costs a tenth of that?

A market snapshot

When looking at the gem market post-4.3, it’s easy to focus on Inferno Rubies and their little brother, the Carnelian, because red gems are by far the most expensive. But if you’reprospecting for gems yourself (as opposed to buying the raw gems on the AH and then cutting them), only one-sixth of the gems you’ll find will be red. Indeed, determining the profitability of jewelcrafting requires you to consider the average of all six gem colors.

Rare gems World average as of Dec. 11 (courtesy AHSpy)

• Inferno Ruby 260g
• Ember Topaz 47g
• Demonseye 35g
• Amberjewel 17g
• Dream Emerald 12g
• Ocean Sapphire 12g

Common gems World average as of Dec. 11 (courtesy AHSpy)

• Carnelian 73g
• Nightstone 20g
• Hessonite 12.5g
• Jasper 12.5g
• Alicite 7g
• Zephyrite 4.3g

For those too lazy to do the math, that works out to an average price of about 64g for a blue-quality gem and about 21.5g for a green-quality one.

The gravy train

To be fair, the increase in the prices of rare gems — especially Inferno Rubies — shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone. Any new patch that includes 5-man instances or a new raid is bound to drive demand through the roof, especially in the opening weeks. Level 85 players are getting a lot of gear upgrades, many of which need gemming. And thanks to the Raid Finder feature, some of these level 85 players are going through a series of upgrades in the same gear slot.

We see these kind of jumps in gem prices any time there’s a new tier of content available. And similarly, we know these jumps are usually short lived. Prices are going to be high and stay high for several weeks. But as the patch wears on, fewer people will be getting upgrades, and gem prices will return to normal levels.

The moral of the story: Don’t make any long-term decisions based on this short-lived spike in demand. Jewelcrafting isn’t any more profitable now over the long term.

Profits again gated behind work

If you’re looking for an easy score as a jewelcrafter, you may want to forget it. Lazy JCs can make money, sure, but the real money is had through prospecting. It’s similar to inscription that way.

For that reason, jewelcrafting tends to be a profitable endeavor at most times of year. It’s hard (and boring) for one person to satiate an entire server’s demand for gems, even if jewelcrafting is all he does. That makes it an easy market to get into for newcomers.

Jewelcrafting 101

Most of the Cataclysm-era jewels you see on the Auction House were born through the process of prospecting — that is, taking Cataclysm-era ore and destroying them to find raw gems. There are three different types of Cataclysm ore, and they all prospect into gems at different ratios:

• Obsidium Ore ~24% chance for each common gem; ~1.25% chance for each rare
• Elementium Ore ~18% chance for each common gem; ~5% chance for each rare
• Pyrite Ore ~18% chance for each common gem; ~7.5% chance for each rare; 100% chance for one to three Volatile Earth

Note that the above shows the chance of getting a specific common gem. Each prospect has a 100% guarantee to create at least one gem, and occasionally, a prospect will yield more than one. The math isn’t simple, but a decent rule of thumb allows us to add together the odds and estimate.

• Obsidium Ore 5.76 commons and 0.3 rares per prospected stack
• Elementium Ore 4.32 commons and 1.2 rares per prospected stack
• Pyrite Ore 4.32 commons, 1.8 rares, and 2 Volatile Earth per prospect

If you’re looking for rares, you’re best off grabbing Elementium or Pyrite Ore. If you’re more interested in common gems, Obsidium Ore is your best bet. Using the server average prices we discussed earlier and the average prices for stacks of ore (88g for Obsidium and Elementium, 150g for Pyrite), we find:

• Obsidium 130.3g prospected – 88g raw = 42.3g profit
• Elementium 169.7g prospected – 88g raw = 81.7g profit
• Pyrite 211.3g prospected – 150g raw = 61.3g profit

Should I prospect?

If you’re spending your time prospecting low-priced Elementium, then you’re probably going to see a 100% return on your investment. That’s pretty darn similar to the return of milling.

But don’t just jump into the deep end without understanding the risk. While the most popular gems — Inferno Rubies, Carnelians, and Ember Topaz — will sell all day long, less-popular gems like Dream Emeralds and Alicite may fester on the AH, even at competitive prices.

It’s also important to consider each step of the profitability of each step of the jewelcrafting process individually. If ore prices spike, it may become unprofitable to prospect, even if the secondary step of cutting gems is a moneymaker.

Finally, if you do decide to take the leap and try to cash in on high gem prices, take a look at some addons to minimize the time you spend on the most tedious steps. For prospecting, I really like the Panda addon. Just make sure to turn on your auto-looting option if you’re spending any length of time prospecting. It’s in the Interface menu: Interface > Controls > Auto Loot.

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When patch 4.3 first launched, the market price for Chaos Orbs on my server was about 400 gold. It didn’t take long for the price to fall though, the average market priceis about 56 gold. Frankly, that’s much lower than I’d have expected them to get so soon.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not complaining. Quite the opposite: I’m excited. That’s because low-priced Chaos Orbs are a tremendous opportunity out there for crafters of just about all stripes.

The current supply

Do you have a large supply of Chaos Orbs sitting in your bags? You’re not alone.

