Thread: Making a profit

On my server I sell six enchants, two BOA and four Cataclysm. However, even with buying materials at a certain threshold I make 30-500g in profit depending on the enchant. Is there anyway I can increase this amount without lowering my threshold (don't think I'd be able to find anymore materials)?

Also is there a certain point at which I can stop reinvesting my earnings into materials, and just bank the gold?

My advice would be to sell more enchants. There are plenty more profitable enchants just looking at cata ones. Weapon and chest enchants usually go for a good markup. My bank alt selling enchants typically posts 60-90 enchants at a time depending on whats above my thresholds.

For mats I pick a cutoff and don't buy anything over that. My cutoff is low enough that I make a good profit and I don't feel like I'm ever starved for mats. I find once you start selling enough stuff the money coming in eventually exceeds the amount going out buying the raw mats.

Gosh. Four enchants? Why not sell ALL of them?

The secret to goblineering is selling everything, instead of hoping that your small concentration area will sell and camp that ad nauseum :P

You will reach the point where you dont have to spend all your profits once all your profits > all cheap ore and herbs that hit the ah one day.

So in short, it will probably take a while as the amount of gold needed for the above probably is pretty massive, but keep in mind noone becomes a millionaire in a day or week ( very few exceptions granted ) if you start with low capital. It takes time, but then again the road to the one miliion is actually more fun than than after hitting it.

Also as others said, do more than just 4 enchants, there is a lot more profit to be made.
Dont trust TSM blindly in what makes gold, use your brain and ask yourself what it is used for and if people would take it. If the enchant is best in slot for raiders, then you know its going to sell pretty well. Best in slot for twinks means it will move but it might take a while before you unload it. That is the other auctioneers secret, people panic if they dont sell their mats over one night, but you just need to keep listing until it sells.

Also, just to add that if you are crafting and DEing Stormforged Shoulders in bulk you can nearly double or triple your profit over someone who buys Heavenly Shards from the AH. So it's pretty damn hard to not make tons of profit on every enchant except for the ones that are flooded due to wow-professions.com levelling suggestions (eg. Enchant Shield - Mastery seems to sell at around 50s even though the materials, 12 dusts are worth about 8g-15g). And as a result, you can sell at a lower threshold to make your profits more widespread and consistent across many, many enchants.

Another thing to keep in mind...if you use TSM or similar addons, they calculate profitability as Market Value - Cost of Mats where cost of mats is the current price for the commodity on the AH.

If you source your mats through alternative means (shuffle, milling, crafting & DE'ing, farming etc), the price value of the mats will actually be lower than what the addon indicates, so your profitability will in actuality be a lot higher than what the numbers show. For example, when I'm crafting enchants, TSM tells me that the total mat cost is ~60k and the profit is around 50k when in actuality, the mat costs are closer to 30-35k. YMMV.

Originally Posted by Atterana

Another thing to keep in mind...if you use TSM or similar addons, they calculate profitability as Market Value - Cost of Mats where cost of mats is the current price for the commodity on the AH.

If you source your mats through alternative means (shuffle, milling, crafting & DE'ing, farming etc), the price value of the mats will actually be lower than what the addon indicates, so your profitability will in actuality be a lot higher than what the numbers show. For example, when I'm crafting enchants, TSM tells me that the total mat cost is ~60k and the profit is around 50k when in actuality, the mat costs are closer to 30-35k. YMMV.

I don't aggree with that statement.

The cost of a raw mat is always it's market price, even if you have means to get it cheaper. This is because instead of selling the enchants or whatnot, you could just have sold the mats for it, and made a greater profit with it :-D . Obviously this only holds true if you can offload your mats effiecently without flooding the market. If at any given time you saturate a market because of selling raw mats, then, and only then, is it an option to go for less profitable routs like enchants and such. (assuming raw mats>enchants). I think this has been debated over and over on this forum, might be worth looking into it (people tag this principle "opportunity cost" )

Originally Posted by Wanamaker

Let's use an example:

An apple costs you $1.00, but you can buy from a special vendor for $.50
You can make a pie with four apples for a cost of $2.00 and sell it for $10.
Your profit on the pie is $8, but if you sell you apples at market price to others, your profit is only $2.
Why would I want to calculate my cost for the apples as $4, for a profit of $6.
I think it's $8 period. Your opportunity cost of selling the apples would be -$6.

Market price of apples = $2
My price for apples = $0.5

Profit if selling 4x apples = (2-0.5) x 4 = $6

Market Price of Pie = $ 10
Cost of 1 pie = 4 apples = 4x $2 = $8
Profit if selling pie = $2

--> I first sell my apples (In this example, I'm selling them to myself!) , and then the pie, but I'm making sure I add value in all my producing steps.

Now obviously, If we're selling pies, we add another $0.5 value to our apples by processing it,

The point I'm willing to make, if that in every step of your producing process you need to add value. Wich I've done by gauging apples at market price. BY getting mats cheaper, I instantly add value to the process, just because I can gauge them at market value.
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Now, what the OP would do wrong is this :

Market price of apples = $2
My price for apples = $0.5

Profit if selling 4x apples = (2-0.5) x 4 = $6

Correct
Market Price of Pie = $ 6
Cost of 1 pie = 4 apples = 4x $2 = $8
Profit if selling pie = - $2

WRONG
Market Price of Pie = $ 6
Cost of 1 pie = 4 apples = 4x $0.5 = $2
Profit if selling pie = $ 4