Recently I started reading a book on business strategy called playing to win. One of the concepts it talks about is splitting the idea of strategy into two questions, where to play and how to win.
So let’s apply this framework to WoW goldmaking and see how it fits!
Where do you want to go?
There is one thing you need to figure out before we ask the two questions in the title. Where you want to go. In goldmaking this is your overarching goal.
My goal is of course to maximize my raw gold profits over time. I just want as much gold as possible.
So let’s figure out how I go about doing this.
Where to play?
The question of where to play is essentially what markets and methods you will focus on. This can be farming versus playing the auction house. Blacksmithing versus inscription or one realm versus many realms.
The question is obviously linked to the next one on how to win, and it is INTRICATELY linked to how much time you have to play the game, what you enjoy and what you are good at. All of these things need to support each other to achieve maximum success.
How to win?
This question covers how you will approach the markets you chose to play in to win at them. The best approach is to choose one where you have a natural advantage over others. You want your advantage to be as big as possible. The ideal is for it to be insurmountable as that would put you in a situation where you do not have competition.
In goldmaking How to win? covers stuff like, what prices and what amounts of stuff will you buy, at what price do you sell, how often do you repost etc.
This will of course vary by market.
My approach
What do I want to achieve?
Right now my long term goal is 1 billion gold. To do that I need to generate a huge amount of gold across multiple realms, as there is not enough gold on a single realm.
Where to play?
1 billion gold is such a large amount that I need to focus on only extremely high gold per hour markets. This means BoE flipping. To get started on a new realm I need to get gold there and battle pets and material flipping are the best markets for getting started on a new realm with just a banker.
How to win?
Take advantage of my grasp of TSM and love of risk to be aggressive when buying and to make better TSM settings. Post and forget to maximize the time my auctions are up on the auction house. Stay away from cancel scans as it takes too much time.
Now it’s your turn!
Hopefully you learned something. Even though my approach wasn’t planned based on this framework you can see how easy it is to follow when it gets broken down this way. It is both a simple and powerful approach to thinking about what you should be doing.