Diablo 3 Profits

250 Million Bankroll

2013-03-12T05:20:00.000-07:00

It didn't take me long to move my bankroll up from 100-130 million to 250 million. Many of the markets that I'm currently playing allow me to buy items for between 1 and 5 million gold and sell them for 10-20 million gold. Generally, I sell about 10 items a day at this rate. I'm still logging in every morning for a few minutes, checking my listings, re-listing any items that expire and listing new items that I've won from bidding. I also invest my entire bankroll in bids every time I log in.

Having a bankroll of a quarter million gold has allowed me to consistently buy enough items to have a full 10 slots of items up on the RMAH. Making money in Diablo 3 is not a get rich quick scheme, it's a marathon of making a little bit here and there and adapting to find new markets to squeeze out margins. I'm still making between $5 and $10 every day with about an hour of total work (half hour in the morning and half hour at night).

I'll continue to work with this bankroll for a little while and continue to pull some extra cash out of this game. I plan on slowly experimenting with the higher end markets, many of which are discussed in Markco's Gold Forum and his Gold Guide. Instead of investing in items with 1-5 million, I'm starting to set up to buying items between 10-20 million gold and selling them for 20-35 million. They move slower, but the profit margins are better.

For those of you grinding out there, keep it up. This concept seems to be working for Blizzard and I expect that other games will come out that will have similar real money auction house set ups, based on the model that Diablo 3 is providing. Just image, if there were 10 games out there like this with real markets and you were making $5 to $10 per day on each, you'd be pulling in $50 to $100 per day by selling virtual goods.

Who'dathunk - pixel traders as a profession.

$5 Per Day - Looking to Move Up

2013-02-09T19:38:00.001-08:00

For the last couple weeks, I have been steadily making about $5 a day by buying items on the Gold Auction House and selling them on the Real Money Auction House in Diablo 3. I've been able to steadily make enough gold by flipping items on the GAH to keep my gold balance around 100 million gold and using any excess gold to buy items that I know will sell for real money. Usually after I log in and go through all of my auctions that have closed, my balance looks a bit like this...

If I'm below 100 million, I invest whatever gold I have into bids or items that I can flip for a profit. If I'm above 100 million, I look for an item to buy and put up on the RMAH.

What I want to do this weekend and for the next few days, is build up my gold balance to around a quarter million so that I can invest in more bids and items, especially now that I'm learning about some of the higher end markets in Diablo 3. The key to making money in Diablo 3 is knowing what sells, and right now higher ticket items are the way to go.

It will most likely take me a few days/turns to reach my goal of 250 million gold and I will miss out on a few days worth of RMAH sales, but I believe that it will be worth it. My plan is to move up from making $5 a day to making $10 a day with this investment in capital.

Also, if you are interested in participating in my dueling tournaments (when PVP FINALLY hits), sign up for my newsletter and I'll make sure to get you an update on how to participate.

Cheers,

PBody5205

100 Million Gold

2013-01-24T04:27:00.001-08:00

For those of you who have been following my blog, you'll notice that I have never had a huge amount of gold to play around with. All of the markets that I have been playing are very low end, which can result in some insanely high profit margins but the overall net gain of a transaction is mere pennies compared to what some Diablo 3 RMAH traders are doing.

Last week, I hit a milestone that I was pretty proud of...100,000,000 gold! If you think about it, 100 million gold is only worth $25 in real money at the current rate of $0.25 / 1,000,000. It's not a lot, but considering that using that 100 million gold I have cashed out around $75 dollars in a week and still have a running balance of between 80 million and 100 million gold every time I log in to the game, that 100 million gold is valuable capital for my Diablo 3 business.

It's also nice to know that I've never invested any cash into Diablo 3, other than the initial purchase of the game and purchasing guides from Diablo 3 Gold Secrets and Gimmic Gaming, and built up my bankroll from scratch.

When you have a "bankroll" to work with on the gold auction house in Diablo 3, there is really no reason to leave a balance sitting in your account. Make your money work for you by investing it each time you log in. I make most of my money by bidding on items and then listing them for a higher buy out. Each time I log in, I find items to bid on with whatever gold balance that I have on my account. Because I log in before work and before going to bed, while I'm not logged in to the game my auctions are selling and my bids are buying the items that I will re-list later.

It's a bit depressing seeing a balance of just over 1,000 gold after having 3 more digits just a few minutes prior, but I know that all of the gold that I used to bid on items is worth more than the 100,000,000 that I had before I bid on those items.

Keep grinding away while we wait for patch 1.0.7! If you would like to receive an e-mail update about my upcoming dueling leagues/tournaments, sign up for my e-mail list under the big red arrow.

Cheers,

PBody

Selling Weapons on the RMAH in Diablo 3

2013-01-13T19:02:00.001-08:00

In the last couple weeks I've been playing Diablo nearly every day and learning as much as I can about the current markets and how to make money playing Diablo 3. While I am still focusing on growing my account and its value by investing into my Barbarian, I am starting to take some of the profits that I am making from the auction houses and cashing out to my Paypal balance. If things keep going the way they have been, I should clear about $200 in January while continuing to grow my gold balance.

