What to do?

As anyone who has studied the AH knows, there is a TON of stuff that goes up for sale each day. If I want to successfully use the AH to earn money, I need to figure out A) what things I can do, and B) which of those will make money.

First, there is plain arbitage; buying things low and selling high. I've tried this in the past and never got anywhere with it. I know some people can make it work, but for now I am skipping it.

Second, my main (Artos) is an enchanter and jewelcrafter. That opens up a few possibilities; buying ore on the AH, prospecting it, and cutting/selling the gems or buying raw gems on the AH, cutting, and selling those.
I could also buy green items on the AH, DE them and sell the mats. Another nice combination (that paid for my cold weather flying) was to use JC to make green items out of the common gems I got from prospecting, DE them, and sell the dusts. Lately the dust market has tanked, though. I could probably make money enchanting scrolls and selling those, too; I'll have to see.

I also have two alts; one is a L53 tailor/miner, almost ready to break into Netherweave, and the other is going to be an inscriptionist but I just started it. I know the glyphs would probably sell well, and netherweave bags are a source of income once I get two more levels.

Next post: potential profit analysis

Baseline!

So, I figured that the first thing I should do before I set up my little virtual business is to see what my baseline is for having no business. Essentially, what would be my gold intake if I just did dailies?

I started at 8:30 AM, fully repaired and with 2,232G (plus change) in my bags.
Being a jewelcrafter, the very first daily I did was the JC one - the return is too high to ignore. The quest only gives a handfull of gold, but the JC token is worth 100G - 400G, depending on how you calculate it (it would cost me 400G to buy enough powder from the AH to buy a token, but if I wanted to sell a token I would only get the going rate on Dragon's Eyes; usually ~150G, sometimes as low as 100G)

After that, I moved to the Tournament and ran those dailies, plus the two bombing run ones because they're fun. :) The Flaming Spears one pissed me off, as my bird's timing was off and I only got one pass at the kraken. The second run took care of it.

I had cleared the targeted dailies by 9:26 AM, hearthed to Dalaran, repaired and vendored my trash. New total gold: 2,460 (plus change and some cloth).

That gave me a gold per hour income of ~328G (including the market value of the token). Whatever business I take up will need to beat that to be better than farming dailies, but I do know that if I am a total failure as a goblin I can fall back on dailies and still make 2K+ per week. :)

Who is Artos?

I have always had an interest in the virtual economy of World of Warcraft.

In real life, I am an accountant and a bit of an economist, and the economies of online games seem simpler and more open than our own real-world economies. However, despite my professional interest in business and economics, I spent most of my time being broke.

I have recently started using the AH to make money; I dropped engineering for jewelcrafting, and have been experimenting with ways I can use it. This blog will be my online journal as I experiment with goblinism. :D