Glyphs and Undercutters

Yesterday was a Sunday, and I had a pretty busy schedule out of game. I only managed to login once in the morning, cancel my auctions and repost them all. This was at roughly 9am. Then I didn't get a chance to logon the rest of the day. I suppose I could have logged in at night, but I was physically exhausted and simply went to sleep instead.

Today I collected my mail, and only raked in about 350 gold. That's the thing about inscription. Some days I prepare a 7 stack of all my glyphs then get ready to post all day. With a good 5-6 cancel repost cycles I can pull up to 2500g a day. But if I let my competitors own the market for a day they make those thousands while I pull next to nothing.

It's OK though. I could "crash the market" and try to own it myself posting every 48 hours, but for now that's not my style. Most days I post 2-3 times, it fits in my schedule, and I earn over 1000g profit for about 1 hour work. And most of the work is AFK. I run WoW in windowed mode, so when I'm opening all mail, posting all mail, cancelling, I'm reading blogs or learning about programming. Every 2 minutes or so I tab back in, run to a mailbox, collect more, post, etc then logoff for a few more hours. I'm comfortable with these prices. Yes I have lots of competition, but we're posting at 50g+ and all enjoying nice profits.

I earned next to nothing yesterday, but I don't really mind. The nice thing is almost no glyphs sold, so I don't have to recraft, and when I do get more time they're waiting in my bags ready to sell.


I think I said in an earlier post, I bumped my threshold up on glyphs, I just have no interest in spending 50% more crafting time to get those 3-5g sales. I've given those to my competitors. If I try to dominate a market for a day, say a weekend I can pull 2500g with 2 hours of half AFK time selling 8g+ glyphs up to 60g. Thats my market now. I have no interest in milling thousands of stacks of herbs to try and crash the market, selling glyphs at 3g. My competitors aren't idiots. They'll just hold onto their stock. Whats the rush? I expect 2 of my main rivals are gold capped or at least sitting on 100k+. If they see an idiot selling every glyph in the game for 3g, they'll either buy them or wait it out. When prices reset, they'll be right back to posting.

So I leave the market as it is. It works nicely for all of us. You just have to post at least twice a day, mornings and nights, and you should average 700g a day.

Inscription pricing, and ding 40k

I am pretty happy with this amount. Lately Glyphs have been selling at high prices. This has introduced all kinds of new competition to the market - but even with the competion we're all making more gold then normal. Yesterday for instance I raked in 2300g in Glyph sales - an excellent day, but I was undercut constantly and couldn't post as many times as I would have liked.

I find this is my new desired method of glyph posting. The competition tends to have a bigger effect on my business with this model though. I raised my threshold across the board to roughly 5g89s up from 3g40s and I am debating raising it a little higher..maybe to the point I don't sell below 8g perhaps.

Part of the reason I raised my prices is lack of confidence in the Darkmoon Card market. I am no longer investing in those cards. For 2 weeks now I've been listing a DC:Greatness, the 90 agility version every day for 4500-5300g, nearly always the cheapest one listed-- no sales yet. Even if I sold the deck, I feel the expansion winding down, and with it the demand for cards. So what do I do with my snowfall ink?

I'm dropping prices on snowfall ink, down to 10g then eventually 7g as the months wind down this expansion. I am trying to move away from the Wal-Mart approach to glyph selling. I'll let others put in the milling/crafting grind to flip those 3g glyphs while I only take the choice sales, from 8g to 65g.

So I move far less glyphs per week, but the ones I do sell have much higher margins. I don't need to buy as many herbs, fluctuations don't affect me as much. There's been a herb shortage lately on our server, but I still have roughly 2-3 bank tabs full so I'm in no worry. Restocking glyphs every 2-3 days is a bit easier. I'm moving a higher % of my snowfalls in runescrolls as well.

Enchant Scrolls

This is a part of my operation that quietly earns me alot of gold. What I do is similiar to the old MMO-champion guide on enchanting.

I really recommend people read that link if they haven't already. It deals with QuickAuctions, setting it up to handle all your enchant scrolls.

I still shuffle saronite which is rather profitable still, the exception is I sell the chalcedony produced from breaking down saronite - I can get up to 12g a piece. But the rest of the gems are still worth 1g each, I can find eternal earth for 3g, and 1 earth helps produce 5 rings or necklaces. So I essentially pay 1.4g per green item and they disenchant to 2.5 dust or more. I could sell this alone for profit at 25g/stack, but I take it the extra step and produce scrolls.

My threshold prices for raw materials are much higher then what I'd buy them for on the AH, or even have the ability to sell them for. I can't sell stacks of dust very easily for 44g a stack. But I can say, when I make scrolls they are worth that much.

What I like about the scroll market is the fire and forget feel. It takes setup with QA to set your threshold and fallback prices for each scroll, in fact I do this with many items not just enchanting or glyphs. Almost everything I sell, at one point I've built a QA group for it. My list of items sold with QuickAuctions is massive. I am building a side-project, a level 3 character on a new realm, started with 1.9 silver and 2 small eggs and within 2 trading cycles was up to 7+ gold with over 100 auctions listed. Part of that was winning cheap bids, making QA groups with huge thresholds and fallbacks for those items, then a quick 5 min posting cycle each day. I will continue that alt and write about him (Flips) but I disgress.

Enchanting is not a primary profession for rushing to the gold cap. But it's still a very valuable profession, one which doesn't take much work but can earn a steady stream of gold. Enchanting also adds value to my saronite shuffle, without an enchanter I'd just be selling off stacks of bloodstones for 23g a stack.

Rags to Riches

Here is a quick side project of mine. I'll try to logon once a day for a while, make a few bids, then logoff. The short term goal is pick up some deals for dirt cheap. I started with 2 silver lol!

