It calculates cost of materials based on either Auction House or Vendor prices (or can pick the best of the two).  It adds up the cost of all the materials and then compares it to the Auction House sale value of the crafted item.  It flags items that can be crafted and sold for a profit.

Obviously this requires that you also have an auction house mod that captures average prices.  It can use the AH prices from Auctioneer, AuctionLite, AuctionMaster or Auctionator.  As long as you have one of those, it can correctly identify profitable recipes.

You can download the addon at curse.com: Lil Sparky’s Workshop

“Monopolizing the epic tailoring enchants is a great way to make money.

On my server, wednesday and sunday are the prime raid days. My own guild doesn’t raid on wednesday and on sunday we’re usually out of content by 10pm, so I’ve made it a habit of popping into the AH around 22:30 to buy out all the [Brilliant Spellthread] and [Sapphire Spellthread] and relist them with 500 gold margins.

When the raids end, people will be looking for new leg enchants and pay premium prices for them. I make 1500-2000 gold each time and those that don’t sell, I put back up at the regular prices or just use them myself.

Having made crazy amounts of gold with cutting [Runed Scarlet Ruby] a few weeks ago when I was one of two tailors with the cut on the server, I tried the same trick with them, but it didn’t work because it’s too easy for a random JC to come in, buyout a few raw gems and undercut me by a good margin and still make sweet profit.

My theory is that there is very few tailors left nowadays and of those, not everyone can make the spellthreads. Those that can, are likely in raids and are using any mats they have available to supply guildies with threads rather than trying to make gold through the AH.”

In theory, I like the concept of timing the sale for the end of a raid when raiders will want to buff up their new gear, and to monopolize some item that there are limited quantities of (and limited producers of).  This strategy obviously requires a good deal of gold to start with, but has great potential.

You can find the details about the addons here on the site, but here’s exactly what I do:

• I have installed Routes addon from Curse.com.
• I have installed Gatherer and Gathermate and Cartographer Mining and Herbalism addons.
• (UPDATE: use Gathermate_data addon as well to add the spawnpoints to your mods)
• I am level 80 and have an epic flyer.  (You can do it with a non-epic flyer, but might be a tad slower, obviously.)
• I have Mining and Herbalism maxed out.
• I go to Icecrown and use the Routes addon to create a route in Icecrown.  I add all the herbalism and mining waypoints from all of the addons that it can use (Gatherer, Gathermate, Cartographer).
• I ‘cluster’ the waypoints with the default setting of 60 yards.  That creates fewer waypoints for the route.  It will fly close enough to a mineral or herb spawn point without making me travel exactly from point to point.
• I use the Extra Optimization option from the Routes addon.  This makes the route as short as possible.
• I then simply fly around the route.  I’ll skip nodes that are in really dangerous spots, like the one next to the Elites or the cluster of evil paladins…it’s too much work to kill them just for some ore.
• Note:  I have both Herbalism and Mining.  So I use a simple ‘castsequence’ macro that’s bound to my Z key that toggles Find Minerals and Find Herbs back and forth.
• Note 2: I have a route that includes both herbs and ore which is long, and I can toggle back and forth.  I also have a route that is only for ore, and I stick with mining only for that one.  BOTH have produced 1000g per hour.

To calculate how much I’m making, I use the Auctioneer addon, with all the details in the tooltips added.  I use Appraiser when I’m at the auction house (that’s a tab available when you have Auctioneer installed).  I have customized my minimum settings so that I will almost always undercut the competition.  I don’t care.  I’m all about volume.  I’m not trying to squeeze every last copper out of each transaction.  That’s too much like work.  I’m in, I post my auctions, I’m out.  Movin’ on.  Yah…I’m sure some folks hate me for undercutting them all the time.  They’ll deal.  The market goes up and down, and somebody is happy because they were able to buy cheap goods.  I’m the WalMart of the Auction House…small business hate me, but the customers love me.  (And if crafters were smart they would contact me and work a deal where I provide for them.)

Anyway, when I’m at the Auction House, I open Appraiser, and just hit ‘Refresh’ on each item I’m about to post so it scans just that item.   No more long Auction House full-scans.  Just one item name at a time.  I use the Histograph as the calculation for the price, and the ‘Beat Competition’ box (or whatever it’s called) checked.  That makes me, almost always, the lowest priced items out there.

EVEN WITH UNDERCUTTING EVERYONE I AM MAKING 1000G PER HOUR.

