Struggling for months, made some research. Result: Touchdown

[Icetapanho]

First of all, sorry for my bad spelling. English is not my native language

Just like a lot of people around the forum, I struggled for months making gold. Herbalism & Inscription were my professions but glyphs aren't that profitable anymore. Constantly getting undercutted on AH, i decided to give up on inscription and was looking around for a new prof.

Made a quick search for gather profiles with 200+ nph on gatherbuddy forums and checked the value of the mats gathered. After 30 minutes, I decided to pick up mining since most of gather profiles include herbs & nodes. My target veins were adamantite & saronite/titanium. All those ores are sold for 4-6g/each & and titanium goes for 24-28g in my server so I imagine if i could farm 200 of each daily (titanium is a rare spawn so would be happy with 20+) i would be making nice gold everyday. In papper, it looks good but in practice, damm. In only 15m of farm, i ran into 5 different farmers (3 of them in the opposite faction) so my fate was written: give up on that market.

Luckly, i gave a try on a different profile claimed to collect 250+ nph, i was going to be AFK for couple hours so, nothing to lose. Came back, stop the bot (~330 in a 1h20, nice numbers I would say) and headed to AH: "I won't do any money with these" was my toughts when I took a look at the bags. I was completely wrong.
Around 100 Fel Iron Ores, 70 Felweeds & 10-20 dreamfoils/Mountain Silversage & Silver sansam. Everything got sold out in 2h. My prices were:

Fel Iron Ore - 10stacks of 10: 30g/stack
Felweed - 14stacks of 5: 3g/stack
Silvesage/Sansam & Dreamfoils: 10-12 stacks of 5: 4g/stack

I made about 380-400g (when i was sitting at about 2k) in a couple hours over a profile that i tested "just because". I searched a bit more into that market and it turned out to be like a niche market. i had found a market that had little to no competition. I could keep a nice influx to the market with ores and herbs, farming 200 ores which time and posting them on AH. 2h of farm means about 1k gold in all the mats.

I know its not a lot but its a sustain amount of the couple of days im running the profile & selling the mats. I started my "company" last friday, about 40h ago. Was sitting at 2k gold without any prospection to inscrease that number. Over those 40h, i had farmed for about 10-15h. Im sitting at 10k gold while i wrote this post, i sold 500g+ and my mailbox is completely full of gold to collect.

My advice of everyone of you struggling, look for a niche market. Look for profile that gather a ton of nodes and check the prices of at your AH. Selling herbs for 2g worth when they fly off the shells and you can replace them fast enough. Dont look for a "huge" sale, make your sales be huge.

 

[mhyr]

Nice read, and I completely agree with you. I see a lot of people on the same spots, using the same profiles and routes, doing exactly the same everywhere. With 10-30 mins of logical thinking and own imput you can find a niche, something for your own or even change a few lines in a code or change the route/behavior a bit. A lot of people think the easiest way is to log in and press "start" but the "safest" way and the one where you can "own" a part of a market on a given realm does wonders.
Also resetting certain markets when there isn't a lot of competition, or keeping prices high gives a feel of control.
Keep up the good work ^^.

 

[Valkafar]

Thought I'd throw in the perspective of a private profile developer.

I have a hard time making profiles for gathering private anymore, because there are so many people that want the SAME EXACT PROFILE and think that they are going to be different for some reason. I can tell you that these are the people that come back 2 weeks later and tell me my profile is the problem, after which I have to explain to them what a market is and how it is not my fault that they did no research.

When people order things like a profile to farm Kingsblood, etc...that's different. I can tell you that when I was in my prime I was making 30+ Pandaria herb profiles a WEEK using a dynamic waypoint system I made. It was insane.

Niche markets are the way to go, and that's how you make gold. Keep it up bro, and if you want private profiles, PM me and I'll write them cheap.

 

[Icetapanho]

Thank you guys. To be honest, if everyone spend 1h researching the market and checking its really easy to find niche markets like i did. I had invested a bit more time researching and found other 2 niche markets where i was able to find really nice gather profiles to make them very profitable. Also, its important to keep prices "fair", I mean, make them something that is affordable to a lot of people or just think much would you pay for what you selling. I "know" i could had done 1-2k more than i did already if i pushed-up prices a bit more but it could risk the amount of stacks im selling daily. Im selling 300+ stacks (of 5 each) of herbs for 4-12g and 100 stacks+ (of 10 each) of ores for 10-15g, however if I do that im opening space for some enter the market I tried to "conquer". Posted 400+ auctions 1h ago (worth around 5k gold, both herbs and ores) and 50+ of them where bought while im writting posts. Collected 4300g 2h ago when i got home from work and have around 700g waiting for me on mailbox already. Don't be afraid to buyout everything at is below your auctions and repost. It may not worth much but you auctions will be the first to pop-up when someone looks for your niche market.