I am going to share with you a few of the markets where I have found the most success in the last few weeks. There are so many markets on both the GAH and RMAH in Diablo 3 that it is very simple to play around and find something that works for you. Since I know the Barbarian class very well, I focus mainly on gear that I would buy for my character. This strategy allows me to quickly evaluate an item and determine if I think it will turn over quickly and takes out a lot of guess work if I was playing markets for Witch Doctors or Wizards.

Most of the RMAH sales that I have had in the last few weeks have been weapons for Barbarians. Here are a few screen shots of my transactions (note that I will sometimes send the funds to my Battle.net account and sometimes to Paypal - I learned a lot about cashing out in Markco's Gold Guide and highly recommend buying it and joining the forums, which have a good group of active members that are making hundreds of dollars playing Diablo 3)

Markco has a great video on his Gold Guide about buying and selling Skorn and I took those strategies and applied them to other weapons that Barbarians use in Diablo 3. The more that I play around on the RMAH and the GAH, the more markets that I'm finding. Keep an eye out for posts in the next few weeks with other potential markets out there!

First Hellfire Ring

2013-01-06T20:40:00.005-08:00

I FINALLY crafted my first Hellfire Ring. I can't believe that it's taken me this long, but normally I only have time to sit down and do one key run at a time when I play. A normal key run for me takes about 15-25 minutes, depending on how quickly I find the key warden. I'm keeping my Diablo 3 time down to about 45 minutes a day if I'm going to do any farming and I only spend about 15 or so on the auction houses when I don't farm.

With the help of my friends at Gimmic Gaming, I've jumped from struggling with mp3 to killing it at mp5 and mp6. I quickly saw more key drops and had better luck on my UBERs drops, which resulting in...

*cue epic entrance music*

It's not the best one I've ever seen, but it's a start and I'm enjoying the 35% increased experience bonus. I'm paragon level 12 now (a bit short of my goal for December, but I'm ok with that) and the 200+ strength is nice for my build. I'm on my way to another one, so hopefully I'll get a better roll next time.

I've invested quite a bit of gold (and some real money that I spent on Gimmic's Barbarian guide) into my character in the last couple weeks, not to mention the time I've spent playing him. I think that to truly know what's going on in the game and in the markets that I'm trying to make consistent money from, I believe that I have to be up on what other players are doing, what is working, what's trending, etc. The only real way to do this is to actually hop on my Barb and get into groups with other players and mow down some hellspawn.

...At least, that's my excuse :).

In truth, if I spend 45 minutes every day playing the auction house, researching, reading Markco's Gold Forum, instead of spending a portion of my "play time" whirling around with my Barbarian, I would be making more money. The real money in this game is in the auction houses. There is plenty of good information out there, especially in guide's like Markco's, that can help you make consistent money from playing Diablo 3. Unless you put a ton of time and/or money into one of your characters, there isn't much money in farming and frankly, it doesn't make financial sense.

But who can resist hacking away at demons for a few minutes every now and again?

How I went from MP3 to MP6

2012-12-27T06:29:00.002-08:00

Lately my goals have changed from crushing the auction house for extra cash each month to learning new markets and investing my profits from Diablo 3 back into my character. My idea is that when PVP and/or an expansion hit, I will have a high powered character to go along with my knowledge of both the gold auction house and the real money auction house. Having a high powered character will allow me to farm high level content effectively, which at certain times may be just as profitable as spending time on the auction house (or a good use of time while waiting for auctions to sell).

Two days ago I was stuck grinding in MP3 doing key runs and getting into the occasional group for running ubers, where you need an infernal machine to access the high level bosses that drop items to make a Hellfire Ring (which I'm still working on). I'm currently Paragon Level 11 and have yet to get a decent legendary drop while key farming.

Enter Gimmic Gaming's Class Guide. Markco posted on his blog about Gimmic Gaming's new guide and gave it a thumbs up, so I decided that it would be worth a shot. The guide contains extremely useful information about building your character and walks you through exactly how to spec to move up from whatever current Monster Power level you are farming.

I literally took the information in the guide and went from farming MP3 to MP6 by just changing my spec and investing a couple million into some new weapons.

Check out the guide here

I only purchased one class guide (each class guide is $30) because I primarily play a barbarian. That was all I needed and it was worth the $30 investment. I learned more in 30 minutes of reading and watching videos about playing my Barbarian than I've learned in the hours and hours I've spent playing the game.

You can get a class guide for each class for less the $100. If you play more than one class and want to learn go dominate with all of them, I highly recommend buying all of them for the reduced price. If you specialize like me, try out the guide for your class first. If I start playing another class, I'll be buying Gimmic's guide to that class before I even get started. I'll be posting results of my upgraded farming runs soon!

