We’re far enough into the expansion now that I can actually write a new version of my total gold guide for BfA. This will go through ALL of the methods for gold making that I am aware of in BfA and will send you to where you can get more information on the market to get started.

Some of the information in this post will be unchanged since Legion, particularly in relation to old world crafting markets that have not changed since I wrote the original guide. For BfA markets I will give a very quick overview of what I know works, or what I’ve heard are the best approaches.

My results

I’ve been focusing on flipping and crafting, with my crafting professions being Blacksmithing, Enchanting, jewelcrafting and Inscription. You can see that I’ve made 8.7 million in sales and a profit of about 1 million over the last month, and this is just on my challenge realm.

The foundation

To make money in WoW you need to have items that other people need or want. In WoW there are two primary categories of items that people are willing to pay for:

1. Performance increasing items
2. Cosmetic items

People are generally more willing to pay for performance increases than cosmetics, as it will directly impact the core gameplay. Performance increasing items are items that directly increase the power of your character. This can be gear, item enhancements, consumables etc.

Cosmetic items include mounts, transmog, rare recipes etc. These items don’t increase your performance, but they are in demand because they look cool, give bragging rights etc.

After identifying items that people want you need to figure out how to obtain them at a lower price than the current auction house price, as this will ensure a profit. In general there are three ways you can obtain items in the game: buying them off the auction house, looting them (from mobs, nodes or similar) or crafting them. These methods help you obtain the items that you want to sell. This leads into the three main gold-making methods in WoW. Crafting, Farming and Flipping. So let’s dig into them.

Crafting

Crafting is the art of buying materials and turning them into other materials or finished products that you can sell on the Auction house for a profit. It is one of the most consistent gold making methods in the game, but generally requires you to bind up some amount of capital in your inventory in the form of materials and finished items before they sell.

Warfronts

An important aspect to crafting professions in BfA are the warfront contributions. During the contribution phase of a war front you will have to turn in various crafted items to help the war effort. During this time you can make gold with all the professions in the game if you are crafting the items that are currently required for turn-ins. This effect is pretty much the same across all the professions, so I will not be mentioning it specifically.

Alchemy

Alchemy is a crafting profession that can create potions and flasks, as well as some trinkets and mounts. The primary materials used are herbs. For potions and flasks only the Battle for Azeroth enchants have meaningful demand. Old world alchemy recipes that are profitable include Vial of the sands and transmutes.

Alchemy is a great profession for gold-making as the main outputs are consumed on use, this means that there will always be demand for new potions and flasks. The old world recipes are also very profitable. I haven’t written anything on BfA Alchemy yet sadly. The best guide I could find was this one by Para on youtube. I think it’s missing some important details, so I suggest you read my post on Legion alchemy as it covers everything you need to know about procs, which work the same way in BfA, even if the rank 3 recipes are obtained in a different way.

Enchanting

Enchanting is a crafting profession that allows you to enchant gear with stat increases. It also allows you to disenchant gear for crafting materials. Enchanting uses crafting materials that can only be obtained from disenchanting gear. This means the only source is either crafting yourself or buying from other players. As the profession mostly revolves around stat increases only the legion recipes are relevant. The main ways to make gold with the profession is crafting and selling enchants and doing the enchanting shuffle. You can also make tomes of illusions, but they have fairly low demand.

Enchanting is one of the best crafting professions for making gold as the enchants are consumed on use, meaning that demand will never disappear. In BfA the haste enchants are by far the most popular ones as most classes need the enchants to get to their break points. Getting rank 3 recipes is crucial for your profit margin, so get to work!

Engineering

Engineering is a crafting profession that primarily revolves around fun recipes. The gold-making potential from engineering is limited in terms of Legion recipes. The Skullblasters can be obliterated for profit. Engineering has a lot of profitable old world recipes, primarily mounts and various unique effect items and toys. This profession is best relegated to an alt unless you love the lore-aspect or have other sentimental reasons to keep it on your main.

Engineering is not particularly strong from a gold-making point of vies, the old world mounts are great, but the BfA recipes are lacking and limited. I have not heard of anyone using the BfA recipes to generate substantial profits, but I could be missing out.