It seems that, regardless of whether I’m just getting Ore, or both Herbs and Ore, the value of what I pull is pretty consistent.  I’ve noticed that no matter how many times I repeat the circuit, no matter what time of day, etc., I am getting a consistent average of Titanium ore, blue uncut gems, Frost Lotus, Crystallized Life and Fire, etc.

The exact way I calculate it is to empty my bags, go to Icecrown and trigger a self-buff that lasts 30 minutes.  Then I fly the route until the buff expires.  Then I mouse over each stack or item that I’ve gathered and look at the Undercut price in the tooltip, and add it up.  It’s always been a little over 500g after 30 minutes.  And it’s repeatable…I’ve done so many times to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.

If I wanted to make it even faster, I’d take advantage of the ‘Taboo’ feature of Routes, which blocks off certain areas.  This would be nice to avoid those sections where the Elites make it too tough to get to the nodes.  But I’m too lazy and am making too much gold just flying around as it is.

I usually just log on and chat with guildies while flying around waiting for an opening in a dungeon run or battleground.  There’s not much left for me to buy in the game, so I don’t farm ‘hard’…mostly I just do it for fun to see how much I can make, and to be able to splurge if I want to power-level a different profession on one of my other toons.

I hope this helps!

UPDATE:  I thought that after a few weeks the prices on everything would steadily decline, and that it wouldn’t truly be 1000 gph any more.  Well, I just finished a test run in Icecrown again, to compare to Sholazar Basin Mining.  I did exactly a 30-minute route around Icecrown, starting with empty bags, and went straight to the AH afterwards.  I refreshed all of my AH data so that I would be undercutting everyone…and posted 638 GOLD worth of auctions!!!  That is over 1200 gold per hour!  So this process still works.  (By the way, my mining route around Sholazar only netted me about 415 gold in 30 minutes, or just over 800 gold per hour.  I’m sticking with Icecrown, tyvm!)

If you are sitting at a Neutral Auction House with Bottom Scanner running, you will see the item as soon as it’s listed and buy it at the discount right away.

Here are some thoughts about this tactic:

1. You have to be paying attention to your toon. Any time you are online doing the same action for long periods of time, a GM might contact you to see if you respond. Cheaters that use ‘bots’ (programs that make their toon act), get caught like this and have their accounts banned. So just make sure that even though you’re watching a movie listening for BottomScanner to go ‘ding’, you keep an eye on your chat log from time to time.

2. You may want to have an alt toon do this for you, considering that you will become HATED by whomever was trying to move that item. True, they took the risk by putting it up on the Auction House so cheaply, but with some of the immature players out there, logic will not prevail. If you sniped something with your main toon, you may be subject to some griefing by the player who lost their item.

3. It’s not illegal or unethical. You’re not violating any rules of the game. True, it’s not very NICE to take advantage of someone like this, but they took the risk by putting it up on the Neutral AH.

Anyway, it’s not something I would do all the time, but if you find yourself in a situation where you can’t really play your toon but you can pay attention to it enough to listen for the ‘ding’ and avoid being suspected of botting, you could find some really good deals.

* I wake up, log on, and I’m always standing by an auctioneer when I log off, so I talk to the auctioneer, and run my Scan. I uncheck Containers, since I neither buy nor sell. I might be missing some deals, but I have found it useless to scan them.
* I take a shower.
* I run back downstairs to watch the scan finish up.
* As soon as it’s done, I go to the Search tab that Auctioneer has added to the interface.
* I have 4 ‘Saved Searches’:
1. Buyouts where the item is underlisted by 80% or more and I can make at least 1g profit
2. Buyouts where the item is underlisted by 50% or more and I can make at least 2g50s profit
3. Bids (short and medium) where the item is underlisted by 75% or more with 1g profit
4. Bids (short and medium) where the item is underlisted by 50% or more with 2g50s profit
* Those just happen to be my favorites; you can create your own.
* I buyout underlisted items first, then I place my bids. Remember that some people might outbid you. Oh well. There will be other auctions.
* I run to the mailbox to pick up the items I bought out.
* I bring them back and post them. If it was a large stack, depending on how the item is used, I split it when I list it.
* Done.

Don’t rely on the recommended prices unless you see the item listed more than about 50 times. Over 100 is better.

Immediately after your scan is complete, use the search functions. The search functions only apply to the last scan, and if you wait, the actual AH auctions will change.

Scan at different times in the day for truly accurate prices, unless you will only ever be listing items at the same time every day. Prices change throughout the day with the population of the server.

ONLY scan at your faction’s auction house. The neutral AH contains completely different prices, and at the time of this printing, your data can become skewed. Not to mention that profit margins at the neutral AH is less because of the obscene cuts they take.