Key Farming and Paragon Level Grinding

2012-12-09T19:26:00.001-08:00

There are plenty of people making good money playing Diablo 3. At this time, I am not one of them. I've changed my outlook on playing Diablo 3, mostly due to a couple months of not spending as much time as I would have liked on the game. Now, I'm making an effort to log in at least once a day and learn about the game, market, and put myself into a position to make a good amount of money consistently.

Here are the things that I am doing to invest in my account and learn.

Gold Auction House flipping/research.

I'm learning what markets are over saturated and what players are spending gold on. Soon I will venture back into the real money auction house as well.

Reading Markco's site and gold guide.

Markco is updating his gold guide often and the forums are still bumping with valuable information.

Farming on Monster Power 2-3 for drops
Grinding Paragon levels
Farming for Keys of Destruction

I'm able to accomplish 3-5 all at the same time, which is great. I have a balance of gear on my barbarian that allows me to farm MP2-3 and also get a little bonus experience. I have a ruby gem in my helm for 29% bonus and am planning on investing in a Leoric's signet ring soon.

I also am hoping to craft a Hellfire Ring for the added experience bonus, which will help me grind out a few more paragon levels as I'm farming. The long term goal is to have a paragon level 100 character that will be able to farm high Monster Power levels, especially after players come back to the game with the PVP patch, which is on the horizon.

Right now I seem to be able to make around 3-5 million a day in a few markets that I have learned about by experimenting and also from advice from Markco's Gold Guide. As I build up my gold stash, I plan on jumping into some higher end markets and hope to be making 5-10 million a day.

Status update:

Gold amount: About 30 million

Paragon level: 10

DPS: 54K

December Update

2012-12-03T16:45:00.000-08:00

As Markco pointed out, I've been slacking a bit on the updates here at Diablo 3 Profits. Part of that is because of the lack of time that I have been dedicating to blogging and playing Diablo 3 and part of it is the fact that I've honestly been pretty lazy. If there are culprits other than myself in the case of the lack of updates, they would be the South Carolina Gamecocks football team and my four fantasy football leagues.

I've been hopping on Diablo 3 every few days and doing a bit of buying and selling and testing new markets. With the game changing as often as it has, without my daily log ins I've had difficulty keeping up with market trends. The concepts that I've learned from Markco's Gold Guide and the forums still apply however, especially the idea of trading in markets that I myself am making purchases for my character.

The markets that I am still finding success are extremely low risk/reward at this time, and I'm only making a couple million with each round of buying and selling on the GAH. I'm experimenting in some higher end markets, but so far it looks like volume would be my way to go if I would log in more often. One possible solution would be to upgrade my work laptop and be able to log in more often during the day (lunch, sometime in the afternoon). With the end of the year coming, maybe I'll get an equipment upgrade.

I'm only Paragon level 7 on my Barbarian, and I'd like to continue to grind out a few levels in between auction house sessions.

Goals for December:

Paragon level 20

100 Million Gold in the bank

Make $50 in cashed out, real money.

Cheers!

Investing

2012-10-21T08:01:00.000-07:00

When I logged into the game this morning, I had about 15 million gold. I'd invested around 20 million in upgraded gear for my Barbarian so that I could hopefully complete the game on Inferno and start experimenting with farming using Monster Power. My plan is to use the 15 million gold that I currently have in the bank and grow it every day by bidding on items and flipping them for a profit.

I've spent a few hours getting back into the game and just doing searches on the Auction House, both Real Money and Gold, to find out what is selling and what specific markets are looking like. So far I've found one market where I can buy items for between 100K and 250K and flip them for around 400K to 600K. These items seem to sell slowly, but consistently.

This morning, I put up several items that I had won bids on last night in the one market that I had found. I invested another few million in bids in my market and then invested the rest in several other markets that I wish to experiment in. Right now, all of my gold is tied up in these bids, which means I'm free to farm for a while and work on finishing up the game and of course watch a few football games. I have nearly 100 winning bids out there, so I am hoping to win around 40-50% of those bids and work on flipping the items this evening and tomorrow.

Even if I win some of these items and they never sell, I'm investing in knowledge of the current markets. Spending a few million to find new markets is an investment that is worth making, you never know when you'll stumble on a market that no one else is playing and is extremely profitable.

Current gameplay status:

Paragon level: 3

Inferno Act II Completed - working on Act III

Patch 1.05 and Me

2012-10-20T09:06:00.002-07:00

Despite my last post saying that I was "back in the game," I basically took the last month off of writing and playing Diablo III. Life gets busy, as all of you know, but with the resurgence of the Diablo 3 community, I've decided to jump back into the game and see how things have changed.

I hopped back on my Barbarian and noticed that I never finished the game on Inferno. The furthest that I ever progressed was finishing Act 1. I also never spent time grinding any Paragon levels, so I'm basically starting to experience the "end game" that is not the auction house.

