What do you think when you read the words "Free World of Warcraft Gold Making Guide" - a sham, right? Well, you are actually in luck. I told myself that I needed to write a hub today, so I figured I would write about something that interests me, and that just happened to be making gold in World of Warcraft/ That's right folks! This guide will cost you absolutely nothing! I'm not going to solicit money or ask that you follow some link that will throw a "BUY NOW!!!!" sign in your face.

In all honesty, it is not difficult to make gold in World of Warcraft. In fact, WoW gold is quite easy to obtain. Yet, players of all levels find themselves asking how they can make gold in World of Warcraft with very little effort. The standard online guide for World of Warcraft provides generalities and often outdated information or suggests that the best way to make gold is to use duping programs or bots. But really, none of that is needed and I will give you some very specific examples of how to make money in WoW with very little effort.

For new characters, do not underestimate the power of your primary and secondary professions. This goes for players creating alts as well. At level five you can train your two primary skills. I recommend gathering professions from the onset, this way you can make money while you level. You can always unlearn a profession land select another later, once you've amassed a satisfactory stockpile of coinage. First things first, however. If you don't yet have a bank alt, you need to make one. A bank alt is a character that you create for the sole purpose of holding items and managing auctions. So, create your character and run towards the major city. There is no need to level up, if you die you can just start from the graveyard and try again. Just follow the roads and you should be fine. Once you've reached the main gates, head inside and locate the auction house. Nearby you will find easy access to mailboxes and the bank. Congratulations! You now have a character that you can mail items to for easy listing. You no longer have to travel out of your way to post your treasures on the auction house.

Now you're ready to make some easy gold. When I start leveling a low level character, I always seem to choose mining and skinning. On most servers copper ore sells for 3-6 gold per stack on average. Of course, economies have a certain ebb and flow to them, but we'll get to that. Skinning will net you about a gold per stack of light leather and they are super easy to get. Not only can you skin the animals that you kill, but you can also skin the slain and looted animals that other players leave behind.

Other options would be to substitute mining with herbalism or you could swap out skinning, but it could be difficult to spot one resource over another if you choose both mining and herbalism as you can only track one item at a time on your mini-map.

As you level, you will often find uncommon items, indicated by their green names. Every once in a great while you might stumble upon a rare item with a blue name, and if you're really lucky you might pick up an epic item with a purple name. Send these to your bank alt along with any ore, flowers, or leather that you happen to pick up.

You will notice after a while that low level items and ore actually sell pretty well. This is because there are fewer low level players in World of Warcraft now that it is a well-established game. When fewer players are in the low level starting zones, there are less drops of sell-able items in those level ranges. Likewise, less people are gathering herbs, ore, and skins in those ranges and so they demand a higher price than they would have several years ago. This is where it gets interesting.

By now you have theoretically amassed a small fortune by selling your items on the auction house. World of Warcraft has been good to you and you've done your best to avoid novelty purchases so that you can have your gold work for you. Over the past few days you may have noticed that some players seem to lack an understanding of market value. Instead of getting mad at that poor schmuck who posted five stacks of copper ore at two gold a stack, you can buy up all of his ore and re-post it at the price the economy will bear. This is a very simple example of making an easy profit using the auction house. The truth is, the guy who posted for less should be happy because he got his asking price, and the people buying the ore don't really have to buy it, so what they are purchasing is the convenience of you providing it for them. Once you have the feel for the market on other items, you will find that a few quick searches every so often will net you a nice reward for minimal effort. Additional items you may want to check into are wool cloth, mageweave, and, depending on your server, runecloth. The most profitable of these will be mageweave in most economies.

Now, what if you have a higher level character and chasing pansies and ore nodes just doesn't sound like your cup of tea? If you are an enchanter, good money can be made farming lower level instances and disenchanting the drops. Good ranges are usually illusion dust, nether essence, and eternal essence. If you have the crusader enchant, you will find that farming Stratholme (live side) will provide you with the brilliant shards and righteous orbs you need along with greater eternal essences from the green drops that sell for decent money on most servers. While you're there, you can pick up the spider parts and bone fragments from the undead side. These usually sell well to players trying to hit 58 so they can start picking up the Burning Crusade quests in Outlands. Sell them in stacks of 30 to make it convenient. (For players using Recruit-a-Friend, the bonus experience from turning in these quests is very good, especially for just picking up the items from the auction house.)

If you have fishing leveled, there are two notable catches in Northrend that will net you some easy gold. Glacial Salmon makes a great +spell power food and Musselback Sculpin is the attack power equivalent. You can cook them yourself or you can just post them to the auction house as is. What? Don't want to level fishing? Do you have a little brother or sister or a kid that is begging you to play World of Warcraft? Why not make them do some chores for you and them let them help you level your fishing skill in a major city? Sure, it's devious, but they're happy and you're happy, what's not to love?

Of course, if you are level 80, you can make easy gold by completing daily quests and finishing up quests that you may have skipped during your grind. This can be stretched even further with the new experience gains from battlegrounds. I have known several players who leveled very quickly in Alterac Valley and then hit the quests they'd skipped after turning 80. These folks ended up with their epic flying mounts in no time, selling or disenchanting most quest reward items and posting random drops on the auction house. After you hit 80, the gold obtained from quests that would have granted experience gains is increased. By waiting to quest, they actually made more money than if they would have leveled by questing and they walked away with a few PvP epics to boot!