As things currently stand, most Auction Houses seem to have a surplus of Chaos Orbs. This shouldn’t be too surprising. We’ve known for quite some time that Chaos Orbs would be going BoE in patch 4.3. A lot of people who didn’t have immediate profitable uses for the orbs (such as tailors) saved them up. And now that they can sell the things, they’re trying to do just that.

Presumably, this glut in supply will be relatively short lived. There are plenty of recipes out there that require Chaos Orbs. Players aren’t constructing a lot of i397 BoE gear yet, but when they do, they’ll need Chaos Orbs. A lot of i365 gear from the Firelands dailies require Chaos Orbs. Tailors can even turn these orbs into Powerful Ghostly Spellthread, an enchant that will be in high demand as players score new gear in the new 5-mans, the Raid Finder, and in the regular 10- and 25-man Dragon Soul raid. The market is good at finding uses for cheap materials, and this case should prove no different.

Moving forward, Chaos Orbs should become more and more limited in supply. They drop in 5-man instances, but as players progress through Dragon Soul, they’ll have less of a need to run content they outgear. Why run heroics if you’re already valor capped and don’t need the gear? Chaos Orbs are found in the Raid Finder as well, but in lower quantity; 25 people are all rolling for one orb. And while the Raid Finder is popular now, its popularity will likely fade when hardcore raiders no longer need the valor or lower-ilevel tier offered.

If you were stockpiling orbs for patch 4.3, you fell into the trap of thinking just like everyone else. When too many people get the same idea for making money, few people actually wind up making money off the idea. Keep that fact in mind when you see everyone rushing to sell off their stockpiles ASAP.

Current and future demand

The release of a new patch created a small uptick in demand for Chaos Orbs. As I said, they’re needed for the new i397 gear. They’re also still required for crafting i359, i365, and i378 gear from previous raid tiers. Sure, the demand for i365 is less now than it was this summer, but it’s still a non-zero factor.

But will that demand hold up moving forward? I say yes.

Don’t be fooled by the slow decent into worthlessness that Frozen Orbs experienced inWrath. Chaos Orbs are different, because Cataclysm is different. You can’t run regular instances without achieving a certain item level — 226 for Throne of Tides and Blackrock; 272 for Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle; and 305 for Grim Batol, HoO, and Lost City. Even now, you need a minimum ilevel of 372 to participate in the Raid Finder.

To meet these ilevel hurdles, a player could run countless regulars, countless heroics, and then slowly progress through the tiers. Or, a dude could just head to the Auction House, drop a few thousand gold, and instantly gain access. Which sounds more appealing to you?

Lower-ilevel epics will always have a market in Cataclysm. And they’re far from the only useful thing you can craft with Chaos Orbs.

Profiting off Chaos Orbs

Right now, Chaos Orbs are cheap — near 60 gold each, on average. That has created some terrific opportunities, so long as your server’s economy will allow them.

For tailors, cheap Chaos Orbs means cheap Dreamcloth. The cost to make Dreamcloth with orbs is about equivalent to — and in some cases, less than — the cost to make Dreamcloth with volatiles. This gives tailors the ability to craft epics with abandon.

According to AHSpy.com, the cost to craft one Dreamcloth using Chaos Orbs is approximately 375 gold. This bargain-priced cloth can easily be turned around and crafted into Illusionary Bags, the i359 Belt of the Depths, and the i359 Breeches of Mended Nightmares, all of which seem to be offering modest profits right now: 700 gold on the Illusionary Bag (3,700-3,000), 900 gold on the Belt of the Depths (2,400-1,500), and 1,150 gold on the breeches (3,400-2,250).

Even bigger money can be made by blacksmiths who went through the trouble of grabbing the i365 Firelands patterns by grinding dailies. The profit margins on i365 gear are tremendous: The Masterwork Elementium Deathblade sells for 8,850 gold on average, with a material cost of only about half that.

Obviously, this gear doesn’t fly off the shelf — you’d be hard pressed to sell more than a one or two epics a day on my server, and it’s a high-population realm. But still, over the course of the rest of the expansion, these markets are likely to prove highly profitable for those willing to stick with them.

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I got an email from someone recently about a new competitor.

I have recently returned to the blacksmithing armor and belt buckles market. When I researched my old stomping ground, I found that materials cost has increased, profits are almost non-existent, and competition was rampant! I didn’t let that get me down, however. I watched the market, checked the reference data, got a good handle on the situation, then when the time was right, made my move! Competition dropped like flies, profits rose, and life was grand. Then one day, I got a new big-wig competitor.

He is one of those types who has his hand in all soups, and had set his sights on my little pot. For the past few weeks we’ve been having a war for the dominant spot in my market. It’s come down to almost nightly bouts of 1c markdowns for hours on end- some nights it goes so low that we’ve even bought stock from each other (me getting the upper hand by a few copper, though). One night, to test his wherewithal, I posted stock very low. He undercut, and I bought it all. He proceeded to buy my low priced bait within seconds. Since then, from war to war, I’ve become accustomed to the prices he likes to set, his posting habits, and his general posting times, but even with all this data at my disposal, he still manages to keep the steam in his engine.

