Have you ever been to one of my posts or videos, or someone else who makes goldmaking content and thought “what the hell, these prices don’t exist anymore?”. Guides are almost always too late, so if you want to join the extreme fun, you have to be able to identify potential markets yourself, and that’s what well look at today.
What do players spend gold on?
- Doing more damage/healing/tankiness
- Looking cool
- Completionism
Those three things cover pretty much everything players spend gold on. I much prefer to focus on #1 as players on average dedicate a lot more resources to being strong than looking cool or completionism.
Anything that makes characters stronger and can be traded is potentially profitable
Gear, consumables, enchants, gems etc. are all typically very profitable. If players want it for end game content and it can be traded, then you can usually make gold with it. How do you identify these items? Guides, content creators, class discords etc. Anywhere players go for advice on improving their character is a fantastic source. I follow class specific content creators like Kalamazii for warlocks, Bicepspump for DKs etc. The class discords are also great, and was the first source of what embellishments players would go for for instance.
Barriers to entry
The other huge factor is how hard it is to achieve a certain item. In Dragonflight the players who went straight for inspiration builds reached Q3 on many recipes incredibly early and could sell them for absolutely incredible profits. They realized the shortest way to the absolute top end and went for it. Similarly being the first one to farm rep in Zereth mortis for the Crafters mark gear in Shadowlands was incredible. Kaychak was first to market on my realm and made millions in a day. If you can find the bottleneck or barrier to crafting or farming a specific item, and then optimize to be the fastest past that barrier the reward can be huge. Here some combination of playing PTR/Beta, and just putting in the work on live servers is what will get you to glory.
When everyone knows, it’s too late (for huge profits)
By the time I, or someone else makes a video or post about something, the time for huge profits is usually over. That does not however mean the time for profits is over, but the extreme profit margins you can see early on with new items, recipes or power increases is typically in the past.
Cosmetics are much less boom and bust
If you want to avoid the boom and bust entirely, then various cosmetic markets are your friends. Flipping battle pets, crafting transmog etc. is much more steady, as demand is not driven by a new patch or new tier. That makes it less exciting, and you need to put in more work in terms of reposts per sale, but on the other side the profit margins are stable, and you can scale up very well if you are active on multiple realms.