I’ve been playing WoW since October 2006, so I’m approaching 4 years played now. In that time I have gotten 4 toons to 80, 2 are in their 70s, and a 61. I suppose I’m a bit of an altoholic, and it’s hard to focus on one goal on any given day. That said, I’ve tried to become more re-focused lately…what do I want to do in game?
I thought, as Cataclysm approaches, I want to stockpile gold. I have no aspirations to get “gold-capped,” but 100k would be nice entering the new expansion. How to do that? I cruise gold making sites such as Just My Two Copper and others for ideas, but at times, their strategies are clearly being employed by other readers, or I have incredibly bad luck. I figured I would start by getting some professions maxed. In the past several months I have leveled tailoring, jewelcrafting, and most recently, alchemy to 450. That is in addition to several max level skinners, an herbalist, miner and blacksmith. I have yet to max out inscription, leatherworking, and engineering.
Now that I have some decent money-making professions, it’s time to talk about how I use them to make money in my very short windows of playtime. I raid twice a week for 3 hours each night. That alone is a lot to ask of my wife, but I do raid after the kids have gone to bed. The other 5 days of the week I try and hop on just for 20 minutes a day (I never make it on all 5 days, btw) and do the things that will make me the most money per minute.
Transmute – quickest 100+g you can make: I focus on the money making cooldowns first. Primarily, I do my daily alchemy transmute (blue to epic gem) because that’s an easy 100-130 gold per day for 2 minutes of work. That beats dailies any time. If I have the mats on hand, I also transmute meta gems. I then ship those gems to my JC and cut them to whatever I think will be most profitable. Any additional time goes to my JC daily to earn my daily token. These tokens will eventually buy patterns that in turn, will eventually enable me to diversify what I can cut. I usually also make an icy prism with that daily cooldown as well.
The Saronite Shuffle: If I’m really fortunate and have a few more minutes to spare (wife is doing something for 10 minutes), I can hop on my bank alt and run a quick Auctioneer scan and also purchase as much saronite ore as I can, usually if it’s under 20 gold a stack. I then mail most of the ore to my JC to prospect for green and blue gems used to cut, craft rings (Sun Rock ring), vendor, or send to my alchemist for the aforementioned transmutes. I also send some saronite to my blacksmith for smelting into bars, then back to my alchemist for transmutation into titanium bars. However, my server’s economy doesn’t really make this profitable in mats alone, only if I use the titanium in special patterns that may or may not sell, so it’s a bit more risky and unknown.
It’s in the Bag: I will also buy cheap netherweave cloth and send them to my tailor to make netherweave bags. Lately, frostweave bags are not profitable, so I focus on the BC bags.
Make Money Actually Playing the Game: It’s important to not get too focused on the economy and forget to play the game. It varies, but some weeks I can squeeze in a Wintergrasp battle on all 4 80s. My server is dominated by Horde, and we win 9/10 times, which is nice for the honor and stonekeeper shards. Not only is WG fun for me, but I will typically get around 20,000 honor for each toon for just 25 minutes of PvP. Plus, the stone keeper shards add up and 150 of them can be turned in for another 10,000 honor. I then use the honor to purchase epic gems to be cut by my JC. If I can turn in around 10-11 gems a week, that’s more than 1,500 gold for playing 4-6 Wintergrasp sessions per week, or about 2-3 hours of playtime. That converts to 500 gold or more per hour, which rivals many other money-making endeavors in the game.
As my professions have been used a bit more lately, my random dungeon participation has abated quite a bit. As of a couple months ago, I was routinely running 2-4 toons through my random daily to get my frost badges, plus an occasional weekly, if I could find the time. I was using the frost badges to buy primordial saronite and then sell it on the AH. I was maxing out around 1,500 gold, but it’s been steadily decreasing in value for months now. On my server, it’s now around 800-900 gold. As far as money per hour, it’s not very good, but alas, you are looting gold, DE mats, BOE chances, frozen orbs, cloth and other supplies, and of course, emblems of triumph, which can be used to upgrade your toon, buy gems, or converted to emblems of valor for bracers or other BoEs that can sell.
Anything else is Auctioneer-based in terms of my resale and vendor searches. I have a lot more to learn about this and other addons that can really make your money-making endeavors more efficient, but that’s for another post.
Mini-cast #2 was included in Episode #230 of “The Instance.” You can find that episode’s show notes and link to the podcast at 
