Do You Know What "Gold Per Hour" Really Means?

      As many of you know, one of the goals of my blog and YouTube channel is to raise the bar on the quality and ethical standards of gold guides available to World of Warcraft players. Recently, a few people have pointed something out to me. On my Zul'Farrak guide, promising 5800 gold in 23 minutes, Alexander Moor commented with the following.

     Now, it's easy to write this off, as "oh, he just doesn't understand the transmog market." But then you have the surprisingly negative response my good friend Manthieus received with his fantastic 20,000 gold in 30 minutes video. It was the same concept but showed you how to farm up Battered Hilts really effectively. Even Asmondgold, an actual goldmaker and youtuber said "There's no way you're going to be able to get anywhere near 20k an hour here, much less in 30 minutes. Nice job on the clickbait title though, apparently it worked." If you close your eyes, I'm sure you can think of a ridiculous video thumbnail promising a bajillion gold you've seen in the past week or two. We've all come to expect some degree of skepticism from thumbnails and titles even though they're otherwise fantastic gold guides, right?

     I put some thought into this and I don't think there's any "clickbaiting" going on. Rather, there's an understanding among the goldmaking community. When a thumbnail says "Make XYZ Gold Per Hour" what it infers is "increase your potential net worth (liquid gold, inventory, auctionables) by XYZ per hour invested."

    Unfortunately, this doesn't fit on most thumbnails. :P There usually isn't a problem with interpretation either. If you're mining, making gems, or farming cloth, those items will sell pretty quickly and no one has a problem with assuming GPH. When you move on to slower sale items though, like transmog, battered hilts, or battle pets, suddenly you have a sale cycle that can be weeks or months long. As Alexander said at the start, "you have no gold, just some items." Viewers may feel cheated if they don't get immediate gold or at least have auctioning time accounted for in the calculations. This may seem like a silly thing to write a while post over, but if we can manage to resolve this issue over time in the goldmaking community, we can get rid of that nagging feeling of "is this video just trying to scam me?" you have every time you click on a guide or a blog post.

     So, what's our fix?
Do we introduce the new acronym GPHF: Gold Per Hour Farmed in our titles?
Do we stick to the GPH system, for ease of use, but make sure to fully explain in the video or guide the process of selling that particular item for each type of the 120 different Auction Houses?
Do we do nothing and let the haters hate, cause YOLO?

If you have any ideas, let me know. Let's keep making the goldmaking community a better place.

Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! And remember that in the end, the key to making gold in World of Warcraft is just to
Search. Craft. Post.
Every Day.

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Countdown to Patch 5.4, 14 DAYS: Sell-off Preparation

     Evil Garrosh is coming, and so are the crazy markets associated with any new patch release, so every other day, I'll be bringing you something you can do to prepare so that you can either make money with Patch 5.4...or in the case of this post, prevent you from losing your shirt!

Poor Garrosh...This is what happens when you eat Mentos and Diet Coke. 

     It's two weeks out and time to start selling off your ilvl 522 crafted epics and Haunting Spirits. These items, like Blacksmith's Haunted Steel Headguard, Leatherworker's Quillen Hide Helm, or Tailor's Falling Blossom Hood sell more slowly than the PvP gear because of the higher prices, but luckily, everyone is gearing up alts right now and is a little more willing to pay. I've been selling them in the 25k-35k range (lower for boots, of course) but remember, you're selling off inventory, here. Craft more if you want to but do so at your own risk because prices for these will fall considerably after the 10th. If you have any Blood Spirits left over, get rid of those as well, as they will continue to drop in value, although probably not by as much as Haunting Spirits.

     If you have several Haunting Spirits, now is the time to sell them. Since TSM 2.0's release two weeks ago, I have sold 58 of them on my tiny little server...wait wait, let me log in...since TSM 2.0's release, I have sold 65 of them on my tiny little server. (Click here for my guide on how to initially set up TSM 2.0) People are hungry for the materials for the gear, even if they aren't buying out the 522 crafted markets.

Liquidating AND making a ton from it? Yes, please!

     The Blacksmithing daily recipes in patch 5.4 give iLvl 553 legs and belts (well, the Leatherworking dailies and Tailoring dailies do, too, but I like Blacksmithing best...hush). BUT, this gear only uses trillium/windwool bolts/exotic leather as base materials, so the demand for spirits will fall. Counterpoint: Helm and Feet patterns have not been introduced, so craftable 522 gear will still be an upgrade for new toons dinging 90 who have the gold to buy them and don't want to grind rep/dungeons/dailies. My rebuttal though, is that since mat prices for the spirits will fall so much, the prices for the gear will fall, making it more cost effective to sell everything you can right now, and then craft any profitable 522s that arise in the future with materials purchased in 5.4 at 5.4 mat prices.  

     In short, drop your epic prices a smidge and start selling your expensive stuff. If it doesn't sell, discount it more. You don't want to get caught in late September having to sell a 522 helm for 8,000g that you crafted for 40,000g worth of mats. Likewise, look at the chart of blood spirits compared to haunting. Two weeks after release (Sept 24th), Haunting Spirit prices will likely drop to 1k. One month after patch release (Oct 10th), expect them to sell for 600g, and in two months (Nov 10th) expect them to have bottomed at 250g. I don't know about you, but I like getting 3k a pop for em right now. :)

Other News:

     My YouTube channel is up and running, and we actually have a guide up now, too! It's completely unrelated to anything I'm talking about up above, but I had a lot of fun filming it, so here it is. Enjoy and hope you make some gold from it. So, if y'all have any requests for future videos (would you prefer addon guides? instance guides like this? PTR guides? profession walkthroughs? flipping tips?), drop me a message in the comments. 

     Until next time, follow me on Twitter for more tips, and always remember that there isn't a secret to making gold in World of Warcraft. All you have to do is just

Search. Craft. Post.

Ever Day.

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