Buying Items from Vendors for Resale

Although you usually don't want to buy items to sell from vendor, some items can be sold for much more than you pay for them from the vendor. Keep an eye out for these types of items. A key example of this is the Gnomish Lighthouse vendor in Azshara, who sells the [Schematic: Deepdive Helmet] for 36s. Only one may be purchased at a time, but many Engineers will pay upwards of 1g for this schematic.

Some players even turn this into their profession by systematically "plundering" vendors in the game world and then selling the items on the auction house at a significant markup. The reason why this works (even for items which are on unlimited supply at vendors) is, that many players don't want to spend time traveling to specific vendors to get hold of a recipe or skill book. They would rather pay a slightly higher price at their local auction house. In some sense, they use the auction house as a "super market" or "convenience store". So it is completely reasonable and legitimate to be the supplier for this convenience store and make money out of it.

This scheme works particularly well with items such as

Skill books to gain access to higher levels of professions such as First Aid
All kinds of recipes (cooking, alchemy, tailoring, etc.)
More or less rare items that can only be found at certain vendors (eg. Strong Fishing Pole)

Players wishing to avoid spending vastly over the odds on a vendor pattern should consider using Adspace, which will add information to tooltips for patterns, books and similar items detailing their vendor cost and location

Using Your Guild

Guilds are perhaps one the most effective ways of progressing your character, and in turn, making money. Most 'high-end' guilds have a guild bank where members donate items for other members. This may range from potions, reagents, and craftable plans. Usually you will have to donate to a guild bank in order to receive items as well as stay active in your guild, but receiving potions that will aid your progression and craftable plans allowing you to profit off selling the products will benefit you in the long run. Also, donating to your guild bank may mean donating something you cannot use in turn receiving something you can use. Sometimes, additional services such as VoIP servers are provided and play a key role especially in end-game content; communication is paramount to a the success of an efficient group. Efficiency results in receiving gear faster, running more frequently in a shorter amount of time, and in turn making more money from runs. In a well put together guild, members become a close knit community including financial and questing support, which are among the most profitable benefits. If you have not considered joining a guild as part of your strategy moving through the game, you may wish to strongly reconsider.

Enchanting Items

Selling enchants can make some money, but usually only when you have very high level (over 300) enchants and only the most sought after ones (weapon enchants and large attribute bonus enchants). Thus, enchanting is isn't really recommended as a good early money making source, particularly because its leveling costs are quite high.

Disenchanting Items

If you farm lots of magical items you can't sell, you can convert them to valuable ingredients that other enchanters will buy (usually at the Auction House). Likewise, it can often be lucrative to check the auction house for green items with unpopular suffixes, such as "of the Gorilla," with low starting bids. If you can pick these items up on the cheap, they can usually be disenchanted into the same ingredients as equal items with more desirable attributes. The ingredients obtained from disenchanting these items are often worth more than you'll pay for the item itself in the auction house. Auctioneer, conveniently, has a subsidiary module called Enchantrix that lists the median disenchant values of most items, which can help you gauge whether an item is worth bidding for or not.

Depending on the market situation on your server, you can turn disenchanting into an important method of earning gold. Especially on developed, "end-game" realms, the demand for enchanting materials is very high, as many players tend to have a lot of money they want to put into improving their gear by getting expensive enchants. Also, typically there are many high level enchanters on these realms, so the materials sell quickly. It is not unlikely that almost any green item in this case will sell for a lot less than the materials it disenchants into. If you find this is the case for your realm, either get Enchanting as a profession or make a dedicated character to work as your disenchanter.

Soloing Instances

If you can Solo an instance,, you have two options. The first is to take the place apart yourself and sell all the drops on the Auction House. For level 70 characters, Scarlet Monastery, Uldaman and other mid-level instances are a very popular source of cloth and marketable blues and green items. If you're reasonably well-geared, and feeling more adventurous, the Scholomance and at least some parts of Stratholme are soloable, and can be extremely lucrative as a source of auctionable items.

Alternately, you can offer to run people through the instance for a price. Some people get so desperate to run a certain instance for whatever reason, be it rep, or specific loot, that they're willing to pay a pretty penny to go through it. Whatever the reason, you can turn that desperation into a tidy profit.

Completing Normal Quests

Nearly all quests offer cash or items as a reward, and often both. While completing quests shouldn't be your main form of wealth generation, it is something you are going to do anyway. The key to making the most of quests is picking your reward items wisely. Don't always pick the item that most fits your class - if it isn't demonstrably better than your current item, instead go for whatever reward sells for the greatest amount to the vendor. You can use Thottbot to check each item's value individually, download a UI mod such as Auctioneer to display it in the tooltip, or you can follow the general guidelines for equipment value laid out later in this guide. In general, if you can't use a quest reward for your character, pick either a plate-armor or melee weapon as your reward--these tend to sell to vendors for more than other items.

Completing Daily Quests

With the introduction of Daily Quests in Burning Crusade, repetitive daily quests (Sketti's rep, Netherwing rep, Ogri'la rep, etc.) have now become a legitimate method of generating significant cashflow. Players who spend several hours a day doing daily quests can often generate 100 more per day. Many players have funded the purchase of their elite flying mounts solely through doing daily quests.

Farming Motes & Primals

Whilst they take time to grind, motes and primals can be very lucrative to a patient player. For example, a leatherworker farming motes of mana from the mobs near the borders of Netherstorm and Blade's Edge can farm knothide leather as well, or a herbalist can farm herbs, alongside motes of life, from the bog lords of Quagg Ridge in Zangarmarsh. Most primals sell for around 12-20g on AH, save Primal Earth which tends to be very cheap. See which mobs you will most benefit from farming, then set out for a few hours. In the process you will also most likely collect significant vendor trash, and may get other profitable item drops as well.