The Undermine Journal - A Beginners Guide and Video

Today's guest post and video were created by reader (and erstwhile podcast guest and contributor) Ruls. Follow Ruls on twitter at @formerruling. If you would like to write a guest post for Power Word: Gold contact us at powerwordgold@gmail.com.

When I first considered making a set of videos related to gold making I knew I wanted to first focus on demystifying the process. There is a divide between those that will make money and those that will never have a large amount of money despite many options being added making it easier. More details after the jump.

The Undermine Journal

One of the first roadblocks are misconceptions that “gold makers” have to spend most of their WoW time sitting in the auction house, they have to examine complicated data and devise formulas for selling, and they are all greedy making their money squeezing dollars out of the poor. My first video hopefully tackles the first and second misconception listed to some decree by discussing one of the biggest resources to a gold maker – The Undermine Journal.

There are three features I want to cover on the website and none of them require much time or understanding complicated graphs or charts. The timing for the video was important because this month there have been discussions about a few of these features becoming premium paid services, and I want anyone to have the chance to see how useful a feature is before the money barrier is raised.

Part 1: Understanding Item Data

Once you have navigated to your server and faction’s homepage (via the straightforward list) finding an item is as easy as searching for the item name in the search bar that appears at the top right of the page. In the video I explain the main simple pieces of information to look for on this page including the Market Price, Mean, and Region/Faction average data all available at the top of the page.

This can give you the best idea of what an item is worth and its relative rarity without having to examine any of the extensive data on the page. The seller information toward the bottom is good for materials that you need large amounts of or buy often.

Part 2: Item Notifications

The site’s most exciting feature is that it can send you notifications via email or RSS Feed. Once you have logged into the site using any of a number of common logins (e.g. Google, Facebook) you will begin to see a notification section on item pages. It can notify you when the price goes above or below a certain amount, or when auction house quantity changes.

When searching for items not always listed on the auction house or when you are only interested when the price is within a certain range this tool eliminates any need to camp in game and repeatedly search all day hoping you don’t miss a deal. Check at the video description notes for some helpful links to get set up receiving data in little to no time.

Part 3: Seller Notifications

This expands on the idea of item specific data being sent directly to your email account. Seller data can be searched on the site, but instead of spending the time looking up patterns just let the site tell you when someone you are interested in starts posting.

Whether they farm ore and post it cheaply or they are your main competition for posting those minipets, this will give you the edge over anyone not using it. You can also set up when your own characters are undercut! I don’t recommend doing that for characters that list commonly undercut items though or the hourly spam will start to get annoying.

A special thanks to flux and the podcast for driving me over to the site to find out about these features. It has taken my gold making to another level and I’m actually nearing a milestone I will probably release to the public “soon™”.  You can catch me on Twitter @formerruling or subscribe to my YouTube channel – I plan on expanding into many more videos over time.

-Ruls

A big thank to Ruls for creating such a great introduction video for The Undermine Journal. I love market notifications and they will change the way you play the auction house. 

It should be noted that The Undermine Journal recently announced that it may begin charging for notification emails and RSS. While it is never fun to see things that were once free start to cost money I can say that The Undermine Journal has been one of the most useful and upstanding members of the gold-making community for the last few years. 

If you enjoy the notifications and supporting a site what provides a great service I encourage you to pay for the notifications if/when the new pricing structure (currently looking like $5 for 2 months of notifications.) goes live. 

If you have feedback about the possibility of TUJ charging for notifications they'd love to hear about it. You can leave feedback via their contact page. 

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