To make real gold, you are best having characters in both camps. There is no need to cross market trade, just make money in both markets – you’d be daft not to ! There will be times when the opportunity arises to transfer items or gold between factions, but taking advantage of two ripe markets separately will do for now.

Ah, I see, someone told you you could make 1000′s of gold with a level 10 did they ?
Well, a level 10 auction house runner can be pretty useful (more on that later)

You’ve read about someone trading up the copper they made from selling their level one clothes and armour (all 16 copper pieces) and turning into 1000g inside 24 playing hours?

The caveat here is “playing hours”. It is just about possible. If you log on 4 times a day for ten minutes trading for about a month.

You have to be very lucky – a mistake early on and you’ve failed.

You need to know the market very well. – a few Auctioneer readings is not enough.

• Markets have variations that are wheels within wheels.
• Evening is busier than morning, Weekends are busier than weekdays
• Summer holidays are very poor trading times, Autumn (fall) Holidays are excellent
• Winter is busier than summer
• Just after an expansion is busier than the eight or so months before it lands.
• Patch day is busy in the evening.

Add all these up and the result is a market that, to the untrained eye pops and weaves all over the place.

Not just a litle bit different, but hugely so.

As mentioned earlier, levelling helps. It’s a simple fact that higher level character has access to better skills, profession levels and can survive in the harder areas where higher value materials and reagents can be harvested.

But if you want to pay Blizzard good money to have your first character sitting outside the auction house for months on end, then go ahead. Be my guest.

If you have an ALT doing this, then that’s a different matter altogether. You’ll soon find a modest amount of levelling with another character will out-earn your “broker” alt by a factor of “many” to one.

When you have plenty of gold. then speculating becomes a worthwhile activity, and yes, using a low level character to process your sales and speculate is a great idea.

Doing it with your first is not recommended.

One thing you “could” do, is get an alt to a neutral auction house for later. It’s always handy to do this. But we’ll come on to that later. For now, it’s an interesting little trip for a level one. And yes, a level one from either faction can do it.

I can tell some of you doubt this, so here’s the videos to finish this post.

First the easy one – Horde Level 1 to Booty Bay…

Now for a much more convoluted route.

Alliance Level 1 to Booty Bay