I'm Poor.. (Making money as a lowbie)

I'm Poor..

Getting money in wow can be frustrating, and trust me high level
players will hate you if you beg for money. If you are fortunate you
may have a high level friend that can be your benefactor and help you
financially until your character can support itself. For the rest of us,
we have to blaze our own trail and become financially independent on
our own. There are lots of ways to make money in warcraft and everyone
has their own ideas on how to do it. I'm going to put in my strategies
and you can use them if you want to. I do well with them.

Bags
Probably the most important thing you need to do to make money is get big bags. I recommend you get big bags as soon as you can afford too. I usually start off with 12 slot bags. They are usually reasonably priced on most servers and will serve you well until you can move up to bigger sizes. Being able to hold more will improve your ability to make money because you won't have to pass up on things because your bags are full and increase efficiency since you won't have to run to town all the time to empty them back out.

Gathering Professions
High level players like to raise their professions quickly, so they tend to buy everything they need to do so out of the auctions house. There is money to be made by selling those materials to them. I feel that the best way to make money when your a low level character is to go get two gathering professions. I prefer mining and skinning personally but you can also choose herbalism. Why do I like mining? Well at early levels copper is pretty easy to find. A stack of 20 copper bars will sell for 1-2 gold on most servers. All you need to do is while you're doing the quests early on mine every copper node you come across. I choose skinning because it doesn't interfere with the find minerals radar on the minimap. If you choose herbalism and mining you will have to switch between find minerals and find herbs radars. You can choose herbalism if you'd like to instead of mining. It is still profitable to pick the flowers and sell them. I just feel I make more money with copper at earlier levels. One thing to note is the Night Elf starting area has absolutely no mining nodes in it. So if your a night elf definately take that into consideration. Check your auction house for prices and make an educated guess on what you will make more money doing. Most of the time mageweave bags (12 slot) sell for ~2g on most servers. So with your first few copper sales replace your bags. You need bags more than you need nice armor. Life is so much easier when you got big bags.

Crafting Professions
There is a circle of life in crafting and before you get too concerned about wanting to have a crafting profession let me explain it. I have mentioned high level characters like to buy their way through crafts. At low levels you gather and make money from these higher level characters, then when you start getting higher, and have lots of money, you stop gathering and start buying your way through crafts thus helping the next generation of lowbies get rich from their gathering.

Crafting at low levels actually will cost you money. The reason is because you can't craft anything valuable. For example, take the Copper Battle Axe. I went to wow.allakhazam.com and checked that it's normal AH selling price is 30s. But the estimated cost of the materials is 1g 32s. So if you craft that axe, you just threw 1g into the garbage. This is true for almost all lower level craftable items. So what I do is sell the materials and then with that extra money I just go buy something I want. Also, at lower levels it's very taxing to keep your craft skill high enough that you can make things you can actually use. And many times you'll need to go spend money in the auction house to get the more rare materials needed to craft things to keep your skill current.

I gather ore and skins until about level 40. I usually have 500g or more when I ding 40. I have more than enough to cover the cost of a mount, training and new fancy armor. At this point, I usually spend a couple hours raising one craft and will have it caught up enough that I can make items I can use at 40 and usually runs me about 100-150g to do this. Consider the average player, They have a profession or two that may or may not be current and possibly enough to buy their mount. More than once I have seen people begging in guild chat for help getting their mount and have grouped with players above 45 that still haven't got a mount. Meanwhile, I have more gold than I know what to do with. Subtracting a mount, training, skilling up a profession, and new gear. I'm usually still sitting on at least a hundred gold and usually much more. And hey, if I want to just keep gathering that's just more money in the bank. Most people think they are doing themselves a huge favor by leveling their craft on their way to 70. I just smile when they say this.

Be Smart About What You Buy
Another thing I want to add is to make sure you are getting a good deal on what you buy in the auction house. If it costs 8 gold and isn't a major upgrade, don't spend the money. You don't need to update your gear every level. Wait until a piece is about 5 levels below you before you change it out, unless you find a bargain. The less you spend, the more you have. If you come across a blue item that isn't bind on pickup, I recommend you sell it rather than equip it. The blue item will normally sell for enough to buy several green items at least and you can turn what would be an upgrade to 1 piece of equipment into an upgrade to several pieces of equipment. Once you have a couple hundred gold tucked away it won't matter as much if you decide to just go ahead and equip it, but early on selling it will be extremely beneficial.

The Auction House Game
The auction house is a great resource for making money, if you're willing to do a little work. You can search the auction house for underpriced items and buy them and sell them for more. There is an addon called auctioneer that scans the AH and over time will help you pick out underpriced items. I do this manually. I set the AH to only show me rare items or better. Then I have it sort it by the lowest current bid. I usually check out everything that is under 30g. I can now just pick out which ones are worthwhile but at first I had to look everything up. If you have any question about the value of an item look it up on either wow.allakhazam.com or www.wowhead.com. They post the average price of items and I find them a useful resource for both knowing what I should be expecting to pay for an item and knowing what is a good price to sell the item for. Lots of people check these sites too. If I notice a blue axe for 8g then you check wowhead and it says it's worth 20. I buy it, then sell it for 18 or so. I do this so that if someone were to check on it and see it's worth 20g they will think "Hey, that's a little cheaper than it should be." and they are more likely to buy it. I find if I list it exactly the same or slightly higher it takes more attempts to sell it. In my opinion, it's better to get it sold and have the money even if it is for slightly less.

General Tips
Find a vender that sells shirts. I like to buy [Common Gray Shirts] and sell them in the auction house. I buy them from the vendor for 4 silver and I stick them up on the auction house for 50 silver. I found they sell really well. The dark color looks good on rogues and I see a lot of them wearing it. Also, tailors don't make gray shirts so there isn't going to be a million of them up so you won't have much competition. People just don't realize they can buy them a lot cheaper from a vendor. I usually put 1 or 2 per day up and they almost always sell. After I have a good bit of savings in the bank I usually stop doing this but it's more from laziness than anything else. In Orgrimmar and Stormwind the vender that sells these is just a stone's throw away from the auction house.

The meat that drops from low level animals is more valuable than most people realize. Things like stringy wolf meat only sell to vender for a few copper but I don't usually have a problem getting 50 silver out of a stack of 20 meat. The meat is handy for hunters that are too lazy to find meat for their pets or people that want to raise their cooking profession quickly. And like I mentioned before high level players normally find it a lot faster and easier to buy their way through professions.

Limited Inventory Items are also good. I don't go out of my way to find these but when I see them I almost always buy them. These are usually recipes but can be other things. These are things that have a small number in the corner that indicates how many a vendor has. This means that if they just have one and you buy it, no one else can get it for a while. So you can buy a recipe for 10s off a vendor, put in the auction house for a gold and probably sell it real easy. I usually check wowhead or allakhazam before buying it just to be sure. There are a few that aren't worth the time but a majority of the time you'll be fine to just grab it and list it.

In Conclusion
I really hope this helps. I use these strategies every time I decide to make an alt and have tested it out on a few different servers (alliance and horde) to be sure it's not just the economy on one server. I feel if you implement these strategies into your play, you will easily be able to get established in the early levels and have more than enough money to buy your 40 mount and beyond. There may be better ways to make money as a high level character but I truely feel you can't go wrong using this as you level up.