I had about 30 million gold left over from playing the auction house, so I invested about 10-12 million in upgraded gear for my Barbarian. With the new Monster Levels, I'd like to clear the game and have the option of farming any Act that I want so that I can adapt to the changing environment and capitalize on the new markets out there. I've started to explore both Auction houses again and will be posting about some of my markets and tactics that I will use, along with farming with my Barbarian.

This morning I ran through Act II on Inferno and started to play a little Act III. My Barbarian dinged level 3 in Paragon levels, so I have a long way to go.

I've also checked back with the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Guide and read up on the last months worth of articles, watched a bunch of new videos, and stopped back into the forums. If you're serious about making money playing Diablo 3, I highly suggest you check out Markco's gold guide.

Back in the Game

2012-09-05T04:14:00.000-07:00

I logged into Diablo 3 today for the first time in about two weeks. After patch 1.04 I didn't have a whole lot of incentive to keep playing the game, even though I had finally sold an item for 34 million gold and had a little currency to play with...basically I was burned out and disappointed with the game. I didn't see the fun/challenge in playing the game anymore and I honestly was just waiting for Guild Wars 2 to come out so I could spend some of my free time playing with my buddies.

Then I realized that I was missing out on making extra money toward things that I want to do in my life like get ahead on bills, help pay down my student loan debt and my car loan, and take my girlfriend out to a nice dinner on occasion. When I logged back in today, I spent a few minutes looking up the "new" legendary and set items and seeing if I could spot any trends. I immediately picked a couple items and used my bidding strategy to invest some of my gold in trying to pick up some cheap set items to flip. I also picked up a few items to throw up on the RMAH. I'm going to do my best to rededicate myself to spending at least half an hour a day on the auction houses in Diablo 3 and try to make a few bucks each day.

An extra $4 a day doesn't sound like much, but an extra $120 a month is halfway to my car payment. I also updated my goal bar on the side of this blog. I'm up around $100 profit from Diablo 3, which isn't all that spectacular but I think now that I have a little bankroll I will be able to consistently make a few dollars a day.

Good luck everyone and make sure to check out Markco's guide. He's keeping it very up to date and his people are STILL make hundreds of dollars playing Diablo 3.

34 Million for an Amulet

2012-08-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

I posted about a high quality amulet drop that I got about a month ago on an Act 1 Inferno run. At the time, I thought that I had found an item worth hundreds of dollars. Here's a screenshot of my godly amulet.

I did quite a bit of research and asked for some pricing help on the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Forums and found that this amulet was indeed "worth" a lot of money/gold. For over a month, I tried listing this amulet on the gold auction for anywhere from 100,000,000 gold to 300,000,000 gold. I never got any bites, so I tried listing it on the RMAH for around $75 a few times. Still no action.

Finally, I decided to lower my expectations and start listing it for a more reasonable price on the GAH. I put it up a couple times for a 50,000,000 buy out and a 40,000,000 bid. When I logged in today, I saw that it had sold! Someone had placed a bid at the 40,000,000 price point and when the auction closed, I had 34,000,000 waiting for me in my inbox.

I immediately put 10,000,000 up on the RMAH to sell and will be using the rest to flip higher cost items like rings and amulets for bigger profit margins. I want to have a decent stash of gold for when the new legendary items come out to buy and flip on the RMAH for a profit.

Keeping Inventory

2012-08-10T04:13:00.002-07:00

With the Diablo 3 markets slowing down and thousands of players leaving the game every day, it's been difficult to justify spending time in the game playing the auction house. I've been making a couple million gold a day consistently for the last few weeks and selling off a bit, but I've even had gold that did not sell on the RMAH. What I'm telling myself now is that the hard work I'm putting in to raise my gold balance and keep in touch with the market will help make me a pile of money when they finally release the PVP patch...which apparently isn't going to be for a while.

Patch 1.0.4 will not have PVP as far as we know. They just released that they will be addressing legendary items, class mechanics, magic find, and a few other things. I don't think that this patch will fix the game, but it will bring a few players back to try out the new mechanics. I'm going to keep a close eye on how Magic Find changes. That might be a solid market to invest in as more players will want to try out Magic Find after the patch.

For right now, I'm doing my best to always keep 10 auctions up and have as many bids in to keep my inventory of items up there. Looking for items to buy out and flip is simply not viable for my play style as when I'm playing the game, most other players are sleeping and not farming. However, I've got a routine down of checking 7-10 different markets for cheap items to bid on every day. I'm keeping an inventory of 30-50 items to resell at any time and logging in every morning and every evening to put items up. Right now I'm spending around an hour a day placing bids and auctions (I haven't killed a demon in weeks).

For those of you out there trying to make money playing Diablo 3, stay strong and keep plugging away. It is entirely possible to make extra money in this game over the long run, as long as you continue to adapt to the market.