We’ve only had one conversation in all this time as rivals, which consisted of him asking if I would like to sell my stock to him at a low profit margin, and me asking him to sell me his stock instead. Not a single word since. My profits are slowly slipping away as he and I post undercut each other relentlessly. I’m still making a bit of profit, but where does this go? Are the 1c markdown wars worth the effort?

One of the things a lot of auctioneers don’t fully appreciate is that the profitability of any market can be squashed by any one person posting near cost. Most attempts at reducing overall profitability in a market only last a short time because crafting for low profits is boring. There’s a sweet spot in the middle of the trade-off between volume and profit margin where you will have the largest possible total profit. If someone deviates too far toward the volume side of this zone, the total profit of the market is reduced.

This can be an effective way to compete if it results in a larger share of the market going the way of the new competitor; however, it loses its advantage if another competitor is stubborn and forces the first person to split this new low-margin, high-volume business with them.

It sounds like this is what’s going on here. You and your competitor have pushed each others’ prices down to a place where it’s barely profitable, and you’re both sticking it out hoping the other chickens out first so the winner can increase prices to that sweet spot where the goods sell fairly quickly at a fair markup. As I can see it, you’ve made two mistakes.

“Owning” a market

Your first mistake is pigeonholing yourself into a single market that you own. You don’t own markets; you rent them with a bunch of competitor as roommates. If you only work on a single market, you will always be at risk as the profit levels raise and lower and competitors come and go. You are playing the game of Who can sell the most belt buckles? when you should playing What’s the most gold per hour I can make?

If you have competitors willing to sell close to profit margin, let them have their way while you focus your attention on more profitable places. Of course, this is just a ploy for them to raise their prices, but all you can do by preventing them from doing that is waste your time by forcing them to waste theirs. Move on to another market with more casual competition, and make sure that as soon as the competitor tries to raise prices to a profitable place, you’re waiting there for him. TradeSkillMaster is good for this, as you won’t even have to look at prices or make manual decisions. If the stock is in your bag and it’s profitable enough to bother selling, it’ll get listed.

Trying to own a market leads you to waste valuable time cancelling and relisting frequently, as well as having to craft a ton more goods when prices get really attractive to buyers. Unless you have absolutely no remaining profitable ways to spend your time, it’s not worth babysitting auctions. Also, if he’s made it clear that he’ll undercut you immediately at the current price level, don’t waste time undercutting 1c at a time. Undercut 5g a time, or undercut straight down to the lowest you’re willing to park your stock and see whether he cuts bait. Nickel-and-diming your way down to that level will take you valuable time that you could be spending on another market.

Taking it personally

The next mistake you made was looking at the names on the Auction House. It doesn’t matter who posts a batch of auctions; all that matters is the quantity, prices, and stack sizes. React to these, not the name of the alt associated with them. As I said, any one person can ruin a market by mass producing and heavily undercutting. As soon as it gets personal, this may seem like a decent option — why bother making more gold per hour when you can win by beating someone else?

I’ve said before: The Auction House is not a zero-sum PvP game like chess. It’s more like a imaginary casino game where the players have better odds than the house. There doesn’t have to be a winner and a loser. Anyone can force someone else to lose profitability by flooding their market, but unless they can follow you around from market to market, they’ll never really have an effect on you. Also, they can only delay you making a profit by investing their own time in crafting and listing. It costs them a lot more time than it costs you money.

The best way to get someone to go all kamikaze all over your favorite market is to send them a mail or tell. People rarely see past the fact that you’re a competitor, so no matter what you actually say, all they’re hearing is “Come at me, bro.” If you want to talk to a competitor about how he prices, remember that just about the only thing that works is reverse psychology, and that’s only if he’s dumb enough not to ignore tells. If you legitimately want to talk to someone who plays the same optional minigame you do, don’t bother trying to do it in game. Go to The Consortium like the rest of us.

Effective competition

All that said, you did pretty well, all considered. You used a very effective tactic by posting low quantity seed/bait auctions and buying up foolish undercuts. It’s a good way to slap some sense into someone who is so single-minded in their pursuit of market share that they forget why they’re selling goods on the AH to begin with.

You might also want to consider looking into materials arbitrage. It’s borderline impossible to affect the price of base raw materials like ore and volatiles, but you can profit off volatility by buying when you know it’s a good deal and keeping a small portion of your mats available for a slight premium. You can better gauge your real materials value this way — and the better you are at picking up cheap raw materials, the better your competitors have to be to get the same cost as you.

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With every new patch comes new opportunity. And when patch 4.3 goes live today, there will be plenty of opportunity in the form of selling new i397 gear.

But what’s the right route to maximizing your profits? Tailoring snazzy new pants for the fashionable mage? Sewing wristpieces for all those boomkin who are really into leather? Or maybe you’re going to trade comfort for fashion and have your blacksmith hammer out a pair of Truegold pants?

Let’s take a look at all your options, both crafted and BoE.

