Making gold on a low pop server

This is not a guide on how to make gold on a low pop server. There are plenty of other blogs out there, as well as forums and guides, that will help you with this endeavor.

I find myself mistified, somewhat disallusioned, that my auctions on my new, low pop server have ended without sales. srsly, when i post gem sales on my medium pop server, i usually sell at least half of them during prime time, then the other half gets relisted (due to undercutters) before going to bed to sell to the overnight market, and i end up with a good amount of gold (even with late night undercutters, or early morning undercutters jumping in). but in my low pop server, i find that there is very little demand for gems, and perhaps that is the reason for the low prices of some of these gems.

lets take an example. titanium ore. this goes for about 275-300 gold a stack on my medium pop server. in my low pop server, they are at 200-250 gold. that's not bad considering gem prices are lower to match supply prices. Basically, the price for ore is set by the demand for gems primarily, and to a lesser degree, metal bars for crafting engineering and bs products.

Since demand on my low pop server is low, prices are low-"er". i find myself in competition with several other gem cutters, which makes supply, or at least, availabily, high. low demand and high supply equals low sales. So what will sell well in a low pop environment? There have been some sales, however. I will not lie. some gems do sell. of the initial, say, 500g i've spent on saronite ore, i made about 500g in return. about 300-350g was on cut gems, and the rest were on selling raw chalcedonys, bloodstones, sun crystals, etc. i dont have accurate figures.

One thing i do notice is that low level crafting mats do sell well. especially for those leveling professions. also, i do see leveling byproducts on the market often. if you go to any of the resource sites with leveling guides, and just check out, say, jewelcrafting or blacksmithing, or leatherworking or whatnot, just make a list of some of the items they suggest you make in order to level your profession. now, go to the AH and search for it. Take, for instance, Pendant of the Agate Shield. Im not going to link it. you can wowhead/alak/thobott it yourself. but when i searched it the other night, i saw 20. yes, someone made 20 to level up JC. propbably for 15 skill points. then moved on. there's a bunch of these out there. people are just tossing these up for half the price of mats, just to get rid of it. i think i'll level a new character and learn enchanting. this may be a prime server to level enchanting. but then again, i havent researched this with medium pop or high pop servers either. so i dont know. i just see the opportunity is there.

What did sell for me? Copper at 15g/stack. Tin at 20g/stack, Iron at 20g/stack. Mithril, depending on time of the week (there's some idiot with 100 million stacks of it posting on certain days) it can go for as low as 30g/stack to as high as 45g/stack. Thorium is a mystery to me. It went for 13g/st on one day (which i should have snatched 20 stacks up) and 35g/st another day. i guess not too many people got the memo that thorium grows like weeds in un-goro crater. but this leads me to think that if someone, or maybe two or three people, are leveling mining at the same time, and happen to be selling their freshly-gathered thorium ores, that the market will drop really fast. there is, after all, less people leveling BS, JC or Eng. so the ores will stay in the AH just a tad longer, long enough for the other guy, who's been collecting thorium in EPL, to drop his cache in the AH at a lower price.

But in a low pop server, what's to do at end levels? for a few, they'd level alts. what attracts new players? a server that's low in population or high? for many people, a low pop server will be less overwhelming and offer more chances to cross paths with people they've met. so with this ASSUMPTION in mind, i think that the most money will be made in the leveling area of progression, and not the end game.

I say this only with the experince of a miner. for cloth, leather, or even fish, it may not apply. but i've found that ore prices, per stack, are ranked as follows:
Titanium
Adamantite/Khorium
Mithril
Cobalt/Fel Iron/Thorium (apart from that strange night where they were going for cheap)
Tin/Iron
Copper/Saronite
Eternium
Dark Iron
Lesser Bloodstone (lol)

So, a low level beginner can pick up mining and earn as much gold as a 77 running around through StormPeaks mining. imagine that. on my server Adamantite is going for 40-50g. i've made about 2k gold just mining in nagrand while waiting for queues (yes, my dk is q-ing as dps) and earning maghar rep. i have a talbuk. =] what's sad is that when i was ready to hit northrend, i stayed in nagrand. but i really didnt care. i just wanted to mine on my slowflyer and finish up maghar rep. so that's what i did until level 70. By the time i was ready (last friday), i went and bought most of the mats needed to level JC. i also had to run around and mine mithril since no one was selling mithril on that day (odd how that one guy who was selling a million stacks did not relist that day, but decidedly undercut me a few days prior). also, i had about 5 stacks of adamantite that i had in my bags, so i bought another 5 stacks and prospected most. i did have to make some bars, turn the dust into mercurial, and make a few rings and chains. I started that day with a little over 3k gold. i ended up with about 1.5k gold. it wasnt that hard to level JC. there are some overpriced items, like moss agate, and small lustrous pearls, but other than that, the prices for mats were decent.

What i did find out:
- Gems from prospected thorium can make a profit, if you buy thorium at a good price. Blue sapphires, star rubies and the yellow one (i forget the name, i'll edit it later) are worthless. but huge emeralds, large opals, and something else, i forget. i'll look it up, but those gems are worth 10g-15g each. so depending on what i am prospecting, i can actually make some gold on my investment.
- gems from outland are, for the most part, worthless, though you might be able to sell your uncut leftovers to those who will not be prospecting ore. but i do like to prospect adamantite for the the dust. the cut gems do not sell well. try to sell the uncut golden dreanites for more tho, as those are the only ones i can think of that sell well. they are pricey due to its demand to make normal flying carpets.
- skip the outland blue gem cuts (350-375). they're useless. skip straight to northred green cuts at 350.
- be friendly with lower city. there's one green cut from the quartermaster that will get you to 350.

that's all i can think of right now. in any case, JC didnt cost me as much as i thought, tho i really stopped at 420 to pick up the dailies and the rare cuts from dalaran. the rest will come in time as i gain more recipes. i still have 8 more levels to... level. so im not even in a hurry to get to 450. those skill levels will come in time.

overall, JC is making me some gold at my level, and has left me with nothing to do between instance queues but quest. i dont really run around mining and killing ogres for their beads any more. yay for that. onwards to gaining rep! Kaluakk for the chest piece and design. then off to either the wolvars or oracles. then.... heroics design drops and faction rep bought designs. i'll have most of the cuts soon enough.