WUG: Earning a living from Diablo 3

Real Money from Diablo 3

Since when did gaming become a full time career? Well if the net is to be believed hundreds are making money from Diablo 3. And many "gamers" are actually making a good living from the RMAH.

How to make money from gaming, Diablo3 in particular
Ever since gold farming and selling gaming gold on sites such as Ebay become an early millennium phenomenon, gamers have been wondering how they can turn their favourite hobby of playing videogames into a full time job. Is Diablo 3's Real Money Auction House the Golden Coin laying Goose that all us gamers have been waiting for? As a game playing reader you're drawn to this article because you love games and have either heard of or are already playing Diablo3 and WUG is your new favourite battle cry. So I've gone off and researched what I could about the City Bankers' favourite MMORPG and looked into if it is even possible to earn a Billion gold in Diablo 3. I've also added a link to the well known Diablo 3 Billionaire program. Which you can click to download here  which if you buy it earns me a bit of bucks for my gaming obsession and will also potentially help you to fit real life economic theories into your Diablo 3 game to allow you to possibly shuck off the chains of grinding for gold and let you become a proper gaming investor.

When is the best time to buy and sell items in the RMAH
Blizzard has kindly let the auction house be available at all times, even in game. 

Legendary Items in the RMAH

• The first 48 hours of the week are a good time for transactions because of "rolling auctions" that haven't been listed as buyouts.
• The "Saronite Saturday" theory refers to Friday D3 gaming sessions that become Farming Fridays with grinders and cash croppers getting the goods to flog them on. Theoretically the spin off of this is that Friday might be the best time to sell, Saturday's prices should see the all dayers from Friday having a massive glut of items to sell on the cheap and that would leave the beginning of the week as the best bidding time.
• Theoretically mid week is a low supply time.
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How is item flood prevented?
Like a real auction house Blizzard puts a fee on each transaction. What is Blizzard's fee for each RMAH transaction you ask? Blizzard takes 15 % of every tranasction. Which means 15 Gold for every 100. This nice little earner from WoW's creators helps them earn more for their game, keep their massive server farms powered and more importantly stops any old seller of tat items from flooding the RMAH with dime a dozen D3 items that would make searching for what you want a nightmare.

Crafting as a better way of earning gold

As I said we've been researching away to find the best ways for you to enjoy your time and make a bit of dosh on the side for your hobby so we've got to give credit to thelittlenerd.com for their useful insights into crafting that we've reproduced here:

"He has been crafting +5  stat armor with my crafting character.  I’ve only made boots/chest/helms so far, some have been sold for $9.99 and others have been deliberately underpriced and listed  for 1.99 – 4.99.  He goes on to say that +5 stat recipes from the gold auction house can be bought  for 250-500k gold, which compares very favourably-cost v investment wise to the  20-30 million gold recipes for +6 stats.  A stack of 100 inferno essences are about 180k lat the time the crafter wrote his little piece and tombs / tears are very cheap(like 15k for 100ish).

Some Stats to calculate profit vs investment in Crafting

100 x Inferno Essences -180kish

Tombs x 1– 500ish each

Tears x 1 (rare inferno mats) – 500ish each

Average +5 stat crafting prices – 40kish

Average gold spent per item is about 100kish

Prices are of course variable and can only act as a guideline because due to the nature of the RMAH they change frequently.

To use crafting to make a  profit you will need to gross over 100k per item, which obviously is a gamble.  Instead of farming all day, hoping for one good item to sell on the RMAH, you can just invest a little bit of gold, and out of say a million gold you invest (which really isn’t much), you can have 10-15ish pairs of boots.  Out of those boots, AT LEAST 2-5 will be good and able to sell on the RMAH.

Final Point – Instead of farming for hours to find items to sell on RMAH, Craft items with the abundant gold you have, and then sell for mediocre prices on the RMAH.  It’s quicker than farming, you almost ALWAYS get your money back, by gold or real money, and the only thing you need to have is about 1 million gold and a decent recipe/max level 10 crafter."

How do you get your real money in Diablo 3?

There are two types of methods for retrieving funds won in the Diablo III Real Money Auction House (RMAH). The first is Paypal, when a player wins an auction and sends it to their paypal accounts, they can either have it sent to a valid credit card, checking account, or otherwise use it to purchase items from other websites that use Paypal-Ebay being the most well known.

Battle.net balance can only be used in the RMAH, and on Blizzard's store, linked from their homepage. 

Many choose to use the Battlenet balance as this avoids Ebay fees.

What is the minimum RMAH transaction amount?

For battle.net balance, any purchase made must be at least equivalent to one USD, or $1. No purchases below that amount may be made, and no further fee will be incurred. Transaction fees are calculated differently for commodities (such as gold or crafting materials), which will be a flat %15 instead of a flat $1 USD fee. 

The maximum amount of money that can be held in a battle.net balance at any time cannot exceed $600 USD, or its equivalent in other currencies.

So should you buy the Diablo 3 Billionaire Guide?

We're playing by big boys' rules here so of course it's going to be ultimately up to you. I've just started to use the guides myself and what I will say is that at the very least they present a really comprehensive insight into Diablo3 and will definitely improve your general gameplay. The guide is well presented and certainly no rehashing of old forum strategies nor simply a list of Legendary items that will sell well.

Here is the link to the Diablo 3 Billionaire Guide, good luck and I hope your hobby makes you rich!