The basic materials

If you’re itching to craft any of the new-for-patch-4.3 gear, you’ll need some basic materials to get you started. Crafting the best, most up-to-date gear requires Essences of Destruction, this patch’s equivalent of Living Embers. If the PTR is any judge, they won’t be available for valor or justice points, but they will be available on the Auction House. Just be aware that they’re likely to be extraordinarily expensive in the opening days of the new patch.

That’s not all you’ll need, however. You’ll need plenty of your profession’s best crafting material, whether that be Truegold, Hardened Elementium Bars, Pristine Hides, or Dreamcloth(which is staying soulbound). Volatile Fire, Air, Life, Earth, and Water all factor heavily into these craftables, as well. Finally, you’ll need plenty of Chaos Orbs. Don’t worry about needing to chain heroics, though — they’ll be purchasable on the Auction House in 4.3 just like the rest of the materials.

New tailoring patterns

Tailors are getting four new patterns in patch 4.3: two i397 bracers and two i397 legpieces. As you might expect, two of the pieces are itemized for DPS casters (Bracers of Unconquered Power, Lavaquake Legwraps), and two have spirit for healers (Dreamwraps of the Light, World Mender’s Pants). All require Dreamcloth (either five or eight pieces) and Essences of Destruction. Just as importantly, all require you to find their respective patterns off of Dragon Soul trash.

Before you go crafting anything, check to make sure the crafted end product is worth more than the materials. And be sure to factor in any costs it took you to get the pattern, whether you bought it off the Auction House or could have otherwise sold it on the Auction House. Factor in the cost of materials for your Dreamcloth as well, whether you used the now-valuable Chaos Orbs or cooldown-gated Volatile Elementals.

New leatherworking patterns

Leatherworkers are getting a number of new patterns in patch 4.3 as well. Eight, in fact — four different i397 bracers and four i397 legs:

• Bladeshadow Leggings Agility leather legs with hit and mastery
• Leggings of Nature’s Champion Caster leather legs with spirit and haste
• Rended Earth Leggings Agility mail legs with crit and haste
• Deathscale Leggings Caster mail legs with haste and mastery
• Bladeshadow Wristguards Agility leather wrists with hit and haste
• Bracers of Flowing Serenity Caster leather wrists with spirit and haste
• Bracers of the Hunter-Killer Agility mail wrists with crit and haste
• Thundering Deathscale Wristguards Caster mail wrists with spirit and haste

All of the bracers require four Pristine Hides, four Essences of Destruction, and two Chaos Orbs; all the legs require eight hides, eight essences, and four orbs each. You’ll also need a handful of volatiles for each, and the mail pieces will require Blackened Dragonscales.

Like the new tailoring patterns, you’ll need to find the leatherworking patterns in the Dragon Soul raid — or on the Auction House, if you’re looking to take a gamble.

New blacksmithing plans

Blacksmiths are getting six new plans of their own. Predictably, this includes three i397 bracers and three i397 legs:

• Unstoppable Destroyer’s Legplates DPS legs
• Foundations of Courage Tanking legs
• Pyrium Legplates of Purified Evil Healing plate legs
• Bracers of Destructive Strength DPS bracers
• Titanguard Wristplates Tanking bracers
• Soul Redeemer Bracers Healing plate bracers

All of the legs require eight Truegold and Essences of Destruction; the bracers require four of each. You’ll also need Volatile Life for the healing pieces, Volatile Fire for the DPS pieces, and Hardened Elementium Bars to make the tanking gear.

The patterns come from — surprise — the Dragon Soul raid trash.

Know the Competition: Valor gear

The selling of BoE valor gear is always big business at the beginning of a patch. This should be no surprise — it’s one of the quickest ways to (moderate) riches.

It’s a simple plan to execute. You grind the maximum number of valor points for the first week of a patch, then quickly grind a few hundred more when point limits reset the next Tuesday. You use those points to buy a raid-quality BoE, and then turn around and sell it as quickly as possible to the highest bidder. Rinse and repeat on all level 85 alts, and you can score a quick 10,000 to 20,000 gold on each.

In patch 4.3, valor vendors will have two different i397 BoE choices: bracers and boots. Obviously, the valor BoE bracers will have some overlap with the craftable BoE bracers from the professions above. It’s hard to see the craftable BoE bracers being worth significantly more than the valor BoE bracers, and it’s hard to see the valor BoE bracers being worth more than 10,000 or 15,000 gold. So be very careful before you go out paying top dollar (top gold?) for a BoE bracer pattern — it may be next to impossible to earn your money back.

On the other side of the coin, those who are interested in selling BoE valor gear should do a quick back-of-the-napkin calculation to see what’s offers a better return on investment: selling BoE bracers or boots. Just keep in mind that raiders will be unable to buy tier with valor points in patch 4.3.

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Last time we discussed how to make money playing the glyph market. It’s hands down the most popular way that scribes try to make money. Problem is, it’s probably the hardest route to riches I know. Glyphs tend to fester on the Auction House, and most go unsold. And yet despite this, no single profession has made me more money over my WoWlifetime than inscription has.

Confused? Don’t be — I’m about the blow the lid clear off the most profitable aspect of inscription: Mysterious Fortune Cards. Yes, seriously. They’re still making people boatloads of money.

