1,00,000 Gold

In my quest to make money playing Diablo 3 (while still maintaining my "real life"), I have finally hit a memorable milestone.  

My gold holdings ran over into seven digits yesterday! 

 I logged in and found that every single one of my auctions sold - most of which were mid level legendaries that I have been flipping for decent profits.  With my limited amount of time in game, it's been difficult to keep up on the markets and find good deals to flip and make any sort of steady income.  The Diablo 3 market changes on a daily basis and there are soooooo many niches and markets out there that by the time any of them are "revealed" online through blogs or forums, all of the profitability has dried up.

For my last four or five sessions, instead of focusing on leveling my barbarian (who is now starting Hell and level 51), I spent about half of my session playing around in the Gold Auction House.  I decided that because I will be selling to mostly casual players, I would make an effort to truly learn the market for the one character class that I know - Barbarians.

Through some trial and error, I've found a few markets for legendary items that are popular for leveling barbarians.  One item in particular has been my bread and butter niche for the last week.  This item sells for around 130,000 to 150,000 gold quite quickly and will sometimes drop in price to around 100,000.  Each time I log in, I search for this legendary item specifically and see where the market is.  If the lowest buy out is high (140,000+),  I will put bids in on any listed items at 70,000.  If the buy out price is low, I'll buy up the few that are low enough for me to flip and make a decent profit re-selling them at 140,000+ each.  Pretty simple.

Now, I won't get rich just by using this little niche market.  I can only make so much gold from one item.  But the idea is that if I can continue to make gold each time I log in by quickly checking several markets like this one, I'll be able to maximize the short sessions that I have and make a decent amount of gold (which will eventually mean a decent amount of real money) each and every time I log in to the game.  Remember, the goal of this blog is show a profit from playing Diablo 3.  I know that many players out there are already making good money playing this game and that my progress bar on the side has yet to quiver - but trust me, I'll get there.

One resource that keeps me going is reading Markco's private forums.  There are dozens of players who post there every day who are making hundreds and thousands of dollars playing Diablo 3.  I highly recommend buying Markco's gold guide, which contains several strategies to help you get started making money playing Diablo 3, and the forums are a fantastic resource.