Guide - World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Guide to Making Money on the Auction House at Low Level

So you finally went out about bought yourself World of Warcraft with the expansion pack Burning Crusade. Now comes the fun part. As you are leveling up your character and being introduced to the new areas, around level 8-10 you will come across the major city for the region you created your character in. Now that you have access to your bank, the auction house, and the profession trainers in your city, I will give some tips to making some serious money, even though you don't have the serious levels yet.

Step 1 - Familiarize yourself with the auction house search feature. You can type in keywords and search or you can "shift+left click" an item in your inventory while on the AH (Auction House) search screen. It will put the exact name of the item into the search field so you only have to select "search". The results will be displayed based on how you select the tabs, you can click the columns so the hits are shown from shortest to longest, then from lowest to highest price. Sometimes if you are not sure the full name of the item, you can type in a partial word. You can also shift+left click an item in the find window to have it's name entered in the search field.

Example - You want to search for "Silk" but forgot exactly what to look for, you just remember "Silk". Enter in "Silk" in the search field. You will see many items with the word "Silk". Ah, there it is, Silk Cloth. You can "shift+left click" on the find for Silk Cloth, then search again to refine your search. Bingo, now you will only see "Silk Cloth" listed.

Step 2 - Look for what is selling and at what prices. The starting areas have large quantities of the following items that are easily accessible by the low level characters:

Minerals = Copper and Tin Ore
Herbs = Peacebloom, Silverleaf, Earthroot
Cloth = Linen Cloth, Wool Cloth

As you advance to the next higher up area, the minerals and herbs available advance to higher levels:

Minerals = Iron and Mithril Ore
Herbs = Briathorn, Mageroyal
Cloth = Silk Cloth, Mageweave Cloth

So now that you see what is selling, you will see that there is a lot of potential to make gold in ore and herbs. The prices vary from server to server, but initially, I would recommend to "Double Gather" at least until you are sure exactly what you want your long term profession to be. This means learning both primary gathering professions of HERBALISM and MINING as soon as you can. You can AH your full stacks of Linen cloth that you saved (DO NOT VENDOR THESE, STARTING TAILORS WILL PAY FOR IT). That should give you enough that you can purchase the two primary professions.

Step 3 - Buying Low, Gathering, and Selling/ReSelling High. Just like the real stock market, you can buy items when they are low, and sell them at your target price. You can enter in your own materials you gathered yourself to help set your price when things are too expensive to buy and resell for profit. By "Double Gathering" on my character when I started, I had more than enough gold to fund my mount when I was level 40, epic mount at 60, and then flying mount and epic flying mount the day I turned 70. I have not decided what my long term professions are as I enjoy being able to harvest both.