My first-ever article covering the Auction House dealt with my quest to reach the Cataclysm-era gold cap of 999,999 gold. I utilized a large number of professions to reach the finish line, but nothing proved a better or more reliable seller than the stuff my scribe was making. But I wasn’t making glyphs. I was making Darkmoon Cards and Mysterious Fortune Cards (MFCs).

I abandoned those markets a while back — not because they stopped being profitable, but because I got tired of milling thousands of herbs and AFK crafting. Fast forward to this past week, when I revisited my poor neglected scribe. He still had a few MFCs sitting around in his inventory, so I crafted a few more and listed them on the AH.

I was pretty surprised at what I saw — the Mysterious Fortune Card market is stillridiculously profitable. And better yet, competition for the market seems to be weaker than ever. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the specifics.

Mysterious Fortune Card market at a glance

I try to be pretty cautious with blanket statements around here. After all, what sells well on one server might not sell well on another. And if competition is unusually heavy on a given server, trying to break into a new market can be a gold-losing proposition. So before I sat down to write this column, I did my research.

I stopped by my new favorite site (and The Undermine Journal competitor) AHSpy.com to take a quick look at the MFC market across every single US and EU server. Here’s what I learned:

• The average server (as of Nov. 20) has about 700 MFCs available; the median server has only 271.
• The average server (as of Nov. 20) prices an MFC at about 12 gold Alliance, or 14 gold Horde.

In my experience, the MFC market is damn hard to saturate. I could list 271 cards each and every day and watch them sell out, even with other folks competing for the same market. True demand varies from server to server, but there have been plenty of days when I soldthousands of cards. And not when they were novel new items. Recently.

What contributes to the always-present demand? Well, it’s simple: Mysterious Fortune Cards represent the easiest and most affordable route to the Cataclysm-era Well Fed buff. That’s because there’s no such thing as a Deepsea Sagefish pool, the fish required for the Severed Sagefish Head +90 intellect buff. You can only fish them up at random. It’s almost always going to be quicker, easier, and often cheaper to craft MFCs into Fortune Cookies, which offer the same great +90 intellect buff … or any other top-level buff you could possibly desire. They’re magic.

And yes, Mysterious Fortune Cards still hold up well as WoW‘s answer to a lottery ticket. Each one you turn over (or obtain via eating a Fortune Cookie) has a chance to give you a Fortune Card worth 5,000 gold, a Fortune Card worth 1,000 gold, or more commonly, lesser amounts down to 10 silver. Wowhead doesn’t have data on a player’s expected return from just flipping over cards and vendoring the result, but anecdotally, they’re worth about 2.5 or 3 gold per flip on average. That fact alone helps prop up their value.

And then there’s the elephant in the room: Mysterious Fortune Cards can be somewhat tedious to make. You have to put in a lot of effort to craft the couple of thousand cards that buyers can consume in a single day. As a result, it’s hard for one person to corner this market unless they have a lot of time on their hands.

High demand and weak supply — it doesn’t take a genius to smell profits in that mix. There will always be a high demand for these cards right up through the launch of Mists of Pandariabecause they’re a rare nexus between usefulness and fun. And judging from the data above, the market is woefully (and chronically) underserved. But will they always be profitable? Let’s do the math.

Is the MFC market right for you?

If you’re going to be making Mysterious Fortune Cards, you’re going to need a lot of Blackfallow Ink. And if you need a lot of Blackfallow Ink, you’re likely going to need to be buying (or picking) a lot of herbs.

Cinderbloom and Whiptail are almost universally the cheapest of the Cataclysm-era herbs. And as such, they’re the best herbs to go buying for the purposes of milling. Again, Wowhead doesn’t offer any exacting data with regard to how many Ashen Pigments (and thus,Blackfallow Inks) you get from each stack on average, but anecdotally, we know this:

• One Cinderbloom mills to ~0.25 Blackfallow Ink and ~0.025 Inferno Ink.
• One Whiptail mills to ~0.3 Blackfallow Ink and ~0.05 Inferno Ink.

Thus, conservatively, it takes four Cinderbloom or 3.33 Whiptail to make one Mysterious Fortune Card. According to AHSpy, the average price of Cinderbloom is about 1.4 g each; the average price of Whiptail is about 1.7 g each. Either way, it costs about 5.6 gold worth of herbs to make a MFC — or, about 6 gold total. That’s a pretty satisfying 100% profit margin given average prices, and that doesn’t even count all the Inferno Inks you’ll make in the process.

You’ll want to do the math with your own server’s specific herb prices. Just multiply the price of Cinderbloom by four or the price of Whiptail by 3.33. If the result of either is a few gold less than you server’s current market price for Mysterious Fortune Cards, you’ve found a lucrative market, my friend.

Selling the cards

Obviously, the best way to sell the cards you make is going to be on the Auction House. Mysterious Fortune Cards are desirable enough to sell on their own — people know what they are, and they’re regularly prowling the AH trying to find them.

