The Lazy Tax

Everyone who wants to make gold normally sells things on the Auction House. It could be anything: Crafted items, Rare Pets, Recipes, Profession Materials, Mounts, Vanity Items, etc. In order for anyone to make profit from any sales, people must pay what I like to call "The Lazy Tax".

The Lazy Tax is your profit. People choose to pay it because they don't want to do the work to find the item at a lower price. Use this ideal to your advantage when you sell items on the Auction House. For example, the best market to apply this to is items bought from a vendor. The vendor could be less than 10 yards away from the auctioneer, but people will pay more for it instead of actually walking over to the vendor! Hard to believe, I know. Some common vendor items include: Jeweler's Setting, Dust of Disappearance, Resilient Parchment, Fine Thread, Crystal Vial, and some Recipes. Check your local Auction House for these items. They could be the market that starts you on your gold making journey!

Selling items on the Auction House requires a tiny bit of math. You might want to have a calculator handy, or you can get Xcalc from Curse.com. It's a little outdated but it works fine for me. Be sure to "Load Out of Date Addons" or modify the TOC file if you know how it works.

The formula I use is ( Total Item Price) x 1.07 = Minimum Sell Price. The Minimum Sell Price is the lowest price I will sell an item. Never post an item for the same amount it cost you to get it / make it, since the Auction House always takes a 5% cut on every sale. It will make 

more sense in the example below for the novice gold makers. 

Experienced gold makers can skip past the next section.

Picture from TheUndermineJournal.com©

The prices above are for Illusionary Bags on my server. As you can see there are four separate auctions. The cheapest is selling for about 2047g. The actual crafting cost provided by TheUndermineJournal.com is 1761g. If you plug it into the formula I use, [1761g  x  1.07 = 1884g27s] , the lowest you should ever post this bag is 1885g. If you post smart and undercut the lowest auction by 1c, then you would post this bag at 2047g 49s 98c. The profit made if it sells, after the 5% AH cut, is about 183g. That's your Lazy Tax.

 When making gold on World of Warcraft, profit is profit. Whether its 1g or 100k profit, it's gold you didn't have before.  Use the Lazy Tax  to your advantage and you will eventually be a gold making goblin in no time! Before I forget to mention it, always make sure to post your auctions for 48 hours if you can afford the deposit. It gives your items the best chance to sell.

Since I'm still fresh in the gold making blogosphere, I will try to post new articles at least once a day to get started, but over time it will probably die down to maybe 2-3 times a week. Stay tuned for more gold making tips!