Tuesday 28 September 2010

Follow the Gold Road has moved!

The new site can be found at www.followthegoldroad.com so please update your RSS feeds, bookmarks etc.

The Blogger site will remain up for the time being, although all the old content has moved over to the new, Wordpress powered site.

Its my first time using Wordpress but I'm liking it immensely so far.  I'll be working on the design of the site over the next couple of weeks, so expect some changes in that regards. In the meantime I'm using a ready-made theme until I've got one developed of my own - which gives me an excuse to learn Dreamweaver at last.

I hope you like our new home and look forward to seeing you there!

Sunday 26 September 2010

The future of Follow the Gold Road

So FGR will be 6 months old in a couple of weeks and that's got me thinking about the future of the blog.

So far I've just been at this at my own pace, posting when I get some time. I don't have a queue of posts scheduled to be published, and that's something I'm intending to change. I think the level of content going out is about right though, between 6 and 8 posts a month of relatively in depth articles is where I'm aiming.

What I want to change is the lack of structure and the variety of media, so I'm going to be having a think of categories of posts - an addon tutorial, commentary on the market, a quick tip and so on and having them released the same time each week.

I've also decided to go self hosting and have set up an account with godaddy for this, though I'm having a few teething problems so far. Gazimoff from The Mana Obscura has inspired me to try out my hand at video editing, so expect to see video guides to the most recent developments in gold making addons here soon. Not only that but his site is exemplary and showed me the potential self hosting has when compared to the limitations if blogger.

The Consortium is growing nicely and there's talk there of a podcast in the future, which I'd like to get involved in. There's some very capable people over there (shout out to Sterling, Cold, Allaphon and Sykez in particular) and I'm sure there'll be some awesome stuff coming out of that community in the future.

I'm so excited about being more involved in the wow communities as we switch expansion over the next few months.

Here's to Cataclysm!

Thursday 23 September 2010

Mobile Armoury Updated

The mobile armoury has been updated with a number of significant improvements. The list of changes can be seen here.

I thought it'd be good to share what those changes are with some images.

What's your favorite 'niche' gold strategy

The third JMTC Blogging Carnival has arrived and this month, Markco's asking what our favourite niche strategies are - I'm sure they'll be some gem-like tips from the community to satiate your gold appetites!



A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact. (source)

I've said before that my playtime is limited and so when I log in I want to use that time to my best advantage, i.e. to make the most gold per hour I can.  For me, this generally involves logging my enchanting toon first and restocking, cancelling and reposting, followed by my jewelcrafter doing the same. If I have time I'll pop on to my glyph posters and replenish the AH and then, if miraculously I've still got some time left then I'll log on my actual scribe, do the research, restock, make some vellums for the enchanter and try and get rid of some of the excess Snowfall Inks.  When I've got a real chunk of time available (say once a week) I'll do some milling and crafting inks and might up my glyph stockpile by say 2 of each - I'm aiming to have a full stack of each come 4.0.

As such - any strategy that requires me to move out of my 'comfort zone' of the AH, Mailbox, the Bank and the Inscription Supplies vendors is unlikely to see much testing from me and the little experience I do have with some of them haven't turned out to be as profitable a use of my time as my standard routine, although many of them are fantastic for say, starting out on a new server or if you're in a position with a low capital outlay.  Saying that, if you have more time on your hands then that sort of strategy can be a lovely supplement to your main sources of income.

Monday 13 September 2010

How can you turn 1000 gold into 2000 gold? Jewelcrafting Edition

I said in my post for the second Just My Two Copper Blogging Carnival that I'd put together similar posts for the other markets I'm in, so here is my take on using Jewelcrafting to turn 1000g into 2000g.

JEWELCRAFTING 



Second only to Enchanting in terms of the proportion of the income it provides me, Jewelcrafting is a fantastic profession. Unfortunately, I came to it late in the expansion, and I missed out on its heyday. However, I'm fully prepared  for reaping the undoubtedly lucrative benefits it will be bringing come Cataclysm, and hopefully I can help you out in doing that too here.

Friday 10 September 2010

New Gold Making Community

Yesterday I discovered a new gold making community, known as The Consortium, through WoW.com so many of you may already be aware.

The people over there have set up a nice site of forums, with an unusual (at least for me) social side to it as well - members can earn experience points, reputation, rate threads and posts and so on.

The Consortium is a community focused on the discussion of gold-making in World of Warcraft. It was founded in early February 2010, by Alaera of Twisting Nether US. The concept was simple: establish a community where World of Warcraft’s greatest entrepreneurs can share ideas, without fear of spilling sensitive secrets to the masses. Initially a small group of friends threading ideas on a free bulletin board, The Consortium now seeks to expand.

