Not making any gold with JC

[Finn the Human]

How do all you Jewelcrafters make so much gold? I've been buying uncut gems and trying to cut and sell them back on the AH, but I end up getting undercut within seconds, and then idiots drive the prices down so it doesn't make profit anymore. I'm at a loss and I can't seem to make any gold :/

[Blacksmithking]

A stack of ore runs about 100g. A common runs 15-50g. Uncut rares run 15-150g. Rare cuts run 30-100g. Uncut metas run about 250g. Cut metas run 200-500.

What this means is that all you have to do is buy some ore, prospect, cut or not cut, and throw it all up on the AH at fair prices. Then let it ride until morning. If a cut is oversupplied, let it slide for a while or buy up the excess supply.

My server is filled with undercutting piranha, but I still squeak about 2-3k per day in profit for about 30 minutes of work. I only know three cuts right now, 2 rares and 1 meta, so I hope things will speed up.

[Lazur]

The AH is flooded with all sorts of things right now. Everyone is trying to unload the stuff they made while leveling up their profs and get rid of it fast. It also doesn't help that Alch can xmute gems w/o a cooldown, this hurt us the most I think. In wrath this wasn't the case. But as things start to mellow out and people start raiding more and getting gear things will pick up. Also when people start leveling more alts things will get better as they will need to buy gems for them aswell. The big selling rush is over, now it's time to just ride out the wave and have patience. The market will turn around. How long though will it take? That, I don't know.

A sidenote... I think, on my server atleast, the farming bots have alot to do with declining prices for items. I have been on this server since early BC and have never seen the amount of farming bots as I do now. It's ridiculous! Today alone I seen 3 underground speed hack bots farming primarily whiptail in Uldum. So I said F this and went to twilight highlands. Upon arriving there I realized it was worse there. General chat was roaring with people bitching about the underground farming bots there aswell. The only silver lining is that they are horde, so I, as an alliance, can DoT em up and watch em die. That is only like a 30 second fix as they just respawn and continue on. I've reported them numerous times and so has the rest of the server, yet no action taken.... Well, I'm gonna step down from my soapbox as I'm getting just as angry as I was earlier this afternoon and can feel my blood pressure rising... /sigh

[Slckaer]

Explains a lot when I can't find any herb in Deepholm after flying around for 15mins.....

[Nume]

Want a super secret tip? /cast prospecting, /use obsidium ore, /use elementium ore.

[gnawzankel]

Big money right now (at least on my server) is in selling the chimera's eyes. I currently have 3 alts doing the dailies with the eyes bringing approximately 500g each. All while stockpiling tokens on the main for when they add epic gem cuts.

[Deleted]

Hmmm I am not sure but a fellow I know told me that he is making a green fistweapons for around 70g and then disenchants them and sells the stuff for over 130+

To be honest, never heard any JC complain about not making money.........

[Nume]

Yeah with JCing its more like how do you not make money :P. Just doing the 1 daily every day nets more gold than doing basically every other daily if you are bad at getting patterns/other JCing stuff :P.

[Elite Peon]

I had the foresight to know that if I immediately went to twighlight highlands when cata came online instead of leveling and what not and mining before the goldrush it would be a good idea . I had no clue .. I farmed for about 20 hours straight on my realm and got about 300 stacks of ore ..which I sold about 100 while prices where sky high on ore ...then I prospected the rest and sold the gems for about 10x what I can get for them now ...lol netted about 50k gold for one days worth of work ...that will last me for a while .

Have you tried making moonsoul crowns http://www.wowhead.com/spell=25321 they go for like 50+ gold on my realm and they sell a lot ...because they are one of the first helms you can get + they are a blue item anyways .

[Deafyx]

With the new Metas out, all you guys will see is dollar signs!

