Blacksmithing Endeavors

This expansion I'm trying to use all of my professions, like I should've been doing all along.  I'm loving the new addition of random blue quality ilvl 415 gear made from blacksmithing, tailoring, and leatherworking.  Right now I'm focused on the blacksmithing view, as it seems to be the most profitable of the three on my server.

For the last two expansions I've used blacksmithing for making and selling belt buckles only.  While this was a small and quick supplement to my income, it's just not enough for me anymore.  On the weekends I can buy up a ton of ghost iron bars for around 70 gold per stack, and forge them into gear.  I make an even amount gear for each equipment slot, then I arrange them by their slot and random enchantment.  I'm slowly learning what enchantments sell, and which ones don't.  For the ones that don't, I will eventually end up disenchanting them. For the ones that do sell well, after a month of doing this I will post a list of what I find to be the most popular random enchantments for plate gear.

An example of green quality sales

Selling these items is a little tricky and I use TSM (trade skill master) to handle selling the greens with the ignore enchantment option selected.  I don't mind taking a loss on selling the greens as I make up for that loss and then some with the sales of the blues.  Sometimes, even the greens sell for a small profit! When posting the green quality gear, I make sure that I'm only posting one of each enchantment for each equipment slot.  For example; I only post one ghost-forged guantlets of the hero, and one ghost-forged guantlets of the avatar and so forth.  I leave the duplicates in my bank. 

An example of blue quality sales

 I manually post the blues in order to ensure that my auctions remain competitive with the other auctions that have similar level requirements and enchantments.

In my years of experience, I have noticed that leveling gear sells much better later in the week and into the weekends than it does on last minute Mondays and gear up Tuesdays. 

 

Additional sales data

These blue belts seem to be the best sellers so far.  I've sold all of them for over 400 gold each!  At the cost of only 7 bars or about 49 gold, I'm making well over 800% profit per belt! We'll see how my second round of crafting and posting goes, but thus far, I'm liking the profits that I'm seeing.  Stay tuned for an in depth analysis at the end of this month!