Tips for Jewelcrafting Business

Ok guys I just felt like writing a quick guide and quick tips on why I think Jewelcrafting is the best profession ever and little tips on how to maximise your profits as well as making extra gold from tips.

DISCLAIMER: Not a get rich quick and mega gold guide.. rather than how to get extra few hundred/thousands gold while afk-ing in your capital city (Orgrimmar). Browsing AH, etc. In short, You chill out and make extra gold while waiting for raid, or wintergrasp or whatever....

If you wanna make more gold. simply just double or triple my effort. Personally I raid, pvp, and do other random stuff so yes I could make way more, but I play this game for other stuff than making gold 24/7

NOTE: This will vary from server to server, depending on your economy and population. It worked on mine, so if your server sucks,... *shrug* move server?

So here we go.

Why Jewelcrafting?

Granted it's pretty expensive to level up..You would spend 2-3k gold on low level mats (yes you can even make money selling overpriced mats for others who are trying to level up JC) but here's the best part.

WORST CASE SCENARIO, you will get your gold back no matter how much you spent by selling dragon eyes that you get from JC daily.

So for example.. lets say I spent 3k gold leveling my JC.. Dragon eyes sells for 85 gold each, If I do my JC daily it only takes 35 days go get your gold back. (Personally I spent 2.4k)

I don't think anybody nowdays are dead poor that they sell all their JC tokens into dragon eyes. What I'm saying is that for those who are really really poor can get their money back, while those who have the gold to spare can go straight to buying JC recipes.

In my opinion I have leveled Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Enchanting and none come close that any of these professions actually provided me any daily gold income... or what I call a gold sink. Unless you're a gatherer (skinning, mining, herbing) but I can't be stuffed running around flying picking up things.

Last, the sole reason why this market will never ever go out of business is simply because.... Every single gear you can find now has sockets to fill!

Thanks to blizzard easy mode Emblem of Triumph + Dungeon Tool, Pro's, newbs, alts now gear up quicker than ever and most of them have dual specs too! making sure that Jewelcrafting business only gets better and better. (on the other hand it's crap for enchanters :P)

JC Recipes

Ok, JC recipes cost gold... WHAT?!? But dude they cost free! all you gotta do is do JC daily for few days and you can pick any recipe from the JC trainer at Dalaran!

No, it's called opportunity cost, feel free to google and find out what it means. But basically lets say you did a 4 days of JC daily and end up with 4 JC tokens that can potentially be traded for Dragon Eyes and be sold, that's how much your recipe cost 85gold x 4 = 340gold for a recipe. So I am here to discuss what recipes you should get because if you get a recipe that really doesn't sell... you just cost yourself 340g (for example)

(a)The best way for any business to be successful and easy, is to determine how large your market is.

Quick Quiz: Let's say you're a Hunter with JC tokens to spend.. should you get... +20 STR cut, +20 SpellPower cut or +40Attack Power cut?

Here's how to determine your market.

+40 Attack Power... Hmm the only class that would want attack power gems are Enhancement Shamans and Mutilate Rogues so you wanna give this recipe 2 Points

+20 Spell Power.. Mages, Warlocks, Shamans, Priests, Druids wow quite a big market. give this recipe 5 points.

+20 Strength. Ret Paladins, Warriors, DKs. Don't be put off by only 3 classes that only want the cut. Do you have any idea the amount of newbie players that are running around playing easy mode class? This recipe gets 10 points easy just because, simply there are so many players would be wanting this gem!

Ok so real quickly I will run down which cuts you should get that has an established market already. Note that this information is very common just simply inspecting all the pro players, armory top players, looking at what majority of the people are socketing.

Red Gems

+20 Str - DKs, Ret Pallys, Warriors
+20 SpellPwr - Druids,Shamans,Mages,Warlocks,Priests
+20 Agility - Rogues, Hunters

Yellow Gems

+20 Int - Holy Paladins
+20 Haste - Shamans

Blue Gems

+30 Stamina - Tanks (druid,warriors,dk,paladins)

Purple Gems

+10 Spell Power +10 Spirit - Warlocks
+10 Parry + 15 Stamina - Tanks (except druid)
+10 Dodge + 15 stamina - Tanks

Green Gems (these gems suck)

+10 Defense +15 Stamina - Tanks

Orange Gems

+10 Str +10 Crit - DKs, Ret Pallys, Warriors
+10 Agi + 10 Crit - Hunters, Rogues
+12 Spell Power + 10 Haste - Boomkins, Mages, Warlocks, Ele shamans
+20 Attack Power + 10 Haste - Rogues, Enhance Shamans

Note: these are quick guide lines on which gems have what potential market. If you wanna argue regarding specs, talents, gem choice, I am not here for that, I am here to give a quick rundown which gems to get for a new JC business.

