Thou shalt have a goal

I’ve spoken with quite a few people of all wealth levels in game about their approach to making gold.  While the ways and means differ greatly, there was one factor that almost always separated the wealthy from the rest.  As you might guess from the title of today’s post, it had to do with goals.

Put more succinctly, the folks who had a fair amount of coin had goals that they were striving to achieve.  If I asked them “what are your goals?” they would immediately respond: “trying to get to 100K.” or “want enough to buy a vial”, or whatever their goal was.

The others, when asked the same question, would usually answer with “Nothing really”, or “enough to be comfortable”, or my favorite “lol wut?” (needless to say it was a short conversation with that genius).

I’m not here to pitch “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” or anything like that, but I mention goal-setting because, although it may sound silly and unnecessary, it works.   I’ll use myself as an example.

When I first started playing Cataclysm, I had a smallish bankroll (maybe $50K) and a couple of maxed professions.  My first thought was to gear up my main which I did relentlessly taking myself below $10K in a few short days, the vast majority of which was replaced by better items within a few days or weeks.

I starting thinking about earning more gold.  For most of Wrath, I would earn money through farming and occasional auction house sales.  I sold some enchanting scrolls and daily gem transmutes on a couple of characters.   In other words, I had a very generic goal—”get moer gold”, and my results were enough to get by, but were by no means “boss”.  If gold making were a car, I was a Yaris.

After thinking about it, I set a goal for myself—before I buy anything else, I’m going to have 50K gold in reserve.  Anything I get over that I’m free to spend.   While it may not have been the best goal, it worked.  There were temptations, of course, things that in the past I would have bought without a second thought.  But because I was focused on my goal, I was able to ignore that temptation.

The rest sort of followed routinely.  Once I hit 50K, I wanted to hit 100K.  Then 250K.  Once I hit 250K, I no longer had a goal and so I floated around there for a while.  I bought what I wanted and geared out a couple of characters but pretty much stayed in the same place.  Come the middle of May, I wanted to hit 500K and did so in about 2 weeks.  On the heels of that, I decided to hit 1MM and that took another 4.   Now my goal is to share what I’ve learned with you.

I said all that just to say this—if you feel like you’re stuck in a rut, make sure that you have a goal in mind.  It doesn’t have to be grandiose, but should be something that is SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely).  So “all the gold I’ll ever need” is probably not a good goal, while “enough to purchase a motorcycle” is.

Good luck and happy golding.

THE 10 COMMANDMENTS FOR MAKING GOLD

So you want to make some gold. 

Maybe you’re tired of farming and running dailies and don’t want to have to worry about repair bills.  Or perhaps you crave that new shiny weapon on the Auction House.  Even better, you just want to be “Scrooge McDuck backstroking through your gold vault” rich.

Regardless of what you are looking to achieve, I believe there are 10 simple rules, or commandments, for successfully making gold in the World of Warcraft (or any online game for that matter).  If you follow these rules, I promise you that you will rake in the gold.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to go into a lot more detail as to each of these–in depth discussion, supporting examples, the works.  But for today, I’m just going to “engrave the tablets” as it were.

I.      Thou shalt have a goal
II.     Thou shalt know thy resources
III.    Thou shalt know thy limitations
IV.    Thou shalt know thy market
V.     Thou shalt evaluate your performance
VI.    Thou shalt not forget that time is money
VII.   Thou shalt always consider risk versus reward
VIII.  Thou shalt undercut thoughtfully
IX.    Thou shalt not lose thy patience
X.     Thou shalt remember the market is not a zero sum game

Now the first 5 are on you–I’m not going to do your research for you.  I’m not going to evaluate your performance.  You’re going to have to put in the legwork.  I put them first because they are fundamental to success.

The last 5, however, is where it gets fun.  If the first 5 are Goldmaking 101, the last 5 are a graduate level course in the same.   Over the next few weeks, I’ll give you some thoughts as to the whys behind them as well as giving very specific examples of the theory in action. 

Until next time…

Money money money money. Money.

Hi.

I’m a millionaire.  At least in the uber cool World of Warcraft.

I’ve had a lot of thoughts as to making gold in WoW but didn’t want to start a blog until I reached a milestone proving that you should at least consider what I had to say.  Now that the day has arrived, I feel qualified to share my knowledge.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing some of my strategies so that you too can profit.

Hope to see you at the club!