Mining + JC = Moneymaker?Follow

So on almost every toon I have I make sure I have mining on him because it's a good money maker.

After maxing tailoring on my main I really am not that interested in further keeping it, I'd rather have a different profession that could benefit me as well as make me some money.

Is Jewelcrafting along with Mining a good pair for making some good gold?

Thanks.

You can make decent money, but not NEAR what you could make in the past. When my paladin was getting his epic mount I stayed in ORG just buying ore, prospecting it, cutting the blues and putting them on the AH, and offering cuts in the trade chat. The invent of new ways to get gems, and the flood of JCers in the market... you can still make money, but only a shadow of what you used to be able to make a few months back. You know what's been making money on my server recently? Skinners. You might consider that if your server is like mine. However, mining/JC isn't a bad way to go either.

I started to take up JC/mining but just dropped JC for skinning. I think you can make money in the long run with JC, but I'm not sure if it would be as much money as you make just selling everything you gather.

Even when I was leveling my JC, I would gather the ore myself so I wasn't spending a lot of gold on the AH, but I also wasn't able to sell that same ore that I was using to level my JC.

I figure I will just make money and then I can just buy whatever I want, whenever I want.

Until the thorium stage, its really cheap.

The design really only made you the difference between the uncut value and the cut value. If the living rubies sell uncut for say 55g on your server then you've made only 40g (10g per gem) extra by cutting them into Teardrop and it would take 80 sales to break even (before accounting for any re-list costs and AH cut of the sale price).


In response to the original poster, you can make money from JC in several ways:

1. Prospecting ore for gems. Originally this was almost exclusively for rare gems but uncommon gems now also carry a significant value and even the powder has good use. You can see the expected result here http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23425#prospecting and do the math based on ore price (and availability) and gem prices. Be aware that prospecting is random, some days you may get nothing but Talasite and it can be very frustrating. Also be aware that the unlocking of the Alchemy lab in Phase 4 of the Offensive allows access to epic gems which may affect rare gem prices significantly (ie expect price crash).

2. Cutting gems for profit. This can either be done as a service (sold via trade channel, charge a few gold per cut) or as a value added reseller on the auction house (cut your own gems or buy from AH, cut and re-list). On my server the price difference between cut and uncut varies typically from 5g to 15g so this is profitable but requires that you have access to popular rare designs which may be costly (300g to 1200g). It can easily cost 10.000 to 20.000 gold to pick up all the world drop cuts. It's also subject to severe competition and aggressive undercutting as there is no shortage of jewelcrafters. Meta gems carry the highest margins but are limited availability as creation is through an alchemy recipe with a 23 hour cooldown. At peak demand I've been able to sell Chaotic Skyfire Diamonds for 230g (components for a Skyfire cost about 110g).

3. Crafting uncommon and rare items for disenchant. There is a wide range of necks and rings which depending on material cost may be profitable to craft, disenchant and sell as shards, essences and dust. Essence and dust markets on many servers have tanked recently due to huge number of uncommon items from SSO reward packs. Shards are likely to crash in price when 2.4.2 patch is released. However it's still worthwhile to keep an eye on component prices and enchanting material prices as opportunities arise from time to time.

4. Crafting uncommon and rare items for re-sale. There's a few items which are excellent (possibly 'best in slot') and can sell very well on the auction house. The Necklace of the Deep is probably the most noteworthy as it's the highest pre-raid Agility neck available to druids, many guides recommend it and it's a solid seller on the Auction house (no shortage of druids, rogue and hunters out there!). There's several items other with random suffix that may sell well if you get 'of the Monkey' or other popular variants.

5. Brilliant Glass. This is a 'once per day' combine of uncommon gems into a container which holds one rare gem. Depending on the relative value of uncommon and rare gems on your server this may be profitable. After 2.4.2 patch it may provide an epic gem. Again this is highly random and can be frustrating when you get a streak of Talasite results.


Also don't overlook the value of being able to cut your own gems to avoid buying over-priced gems for your own gear. There is also some epic gem cuts available which are 'bind on pickup' for your own use only as well as a few trinkets, many of which are quite good.