Note that I use my bot for 3-5h/day to gather mats. I also target different niches according the demand and how fast I see stacks going off the shells. Im trying to have 100+ auctions of each mat (both herbs and ores). Some of them I still have some stock because the profiles im using are gathering a high number of nodes hourly. Im learning two things at the moment

- Don't be greedy. Don't push your prices up for because you control the amount of supplies. Its safer to have a affordable price, just push it up when you can't keep up with the demand. Thats one of the rules of IRL market: if the demand > supplies, price goes up until the market gets in balance. the opposite apply too: if supplies > demand, price goes down until the market gets in balance

- Low level mats are (almost) always in high demand, easy/fast to farm (my profiles are gather 250+ nph) and very profitable. You can farm around 180-200 copper ores, 180-200 silverleafs, 80-100 peaceblooms & 50-70 earthroot in not much more than 1h. On my server, everyone of them goes for 80silver/each (peaceblooms goes for 1g) meaning 400+g in a 1h of farming.

Keep it simple and affordable, you will get "rich" in a few days.

 

[nordrassil]

I just farm heroics for 10 hours every day which nets me 50k a day.

 

[frosticus]

I have a hard time making profiles for gathering private anymore, because there are so many people that want the SAME EXACT PROFILE and think that they are going to be different for some reason.

i run into this all the time. nodes are nodes, there are just so many routes you can take in a given zone to be considered above average nph. everyone wants high nph. its tough to understand nph isnt the only consideration. we could make 9 profiles and give them to 9 different people, and everyones nph goes down. the last couple years ive been running the AH i've learned you have to be flexible to make it work.

no lesson, just rambling, waiting for the bot to come back up, up 10k on gems today, playing by hand. if you know, you know.

 

[Aion]

no lesson, just rambling, waiting for the bot to come back up, up 10k on gems today, playing by hand. if you know, you know.

This!

To the OP: I have no idea why you have dodged the inscription money machine, but I strongly advice you to rethink again, in Draenor Inscription will be the Jewelcrafting of the prior expansions, if you know what i meant

 

[frosticus]

i rolled 3 alcy/scribes to prepare, thinking about rolling another 3. im sure i have enough mats left in the gbanks

 

[Thepro27]

My thoughts on this though; isn't the spawn rate MUCH lower when there aren't many to very little people in the zone? I tried farming some elementium ore and the herbs there (i forget the name) but I was getting VERY little spawns of them, so a few hours I barley had a few stacks of 20. As if it were cata still, the few hours I would spend I'd have 10+ stacks in only a few hours.

Although; with this thought, it's MUCH less likely you'll get banned. I even had a private profile on a fresh account and it got banned in 5 days farming MOP herbs/ore.

 

[worm]

in Draenor Inscription will be the Jewelcrafting of the prior expansions, if you know what i meant

How so? C'mon share some info to us non-beta testers

 

[frosticus]

My thoughts on this though; isn't the spawn rate MUCH lower when there aren't many to very little people in the zone? I tried farming some elementium ore and the herbs there (i forget the name) but I was getting VERY little spawns of them, so a few hours I barley had a few stacks of 20. As if it were cata still, the few hours I would spend I'd have 10+ stacks in only a few hours.

Although; with this thought, it's MUCH less likely you'll get banned. I even had a private profile on a fresh account and it got banned in 5 days farming MOP herbs/ore.

you are right. most herbs are on a rotation where there are X amount of nodes present at one time. so for every node picked, one new node appears on the map. items like lotus, and rare ore are on a different rotation even though they spawn from normal nodes on a % chance.

and second, was your private profile new? or had you been using the private profile for awhile. was this the first time you've been banned from that computer? as a rule, each ban should be treated as a unique event, but i feel multiple infractions, on the same ip/computer etc. may have an effect on future investigations. e.g. when i was getting bans piling up 10 months ago, my run ended in getting 6 accounts banned at once, no connection other than ip for 2 of them. but banned all 6. its just tough to state 'i got banned on a private profile on a new toon' and that be the whole story.

i reread this and cant make it sound 'not shitty' sorry if it comes off that way, i mean no offense

 

[Jerusalem]

Excellent post,

I completely agree with picking up on a niche. Sometimes the public picks up on that a section of the market is overloaded and will ignore it for a while. Then a day later when you log on you will see the entire auction supply has vanished and a stack is going for close to 75g/20 (borean leather). This is the what you SHOULD be stockpiling mats in your Guild Banks for. Unbeknownst to some-- Running Gundrak profiles with a skinning char will yield roughly 17-30 borean leather a run.

 

[Butty26]

I made some research and in the end I farmed MoP ore + mining for 1k/h and made a lot more than you make in those niches not selling anything.