Auctions Picking Back Up

2012-08-07T04:20:00.003-07:00

As I'm sure that you've heard, Diablo 3 is broken. Players are quitting the game left and right, which has made it difficult for people like me to make any kind of consistent money playing Diablo 3. A smaller player pool means less players spending money on items. If you look in the Diablo 3 "Blog-o-sphere" you'll find several "I'm quitting this game" posts on blogs and blogs that haven't been updated in weeks or months. I've admittedly slowed down on my posts as I've been a little discouraged, but I've learned a few things this week that have renewed my making money vigor.

Fewer players playing the game means fewer players farming high level content

I've noticed that prices in many of the markets that I check on a daily basis are either staying strong or even increasing. Quality items are starting to become scarce as there are not as many people farming content and finding these items, but there are still players who want to purchase upgrades. There are also less players utilizing a bidding strategy, meaning that I'm picking up items for less than 10K and selling them for well over 100K consistently.

Players are not buying elite items, but they are willing to spend a few million for an upgrade

I still haven't sold my bad ass amulet that I keep listing for around 100 million. I think that I'm going to save it for the PVP patch, where it might be worth a lot due to the high vitality and resist to all (if resist to all even factors in to PVP). Anyway, now that I have a little more gold to play with, I'm finding that I can make a profit a million or so at a time buying amulets and rings for between 400K and 800K and re-selling them for 1 million to 3 million. If I can do 10 of these a day where I'm making about 500K each, that's 5 million a day or $9 real money per day, which equates to $270 a month. I could live with making an extra $270 a month on Diablo 3.

People are still reading about Diablo 3

Although several Diablo 3 bloggers are showing decreases in traffic, we are all still getting some traffic to our sites. Meaning that there are still people out there playing the game. I know that quite a few gamers are looking forward to the release of Guild Wars II, which will be coming out in a few weeks. I expect to see a lot of players stop playing Diablo 3 at that time, but that just means that the markets will change. Players will come back to Diablo 3, especially when the PVP patch comes through. There are always going to be opportunities to make money playing this game, it's just a matter of finding the right markets.

Make Gold in Diablo 3

2012-07-31T04:41:00.002-07:00

I just finished up another HubPages article on how to make gold playing Diablo 3. For many of you who are experts by now, this article won't be anything mind blowing, but for anyone who is just getting started at trying to make a buck playing Diablo 3, this is a great place to start.

Make Gold in Diablo 3

To give you guys a quick update, things have been slowing down a lot for me in Diablo. I traveled last week for work and my laptop can't load Diablo, so I missed a few days of playing the auction houses. When I got home, I tried to knock out a few rounds of auctions and noticed that items were selling extremely slowly (or not at all). I think my markets are starting to see the results of thousands and thousands of players quitting the game because they are bored.

My amulet that I posted about last week hasn't sold yet. I've had it up a few times for pretty high amounts (250 million, 225 million) and recently for 100 million bid. I may have to bite the bullet a bit and sell it for a reasonable price, buuuuuuuut.....

Right now, Blizzard is implementing a large patch. The rumor is that it's a PVP patch...meaning that a ton of players are going to be coming back to the game. I honestly think my amulet is going to be a hot item for players looking to do some PVP, so I'm hopeful that I'll be able to find a buyer. Also, once this patch is released the auction house should liven back up.

Keep a close eye on the markets and find out what stats people are going to want for PVP. These items will sell for stupid high amounts over the next week while players are trying to become the best at PVP. I'd suggest joining Markco's Diablo 3 Gold Secrets forums and reading up from experts who have made thousands of dollars playing Diablo 3. I just renewed my subscription and am looking forward to reading what everyone has to say about the new patch!

Awesome Amulet Drop in Act 1 Inferno

2012-07-23T04:25:00.001-07:00

Over the weekend, I spent one of my mornings playing the game and learning how to farm Act 1 Inferno efficiently. Basically, I followed the advice of the guys from "Try Hard" on YouTube. I'll add the video to the end of this post.

My Barb is geared out to the point of being able to kill things fairly easily in Inferno Act 1 but I haven't progressed any further than that. I have a magic find set that gets me over 200% MF with the Nephelam Valor buff, so I was hoping to get a decent drop over the weekend to build up my stash.

Boy did I ever.

By my third or fourth run, I hadn't found anything worth putting up on the AH. I was getting a little discouraged...when I saw that I had an amulet drop. I usually wait until the end of the run to identify everything, but I get antsy when I see rings or amulets. So I cleared the mobs in my area and right clicked the ammy...

Holy #!!~#@~#!

I immediately hopped on to both auction houses and started looking for similar items so that I could price it out. I couldn't find a single item like it...and immediately started seeing dollar signs.

I finally found one item that was similar but didn't have any magic find. It was listed for 300,000,000 gold. So, I figured what the hell...I'll put it up for 300,000,000 gold and see what happens. That's over $500 worth of gold if I sold it straight on the GAH at $.25 per million (after fees). It hasn't sold yet, but we will see. I've heard that high ticket items tend to take a while to sell, so the name of the game is to be patient.