Provides market prices — so you know how much to list your items for, or what you should pay for an item you want to buy.

Search functionality — automatically provides info on ‘good deals’. Buyout or bid, and resell at a profit!

Knowing what things are worth just by mousing over the item helps you make good decisions. You can pick the best quest reward knowing what it vendors for, or if you have to drop something from your pack, you can find the least-valuable.

Speedy listing – allows you to list stacks quickly with one click • Recommended pricing – configurable settings which help you choose prices automatically.

Keep the math simple

If you’re selling things in stacks bigger than one, make your pricing easily divisible into a nice round number. A stack of 17 items for 2g, 31s makes it difficult to figure out unit price in their head (13s 58c each). Instead, break the stack into 10, 5, and 2, listing it for 20s each (2g, 1g, and 40s). Sometimes you can make MORE this way just because it’s easier to calculate than other listings out there.

Miscellaneous Auctioning Tips:

* ALWAYS put a Buyout Price. Period. Some people bid, but most people who come to the AH want their goodies right now!
* Always list an item for 24hours. The price difference for listing is negligible, and you get it back anyway if it sells. But keep in mind that many people from different time zones play on your server. Don’t restrict your audience by using a short listing.
* Consider a monopoly. If when you go to list the items, there’s only a handful of the same type of item out there, think about buying out all your competition and setting a higher price. People who want an item for their profession, or quest, or whatever, usually want it right then and there, and will pay whatever (within reason) for it, especially if it’s the only one available.
* Don’t list if competition is high. I sell Essence of Water for over 15g each. If I go to list one and there’s a bunch of EoWs for 9g, and a handful for 10g, I’ll wait and list it later, when there’s only about 5 EoWs total. Then I’ll list it for 15g, even if there’s a 9 or 10g out there, because they’ll get bought out and someone will be stuck with mine.
* Remember….prices in Auctioneer are for prices LISTED. If an item is listed at 1000g, over and over again, and it doesn’t sell, you might see the average price for it as 1000g. That doesn’t mean that it’s worth it. Use common sense…a level 19 item will not sell for 30g…level 19s usually don’t HAVE 30g, ever. (unless they read this guide!)
* BE CAREFUL when searching for good deals. Make sure you have enough data to support the listed prices. Even then, use caution. I have found that certain items tend to be ‘over listed’. For example, my auctioneer data on some patterns or recipes has them worth 30g because of the averages for how they are listed. When I look at the actual auctions, there’s 15 of the same recipe, some for 1g50s, some for 100g. I think some people are either nuts or they are intentionally trying to mess with people using auctioneering.
* Bid on Tuesday mornings, before the server goes down. The clock keeps running on the auctions, but less people are likely to out-bid you!
* When searching for good deals, consider the ‘splitting a big stack’ strategy found in the General section.

Once you install, Auctioneer will add a few things to the window that you get when you speak to an auctioneer NPC. You will now have two extra tabs (“Post Auctions” and “Search”), as well as a Scan button to the Browse tab, and a UIRefresh button to the Post Auction tab. It will also add some lines to your ‘tooltip’, which is the info that pops up when you hover your mouse over a sellable item. If you don’t see those things, check your installation. Norganna, the designer of Auctioneer, has support forums at her site where you download it.

Let me try to give a non-technical explanation of how Auctioneer works. When you run ‘Scan’ on the AH, Auctioneer looks at every auction listed, saving information about the items like Average Buyout price. (That’s the most significant piece of info it stores.) You can check or un-check the different categories in the Browse tab, which determines whether or not Auctioneer will scan the auctions in that category.

For example, when you run the scan, Auctioneer finds 70 auctions for Netherweave Cloth, and the average buyout price is determined to be 15s per cloth (2g50s per 20-stack). Now when you mouse over Netherweave Cloth in your pack, or on the AH, your popup Tooltip will display data like Number of times seen at auction (70), and average buyout price. You can imagine how helpful it is to know what items sell for. You can know what price to list an item for (not too high that it doesn’t sell, but not so low that you’re missing out on some gold). But you can also search for deals…items that are listed too cheap which you can buy and resell for profit.

The Search functionality is your deal-finder. Immediately after a scan, go to the search tab and enter the filters you want to use for your search. For example, you might filter on something where you can make at least 1g profit. You run the search and find 2 stacks of Netherweave for 1g each. You can buy those, relist them for 2g45s (just under the average price), and whammo! You’ve made gold! Without farming, without high-end crafting recipes, and really, without the need to even be a high-level!!!