Easy Ways to Get Gold in World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft is a worldwide phenomenon, with over 8 million players around the world. With all of this popularity, you would think that there would be a wealth of information available for free on every aspect of the game, however, this is not the case. With such popularity comes the obvious side-effect of those who wish to profit from it, and the internet is filled with hundreds of World of Warcraft gold guides that cost anywhere from $5 to $50.

Since almost all players have trouble getting enough gold, it's an extremely common problem. There isn't a day that goes by in which at least one or two posts fail to graze the official WoW forums asking about generating money. The introduction of the prohibitively expensive flying mounts in the new Burning Crusade expansion hasn't helped matters.

Generating money in World of Warcraft is actually incredibly simple once you understand some of the best tricks. It doesn't require buying gold to use as seed money, and it doesn't require spending hours upon hours in dungeons farming for epic items.

There are actually many ways to generate gold, but I'm just going to go over a few of my favorite methods. These are the same methods I use myself, and I have hundreds of gold even though I only play about five hours per week. I have never, ever purchased gold. I earned it all inside the game.

Before we get started, I highly recommend that you download and install the World of Warcraft addon called Auctioneer. This little beauty will let you scan the auction house for current prices, and it will keep a database. Then, whenever you mouse over an item in your inventory, it will tell you the average value for that item. This will help you know what price to place your items at when listing them on the auction house, and will also help you know what to trash and what to keep if your bags are full.

You should also upgrade the bags of every one of your characters to the largest possible right away. 16 slot bags have dropped quite a bit since the Burning Crusade expansion, so you have no excuse to avoid purchasing them as soon as you have the money. This will make your money-earning go much faster.

Now, let's move on to the juicy part of this World of Warcraft Gold Guide.

Dual Gathering Professions - This is the easiest way to generate huge amounts of gold very quickly. You may be tempted to pick up a crafting profession, but I absolutely encourage you to avoid this like the plague! Crafting professions typically cost you much more than you make, at least until the point where you get to at least 300 skill in that profession and manage to get your hands on some of the very rare, and very expensive, recipes. I highly recommend that you pick up two gathering professions on every character that you start. You can always drop them later if you want to pick up a crafting profession, but you should be earning money on each and every character that you are leveling. It doesn't take that much time to stop and pick herbs and mine ore, and it certainly doesn't take a lot of your time to skin every skinnable mob that you kill. I recommend picking up skinning as your first profession, and then herbalism or mining as your second profession. This is because you can only have one tracker going on the mini-map at a time, and also because skins are not as easily ninjaed as herbs or ore. Plus, skins are so abundant that even on the rare occasion when someone steals one of your skins, there are thousands more available throughout Azeroth. List everything you gather on the auction house, but don't necessarily undercut the lowest price. If everyone undercut everyone else, eventually, the bottom would fall out of the economy. Professional gamers understand this, which is why they typically put their items up at slightly higher than the cheapest item. They know that the cheapest item will sell quickly, leaving the next best alternative, you, as the cheapest. This way, they don't continue undercutting, and they earn more than the person with the cheapest item did.

Fishing - With the addition of Stonescale Eel pools, fishing is not quite as lucrative as it once was, but it is still a decent money-maker. If you're tired of hacking and slashing, and you need a break, pick up a fishing pole! Stonescale eels are still the best money maker I know of when it comes to fishing. Plus, a new quest in the Burning Crusade expansion can get you a great +20 fishing pole for free! If your character isn't high enough level for that, head to the Wailing Caverns in the Barrens and fish for deviate fish. These also don't sell for what they once did, but they can still make a lower level character a decent bit of cash quickly.

Questing - I know many people have started recommending that you just grind levels, claiming that it is faster to grind than to roam around picking up and completing quests. I disagree with this. I believe questing levels you much faster than grinding, plus, you can pick up some great money completing quests. I have made as much as 200 gold in a single day on a character in the low 60's in level! That was for questing alone, and does not count the addition 100+ gold I made from herbalism and mining. (I know, this character broke my skinning + another gathering profession rule, but the guildmate that I adventure with most often is a skinner, so we work quite well together.) I recommend completing as many quests as possible while leveling your character, because this will net you more gold than just gathering alone.

Vendor Trash - This is the stuff that you get off of mobs that doesn't seem to have a use in the game, stuff like bones and broken weapons. Don't just throw this stuff away unless your bags are full and you need room for something valuable. In fact, there are places in the game where you can earn decent money on mostly vendor trash! A friend of mine told me about a place in Felwood where you can kill many bears and you can not only get stacks of leather, but some pretty decent vendor trash, as well. He said he makes around 15 gold per hour on a character of level 40-something. Not bad at all if you're going to be grinding around this level, anyway.

The Darkmoon Faire - The faire comes to town every two months for about a week. It comes to Elwynn on the Alliance side one month, and Mulgore for the Horde the next month. There is some decent money to be made while the faire is in your city. Items such as evil bat eyes, glowing scorpid blood, and vibrant plumes make great turn-ins. My favorite is going for vibrant plumes in The Hinterlands. The owlbeasts there drop the plumes at a decent rate, and they also drop giant eggs, which are needed for the cooking quest that gets you past 225 cooking skill, so they sell for a decent amount, also. In addition, the wolves in this area are skinnable, and you can also pick up tender wolf meat from them which sells very nicely as a cooked food item. Both Horde and Alliance can farm in the Hinterlands.

Elementals - Most higher level elementals drop good stuff. Earth elementals drop elemental earth, fire elementals drop elemental fire, etc. These items are highly prized for professions like alchemy and enchanting, so elementals of all types are great if you're going to be grinding. The earth elementals in Arathi are very easy to kill and drop elemental earth at a pretty good rate. They also drop some vendor trash that is worth a decent amount, and they drop deeprock salt which is needed by leatherworkers.

Limited Availability Recipes - There are a number of recipes sold on vendors all around Azeroth that are limited in availability. These may be sold in a quantity of one at a time, and may not respawn again for up to 24 hours. One such pattern is the gnomish cloaking device pattern, sold in the basement of Ravenholdt Manor in the mountains in Hillsbrad. You'll need Ravenholdt faction to purchase it. There are many other recipes that can be bought for a few silver and sold for a gold or even much more. The major healing potion recipe sold in Everlook in Winterspring is another good one.

Spider's Silk - This is incredibly valuable and drops off practically any spider of at least level 20. You can get these off the spider in Darkshire if you're in your 20's in level, but it drops quite nicely off the spiders in Arathi. Once you get to higher level spiders, you start getting other types of silk, like Ironweb, which may not be worth as much as regular spider's silk.

Prospecting - This is pretty new, since this is part of the jewelcrafting skill that was just introduced in the Burning Crusade expansion. If you're a miner, you can prospect many of your metals to obtain gems. These gems are worth very good money to jewelcrafters, and also to those who are seeking to upgrade their socketed items.

Disenchanting - This skill is not as popular as it once was, due to Blizzard making it necessary to have higher skill to disenchant higher level items. Once upon a time, any enchanter with a skill level of 1 could disenchant a level 60 epic! Not so anymore. Still, having an enchanter as a quasi-gathering profession is quite lucrative, especially if you spend a lot of time in dungeons and end up with many bind-on-pickup items you can't use.

Well, there you have it. You've seen some great ways to collect money very quickly. These are easy, fast, and don't require a lot of investment up front. So don't buy gold, earn it!