Jewelcrafting

Jewelcrafting is a crafting profession that revolves around gems. You prospect various ores turning them into gems and cut the gems. The cut gems can be added to socketed items. In addition you can craft rings that can either be disenchanted or sold as gear. The BfA gems sell well, particularly the haste gem and the Epic Kraken’s eyes. Due to price and gem yield ratios in BfA you should only ever prospect platinum ore. The jewelcrafting panther mounts are the best old world recipes, and these mounts are great for gold making!

Jewelcrafting is a very strong gold-making profession. Prospecting is often profitable and you can move a large amount of materials.

Cooking

Cooking is a secondary crafting profession, which is available in addition to your two main professions. It takes various food crafting materials such as meats and fish and turn them into consumable food. The consumables give statbuffs and are used by raiders and other players seeking to maximize performance. Cooking is sadly a bit lackluster in BfA. You can make gold with both the feasts and the secondary stat foods, but the profit margins have been very thin for me.

The profession does offer a really high sale rate though, which is great as you can quickly turn your items back into gold to keep the money moving.

Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing is a crafting profession that uses bars obtained from melting ore to craft plate armor and weapons, as well as some assorted cosmetic items. In BfA you can currently craft armor and weapons that is item level 300 and can proc to 310. This gear does not require expulsom which is awesome as it makes it very easy to stock the items. The sale rate is really high and these items are surprisingly very good money makers.

Blacksmithing can also create a lot of transmog gear from old expansion. Some rare recipes have looks that are very sought after primarily for weapons.

I’ve written several posts on old world crafted transmog, particularly for blacksmithing, as well as a post on the BfA 300/310 gear and I suggest looking into both of these.

Tailoring

Tailoring is a crafting profession that turns various forms of cloth into cloth gear. You can also create some tailoring only mounts. In BfA tailoring has several markets that are good from a gold making point of view. You can utilize the Tidespray linen bracers in the scrapper to get access to cheap expulsom. You can also craft the item level 300/310 tailoring armor. This armor does require expulsom, so it takes a bit more work than the blacksmithing gear. You can also craft bags, which typically is quite in demand as players always want more bag slots.

Old world recipes that are still relevant include transmog gear, old world enchanting shuffles and hexweave bags.

Leatherworking

Leatherworking is a crafting profession that uses various leathers obtained from skinning to craft leather and mail armor.

In BfA you can also craft weapons, including Bows. While I don’t have any personal experience I expect the item level 300/310 gear will sell as well as it does for blacksmithing. You can also utilize the level 110 bracers in the scrapper to generate expulsom. This may be cheaper than linen on some realms, but it heavily depends on Blood-stained bone prices.

For old world markets you are mainly looking at crafted transmog to generate sales. The advantage with leatherworking is of course that you can craft two types of armor, which increases your customer base substantially.

Inscription

Inscription is a very strong gold making profession. It utilizes herbs and turn them into pigments for inks. The main outputs are glyphs that give cosmetic effects for your character.

The biggest gold maker in BfA for inscription is the Darkmoon Decks. In fact they are pretty much the only truly profitable recipe this expansion. Milling is a pain as you generate thousands of useless ultramarine pigments. You can use some of you crimson and ultramarine inks to craft Tome of the Quiet Mind to get rid of them. I have also found that the item level 300/310 off-hands that inscription can craft sell quite well.

You can read my posts on glyphs to get a good background of those and my post on darkmoon decks will get you up to speed on that market.

Farming

Farming is all about going out into the game world and acquiring materials and items by interacting with it. There are two primary ways of generating items from the game world: Gathering from nodes using gathering professions and looting dead mobs.

Mining

Mining is one of the three gathering professions in the game. You mine from ore deposits for all the various ores in the game. Your customers will be blacksmiths, engineers and jewelcrafters. You can make good gold per hour from tons of different routes both farming for legion ores and farming old world ores. I personally don’t farm, so I can’t tell you the best routes, but Studen Albatroz has you covered on a combined herbing and mining route.

Herbalism

Herbalism is the other gathering profession in WoW. You pick flowers to gather herbs. Your main customers are alchemists and scribes. I suggest sticking to BfA herbs as demand for old world materials is very low for herbs. If you are looking for farming routes Studen Albatroz is your friend yet again.

Skinning

Skinning is the third gathering profession and it is very different from the other two. It works by skinning the dead bodies of animals with skins. You need to both kill the mob and then gather the body. Your main customers will be leatherworkers.

WTBGold has a guide on all the spots for Coarse leather. he also has tons of guide for skinning and farming in general, so do check out all his videos if this is what you are into.

Raw Gold

Raw gold farms revolve around farming areas where the mobs drop a lot of gold and you also get items you can sell to vendors. The primary goal is to just generate pure gold. The most popular raw gold farm is to run all the Cataclysm raids at 25 heroic. This will net about 1.5-2.5k gold per raid, and a chance at some rare mounts. Raw gold farms are great if you don’t like interacting with the AH, dislike variance or you are in the process of building up your capital.

Hyper spawn farms

Hyper spawn farms are sort of a new thing in BfA. The new meta is to farm in two groups of 4 which allows all 8 players to loot every mob. The main target for these kinds of farms is Tidespray Linen in combination with the rare, but expected Epic Bind on equip world drop item. The raw gold will also stack up.

I don’t do this myself, but Studenalbatroz will have you covered with guides for some of the better spots for this.

Specific items

The last group is the most diverse one. This encompasses all farms where you kill mobs looking for specific drops. The drops can be trade skill materials like volatile fire or highly sought after transmog pieces (AQ20) or a combination.

The youtuber Oldbess has a ton of farming videos out that cover all forms on farming and I suggest checking him out for some ideas on good spots.

Flipping

Flipping is the least time consuming way to make gold in WoW. It simply involves trading on the auction house. You buy low and sell high. There are a lot of different markets you can try your hand in flipping both Legion and old world. Flipping works best when there are natural variations in either demand or supply for an item which will cause the price to vary over time.

This is my favorite way to make gold and it is amazing the amounts of gold you can generate from high-end BoE flipping.

In BfA the best flipping markets are Epic Bind on equip items (BoEs) and materials, you can check out my writeups on flipping for more specific help getting started. You can also look into flipping Augment runes, although the volume is lower than the two aforementioned markets.

In old world markets you can try your hand at transmog, Battle pets or trade skill materials. Check out my post on mining for an example of how you can flip old world materials (just make sure there’s an actual market for the items you are looking to sell.

Useful Tools

TSM

The main tool for any serious gold maker is TradeSkillMaster. It is an addon suite with a desktop application that downloads price data and allows you to create rules for easy crafting, mailing, shopping and posting your items on the auction house. It has a premium service that includes e-mail notifications for great deals and importing great deals as a shopping scan.

TSM has a very steep learning curve, as it is a total profession framework. It does not hold your hand, and requires a lot of setup. Luckily you can import settings from other players and there are a ton of settings out there. I have published most of my settings in my pastebin here. You can also check out Sheyrahs. TSM recently upgraded to version 4 and I have a written guide for TSM here that is currently up to 11 parts covering all of the basic functionality.

A second account

Once your auctioning operation reaches a certain size a second account becomes an invaluable tool. It will allow you to run auctioning scans, shopping scans and collect mailboxes while playing your main. I strongly suggest buying a second monitor as well. This will help you really unlock the benefit of a second account. For a detailed guide on why and how to set it up check out my post on the subject.

Knowledgeable players

The last tool is the total knowledge of experienced gold makers. Obviously you are already seeking this out as you are here. I have linked to several youtubers throughout the post, so make sure you check out the ones you like. Check out the list below for some other resources you should check out, including my Discord server for spreadsheet support.

1. My discord
2. Reddit.com/r/woweconomy
3. Woweconomy Discord
4. WTBGold
5. Gumdrops Stream

Happy hunting!

While I may have missed some niches, this should give you a great overview of WHAT you can do to make gold in WoW. For the “How” you should go to the linked guides and experiment on your realm.

If you want to level up your gold making consider supporting my Patreon.