I bet I get outbid on most of these, if not all. But they all have easy potential to be turned into a few gold here, a few gold there, it seems pretty simple to snowball 2 silver into 10 gold, then 10 gold into 50, then 50g into 250g.

We all love these rags to riches stories, so I'll try to keep this character going for a while.

Wrathful Glyphs!

Quick post, my Inscription business has been doing great this week. I think my competitors are partly to thank, we seem to all have high (~50g) fallback prices and we're falling back on a number of glyphs. My guess, we all post 2 of the same glyph, eventually some sellout and go to fallback. Tons of glyphs have been selling at big prices this week. Above is a picture from one of my glyph posting alts, gotta love the 58g Glyph of Penance sales ^^

Broke 17,000g, invested in Ore, Epic Gems

Boring update, but just days after seeing 10,000g for the first time, I saw 17,000+ as well. Which was nice. It's always a little painful to invest a chunk of it away and see that number drop, but you know it will come back.


Some investments I made - about 3400g worth of saronite, I've never bought so much in my life. But it was on the AH for decent prices, so why not? The rare gem market, chalcedony, and turning the rest to greens to DE has been good to me. Inscription is my main market, but rare gems are a close 2nd.

Also invested in some uncut epic gems, I have about 7-8 good designs to cut now so I figure 10-60g profit per gem depending when I sell it. Set up QA to handle epic gems for me, only problem is price fluctuations throughout the week, I may change my threshold often to handle the fluctuations in uncut prices. We'll see.

Bought mats for flasks and sold 25 endless rage today for about 200g. Not bad for a few minutes work.

I'm really loving QuickAuctions.

WoTLK, winding down?

I expect the Lich King to fall soon on many realms, and with that, the slow death of raiding the rest of the expansion. That will have quite an effect on professions, especially those of us who use multiple professions for making gold. I am curious to hear other opinions on how to maximize the end of WoTLK. Who knows how much time is actually left, but I wouldn't be surprised at 4-6 months left.



1) Alchemy, keep selling flasks obviously. Epic gem transmutes as long as they are worthwhile and still selling.

2) JC, start unloading stock. I do not want to go into Cata with a bunch of WoTLK gems in my bank, I figure they will quickly become useless. I don't even know what direction this profession will go in the new expansion. I have heard a huge amount of stats are getting thrown out of the game, like hit rating, defense, spellpower. If the game is simplied down to 5 stats, that will be terrible for this profession. It might have its focus shifted to jewelery, but then it just becomes another type of tailoring. If this happens, the profession will still be OK but nowhere near the gold mine it once was.

3) Inscription, barring major changes to Glyphs I think I'll run the Glyph business almost as normal, with few modifications. Main one being Snowfall Ink. I used to price Glyphs lower, knowing sold snowfalls made up most of the cost. But with the expansion winding down, I don't know what will happen with the DM Card market. I have low confidence in it now. I would guess, a month from now after many people have killed the Lich King, less sales, lower prices on the trinkets. 2 months, lower still, 4 months from now you are in the danger zone. I don't want to end the expansion with a bunch of unsold cards, unfinished decks and an excess of snowfall ink. Glyphs may retain value across expansions, I can't say the same for cards, trinkets or inks. So I expect to drop the prices on my snowfall inks, possibly in half, and have to readjust glyph costs slightly. I'm not afraid to go into the expansion with bags and bank tabs full of glyphs and herbs. I expect with herbs, they will drop in price dramatically for months, then eventually raise again. Just don't bank frost lotus, sell those for as much as possible the rest of the expansion. I still see Lotus from TBC at 2g a piece and not selling. Don't want to hang onto those. Herbs on the other hand may triple in time to the profession levelers.

4) Enchanting. Unload scrolls, except a few leveling scrolls. I don't expect a big market for 60+ "leveling" enchants. The enchants themselves may also change, as the entire stat system in the game changes. I hope to go into Cata with 0 scrolls, but a decent stockpile of mats. Not afraid to hold tons of infinite dust. I look at the end of TBC, and stacks of Arcane Dust for 15g a stack. Now I see them at times sell for 150-180g a stack.




Those are my main markets, I won't comment on the others. Interested to hear opinions from others on how they are winding down this expansion.


What I'll do at the start of the next one, depends on how much gold I have going in. If I have >100k I will powerlevel Inscription and JC first. Possibly BS as well. I will probably spend my first 24 hours in the expansion gathering non stop, mining and herbing.

I want to stockpile the "new" lotus immediately at the beginning of the expansion, and save them until a serious raid hits. People didn't flask much for Naxx, but when Ulduar came out they sure did. Frost Lotus prices really didn't rise until then. In the early days they were 5-7g a piece, now they are 50-70g.

10k gold, Battered Hilt, my first DM Faire

This was a pretty good week.


In quick review, I hit 10k gold and beyond for the first time. It was nice seeing that before reinvesting. Glyph week has been competitive, but good. I'm losing lots of potential sales, but we're still selling high at least. I couldn't get many herbs this week, but I wound up with lots of saronite ore.

I bought a battered hilt and flipped it too fast, for 1470g profit (paid 8300, looted 9740 from mailbox). I realized that was a bad timed purchase, even thouhg at the time it was a deal. It was too much of my gold to tie up.

I'm sitting on a deck of each type from the Faire, so I'm excited to sell my first Nobles trinket. The uncontrollable itch to sell fast like everyone else is biting me, I'll have to work on patience in the future.

Shuffled lots of saronite this week and took the warriors enchant/tailor to 407/360 respectively. I could dump more gold in there, but I'm not rushing it. Going to sell my scrolls I made from 350-407 and actually make profit, then finish up enchanting. At least I can disenchant everything now. Not sure if I'll continue on with tailoring or switch to blacksmithing.