If you want to boost sales a little bit, barking in trade might dredge up a few extra sales. This is especially true on the weekends, when there are more casual players online who are unfamiliar with the product (and the possibility of a 5,000 gold score). Be careful not to go overboard, though. Advertising too heavily can be counterproductive — it can irritate possible buyers and clue others in that you found a lucrative market. And if your cards are selling for 15 gold each … why can’t they list a few thousand units for 14.50 gold and undercut you?

Mysterious Fortune Cards tend to sell best when you list them in varying large quantities. Stacks of one card almost never sell, even if they’re the cheapest auction listed. Stacks of 20 seem to be the “sweet spot” where sales are strongest. Stacks of 50 sell well, too, and you’d probably be surprised at how many people out there are willing to buy stacks of 200. Listing in different but useful quantities (10, 20, 50, 100, 200) is a great way to stand out from other sellers.

Dealing with your “waste”

Back in the day, I never really set out to make Mysterious Fortune Cards. I was trying to makeDarkmoon Cards, and MFCs were my waste product — the most efficient and lucrative way for unloading my Blackfallow Inks. My, how the tables have turned.

So what do you do with all these Inferno Inks you craft? The easy answer is to sell them on the Auction House. They’re still needed to level inscription to 525. Right now, they’re worth about 22 gold each on average. That’s a pretty nice bonus: You get 2 or 3 gold worth of Inferno Ink for each MFC you craft.

Or, alternatively, you could put in the extra work and do what I used to do — make Darkmoon Decks. Prices for the trinkets have held up remarkably well, at least so far. TheDMC: Tsunami trinket can still fetch as much as 10,000 gold; DMC: Volcano can fetch 7,500. Prices are sure to go down in patch 4.3, but for those who prefer to stay out of raids, they’ll continue to hold solid value.

No matter what you do with those Inferno Inks, though, it’s hard to go wrong. After all, if you’re already making a profit on Mysterious Fortune Cards, it’s just found money.

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Glyphs are probably the most common way scribes try make money. Really, it’s no secret why — every new character needs to buy three glyphs at level 25, another three at level 50, and yet three more at level 75. Demand for glyphs is almost always there — or at least, demand for useful glyphs is almost always there.

On most servers, the glyph market on the Auction House is absolutely cutthroat. Players who are leveling inscription always have a boatload of glyphs to unload, and many are content to sell these at fire-sale prices just to be rid of them. On the other end of the market, you often have glyph salesmen constantly undercutting each other by one or two copper on a 50 gold item.

How do you compete against these people?

The best piece of general advice for anyone playing the glyph market: Have persistence. Know what each glyph costs you to make, and be willing to undercut your competition right down to the thinnest of profit margins. You have to be willing to work the same market forweeks, maintaining as steady a presence as you can. The harder you undercut your competition, the less value your competition will see in staying in the market and undercutting further. And as that competition starts filtering itself out of the glyph market, you can let prices return to a higher level to start making money yourself.

Even with heavy competition, it’s possible to make money selling glyphs. If you are going to participate in this market, though, be sure you have realistic expectations. Know that for every 100 auctions you list, only two or three will sell. Those who are the most successful will be those with the most persistence, listing auctions several times a day, making sure their glyphs are always the lowest priced, even if only by a few copper.

What’s the right price for a glyph?

Glyph prices are almost always determined on the supply side, independent of demand. The most useful of glyphs (i.e., the most frequently bought glyphs) are not always the most expensive, especially if a scribe can get access to that glyph early in the profession leveling process. Instead, the most expensive glyphs tend to be those that are the hardest for scribes to make — those whose recipes are gated behind Books of Glyph Mastery or to a lesser extent, behind Minor Inscription Research.

If you’re up against 20 or 30 other scribes trying to sell a certain type of glyph, you’re somewhat powerless to set the market price yourself. You can either undercut the existing price (which is likely already pretty low) by a few copper and hope your auction sells before someone inevitably undercuts you. Or, alternatively, you can undercut the existing price hard and hope that your actions eventually chase the competition away. Both tactics have their merits. The former is good for a more casual player; most glyph sales are simply a result of listing the right auction at the right time. The latter is good for a more hardcore player who wants to dominate the inscription market through constant vigilance.

If you’re only up against one or two other people, then you’re in a much more powerful position when it comes to pricing. As I said before, most glyph salesmen will list their auctions at exorbitantly high prices when competition is absent. Prices of 100 gold, 200 gold, and even 500 gold are not uncommon when it comes to certain hard-to-find glyphs.

That being said, here’s something to consider: Not all potential buyers will have the luxury of paying 200 or 500 gold for a single glyph. Newer players, whether they be new to a server or new to WoW itself, frequently find themselves strapped for cash at the times where they’re most likely to be in the market for buying glyphs, immediately after they ding levels 25, 50, and 75. Even I’ve had to pass up glyphs I wanted because I couldn’t afford them, instead buying less useful but far more competitively priced glyphs.

You’ll have to play around a little bit to find your own server’s sweet spot with regard to pricing. I’ve found some success with an alternating price strategy — charging a higher price during weekdays when more hardcore players are likely to be on, and charging a far lower price on weekends to try and rope in more casual players who simply can’t afford those higher weekday prices.

