Four Easy Steps to Set Up a Profitable WoW Business

There are many examples of making gold in World of Warcraft based on real life examples.  The most common are just selling your wares that are profitable or buying low and selling high on the Auction House (aka Flipping).  Then there are some examples that display “out-of-the-box” thinking, like selling crafting kits by stockpiling and then advertising on your server’s forums.

The later idea got me thinking… I have an uncle (IRL) who makes a ton of money running a pawn shop.  People come to him for loans giving him stock as collateral and if they don’t pay he resells it.  People also just sell stuff to him because they are pretty well guaranteed that he’ll buy it.  So, what if someone set up an in-game pawn shop?  Read on past the jump to see how it works.

Now before anyone gets rude and out of hand, let me say that as I started to write this post, I did a Google search and found that there are other people who have thought of this.  So, this may not be an altogether original idea, but I have postulated and penned this idea without plagiarizing from other people. 

Four easy steps.  To start, you need a guild bank that you can manage yourself (a one-man-guild works perfectly here).  You can set up your bank to easily find items using an addon like Sushi Sort.  This way you can easily find items when someone comes to repay their loan.  Second, you need a large bankroll or you’ll have to turn some people away.  Third, you need a database to tell you what to pay or loan people, like The Undermine Journal GE.  And lastly, you need to advertise your service.  You can do this on your server’s forum.

Here’s the breakdown.  You advertise your pawn shop services on your server’s forum (possibly even with some baseline prices so that someone can just e-mail you in-game with a COD option).  You probably want to at least establish in your advertisement how much you are willing to loan or pay for merchandise, for example 50% of The Undermine Journal’s Mean Price for Epic Items, 30% for Rare Items, 20% for Uncommon Items and 10% for Common Items.  I’m just spit-balling with these numbers but you’ll want to pay something that’s fair but where you can resell the items and make a profit.  Keep in mind most pawn shops (IRL) only pay about 10 cents on the dollar (that’s pawn lingo for about 10%).  You’ll also want to advertise your interest rate- 10, 20, 30% you choose how much you think is fair to earn from others here. 

Next, people should begin to contact you for either a loan or to sell their wares to you.  Why?  Because they either don’t know how to post or don’t want to wait for their wares to sell on the Auction House and they need the money now.  So, let’s say Joshanda wants a loan.  Joshanda contacts you and takes out a loan with you for 5000G placing her Parrot Cage (Hyacinth Macaw) in your care as collateral for let’s say 48 hours.  48 hours later, Joshanda returns and pays you 5500G and reclaims her higher priced item.  What’s that?  Joshanda didn’t come back after 48 hours?  That’s too bad for her.  Now, you have a pet that’s worth 14000G or more that you can sell on the Auction House.  As your business picks up, you’ll probably want an addon like Player Notes or URNotePad to keep track of whose stuff you’re holding on pawn.

And that’s where the guild bank comes in handy.  The more stuff you’re holding, the more room you’ll need and a guild bank is ideal for that.  You can even organize your tabs for stuff that is on hold for 24 or 48 hours and stuff that is your own inventory to sell.  It’s totally up to you how you customize this.

So, what are your thoughts?  Do you agree this could be a profitable WoW business?  If you’ve tried this before, please share with the community how it worked or didn’t work for you.

As always, heh, heh, glad I could help!