Cutting gems for tips

Ok I see this often, once people got 5 or more cuts, they decided that they have a "shop" and start spamming trade on linking their [Jewelcrafting] with macros such as

Trade Channel : Looking for work [Jewelcrafting] PST for the best cuts, most awesome service, friendly paladin who will tank for your heroics! 10g Per epic cut, 5g for blues.

Slightly exagerated but you get the point. Yes it's ok to make cute little macros to spam trade every 1-2 minutes.

But of course you notice there are simply spontaneous buyer yelling in trade channel : "LF JC " <- this is a red hot buyer ready to spend!

Do NOT link them your [Jewelcrafting] unless they asked to.. why? Because people are simply lazy or don't have a clue how to navigate through it. You will not get the sale, simply it's really annoying.

What you do is pst them "What cut you need?" because this way they can be very specific and easy to reply. They will type something along the lines of.... "can you cut +30 stamina?" if you have the cut the next step is to meet up.. "Yea, come top of Org bank" or meet me outside AH, or somewhere along those lines. Try this. you will get many more cuts and simply get more business (out play your competitors too)

Cutting gems for profits

Getting 10-15g per cut is a nice gold while I afk around in orgrimar browsing AH or chatting with friends/guildies. But there are better ways to maximise your profit by listing epic gems at Auction House.

Quick math (from my server)

Trade Channel: "WTS Cardinal Ruby 150g.. i got 6 pst.." <- Buy it

Now because I afk around in org I can quickly check that a recipe that I got example.. bold Cardinal rubies are selling for 185g

thats 35g profit per ruby! and the profit is from multipliers effect.
35gold x 6 = 210g

Buy the ruby, cut it and sell im in AH.

Golden rule while doing this:
1. List near or during peak hours when most players are online, when raiders finish their raids. More players online = more buyers
2. Undercut your competitors by 1gold to get the sale.
3. Only list maximum of 3 at a time. You will list the other 3 when your 3 have sold out. You don;'t want to flood the market or price will rapidly go down. Don't worry, epic gems always sells for themself!
4. Aim for 20g+ profit for gems minimum and diversify.. I list 2-3 gems of each color/cut and by the time I finish my raids. usually I would get 20g-30g profit x 3 gems x 7 types that I cut = 630gold of sales while I was out raiding. Passive sales ftw. All of you are capable of doing much more than I did of course.

Alchemy + Jewelcrafting = Easy gold

Making pots and flask sucks, simply because I think they nerf the procs (I used to do it in BC) and what you really wanna get is Transmute Mastery as Alchemist.

Personally I have 2 alts transmuting epic gems for me everyday, and if you're lucky, you can get really good procs of 2 or 3 epic gems every now and then.

Quick math.

I buy scarlet ruby (40g) + eternal fire (30g) cost = 70gold
I transmute it to Cardinal ruby, cut as delicate (+20agility) sells in AH for 185g

185gold - 70gold cost = 115gold profit.

Lets go for Dreadstones. Eternal Shadow(10gold) + Twilight Opal (12gold) dirt cheap on my server, because these eternal and gems are crap anyway. = 22gold cost
Transmute into dreadstone cut into +10dodge+15stamina (common tanking gem) sells in AH for 150gold

150gold - 22gold = 128gold profit

You can really have fun with this and find which transmute will net you the most gold..
If you're really dedicated I have a friend whos got like 5 alchemists on his alts transmuting everyday (and hoping for many procs!). So yeah it's pretty good.

Where to get more epic gems?

a. Alchemy from transmutes

b. Emblems. Trade your emblem of triumphs -> conquest -> valor -> conquest. tip: Shift + Click to trade large amount of emblems. try to go for purple or orange cause its cheaper (only 10) compared to red or yellow (20 emblems)

c. 10.000 honor = epic gems from pvp vendor in org. Try to buy Red

d. Trade in those useless stone keeper shards and WG marks (once you get all you want from the vendor: mammoth mount, heirlooms, etc) for honor.

e. Make a macro to spam trade channel. "Buying all Cardinal Ruby 150g, Dreadstones 110g, King's Ambers 130g Buying all COD or PST" make sure you get nice health profits to cut these gems.

Good luck & Have fun!