The best problem to have

I want to share with you all a question I got via Twitter from @haylandaniels. It highlights a less common problem some people have in dealing with heavy glyph market competition.

The glyph market on my PvP realm is crazy. Any suggestions on how to break the death grip of the 2 a-holes ruining it? by insane i mean Glyph of Howling Blast is 470g

The given situation sounds like a scribe’s wet dream. Most markets have the opposite problem — margins that are far too low. This market’s problem is one that’s easily correctable by any one solitary person who has a reasonably leveled scribe and a desire to make money hand over fist.

No one person can ruin a market. Ruining a market is a collective effort. Half of the blame goes to the folks listing auctions at prices that are too high to sell. The other half goes to those who are willing to just sit around and let it happen, failing to compete in what is clearly a market ripe for competition.

Most of you folks can probably guess my response as to how to play this market: “Undercut those two a-holes, and do it hard.” Specifically, I recommended undercutting by 95%, listing glyphs around 20g. @haylandaniel‘s response:

They just buy them up and resell them. They’re evil. Evil I say.

And that response is precisely why I suggested listing those glyphs at 20 gold. If he had listed his auction at 469g 99s, he’d have quickly been undercut — probably to the tune of 469g 98s. Even a more significant undercut would have been matched — 250g could easily be beat with 249g. If the gylphs sell for 249 gold instead of 470, the bad guys still walk away with quite a hefty profit. And @haylandaniel, in said situation, would walk away with nothing but hurt feelings.

A heavy undercut that drops the price all the way down to 20 gold creates a tough choice for the two market dominators. They could undercut at 19g 99s, but that would slash their profit margin from several thousand percent to just a few hundred percent. Or, they could just buy out your 20g auctions, essentially paying you a small fee to “reset” the market price to the much higher 470g. The latter tactic offers no guarantees, but they’ll definitely make more money buying you out at 20g and then selling their auction at 470 (470-20 = 450) than simply undercutting you at 19g 99s (19.99 – 0 = 19.99).

Judging from @haylandaniel’s response, the top scribes on his server are definitely using the buy-out-the-competition strategy. And that’s no surprise — it’s a common tactic, albeit a risky one. It’s a gamble that @haylandaniel will just go away. And judging from the tone of his tweet, he was considering doing just that. But … why?

For @haylandaniel, this server’s glyph market is a dream situation. He’s found himself two steady customers, willing to buy his entire inventory out on a regular basis. Why should @haylandaniel care that his profits are coming from people trying to keep him out of the market, as opposed to end users of the glyph? Profits are profits.

I love people who try to buy out the competition. They tend to be my best customers, giving me hundreds if not thousands of gold in the hopes that I’ll just go away. It typically ends very badly for them — after a few weeks of buying me out, they find themselves holding on to hundreds of glyphs that they just can’t sell. Their only choice is to give in, accept my terms, and start listing their auctions under 20 gold.

That’s about the time I pack up my own shop. Take advantage of the competition’s bad strategy, make money off it, and move on to a more profitable market. My advice to @haylandaniel: List those glyphs one or two at a time. And keep doing it until they stop buying. Easy money!

Looking to make more WoW gold?

Check out the secret tactics you can use to legally and easily generate up to 427 gold per hour or more in World of Warcraft without using hacks or cheats.

Get ready to make more gold playing WoW than you have ever seen before.

World of Warcraft In-game Leveling Guides

World of Warcraft leveling take a huge leap forward with Zygor Guides 3.0, the fastest, most powerful leveling guides in the world.

Leveling has NEVER been this easy! You will be leveling so fast with this, you might think you’re cheating. But you’re not, Joana’s leveling guide mod is 100% legal with Blizzard.

Cataclysm greens, alias the blooming market of twinking.

I’ve experienced on myself aswell, when you pvp in the 75-79 bracket, you will have around 15k hp at Max without these greens, making a huge gap between players, especially if you’re not even using heirloom items.
Most of the players will rush to the AH when reaching 77 to buy cata greens for every slot, practically willing to give hundreds of gold for a usual level 77 common green item.

What and what not to buy from the AH:

There are three levels which we will target here, 77-78-79 and the sell prices go down in this same order.
Do NOT buy any crafted item, as they are usually low on price, and easy for mass production, which makes it not worth our time.
The more types of stats it has, the more valuable it is. For example a Stam+int+crit+hit armor will be much more valuable than Stam+int, or worse, int+hit (since mass stamina is always vital for you in this bracket).

Methods of obtaining:

-You can either fetch them on the ah for 20-50gold at max,
-go farm it yourself
-or head to Vashj’ir or Hyjal and advertise in the general chat, something like “WTB all your lvl 77-79 cata greens for X gold, whisper the item and I’ll tell if I need it”.

People will whisper, if you see that the item is worth selling, well then, buy it, weapons, chest, legs are the most valuable.

I suggest you NOT to use the trade channel, since people will get a heads up and will start doing the same method as you, which you wouldn’t want to happen.
I tried to solo BRD with my mage since it has a really high chance of uncommon drops, but due to speed issues, it’s not really profitable.

For those who use Auctionator:
Armor/77/79/i272
Weapon/77/79/i272

Profits:

Depending on the demand, a spellblade is sellable for around 160-250 gold, chest/legs for 115-180, other slot items for a few gold less than chest/legs, but you can experience with the prices.
I can usually buy 10-12 items from the AH each day, and are sold within 24 hours.

Also a few extra non-related disenchanting tips:

span style=”font-size: small;”>-Greater Nether and Eternal essences have a high demand, you can make a little extra money by disenchanting greens:
Armor/41/45
Weapon/41/45
Armor/51/60/i45/i65
Weapon/51/60/i45/i65
-Greater Eternal Essences can be obtained in a more profitable and massive way:
- [Enchanted Thorium Blades]  disenchanting is quite a good method, altough you need a blacksmith (friend or character), it’s possible to make thousands of gold if the mats are cheap, or you can also mine Thorium in silithus in no-time.

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A thread regarding what professions are the best for someone just coming back to the game spurred me to write this guide with my own thoughts and ideas about making gold with Jewelcrafting and Enchanting. I am not claiming this to generate you hundreds of thousands of gold but it took me from 700 gold having to borrow gold for repairs when raiding to having 30k gold in 1-2 weeks. It all depends on the time and effort you put in.

Step 0. Preparation and requirements
This guide requires you to already have both Jewelcrafting and Enchanting maxed out. Being in a high level guild allowing you a higher chance to gain additional enchanting materials when disenchanting is also recomended. Large bags are also recommended. Having at least 20-30 slots free definitely speeds things up.

I also suggest that you use the Auctioneer suite to keep track of prices on your realm. You will find the latest version here:
Auctioneer addon for World of Warcraft

Step 1. Gathering resources
The first step of earning gold with Jewelcrafting and Enchanting is ensuring your resources. Either by having an alt with mining or through the auction house. Having an alt that mines will probably net you a higher overall income but it will quickly become more time consuming. In my opinion, if you’re not going to bot, the auction house is the better alternative.

The ores that you are interested in buying to prospect are going to be:
Adamantite ore: Adamantite Powder as well as various green and blue gems
Elementium ore: Various level 80 green gems, as well as occasional level 80 blue gems
Pyrite ore: Volatile Earth, various level 80 green gems as well as blue gems

You will find a more accurate breakdown below:
Adamantite Ore – Item – World of Warcraft
Elementium Ore – Item – World of Warcraft
Pyrite Ore – Item – World of Warcraft

You will have to do your own research before you start purchasing your gems as prices differ from realm to realm. Where I play I have found the following price ranges are the ones acceptable to buy gems in:

Adamantite ore at or below 80-100 gold (depending on the price of adamantite powder on your realm)
Elementium ore at or below 25 gold
Pyrite Ore at or below 40 gold

After this you are set to start prospecting. You will often find yourself sitting with 1000+ ores of a kind so it will be tedious and large bags are recommended but it will definitely pay off in the end.

/cast Prospecting
/use Obsidium Ore
/use Adamantite Ore
/use Elementium Ore
/Use Pyrite Ore

The above macro will help you prospect with less effort.

Step 2. I have tons of gems, what do I do now?
To begin with, you will create the following items with your level 80 green gems. You will occasionally procc a high quality blue item while creating them as well.

Carnelian Spikes – Spell – World of Warcraft
Alicite Pendant – Spell – World of Warcraft
Hessonite Band – Spell – World of Warcraft
Jasper Ring – Spell – World of Warcraft
Nightstone Choker – Spell – World of Warcraft

For your blue level 80 gems the following three are the ones worth spending your time on:
Ember Topaz
Inferno Ruby
Demonseye

These are the most commonly used gems in sockets spread a cross all classes and speccs. Cutting these will usually always net a higher price as well as ensuring you sell them. From realm to realm different cuts will sell for a higher price so you may want to do some research on which cuts will net you the highest income on your specific realm.

As a thumb rule though, do not cut all of your blue gems into the same cut. You are more likely to sell your items if you spread them around as there are only so many of a said cut being sold at a given time.

Step 3. So what about the green items?
You will disenchant all of your green items yielding you the following enchanting materials:
Heavenly Shards, Greater Celestial Essence, Lesser Celestial Essence and Hypnotic Dust

These are the creme de la creme of enchanting materials and will sell very well on any auction house. However, what may net you an even higher income is turning this into enchants themselves. High level enchants do however usually also require Maelstrom Crystals. This means that unless you can not find a steady income of Maelstrom Crystals just selling the materials themselves may result in a quicker/equal profit.

/cast Disenchant
/use item:52306
/use item:52307
/use item:52308
/use item:52309
/use item:52492
/use item:52310
/use item:52314
/use item:52316
/use item:52312

The above macro will help you disenchant your items with less effort.

One enchant in particular I have found to be selling good without requiring outrageous materials is:
Enchant Off-Hand – Superior Intellect – Spell – World of Warcraft

There are however of course plenty of enchants that sells well, especially the higher level enchants. I usually get a profit of between 100g per enchant that I sell on the auction house over selling just the materials. But once again, there are only so many of a said enchant that will be sold at a given time. So don’t make too many of a singl