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Despite the complaints you may hear from some, in the World of Warcraft game it’s easy to earn extra gold. Spend some effort, work at it a bit, and you’ll have plenty of gold to spend on your items. Most of the basic stuff you can do while leveling or wandering and this basic stuff applies whether you’re playing vanilla WoW or the upcoming Cataclysm expansion.

For starters, there are only a couple of ways to earn money in the entire game. You sell stuff or services to someone (whether a player or not) and/or you complete quests for the rewards. (If you’re a Rogue you can open locked boxes or pick pockets to earn a little more.) Selling stuff to vendors is small change, but it adds up in the long run. Completing quests is a good way to go and the rewards are pretty good at high level. Advanced players will often have a routine where they complete a number of the Daily Quests in an hour or two and make 200 to 300 gold.

But the best way to cash in is selling stuff to other players and the Auction House (AH,) is how most people sell their stuff though some will do it in trade chat. (Selling your skills for tips is another good way to go.) The only trick is in discovering which stuff to sell is worth the effort and then obtaining that stuff.

So where to start? You’re going to make a brand new character and take that character to the big city, without leveling it (though you can if you want to.) I like Ironforge on the Alliance side and Silvermoon on the horde side. This character will become your dedicated banker/buyer/seller. Everything that your main characters want to sell will be mailed to your banker for posting on the Auction House. This means that your characters do not have to go to all the way to the Auction House every time they want to sell their loot, saving you lots of time. Just visit the closest mailbox, mail your stuff, get rid of the vendor junk, turn in your quests, and get back to the game.

Grab “skinning” as your first skill. You’re going to be killing a lot of skinnable critters on your way to the level cap and you can make planty of gold selling those skins, even as a a low level character. Youir next primary skill will be either herbalism or mining, that way you can be detecting herbs or ores while skinning critters. . Just gather stuff and skin everything and spend a bit of time, if necessary, to make sure your gathering skills are high enough for the next zone.

If you’re higher level you can do pretty much the same thing. Pick up the gathering skills and start making loops around the low level areas. Gather and skin until your skill increases enough to move on. If you’re high enough level, and you’re on a PvP server, you’ll also be in position to help out your side if the other side is harassing them. PvP won’t help your gold stash, but it can be a pleasant diversion.

As you loot stuff you will collect gray, white, green, and (very rarely) blue items. The non-player vendors get all of your gray stuff. Your banker gets all the stuff that’s white or better (if you’re not going to use it.) (By the way, pay attention to current AH prices so that you don’t over or under price your stuff.)

You can also run your higher level character through the low level dungeons. You’ll find plenty of junk to sell to the vendors and plenty of cloth, green items, and stuff to sell on the AH. With just a couple of runs through the instances you’ll fill your (large and empty) bags with loot. If you’re lucky you may even find a blue item which can be sold for a pretty penny.

These tips will keep you in gear and mounts as you level, if you apply them. Some people, though, are more ambitious. If you want to earn a lot more gold then there are a lot of sophisticated strategies to follow, and you can find a great number of these strategies in a book titled, “Warcraft Millionaire.” Whether you just want enough gold to keep your characters in good gear or you want to hit the gold cap (a bit over 200k gold) this book has you covered. Read this review of the Warcraft Millionaire and see if it won’t massively increase your gold stash.