I also posted this on Markco's Gold Forums and got some great advice on how to go about selling this item and what it might be worth. The consensus is that it is probably worth over 100,000,000, but might take a while to sell.

If I could sell this off for a hundred million or two, it would be an awesome way to get some money in the bank and work toward my goals. Until it does sell, I'll be using my regular strategies to build up my gold and now I'll probably do at least one farming run each morning to try and get some more items like this one.

Gold Find Set

2012-07-20T04:36:00.001-07:00

As I've said many times on this blog, there are countless ways of making money in Diablo 3. For casual players like me, playing the auction house is the most efficient way to use time in the game to make a profit. An hour a day can turn into millions of gold, which can turn into cash money.

However, as a gamer I also enjoy spending a little time actually playing the game and swinging a badass two handed axe like a giant baseball bat.

I decided to invest in another strategy for making gold that I read about in Markco's Gold Guide. He suggested a farming run in Hell for players that do not quite have the gear to effectively farm Inferno Act 1. The probability of finding an item that's really worth selling on either AH in Act III of Hell are slim to none, but with a decent gold find set you can make upwards of 400K per hour killing everything you can find.

The first step was to pick up a high DPS weapon. I spent about half a million gold on a two hander with close to 1200 DPS. The important thing is to be able to pretty much one shot as many mobs as possible, which my two hander does nicely in Hell Act III.

Then it was time to start combing the AH for Gold Find Gear. I went slot by slot and looked at prices for the max gold find (which are extremely high) and then knocked off one or two percentage points from my search and picked up deals that had high Strength (for my Barb) and high gold find. I'm not concerned about vitality or resist all at this point, I just need to kill fast.

For a few million, I outfitted my Barbarian is Gold Find gear that was not perfect, but pretty close. Unbuffed, I have 289% GF and 364% with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor.

GF Without any stacks of Nephalem Valor

GF With 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor

I also equipped my follower (Templar) with gold find gear. You get a bonus to your gold and magic find from your follower, so if you put together a GF or MF set, make sure you don't forget your follower. Templars are the best because they can equip a shield, which gives you an extra GF/MF slot.

Here's the build I use normally when farming Act III Hell for gold.

Now that I have a gold farming set, whenever I have some extra time to play the game I can throw on this gear and run around Act III Hell and kill everything I see. I've had mobs drop as much as 2,000 gold. On average, white mobs will drop 200-500 gold a piece.

Seeing huge amounts of gold drop from mobs is a lot of fun. It's not the most efficient way to make money playing Diablo 3 and you won't get rich doing it, but it's extremely consistent. I invest a lot of my capital on bidding on items and I only win about 15% of the items I bid on...which means I tie a lot of gold up in bids. When my gold balance gets low, farming for gold like a Chinese Gold Farmer is a way for me to spend any extra time I have playing the game and still be helping my bottom line.

Thanks for reading and be on the lookout for a video of one of my Gold Find runs soon!

Finding My Style

2012-07-19T04:21:00.002-07:00

Over the weekend I had quite a bit of time to play around in game. My newly dinged level 60 Barbarian had some mediocre gear for a level 60, so I went ahead and spent some of the gold that I've been earning using my bidding strategy on upgrades. After all, this is a game and I'm a gaming dork...I enjoy running around killing things. I got a shiny new two hander with 1200+ DPS and a bunch of 100 Strength, 100 Vitality, + Resist to All gear to help me get through Inferno.

Inferno is hard.

I can see why the developers didn't think that there would be a Diablo kill on Inferno for a little while. After I died a few times in Act I Inferno, I switched out my bad ass two hander for a sword and board set that drastically lowered my DPS but allowed me to stay alive for most of Act I. I didn't have a lot of Magic Find on my gear, but my goal for this weekend was to just enjoy the game and clear some content. I progressed most of the way through Act I Inferno before I decided to start exploring some other options and get back to playing the AH.

At the time, I had about 5 or 6 million gold from playing the GAH. My stash and a couple mule characters were full of items that I had won on the AH using my bidding strategy and I was just waiting for my GAH slots to open up to sell them. I've found enough markets to keep a constant supply of cheap items, which is great...but because of the 10 auction limit I can only sell so many at a time. This means that any other time I have in the game could be spent farming and making more gold. To do that, I need a farming set.

I went back to Markco's Gold Secrets Guide (which has been updated a ton since my last read through) and picked up a few farming ideas. One that sparked my interest was building a gold find set and farming lower level content for gold. For this, I could definitely use my badass new two hander to mow down mobs and break open things. I spent some time researching Markco's guide and also the Diablo 3 Gold Secret Forums (which you get 3 months free access to if you purchase Markco's guide for $24), and decided that I could make upwards of 500K gold in about 45 minutes if I built a gold find set.

Half an hour and a few million gold later, I had a set that gave me over 300% GF with the Nephalem Valor buff. I'll write up a post soon about my Chinese gold farming imitation.

