Selling Common Quality Patterns

First, if the "What I'm Reading" tab looks any smaller on the side, it's because I accidentally deleted my widget. I'm currently readding all my favorite reads out of my GoogleReader. Sigh...anyway, to the article!


Effortless Gold
So, I have taken up this odd practice of selling white (common) quality patterns on the Auction House (AH).  As to not encroach onto a friend's cooking pattern territory on the Neutral Auction House (NAH), I am only doing this on my other server with my mage.  So far, it has been a success.  For my priest here on my home server, I have been selling tailoring patterns.  There really are quite a few lazy/don't have a clue people out there in Warcraft.  I suppose some of it can be chalked up to being new and not knowing where things are BUT I believe most of it is laziness.

White quality patterns are typically bought off vendors around the world. Some patterns only show up once an hour or once every few hours, and the patterns can be sold in unlimited supply or 1 per spawn period (aka, once someone buys that 1 pattern, it won't show up again for 1 hour).  Since all you have to do is fly to the vendor and purchase the pattern, you would think more people would do this. Nope. There are some really lazy people.

 So, let's make some money off them!

Setting up Your Toons
So far my little experiment has made me about 150g a day on my tailoring patterns, and about 150g a day from cooking patterns.  That's 300g for sometimes 1 hour's worth of work, but, usually it is just logging in, collecting money, and reposting patterns from my stash. We'll say about 300g for 15 minutes worth of work to hop to my four bank characters. 

One character sits in Booty Bay. She's 24, she won't move.  She sells on the alliance side of the neutral AH.
Another toon sits in Darnassus, posting on the Alliance AH. She's level 1ish.
And the third toon sits on the Horde AH, also level 1ish.
The fourth toon sits in Booty Bay on the horde side. She posts on the horde side of the neutral AH.

The neutral AH's are located in Booty Bay, Gadgetzan, and Winterspring.

So, with this setup, I can send stuff from my big toons (mage and rogue) on the alliance and horde sides of my server and have my lowbies post it.  I fly around the world on my high level toons (a lot easier on the teleporting mage) and collect common-quality (and some green quality faction specific) patterns to sell. 

I'm starting to enjoy this a little bit more than farming herbs!  Herb farming to me is relaxing, but, this is sort of like gathering...I'm just gathering a different type of item.  You can stockpile 2 or 3 of each recipe and sell them according to their availability:

• Is this recipe purchasable by only alliance or horde players?  If yes, I need to sell this on the netural AH, or even better, have a friend help move it over to the opposite faction AH.
• Is this recipe a reward from a faction-specific (alliance only or horde only) quest?  If yes, I need to price the item even higher (think 500g or more) on either the netural or opposite faction's AH.

Where to Find the Goodies

Where can you find these patterns?  You can use the addon Ackis Recipe List to not only discover the locations of recipes that you are missing, you can see all the recipes for that profession (I suggest sticking with tailoring and cooking) that are possible to obtain.  A list of faction-specific patterns is available here on WoWWiki.  As you can see, things like [Bright Yellow Shirt] are available only on the alliance side. I frequently sell this pattern on the Alliance AH for 50g.  I am going to try and sell it on the neutral AH for 100g, the same price I sell all my cooking patterns.
Little Inconveniences
 Granted, you will not always have someone who can come help you transfer items over. Plus you also run the risk of someone ninjaing your items when they are passing hands from one side to the other.  Things may take longer to sell on the neutral AH, BUT, if someone wants what you have, they will come looking at the neutral AH.  Yes, you will take a profit hit (30%) by posting on the neutral AH but it is not an end all deal if you have to.

Also, if you are like me and have like 5 character slots full already per server, then you will need to decide what you want to specialize in:

• Collecting white quality patterns/recipes from around Azeroth on your faction, and selling only to your faction's AH.
• Collecting white quality patterns/recipes from around Azeroth on your faction, and selling to the netural AH.
• Collecting white quality patterns/recipes from around Azeroth on your faction, and selling to both the netural AH and your factions AH.
• Collecting white quality patterns/recipes from around Azeroth on your faction, and selling to both factions AND the neutral AH.

Option 1 is the least time consuming, and option 4 is the most time consuming.  I recommend option 3, which gathers all your recipes and posts them on the netural AH and your faction AH.  This way you only need your normal bank toon that hangs around the faction AH, and either a bank toon to hang out near a neutral AH or your main toon to post the recipes there.


The idea here is to not clog up your bags with too many patterns (I keep 3 maximum on my toons, 4 if it sells well) and only check these toons once a day.  These patterns may not sell for two days, and you will find yourself reposting often. But, so far, every single day I have logged in, as long as I price my tailoring patterns at 50g or below (35, 25, 15) I will sell at least one, more than likely 2 or 3. The further you have to travel from the cities to get the patterns, the better they sell. People are lazy, remember this!  As far as cooking recipes go, some days I sell three recipes (at 85g final profit each) per day.  Sometimes I sell zero.  These recipes do not have to sell overnight; have patience.  If you get a recipe from a quest, these should be priced around 500g.  They may take two weeks to sell, but you will find a buyer eventually that does not want to level a level 30 just to get a recipe.

I hope these ideas help you make some gold!

Oh, and while waiting for the zeppelin earlier, I saw these cute faces on the woodwork:

O HAI.

I'm sure it's part of the texture of the wood but I laughed all the same!