Samadan’s last Wowhead column brought to life a very interesting post from the woweconomy subreddit. Someone telling their story of how they made 80 million gold over the lifetime of 9.1. So let’s learn from him!
From scratch
This guy started from scratch on a new realm in October 2020. They don’t say if they have any previous experience with the Auction house or not, but I’m going to assume they do. It certainly reads that way as they were noticing the potential of legendaries very early.
Start with something easy
They started with just missives. This is perfectly in line with what I generally preach. If you are just starting out you need to stick to markets with a low capital requirement, and preferably high sale rate. Missives during the early stages of 9.0 fit the bill perfectly. They sold fast, and leveling inscription was fast and cheap.
Then go for the big gold
Next up he went for the big gold markets, which he quickly realized means legendaries almost exclusively in Shadowlands. He had everything ready with all recipes leveled in time for 9.1, ready to absolutely blast, and blast he did. He got a second account, which I find almost mandatory if you want to go for large gold piles as the time savings are so incredible.
The secret?
Once again it turns out that the great secret of goldmaking is that there is no secret. They did not do anything crazy, outside of the extreme effort he put in. Literally reposting 12+ hours every day. They could only do this because they lost their job. At some point there’s no getting around the fact that more is more, and legendaries is the only market that can deliver these quantities of gold, if you can deliver that quantity of effort. They even spent hours every day crafting the intermediate materials, which is incredible, and underlines how thin the margins must have been.
Can you get rich without reposting?
Not quickly. Currently there are no real volume markets, in terms of total gold volume, that are not hyper competitive. Legendaries are the best items for making gold, and they are incredibly competitive. If you want to get rich right now, there’s little you can do outside of revving up the scroll wheel macro.
What can you do on a more casual schedule?
My own results give a great pointer here. Since 9.1 launched I have earned about a gold cap on my main realm. I do this while combining a full time job, vacation time around the launch of 9.1 and 2 kids. I do spend more time on WoW than most people in my position due to this website of course, but even then it’s feasible to get rich with the same basic methods. If you can focus all your efforts on reposting on Wednesdays, I get about 60-70% of my sales on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so that is when it matters. Selective effort matters for anyone who can’t spend the entire day reposting!