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Reader Q&A: How to Monitor Your Gold Making Progress

By on Jul 19, 2011 in Auction House, Economy, Featured, General, Reader Email, Warcraft Econ

In today’s segment, I wanted to discuss a reader e-mail that we received this week. Hopefully will be able to do these Q&A sessions on a weekly basis. If you have questions and would like to see them featured here and answered, please feel free to submit them. Here is today’s featured question:

Reader Question

“Maybe this topic has been done but I’m new to AH farming and don’t know and I cant find an article that tells me. What income level tells you if your on track? I started really trying to make gold about 6 weeks ago, I did ok at first while learning Trade Skill Master in the last 30 days i sold 514,625g in goods and spent 227,314g (i kinda went on a mount / pet binge and leveled an engineer) so my spending was higher than it should of been. I’m very well stockpiled now on mats. July 21 is going to be a beautiful day. (First possible day for new patterns) I milled 16,000+ elemental ores and uncountable herbs this month.

My question is and maybe you or a writer can tell us starter AH goblins in an article what should we be doing in gold to know we are on track?”

Cheers,
Idis US FIRETREE

To start with, fantastic work! Since you sent in those figures I’m guessing you are either using my sales add-on or using a spreadsheet. If you or any other readers are still using the traditional spreadsheet, I recommend my sales as a great add-on to optimize your spending and income calculations. So as far as sells tracking,that’s my best recommendation. Congratulations on your achievements thus far. In six weeks time that is quite a lot of Gold to bring in. You should feel very proud. Now, to answer your question. How much gold should you be making to feel like you’re “On track?” Well, the answer, like most answers with the World Of Warcraft economy is, it depends.

Setting Goals

Idis, you pose a great question. A question that I think most readers can learn from. How can you tell if you’re on par for becoming an accomplished gold maker? What makes you the pinnacle of financial wealth on your server? The answer is really determined by you, the individual player. The first thing you need to do, Idis, is asses why you started making gold in the first place. For you to be able to tell if you’re on track, you need to have some defined parameters. Did you start making gold for BoE epics? To gear out your alts? To finish your mount or pet collection? Just so you could buy anything you wanted whenever you wanted? There are many different reasons people start making gold, and determining what your main priority is will help you better define your success. Let’s for example say you started making gold for no other reason then hitting the gold cap. To obtain 1 million gold in this game is a true achievement, which only a few have earned. Based on the numbers you’ve presented, you’re well on your way there. To be sitting on 300,000 liquid gold in just 6 weeks is fantastic. Including your spending, that means you’re earning roughly 50,000 gold per week. At that pace it would take you a mere 20 weeks to hit the gold cap. Not bad for 5 months work. Of course, it would be less if you curbed your spending habit.

While the gold cap may not be your ultimate goal, what I just did there was break down your wealth and put you on track for a point in time of when you will achieve your milestone if you stay on plan. Becoming wealthy in World Of Warcraft isn’t a difficult proposition if you have a defined goal and a plan of how you’re going to get there. I hope this helps answer your question. Think about what you’re ultimate goal is and then sit down and try and map out your progress. There isn’t a gold figure I can put on being a successful gold maker, that all lies on your shoulders, the individual player.

DMCA.com


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About the Author

Wes of Capped By Cata and the Auction House Junkies Podcast is a Staff Writer here at Warcraft Econ. He can be contacted at CappedByCata@Gmail.com or on Twitter @CappedByCata
  • http://coldsgoldfactory.blogspot.com Cold's Gold Factory

    It's really only a time investment difference that seperates players in the gold making game. Once you understand how to make gold within any market, it all boils down to how much time you have to babysit the auctions that get undercut, how much time you have to spend crafting, how much of your process is automated, and how much time overall you can spend in-game as opposed to real life.

    As long as you are constantly turning a profit and moving towards your goal then you are on the right track. How long it takes you is just a gauge for your time available to put into your project.
    My recent post WoW Patch 4.2 Tanked Volatiles Fire And Earth

  • http://www.warcraftecon.net Warcraftecon

    Agreed. I wish gold per hour was easier to calculate. We have tried, but can only estimate it.

    Ex.
    Revenue – Expenses = Net Income / Hours spent = Gold Per Hour

    10,000 – 5,000 = 5,000g / 2 hours = 2,500 Gold Per Hour

  • Fex

    i wish GPH was easier, and most of all uniform.

    Are expenses you make in order stockpile goods valid to calculate for example? Unless you only spend money and don't stockpile a thing you're allready looking at skewed results. And not stockpiling at least some things is inefficient. It puts you too much at the mercy of price fluctuations.

    Next to that how do you count "time spent"

    Do you actually include mail time. Time spent crafting, / prospecting, etc. And how do you deal with the occasional chatting / interruption of that process? They may seem minor numbers but for me chatting well exceeds 3 hours a week, where i'm logged on to jc to prospect. And end up chatting to someone. Dealing with guild drama, or logging an aditional alt to give a guildy some low lvl mats for something.

    Also, is time spent camping all to be counted? i for one can sit camping the ah for several hours at a time doing nothing else. But whenever i cook dinner, do the dishes, hang laundry, i'm also on that alt. All in all, checking once every 5 minutes is around as effective as checking once every minute. In reality the time i spent doing those household chores, i'm not camping at all. I'm simply listening for the little sound que that will tell me a competitor has come online, at wich point i will check their location, and repost if need be. For the rest i'm not doing anything.

    And then there is multitasking. There is no problem at all in camping the ah, while crafting. Does it count as time spent once, or twice? and to wich market would you contribute it?

    Plus the time old leveling alt, doing something solo, unrelated to goldmaking, while checking the ah regularly, again, paying attention to competition logging on. There is a good chance that i would not be working towards achievement points if i were not trying to make gold. Its far more likely i'd spend that time doing instances. But i can't interrupt that every time a competitor pops up, so i tend to go fish for a rare or something on an alt while keeping an eye on ah. Should this be counted to my gold per hour?

    In any event, the Hours spent, it is a very debatable figure, and when comparing GPH, it gives very skewed numbers. For me, its around 2k an hour. And i'm counting all playtime on all characters except when i'm in a dungeon to determine my gold per hour. But i doubt many others calculate it like that … Just counting prospecting + crafting time, and playtime on my ah alt, would allready set it to 6k / hour for instance….