Our site is host to both public and private forums. The private forum is accessible only to “earned” members, or as well call them, Wind Traders. Wind Trader status (and access to the private forums) is earned on an invite-only or application basis. Due to the sensitive nature of the information contained in the private forums, membership is limited to one player per server. Nonetheless, we plan on regularly releasing articles showcasing the quality of content housed within the private forums. We will do this not only to give back to the community, but also to fuel discussion in the public forums. The public forums are publicly accessible and contain a wealth of information including:
  • WoW Economy discussions.
  • Power-leveling guides and routes.
  • Profession FAQs and leveling guides.
The site will also host a GDKP forum, which will conglomerate and streamline GDKP runs from all servers worldwide.

You may browse the current Wind Trader list here (expect this list to grow within the days and weeks ahead).

The Wind Traders are a very exclusive and elite group. If you think you have what it takes, check out the application page.

Sterling, one of the admins, was kind enough to invite me to be one of their 'Wind Traders' so the least I can do is give them a little plug.

So, go have a look around, sign up and become a part of this new community, just click the image below.

Wednesday 1 September 2010

"24 hour" maintenance

Maintenance finished 10 hours early. Thankfully, I posted my usual 48 hour scroll auctions before raiding last night. And this is only 3 hours after I noticed the realm was back up *grins*





Shame I didn't have time to put any gems up.

Tuesday 31 August 2010

How can you turn 1000 gold into 2000 gold?

So, the second Just My Two Copper Blogging Carnival is here and this time Markco has posed the quiestion: "How can you turn 1000g into 2000g?"


That's a pretty open ended question and no doubt the bloggers participating will post about a myriad of different ways of solving this problem.


What I was going to do was talk you through how I would go about doing this for each of my professions, tell you which addons I use to help and provide you with a shopping list of mats to meet the orders I'll set up (see here for a guide on setting up shopping lists in AuctionLite); basically run you through the routine for each of the profession I use (or have used).


That would turn into a post of epic proportions, so instead I'll be doing a multi-part series, kicking of with tailoring.


Let me know in the comments if you want to see how-to posts on any of the addons I mention.






Tuesday 17 August 2010

Question Time!

Kadomi over at Tank Like a Girl has inspired me to field questions from my readers.  If there's anything you'd like to ask about making gold, using addons, professions or anything completely random then clicky clicky on the Formspring widget to the right and fire away!

I'll put a Q&A post together (if and) when I've had a decent number of questions.

Cheers for now

Buying mats with AuctionLite

In my posts about using EnchantShop, I mentioned that I did not use the mat buying interface provided by that addon to keep myself in stock. Today I'm going to share with you how I buy my mats, using the addon AuctionLite.

Thursday 5 August 2010

Selling Scrolls of Enchant using EnchantShop Part 2

Hi Peeps!  Here's my follow up guide to using EnchantShop for your scroll business.  Part 1 can be found here, in which we looked at setting up the addon.  Now we'll take a look at putting it into practice.

Tuesday 3 August 2010

Blogging Carnival

Yesterday's Blogging Carnival over at Just My Two Copper was a great success.  There are some fantastic articles in the list, and even though I have a pretty comprehensive gold-making blogroll, I still discovered some new ones.

My thanks go out to Markco for including my article in the list and for getting me nearly 400 page views yesterday - 3 times more than my previous record, which incidentally, was when Markco added me to his blogroll :)

I look forward to the next one.

Wednesday 28 July 2010

Spending spree with some nice results

Until last night, it had been a while since I'd optimised Felica for 10 man raiding.  I was running over hit cap as I'd had to gem for it in the past and not replaced the [Veiled Ametrine]s I'd used with my regular [Reckless Ametrine] since I'd got some gear with which to replace that hit with.

So, as I used to obsessively do, I cracked open Rawr, reloaded her profile from the armory, checked through the gear I had in the bank and made sure it was all selected as available.  After a quick optimize, and adjusting some filters on available gear, I had a browse through some of the possible upgrades and what I might be able to get my hands on before the usual Tuesday night raid invites went out.

Tuesday 27 July 2010

Selling Scrolls of Enchant using EnchantShop Part 1

Hi guys!

I've been meaning to get a how-to type article up for a while now, and Markco's Blogging Carnival is the perfect opportunity to get my arse in gear and get it done.

EnchantShop is the addon that really kickstarted my gold making journey by enabling me to really cut down the time taken to mass buy enchanting mats, mass craft scrolls, and post them all with a single click of a button without having to set prices individually.  I remember making around 5k in my first week of using the addon and being like OMFG this is so easy! Need... to... make... more... gold!!!!

Tuesday 20 July 2010

My glyph industry is up and running

I spent a lot of time on WoW over the weekend, albeit I wasn't looking at my screen for most of that time and just absent mindedly rolling my mouse wheel to mill herbs* or doing the chores while Skillet was processing a queue of over 2000 inks, still a lot of time logged in.

I've been meaning to get my glyph business properly up and running as so far its not been a great money maker.  To be fair, I've made thousands from inscription - selling vellums, off hands and cards (not having much luck with runescrolls at the moment), but it was glyphs in particular I needed to put some work into.

