Making Gold With Meat

Knowing a market makes it much easier to know what will sell and what won't. How well you understand the demand for the materials or gear can also allow you to generate more gold from your sales.

For example, from my experience with leveling several alts, one skill that never gets any lovin' until I've maxed out my others is Cooking. By the time I remember the first thought is "Ugh, I don't feel like going out and killing a whole bunch of boars and low level Murlocs just to get the meats."

Gathering the ingredients is a pain.

The same pain is felt if you're power leveling an alt. Or if you are a battleground wonk that needs something to do while you are waiting in the queue. And when you are leveling quickly you don't want to go looking beyond your local trainer for recipes.

So what do you do if you don't feel like leaving the cozy fires of Ironforge to get what you need? Head to the Auction House (AH), of course!

Now a savvy flipper will know what ingredients are needed for the recipes that trainers provide. These are the ones for cooking, compliments of Thottbot. There's not a whole bunch of recipes to choose from...and that generates demand.

Make a note of the meats needed for each and search the AH for these. These items usually don't popup as a "good buy" the way I have Auctioneer configured because the prices tend to be low. But I've found that I can usually get anywhere from 17s -24s a piece (actually, I can get more but I've scaled that back a bit - it was a bit excessive). Markets will vary, but I'm guessing that you'll be able to pick these meats up for about 3s each if you watch for it.

When you buy, if there is a LOT of it on the market, don't buy it all and then rake everyone over the coals. Get a couple stacks and leave the rest. I see nothing wrong with getting a couple stacks and pricing them at 24s a piece while there are lower priced alternatives. What will happen is the others will get snatched up and yours will be out there as the only ones left. If you have 20 of these out there (Clam Meat is one I often sell), you can pull in somewhere between 4-5g. Woop!

Now don't think others won't see this and realize they can fetch a higher price from all that meet the Murlocs are dropping. It's common for prices to go up to get closer to what you are charging (you are setting the ceiling) and prices for meats may become less of a bargain for a little while, but they drop quite often.

This is a VERY good strategy to have in your bag of tricks. Do this right and you should be able to rake in 10g - 20g extra a week with minimal investment.