I was kind of reluctant to write this article because it’s somewhat frowned upon although it still is a legitimate way of making gold. But if you don’t care what other people think or want to try this on a bank or auction house alt, by all means give it a try!

Cornering the market means pretty much making the market a monopoly, your monopoly. Which means you control the price of a certain good. So in your mind you would have a set price like 80 gold for Frozen orbs and buy pretty much everyone out below you and control the market so that Frozen orbs don’t go below 80 gold. You would also call out on the channel wanting to buy everyone’s Frozen Orbs and take control of as much supply as you possibly can.

The Disadvantages
There is great risk with this strategy because new supply always arises. People are always running heroic dungeons, which means each group is getting an orb per run. Not all of these orbs will make their way onto the auction house but some of them will. You also need to have a sufficient amount of gold to control the market so that you don’t run out of gold and have a bunch of frozen orbs sitting around that you have bought much higher than the current market price.

You also need to make sure that you know how much you are making off of each orb. If you’re selling them for 80 gold and someone else is selling them for 78 gold, it probably isn’t worth it to buy them out unless you want to make the 80 gold to 85 gold instead, even riskier. You always have to consider what the auction house cut is. That’s 5% so if you’re selling Frozen Orbs at 80 gold, you’re paying the auction house 4 gold per sale. That means you shouldn’t be buying orbs unless they are under 76, preferably much lower.

The Advantages
So where’s the potential? Well, if the demand grows and the supply shortens you can actually raise the prices of your supply to say 85 gold or higher. If there’s no one else selling Frozen Orbs you can probably raise it to 90 gold and you actually sell some, although it might be fewer, that’s still an extra 10 gold. As more orbs make their way onto the auction house you can go back to selling them at 80 gold and take out everything below it.

You can make a huge amount of gold from this but it takes a lot of work and patience. You have to consistently monitor the markets that you are in. As your gold base increases, you could start doing other things like Abyss Crystals, Runed Orbs, Infinite Dust, Ebonweave, Spellweave, Moonshroud, etc. the list just goes on and more people will like to dislike your auction house alt…lol.

If you’re doing this right, you will probably sell 30-40 and be making anywhere from 5-15 gold per day on each item. So that’s anywhere from 150-600 gold a day per item. As you increase your repertoire, you will be able to multiply this number. So if you’re doing 5 different items you will be making anywhere from 750-3,000 gold. This is a ballpark figure because it really depends on so many factors. As you do it more you will probably make more as your refine your skills.

As you can see you can make a lot of gold from doing this, ridiculous amounts to be honest if you work really hard. I don’t do this very often as it is much too time consuming and I try to let the markets do their thing. I don’t want a monopoly happening for anything in the real world so why would I want one in the World of Warcraft. Well it’s just a game one would say, but it’s very funny how most of the players in the game reflect the very person they are in real life. Some are able to create a complete alter-ego however which is amazing in itself.

Anyhow, back to the topic. If you don’t want to go this extreme, the best way is to simply buy when markets are cheap and just resell it when the markets are higher. This I do, because it’s much less time consuming and I don’t annoy anyone. To use the Frozen orb example, I often buy them around 60 gold and see them go for mid 80s often. I usually use the Frozen orbs to craft stuff because that yields a greater profit for me, but if you don’t have crafting professions I suppose this would work well for you.

Hope this helps you open some new doors to making more gold! Be sure to check out my other articles! Thanks for dropping by and reading. Hope to see you soon again!

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Tags: Auction House, Jewelcrafting, Profession, The Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft