Working the Auction House Below is a guide to working the Auction House ; how to make tons of wicked cash off it . Overview and Guidelines . Choose Your Business . On the AH , there are several distinct ways to earn gold . Each of them requires a different play style and level of understanding . It is important to choose those which match your strengths and preferences in order to excel . Knowledge is Power . This is very true for making gold on AH . The more complex line of business you choose ( crafting or trading ) the more important it becomes . While you can learn on your own from mistakes , much better approach is to use and consult plethora of free online resources and guides available . Learn common and well - known practices first and then use your creativity and cunning to improve upon those . Spending a few hours reading online about how to make gold on AH can boost your income several times . ( e . g . place to start : ' The Consortium ' gold making forums ) Use the Right Tools for the Job . Many tools and addons are available to increase your gold - making efficiency and make your life easier . Use them ! They will give you advantage over your competitors and save you time ( e . g . Auctioneer AddOn , TradeSkillMaster AddOn , or an online AH history database like WoWuction ) . Understand Your Environment . As you sharpen your gold making skills , understanding the specifics of your realm ' s market will become increasingly important . While generic guides and tips on what to farm , craft or trade might be a very good start , to really master your AH you will need to pay a lot of attention to your environment . Environment mainly means understanding your competition . You need to be aware how many competitors in each niche there are and what are they doing . Some very profitable niche can be completely useless if one or two good competitors appear in it . Always be aware and observe . You can try to push out your competitor by undercutting prices for some time , but sometimes it is wiser to just move away to a different niche . These will be your most difficult calls ! Buying / Reselling . If you ' re ever browsing the Auction House and you see an item cheaper than usual ( i . e . Black Malice normally goes for ~ 10g , but you see it for 6g ) buy it and re - sell it on the Auction House for the proper price . Things to remember : Farming / Selling . There are many items of value that can be farmed from npc ' s , either in bulk or a single drop . Some examples of the most coveted items to farm : When farming , remember that it is a painstaking process that requires patience and perseverance . Sometimes , to get the item you want , you may have to farm for days or , if you are extremely patient , perhaps weeks at a time ! On the plus side , almost all enemies worth farming also give XP and drop other loot as well ( also money ) , so you never know what ' s going to pop up in your next loot window ! Suggested Areas to Farm , and the Loot : Pricing an Item . It ' s important to understand the Auction House mechanics when posting items . has a lot of useful information , but here is a summary of some common calculations . Bare Minimum . If you just want to experiment , and do not want to lose money , do the following : In Retrospect . . . . Obviously , for some items , you may find after several expirations , it would have been better to have just sold it to the vendor outright . However , you will likely find that this is very rarely the case , if you are simply selling drops . If you are doing more advanced auction house techniques like buying and reselling , either from vendors or the auction house itself , you need to be more cognizant of profit margins . Staying in the Green . If I list an item at the suggested auction house price , how many times can it expire before I lose money ? Breaking Even . Assuming your item does not expire , or does not have a listing fee ( such as with Enchanting dusts or shards ) , you must sell the item for a minimum 5 % markup of the vendor value . Obviously items that can be sold on the auction house for 50 % , 100 % , 300 % , or even higher markups are much more profitable . The higher that markup , the more room you have for a few expirations . Price Comparison . Compare your item . The best way to do this is with price statistics . Some people using the median or average price statistics on Allakhazam . Others use addons such as Auctioneer that gather historic prices you have seen on your server . Advanced Topics . Buyer Mentality . Explanation . This may be an American thing , this may be a young person thing , this may be a gamer thing , or maybe it ' s just a human thing , but there is a buyer phenomenon or mentality . If you understand it , you can take advantage and profit . This is not necessarily manipulation - think of it as providing a convenience service to your buyers . If they do not like your price , they will not bid on the item ! Since we ' re all online gaming , buyers have all of the same online resources and add - ons ( Allakhazam , Thottbot , WoWHead , Curse , etc . ) available to them that sellers have , so it ' s all fair . That being said , remember that buyers are lazy . Buyers like instant satisfaction . And buyers love convenience . This is why auction houses work , why they are linked between cities , why we have the Trading channel , and why we have buyout . Profiting . The main form of using this concept for profit is buying and re - selling . Whether your source is a vendor or the auction house , you are ultimately utilizing this concept . With the principle of lazy , instant satisfaction , and convenience in mind , you should almost always be successful with the following techniques : Farming the Auction House . Anyone who has used the auction house as experienced this , whether they realize it or not . Especially after the release of Burning Crusade with its nearly 12G daily quest s , there are a lot of characters with a lot of disposable income . Small Scale Example . For the casual farmer , let ' s give an example . Say your realm has 50 stacks of Wool Cloth for sale typically at any given time . Maybe one or two have a buyout for 1G , and several more have bids for 1G . The other prices are significantly higher , maybe a few at 2 . 5G , some at 3 , 3 . 5 , 4 , and the occasional 4 . 5G for the desperate crowd . Manipulating Prices . There are two different approaches to large scale price manipulation or even monopolization of a market . Let market be defined as an item with high demand and high volume , such as gems or cloth . The first approach is the classic buy - it - all , re - sell much higher . This is not only expensive , but it ' s committing . You actually have all of the items and you must sell them to profit . However , you have the most control , and while risky , if it works , you can make a lot of money by deciding your profit margin , rather than squeezing it into an existing market . The second approach is manipulating the bottom of a market . The manipulator raises the minimum bids , therefore making his price nearer to the bottom of the pile . By removing only the super cheap , and by also raising every minimum bid , the bottom of the market is raised . By raising the minimum bid , the manipulator may actually type in more than is required by the minimum bid , paying a little more for the item if it is won , but also removing this price as an option to other prospective buyers . This approach is safer because it is committing only to cash , but not to actual items . For example , assume all of your bids are eventually outbid . While they were still on the auction house , your money was temporarily not available ( much like a real world investment ) . However in the end , you didn ' t lose anything because all of your bids are returned at no cost ( no penalty bidding ) . On the contrary if you did win all of the items , by leaving a fair amount of pricier items , unlike the first example , and at the same time removing the bottom of the market , your listings are actually closer to the top and seem less extreme . Theoretically , you make more money , or at least have a less risky investment .