I also would like to be able to farm Inferno runs in between gold find runs. I'm going to start building a Magic Find set that I will be able to use in Inferno Act 1 and quickly clear the content. This will take a little while as the items with Magic Find, Resist to All, 100 Vitality, and 100 Strength cost upwards of a few million gold a piece. The plan is to keep an eye out for deals on the AH and big on some bad ass items to build my set and get it for cheap.

I'm at a bit of a crossroads in my making money in Diablo 3 adventure. I haven't made a whole lot yet as I've spent a lot of the gold that I've made by playing the GAH on buying gear upgrades and investing in my main to be able to farm and craft to make more gold. Once I finish out my Inferno Act I MF set, I can really see myself starting to rake in the gold and then be able to start selling on the RMAH. I want to build up to around 10 million gold and then anything above that will be sold or invested in items to sell.

This morning's post is a little longer than my normal ones, but there are just soooo many options at this point that it makes my head spin. Thank you for reading and if you have any suggestions, comments, or questions feel free to leave a comment here or e-mail me at pbody5205@gmail.com. I'm also on Twitter @KKrizan. Cheers!

Make Money by Selling Set Items and Legendary Items

2012-07-17T04:13:00.002-07:00

I just posted a new guide on my HubPages account about making money and gold selling set items and legendary items. I've found a couple good arbitrage opportunities where I've made as much as $6 per million gold by buying set items on the gold auction house and selling them on the RMAH. I'm working on finding a balance between flipping items on the gold auction house and investing some of my profits in items that will sell on the RMAH and also gearing up my Barbarian to be able to farm gold/rares. Check out the new guide below and start making some cash!

Make Money in Diablo 3 Selling Legendary and Set Items

Weekend Warriors

2012-07-16T04:43:00.005-07:00

The weekends are for buying. I spent a lot of gold picking up cheap items that are going to sit in my stash until mid week when the prices level off and I can sell them for their "normal" prices. I did however find one awesome deal that I flipped for over a million gold.

One of my markets is belts with Str, Vit, and Resist to All. I was scanning the AH and came across this deal at the top of the GAH search page. I was surprised that it was still there when I clicked buyout. At first I thought I should just keep the belt for my Barb, but when I looked at the prices for similar stats I wanted to get it up on the AH and see if I could flip it for over a mill.

I put it up for 1,250,000 and it sold within twenty minutes for a cool 1 million profit. That is why I love the weekends - players who don't know much about the AH find items and throw them up for any amount without doing research. For players like you and me who know our markets, we can spot deals like this a mile away and capitalize on them for huge profit margins.

I spent a lot of time this weekend reading the forums over at Diablo 3 Gold Secrets and learning about how other players are having success not only flipping items on the GAH like I am, but buying items on the GAH and selling them on the Real Money Auction House for cash. I highly recommend that you go check out Markco's gold guide there and join the community of players who are serious about making money playing Diablo 3. It's a literal gold mine of information.

Have a good week everyone and don't forget to put in some bids tomorrow for the server reset!

Bidding Strategy Video

2012-07-13T05:30:00.000-07:00

Instead of just writing about my experience making money playing Diablo 3, I wanted to show you guys one of my auction house strategies that makes me millions of gold through a video! This is my first effort on putting together an instruction video but it won't be the last! Check it out below.

Bidding Strategy Guide

2012-07-10T10:57:00.006-07:00

I just put together a guide on HubPages for a bidding strategy that will allow you to make some decent money playing Diablo 3. As stated in my short guide - understanding the gold auction house is the first step to understanding how to make money playing Diablo 3. Gold has a value and an exchange rate (if you understand how to convert the gold that you've acquired to real money. This guide will help you in one aspect of the gold auction house - bidding on items.

Make Money in Diablo 3 By Bidding on Items

Check it out and enjoy!

Ding! Level 60!

2012-07-09T04:13:00.001-07:00

I've been in the leveling home stretch for about a week and I finally just sat down and pushed through over the weekend. I have just over 40 hours played on my Barbarian (and a lot of that time has been spent playing the AH). I probably spent 25 in game to get him leveled to level 60.

I dinged 60 in the middle of Act IV in Hell difficulty. I didn't spend a whole lot of time farming anything as I leveled, I just concentrated on burning through the content. Now that I'm level 60, I plan on jumping into Inferno and trying my hand on Act I. I invested about 4 million gold in gear to hopefully get my resist all up a bit and also tacked on some additional gold find. Looking at the screenshot above, I feel like I need to invest a few more thousand into dyes to make my Barb look less like a clown and more like a money making cash cow.

I'm still spending the first 20 minutes to half an hour of my in game time combing the AH for deals and bidding on a bunch of items. I've really learned a few markets and have been trying to expand my horizons a bit, but I seem to keep coming back to the ones that I know.

My bidding strategy seems to work and give me a steady flow of items to flip. Almost every time that I log in I have won at least 5 items that I can re-list for 100% or more profits.

