Every World of Warcraft player wants to know the fastest way to make gold, while gathering raw materials with Mining and Herbalism have proven to be very lucrative, none of them come close to the amount one can earn who knows how to buy and sell on the auction house.
First, here are the results I had from my first day buying/selling with only 35g
As you can see, I made the following profit:
Serpent Slicer
Bought: 7g 54s Sold: 47g 28s Profit: 39g 74s = 627% profit
Refined Ore Gloves
Bought: 15g 92s Sold: 71g 81s Profit: 55g 89s = 451% profit
Reticulated Bone Gauntlets
Bought: 1g 87s Sold: 28g 33s Profit: 26g 46s = 1,515% profit
2x Glyph of Fear
Bought: 85s Sold: 14g 2s Profit: 13g 17s = 1,671% profit
I started with 35g to show you don’t need a lot to start with. I went from 35g to 170g from 15 minutes of farming the auction house, a 485% return on investment. If I had more gold to invest, say 500g, I am confident I could be up to 2,000g from an hour of buying. I will track the results for each day. This is one of the main ways I make gold, but I make the most using WoW School’s guide.
In this article I will share with you my strategy at buying and selling on the auction house and track my progress at making a profit so you can see exactly which items are being bought and sold. Check out my Youtube Video showing how I buy and sell using Auctioneer.
Before you continue with this guide, if you do not currently have auctioneer or are new to it, go back and read Auctioneer Guide Part 1.
Set Up
- you must first have at least a week of data mining (scanning) of the auction house to ensure your data and prices are up to date.
- Go to the Auction Search UI (See image) and then click realtime (under options) and ensure “Search While Browsing” and “Resale” are checked (See image below)
- Set you “Resale” settings to 5g minimum profit, and 70% Min Discount. You can change this setting once you get more comfortable. This will make it so only items that have a profit margin of more than 5g and the item is priced 70% below its value (ex. item selling for 2g 40s but really worth 8g would give you 5g 60s profit)
Buying Low
You are now ready to make some gold, here is where we find the deals on the auction house to invest in.
Click on Real Time Search, then Scan.
As the scanning starts, a new window will pop up and start displaying items based on your “Resale” criteria.
A Description of the headers
Item – Item name
Pct – Percent that the item is of its actual real value. So 15% means that the item is priced at 15% of its worth this indicates a 666% Return. (ex. Item priced at 15g could sell for 100g)
Profit – The amount of profit (Sale price – Buy Out price) that this auction will give you.
Buyout – Current buy out price.
Bid – The Current bid price
Left – Time left until the tion ends
Deciding What To Buy
As you can see in the image above there are a lot of items that show up, however not everything that comes through in your criteria is worthy and you’ll have to sift through the incorrect data or people trying to scam auctioneer.
This is where Auctioneer data comes into play, here are the main things to look for in the stats:
- StdDev – Confidence – This is the main stat I look at, it is a percentage depending on how much the price of the item fluxuates when they are put up. An item that auctioneer has seen put up between 45-55g multiple times for days will have a really high confidence rating, like 90%… however an item that auctioneer has seen put up for 5g, then 5c, then 500g, will have a really horrible confidence rating. This goes to show that if the item you are looking to buy has a high confidence rating, but this one item is low priced, that must mean it is an error on the posters price.
- Wowhead – If the confidence is good, I will search the item if I am unaware of it on wowhead. Check the current comments from the latest patch as a change might have happened to the item and it is no longer in demand. You will get a feel if the item is a good buy if people are commenting “OMG I NEVER FIND THIS ON THE AH”
- Purchased Price – This stat will list at what prices auctioneer has seen the item BOUGHT for, very useful stat.
The rest comes from experience and knowledge, some twink items sell for large amounts, and the auction house has a lot of fluxtuations depending on the day of the week or the time, certain days are better to sell and other days are better to buy.
I am now at 170g and will invest that into new items tonight. I will continue to track my auction house buying and selling and share the results with you. To receive alerts be sure to subscribe to the rss feed!
This is one of the main ways I make gold, the other is by using WoW School’s guide, be sure to check it out.
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Awesome profits from resale especially of twink items. I’ve tried it before. It was really successful in my server until the BOA items came!
Sassafrasa’s last blog post..Money with AHsearch
Thanks for the guide
best one i’ve seen so far
Thank you! I literally had no clue what all of the headers in Auctioneer meant.
If you could do a post containing a guide to what all the OTHER headers mean that would be amazing. For instance, you explained some of the headings in the Search tab above, but there are a bunch to the right of the ones you describe, and I have no idea what they mean…
Great tutorial! Two things I think could be useful. Show a screen shot of where you go to set your resale settings(i.e. 5 gold/70% in example).
The percent column shows the value based on the current bid, not the buy out price? Is this changed in the settings somehow?
Thanks again for the lesson.
Nice !!!! i started with 789g 65s and 65c and now i got 1402g 32s 34c!!!!! it just 1 night
What server do you gusy play on ?
this auctioneer is great as soon as you understand what to do with it i just started with at like 15:00 in the evening i got it all figured out but it was worthwile now i understand it its a great way to get glyphs for like 2g and sell them for 30g while most people sell em for round 36g now i got enough ouctions going and got icebane threads for 200g buyout selling it for 375-400g sooo easy to find that kind of stuff
Em i cant find where i can download this adon
where can i download this addon?
That addon that shows your wealth, you said it count what you have on the auction house too, then you don’t have 1300gold you still have the 80 gold you had on the video because none of you auction are 100% sure to sell (all of them might expire).
Just wanted to point out this.
/Ricoo
@Ricoo
that addon figures the worth of both liquid and solid asserts just as your financial portfolio would. You have to include fair market value of goods you have posted, as well as in your bank.
All four of my 80s have epic flight and one has the tundra mamoth. I want for nothing. Auctioneer makes it posible to make as much gold without having to be a dick and gauging
I love people that gouge the market because it makes my fair prices sell faster. I get most of my merchandise from buying low.
Great guide and even with all of my experience I learned things I didn’t already know on this site.
I currently have two bank toons, each with their own 4 slot guild banks with 26,000 gold and a lot more than that in goods in my banks.
when i scan for items on the ah when it is finished scanning only 2 things pop up for sale can u please help?
Where can i find this StdDev- confidence?
And can you please make a video of the settings used? Thanks
were do you find the addon i cant find it also does this still work in 2010??? in july??