[Modify]

How about you search the ah for a gem that isn't there and simply get that recipie

[sheaebay]

also selling the chimera eye can really add up (if you arent buying patterns) I have 2 JCs. 1 for my main and 1 to feed me chimeras eyes. I sell 1 eye per day for about 300-400 gold. It really adds up over time

[Ieft]

Find an alchemist friend preferably xmute spec, get the meta cuts, buy elementium ore for ~100g a stack (depends on server) prospect ore give the uncommon gems to alch, get meta's, cut meta + rare gems, make profit.

[SevenGirl]

the problem isnt getting gold, the problem is having something to spend it on.

[Selestarius]

there are two main options if you want to make gold with JC currently.
First: You farm your own ores, this means anything you sell is pure profit, and with prospecting this is likely to be quite a bit of gold, the best selling rares on my server atm tend to be Any cut Inferno Rubies or any cut Demonseye gems, this combined with the random pyrite drops (which provide a nice little gold boost if u sell or prospect them) means that mining and then prospecting your ores is an effective way to make a tidy bit of gold. This way does take a bit of time though, this is mitigated by the lack of risk, no gold sinked into it=no gold lost if nothing sells.

Second: Buy the ores from the AH, this is the method i prefer as it requires little time and effort, a bit of gold is necessary to back it up though. A lot of the time you will find some stacks for relatively cheap on the ah with people undercutting each other like mad e.t.c., then you need to prospect the ores, a bit boring but if you key bind prospect and put some music on ;p
Now, you will get alot of green gems, and a fair amount of rare gems, the rare gems can be sold for a decent amount but, funnily enough this is probably the least profitable of the two. You don't sell the greens, uncut or otherwise on ah, this is a shoot-able offence! What you should do with them is get a friendly transmute master to make Shadowspirit diamonds with your greens!, this is a great way to make gold especially if you have lots of green gems, it might take a while to sell them if your not constantly paying attention to other sellers and undercutting e.t.c. (the blizzard mobile auction house/web browser auction house is a really fast and efficient way to do this) but the amount of gold gained from this is absolutely ridiculous (cutting these into meta's is usually the best way to make gold out of these but both methods are viable)

It is also a good idea to make the Fire Prism each day, this gives you a chance to get 1 or more Chimera's eyes, nice gold earners in their own right, on my server they go for 350g so far

Since Cata release using these methods I have made a silly amount of gold, and have already bought the Sandstone drake, leveled several proffesions to max, bought a couple of epics and some blues, gemmed and enchanted my gear and that of my alts e.t.c

Hope this helps!

/Sele

[UnknownSoldier]

I highly suggest having Alchemy leveled along with Jewelcrafting (doesn't have to be on the same character). That way you can completely control the flow of your gems straight up from the raw materials without relying on chance with prospecting (I'm talking about for blue gems here).

But the secret I feel is diversity. People will eventually undercut if your product is up on the AH long enough, so you don't want 9 Brilliant Inferno Ruby up on the AH at once (using Inferno Ruby as an example since it sells pretty hot). Instead you could have 3 Brilliant, 3 Bold, and 3 Delicate up on the AH and increase overall chance of sales and decrease chance of being undercut.

That's clearly just an example, but the key is to diversify over the gem market rather than lumping everything you have into a single product.

[Leobald]

Server economies vary sometimes to a surprisingly large degree. What works on one server might mean a huge gold loss on another. Here is what works and does not work for me on my server:

What works:

1. Prospecting: Buying ore and prospecting it is guaranteed, risk-free profit, even though prices for raw gems (both rare and uncommon) have significantly fallen. Obsidium Ore goes for around 80-100, Elementium Ore for 100-120. You get on average 6 uncommon gems from a stack of Obsidium Ore, and you need to be very very unlucky for those gems not to be worth 100 gold at least. Usually it is way more.