Friday 16 July 2010

"Surely you can't raid over a 3G connection..."

After being disappointed that my planned seesion at a friends house was cancelled yesterday, and knowing that my better half was working late, I got home last night and got myself into geek mode.  The goal? Tethering my iphone and logging into WoW to restock my scrolls and rare gems.

Thursday 15 July 2010

What do you mean you've gone to a festival!??

Was hoping to have a restocking/raiding/RDF levelling session over at a friend's house tonight.  So I call to confirm earlier on and told he's at a blooming festival for the next 3 days!

Pfff.... only another 5 days until new internet is connected at home, tho its gonna be a long five days.  At least I haven't (yet) got a beta invite to frustrate me even more!

Monday 12 July 2010

Mobile Auction House

So having moved house, I've had no internet access at home since 30th June and it won't be connected up in the new place until 20th July.

So to get my gold fix I subbed to the mobile auction house and have used that to make over 20,000G in the last two weeks, purely from selling off my stock of enchanting scrolls and rare gems.  I've not touched the glyph industry at all as a maximum of 200 posts per day doesn't really meet the demands of playing that market and posting everything individually would have been a nightmare - it was bad enough with the rare gems!!

Tuesday 29 June 2010

Amazing website

I came across this post at WarcraftEcon in my reader today.

Its a preview of an amazing looking website, the Undermine Journal, which is essentially a full market analysis of your specific realm's economy.  Unfortunately, its limited to a few US realms only, but hopefully as it develops (it's still in alpha), it'll support us on this side of the pond too.

Check it out!

Sunday 27 June 2010

Update 27/06/10

Quick Update:


Cash:
Felica (enchanting/tailoring):  26,494
Shintarg (JC/Xmute):  6,143
Drakuthu (scribe):  2,321
Total Liquid:  34,958

On AH:
Felica:  19,557
Shintarg:  12,745
Drakuthu:  10,507
Total on AH:  42,809

Grand Total: 77,767

The return

So I've resubbed back to wow after a break of only a couple of weeks, I guess I've still got the gold bug!

I've only been back a couple of days and haven't done much in the way of getting back into my markets in a big way, other than just to restock and pick up a shed load of netherweave cloth at a good price in preparation for the cataclysm bag rush.

I have decided to get my stable of alts levelled up and plan on having one of every class at at least 60 before cataclysm drops. I do want to roll a goblin priest come cat so I may leave that slot free.

Monday 14 June 2010

Update 14/06/10

Apologies for the delay, RL has been 'getting in the way' with job interviews, house hunting (moving 1st July!) etc and my WoW time, and more so planned blog time has suffered.

As a matter of fact, my sub runs out today and I'm not sure whether to resub or not at the moment.  I may leave it for a couple of weeks or I may take more of an extended break and play something else. I tried a free trial of Star Trek Online recently and hated it.  A couple of months back I was intrigued by Fallen Earth and loved the trial but I couldn't give up WoW to play it at the time - I can only fit one MMO into my life so perhaps I'll go back to that.

Anyway, liquid gold totals sitting at:

Shintarg (JC/Trans):  5,713
Felica (Ench/Tailor):  23,146
Drakuthu (Inscription):  4,163

Total Liquid:  33,022

I have at least 35,000 in items (can't check right now I'm afraid) on the AH, bringing my total to 68,000.

Sorry its not a very detailed update, I hope to continue with the blog but only will if I am actually playing WoW, if not I shall certainly pick it up again come Cataclysm and document the gold road in New Azeroth :)

Tuesday 25 May 2010

Update 25-05-10

In the tradition of Stokpile I'll be doing a weekly report on my AH activities.  I'll be running the weeks Wednesday to Tuesday (as I play in the EU and maintenance day is Wednesday).

Tuesday 18 May 2010

The Work Force - Shintarg

Next is my Shaman, Shintarg who dinged 80 last night.  Thanks to the fiscal efforts of Felica and his first random heroic being the Forge of Souls , he's already got a 4700GS.

Monday 17 May 2010

The Work Force - Drakuthu

The freshest recruit into the work force is Drakuthu, a level 59 Death Knight who has been sat in Thrallmar for a couple of months since getting him out of the starting zone.  The plan is to get him to 60 then level through LFD as a Frost Tank (though given the changes coming to DKs in Cata, I may respec blood to get used to the play-style).  I'm waiting to 60 before going to LFD in order that he has all the tools necessary to tank effectively - DnD especially.

The Work Force - Felica

So, time to introduce the characters I use for making my WoW Gold together with a brief overview of how I make gold on each of them.  I'll be making more detailed posts on each of the professions I use soon enough.

Friday 14 May 2010

One small step...

I've been playing WoW since early days of Vanilla, when my little brother introduced me to it and I would borrow his account when back at home from university.  I got all the way to level 43 on a Dwarven warrior...