Well, I'm off to give Inferno Act I a shot. Wish me luck!

First RMAH Sale!

2012-07-05T04:21:00.001-07:00

Finally! I broke the damn RMAH ice and made a sale. I was beginning to believe that no one actually bought items on the RMAH and that everyone who I've been talking to about making money in Diablo 3 had been playing a huge joke on me. Now, I've got a renewed confidence in the game and am going to see how I can expand upon my one GIANT $1.99 sale.

Here's what sold and how I sold it...

I've been experimenting in several markets on the gold auction house, primarily for Barbarian gear because that's the class that I know well. I use a bidding strategy to try and scoop up deals for gear that I know will sell quickly if priced right - so I normally have a lot of gold tied up in bids. What I'm trying to do is build up my gold supply so that occasionally I can invest in an item on the GAH to flip and sell on the RMAH. I've heard of players getting as much as $20-$30 per million gold spent on the gold auction house in real money when they sell items on the RMAH - but I know that number is drastically dropping.

Right now my stash hovers between 2 and 4 million depending on how many bids I have going. I'm spending a little bit of my gold investing in a long term strategy (that I'll write about once I figure out if it will actually work) and then I also have been keeping an eye out for items that I think would sell on the RMAH and are in my price range. That's how I found the item that I sold last night.

I was looking through level 60 Barbarian shoulders with 100+ Vitality, 100+ Strength, and any Resist to All. I found a low (ish) bid on a really nice piece with 150+ Vit, 140 Strength, 30 Resist All, and 16% Magic Find. I scooped it up for about 400K gold. I tried to sell the item a few times on the RMAH for $10.00, then $5.00...then I dropped it to $1.99, which is where it sold. Now, I know that the gold to money ratio isn't that great on it, but the concept that I learned from this sale is valuable - items with high quality stats will sell on the RMAH if the price is right.

I had the money go to my Battle.net balance to avoid the high pay pal fee. My idea is to build up a little balance in my Battle.net account and then use the money in that account to bid on/buy high cost items that I know will sell and re-sell them to cash out through Pay Pal. I'd like to find a bunch of small markets where I can flip items like the shoulders and build up a nice little revenue stream.

For now - I'm working on getting to level 60 so that I can start building my farming set. I'm level 55 and can just about taste it! Now I've got about 45 minutes before I need to get ready for work - level 56 here I come!

Post Weekend - Bidding Strategy

2012-07-02T04:28:00.003-07:00

On Saturday I posted that I was up to 1.4 million gold and was going to try out some new strategies for making money in Diablo 3. Outside of the hour and a half I spent listening to podcasts from Markco about auction house strategies, I only spent a few hours this weekend playing the game. Most of my time was spent combing the auction house for deals and learning how to flip items for a profit on the gold auction house. I still have yet to make a sale on the Real Money Auction House (RMAH), which has been a little frustrating...but I did see a ton of success making gold this weekend.

My current gold balance shows around 400,000, but I have 8 auctions up that if they all sell will net me around 3 million gold. I also have about 1.5 million tied up in bids - which is where I am seeing the most success in flipping items. So even if only half of my auctions sell, I'll be up to around 2,000,000 gold and plus whatever gold I am refunded for my bids and the value of the items that I do win when the auctions end.

From my experience over the weekend, I found that bidding is where the biggest profit margins are. Players that are buying upgrades are not going to bid on items and wait for the auction to end - they will sacrifice a few Vit points (and pay more gold) to be able to get an upgrade right now. Here's the bidding strategy that I used this weekend to play the GAH.

Pick a niche. - I play a Barbarian, so I started looking at level 60 armor for Barbarians.
Find items that you would purchase for your character. - My search criteria included: 100 Vit, 100 Strength, and I tried several other key stats like movement speed, attack speed, and resist all. I picked one niche (belts) and decided to play in that space until I learned the price points and how to make a profit flipping items there.
See what the lowest buy outs for items with your search criteria are. - If you find a belt (or whatever other armor choice you pick) that has 100 vit, 100 main stat, and 40 resist all for a 50,000 gold bid with no buy out, check to see where similar items are priced at with buy outs. If the lowest buy out for a similar item is 500,000, put in a bid for the item.
Bid on lots of items. - The easiest way to track items is to bid on a ton of items. Once you bid on a item, it will show up under your auctions tab until it expires. Right now I have 26 items that I've bid on and am following, but as I grow my gold and expand to other markets, I expect to be following hundreds of auctions.
Don't overbid. - Set a top price for each item that you are bidding on and stick to it. You want to be able to sell the items you win for at least 2x the amount you paid for them to make it worth your while (and the auction slot).

The first step to making money in Diablo 3 is having a handle on the gold auction house. I feel like I'm getting there and learning, so I'm hoping that my first sale will come soon on the Real Money Auction House. A huge thank you to the guys over at Diablo 3 Gold Secrets forums for continually posting and helping out guys like me who are struggling a bit! Keep up the good work.