Transmog: One Realm One Million Gold Profit

4.3 Prep

Keelhaul showing the potential of transmog

Experimenting cross faction

True Horde

Timeframe and changes of game plan: going full circle?

Final thoughts and thanks

4.3 Prep

I did Darkmoon Faire turn in for two months trying to get some rare recipes but all I got was loads of greens and loads of bags. I disenchanted a lot of the weapons and stored the rest of the stuff. I used some greens on my own toons while levelling and sold some. I ended up with around a guild bank of greens heading into 4.3

Keelhaul showing the potential of transmog

I listened to the PWG: Podcast and read blogs, twitter was lighting up with a lot of amazing sales, so I decided to increase my prices, this was probably the time where I got most of the hate from people. I had some really good sales and this boosted my confidence so I bought more stuff and started posting more stuff and made even more sales. Twitter went crazy everyone was talking about transmog and I started posting daily screenshots of sales. It was new, exciting and I was making a lot of gold.

Experimenting cross faction

Around the time of 4.3 I got a second account and started selling items on both factions. I soon hit 500k in transmog profits with a 60/40 split with slightly more of my money being made on the horde side. Looking at the overall million gold it is more like a 70/30 split in sales. I cancelled my second account while I ran a US account and mothballed my entire alliance inventory in my guild bank for about a month. There was a lot more competition on alliance side and I mainly stuck to high/mid tier items there.

True horde

I played alliance most of vanilla but switched to horde near the end of vanilla and have been mainly horde since. It is hard for me because I have so many alts but I’d class my Tauren druid as my main, I had a feeling on items that horde players might gravitate to more than alliance players. I still haven’t seen a female Tauren in full Glorious ingame but I really really want to!

Timeframe and change of game plan: going full circle?

Initially I was pricing items around 50-100g because that was nice profit for an item I picked up for a  few gold however Keelhaul’s sales pushed me to slowy start increasing my prices. After this initial bump up in price I think my average price per item was around 1600g (Total value of Auctions divided by number of items posted).

After I hit 500k mark I started picking up more items and experimenting with more weapons / rare quality items. My inventory went from 2k to over 6k. Posting fees went up but so did sales. Near the end the last 150k or so I slashed prices. The reposting time (wtb bigger bags blizzard) was taking such a large chunk of my time. I normally used this time to write down blog ideas/posts so it wasn’t totally wasted. However competition on my realm were really cutting off my low priced sales. They were posting items at 75g to 200g and my lowest stuff was around 400 at the time. I decided just to try and clear some of this inventory. It was being bounced around mails on several toons and having 3 Gbanks full of transmog items wasn’t the best MoP stockpiling idea. Each item takes a slot and I could go into MoP with a low tier transmog item or a stack of ore, leather or enchanting mats. Today my average price per item has dropped to around 500g.

I pretty much dropped every other way of making gold because you can not beat transmog for profits in terms of the time/effort you have to put into it. I do a few things on the side like crafted pvp gear and recently 77-81 greens but in terms of gold per hour transmog was/is so ahead of everything else. It took me around 70 days to make 500k and another 80 days to get me to 1 million however the last 500k felt really slow mainly because I was actually selling more stuff but at a lower price. I’m sure it’ll take more than 80 days to get another 500k purely because my prices are so low now and the amount of other players in the market.

I stopped using buying lists around the time me and EPP released our leather list. I’ve been doing transmog for so long I can mainly tell if I want to buy an item just from the name. It is very very rare for me to come across an item I don’t already have and that is normally because it is a super rare drop.

Looking at the math it works out as an average of 200k Profit a month  (Profit = Sales – reposting fees – buying items)

I made a little over 1.2 Million in sales to get this 1 million in profit. Those costs can add up if you are posting lots of items and also trying to flip expensive items (e.g Chan's Imperial Robes). It currently costs around 8000g a week to repost items and sales can be unpredictable. I recall making 130k in 9 days around the same time as the Love is in the Air event but also I have had quiet weeks where after deposit fees I’ve only just about broken even.

I’ll most likely hit 2 million liquid gold in a couple of weeks, I’ve come a long way considering that I was sitting at around 300k in November. I am currently focused on levelling alts on my second account and alt realm, I got every boa except the ring for my tank/healers and I am going to sit in SW and just LFD to 85.

Final thoughts and thanks

Majority of my sales were made horde side which sets me apart to a certain extent I think from Keelhaul and Elvine.  I am very goal–orientated and I’m still thinking about what my next goal should be. My realm is very saturated and prices keep on falling. Seeing mid tier items as low as 200g while the cost of picking these items is over 30g makes me a little sad and there is not so much room for profit. I’m still sitting on over 5000 items so the increase in buying these items does not affect me as much as others however it is a factor in future profit potential.

I never really made this connection before but looking back at my gold making career I have to say I was more suited than most to this new way of making gold. Back in The Burning Crusade I realm hopped and made lots of horde and alliance toons. I was really into level 39/49 pvp I would start on a new realm and mine copper ore to get some starting capital. I would then use this gold to flip twink items. I knew most about 29/39/49 brackets I would flip greens, blues and purple quality gear. I would have to be patient and search the Auction House daily looking for a good deal. I would negotiate and try and bring the price down if I was buying or try and get the highest price possible when selling.

Huge thanks to @DEazeroth for showing us what was possible and @Powerwordgold who was there at the beginning. I sometimes think Jim gets overlooked a little his blog warcraft looks was spot on in a lot of areas: Bonechewer, Ceremonial leather and Hulking? And I remember looking at his site a lot in the early 4.3 frenzy.

Big thanks to the twitter community! I’ve had the pleasure of hosting a couple of amazing guest posts which gave a real insight into what people were doing on their realms @marthapie for showing the way she promotes transmog on her realm and @Audemgold for sharing his rags to riches story and what he spent his transmog gold on. Keelhaul has been doing his wowfactor shows + upcoming Secret Project, Elvine is doing his live streaming and I’m doing my blogging. It has been amazing to share this journey with those two and many others on twitter.

Special thanks to multi-realm transmog seller @EpicPennyPouch it seems a long time ago since we did that leather list together I would probably never have done that post without someone else to share the blame with : )

And finally a big thank you to my realm, there has been a lot of hate and a lot of discussion in trade chat but there was the odd thank you in there as well.