2. Selling uncommon gems: Sell Nightstone, Zephyrite and Jasper only on days when those gems are up for the daily JC quest. I really don't understand why people don't stockpile some of these for later use when they are cheap, but over the past weeks these gems could always be sold for twice their "normal" price on JC daily quest days. I never understand why JCs complain about the high cost of these three daily quests (especially Nightstone), but I am happy to make a nice profit on their laziness. (This is also why I don't think that finding someone who can turn your uncommon gems into metagems is necesarily a good idea.) Never forget: cut uncommon gems vendor for 9 gold, so never sell gems cheaper than 9-10 gold.

3. Selling cut rares: Profit for those cuts that I have currently vary between 10-50 gold per gem. Not much, but it ads up. Do the daily every day, so that you have as many recipes as possible. Watch the market carefully to try to find out what kind of gems sell better than others. The price of uncut rare games is a nice indication. Sometimes having the recipe for a popular gem that many other JCs offer is still better than sitting on an exotic gem that nobody wants to buy. Never sell uncut rares on the AH even if you don't have a recipe for that colour yet. The price for uncut rare gems cannot fall much lower than it is now.

4. Selling Chimera Eyes: Turning your JC token into a Chimera's Eye and selling it is immediate profit, but you lose out on money on the long run, since you will have less recipes.

What does not work:

5. Cutting metagems: With all those people leveling their JC skill to 525 by cutting metagems, the prices for cut metagems are almost always below the price of a raw gem.

6. Fire Prism: The price of the 18 uncommon gems will almost definetly be higher than the price of the 2-3 rares you can get. Yes, there is also a chance for a Chimera's Eye, but it is low. (I got 1 Chimera's Eye while doing about 15-20 Fire Prisms to get to 525 JC.)

One additional comment: Someone above said that the price of rare uncut gems is so low because alchemists can transmute them without cooldown. With herb prices being so high, transmuting rare gems will never make sense, it will just lose you gold.

[Finn the Human]

Due to undercutting on my server it seems impossible to sell anything on the AH... this is getting ridiculous

[Nume]

there are two main options if you want to make gold with JC currently.
First: You farm your own ores, this means anything you sell is pure profit, and with prospecting this is likely to be quite a bit of gold, the best selling rares on my server atm tend to be Any cut Inferno Rubies or any cut Demonseye gems, this combined with the random pyrite drops (which provide a nice little gold boost if u sell or prospect them) means that mining and then prospecting your ores is an effective way to make a tidy bit of gold. This way does take a bit of time though, this is mitigated by the lack of risk, no gold sinked into it=no gold lost if nothing sells.

Second: Buy the ores from the AH, this is the method i prefer as it requires little time and effort, a bit of gold is necessary to back it up though. A lot of the time you will find some stacks for relatively cheap on the ah with people undercutting each other like mad e.t.c., then you need to prospect the ores, a bit boring but if you key bind prospect and put some music on ;p
Now, you will get alot of green gems, and a fair amount of rare gems, the rare gems can be sold for a decent amount but, funnily enough this is probably the least profitable of the two. You don't sell the greens, uncut or otherwise on ah, this is a shoot-able offence! What you should do with them is get a friendly transmute master to make Shadowspirit diamonds with your greens!, this is a great way to make gold especially if you have lots of green gems, it might take a while to sell them if your not constantly paying attention to other sellers and undercutting e.t.c. (the blizzard mobile auction house/web browser auction house is a really fast and efficient way to do this) but the amount of gold gained from this is absolutely ridiculous (cutting these into meta's is usually the best way to make gold out of these but both methods are viable)

It is also a good idea to make the Fire Prism each day, this gives you a chance to get 1 or more Chimera's eyes, nice gold earners in their own right, on my server they go for 350g so far

Since Cata release using these methods I have made a silly amount of gold, and have already bought the Sandstone drake, leveled several proffesions to max, bought a couple of epics and some blues, gemmed and enchanted my gear and that of my alts e.t.c

Hope this helps!

/Sele

What this guy said, except he didnt mention the easiest gold making method. A lot of times the cheaper gems like Amberjewel and oceans sapphire sell much better cut than uncut, so you can get a pattern for those and simply buy uncut and resell cut to make good money.