So you're making some gold in WoW whether by hand farming or botting, and now you're wanting to make a little real life cash. Now you just have to find a buyer. There are two types of buyers in the world of RMT. Your Private Buyers and your Retail Suppliers.

Private Buyers are buyers whom contact you either from a post on a popular RMT message board like Markeedragon.com or people who've found out you're a gold seller in some way or another (you've sold gold to a guild member who tells a friend etc...). Generally these types of buyers pay more for the gold than a Retail supplier will, but along with that comes as the popular song say's "mo' money mo' problems". That is to say that many private buyers will take longer to sell to because of conflicting schedules, fear of being scammed, or general asshatadness. You will also find more than your fair share of scammers who will either try to scam your gold from you without paying, or initiate a claim with PayPal and cause a chargeback, thus getting your gold, and their money back.

This is not to say that you should avoid selling to private buyers. You just have to familiarize yourself with the scams that are out there and protect yourself. Keep AIMlogs and record any voice conversations. Keep screenshots, especially of the trade itself, hell you could even FRAPs it. Another way you can keep yourself safe is by getting TrustWho verified (a service of Markeedragon) and trading only with other TrustWho verified persons. In a nutshell TrustWho establishes who you are so that buyers can feel safe buying from you because your information has been verified by a company. It removes a lot of the anonymity from the internet transaction.

As for Retail Suppliers they generally pay less for the gold as they are a middle man to the big companies like IGE.com. Dealing with a well respected company like IGE makes the transaction a lot less likely to be scammed. I have posted on a previous blog my experiences with Pusada.com and how happy I am with that company. Since that post I have sold to them many more times. I don't make as much as I would from a private buyer, but I have never had a pay problem with them, and other than one time one of their accounts was banned for some reason, their pickup was always timely and speedy.

Generally what I do is attempt to find a private buyer for the first couple of days, if I have had no interest (and trust me, I've spent several days bumping to sell on several different forums) I send IGE a message that I have gold to sell to them. Within another day or two I've been contacted and have made the transaction and cheered as I watched the money be transferred into my PayPal account.

What do I feel about the Private Buyer vs. Retail Supplier issue? I think if you have the time and patience to wait for the buyers, and build a steady client list, then by all means get trustwho verified and work on it. Try not to pull too much of your hair out.

If you don't have the time and patience? Dump the gold on the retailers. They're almost always willing to buy what you have, though you may not like the price. Hey what can they say, they want to make some money too, and they know you're probably desperate for the cash.

Those of you who have read some of my previous entry's into this blog probably realize that I am a botter. I've used Glider, Pirox, Mimic (which lost me 3 lv80 botting accounts) and GnomeTools (the best bot I've used for leveling and farming mobs(since Glider) so far).

I recently came across a posting on the Glider forums talking about a new gathering bot that Bossland and Hawker from the Glider forums had been working on. I immediately checked it out and when I watched the video I wanted to cheer. It is basically a standalone Yoink!, for those who never used Yoink! with Glider, it is a flying patrol bot that gathers herbs, mining nodes, and gas clouds. This is great for me since I make a lot of my gold from farming ore in Sholazar Basin, and honestly mining it by hand 8 hours a day is a pain in the ass.

Now this bot has a name. It is called Gatherbuddy, like I said before it'll harvest your nodes for you automatically and comes with some great profiles, though when I used mine I saw a long line of other botters all following the same path as me. I would suggest using your own profile. I have been using it for about a week and a half now and have had no major problems with it. It's smooth, rarely crashes for me, and gathers more nodes than I could by hand. The only con's I've noticed so far has been the combat. It uses macro's kind of like GnomeTools, but doesn't use them as intelligently. It also doesn't have the ability to mail your harvested goods out to your mule character, but there are addon's that can take care of that for you, and Hawker has mentioned that automailing is in the long term horizon plan.

Now I know what you're thinking....this is too good to be true, it must cost an arm and a leg. I am not going to lie to you. It does cost a little bit up front, but you'll more than make up for what you spent from the gold you sell (if that's your thing). Gatherbuddy costs 15 Euro's up front (about 22 USD) and after the first month you pay 5 Euro's a month. It is worth every penny, trust me.

Ok so it's a great harvesting bot, but is it secure? Right now no public bot is undetectable by Warden, they are merely undetected. Hawker and Bossland seem to be committed to making sure that Gatherbuddy stays safe, if Warden's offsets change, they shut down the authentication servers for Gatherbuddy. That's much more than can be said for Mimic.

My opinion? Use GnomeTools (or MMOtotus when it releases) to level your toon to 60-80, then gather away and make some money using Gatherbuddy!

This is just a carbon copy of my fightbook posted at www.mmognometools.com

This fightbook is still a work in progress, I've used it for about 4 hours and haven't noticed any glaring problems so I thought I would share it with the other hunters here and hopefully see if there are any crazy glaring problems I've missed.

First we'll start with spec, it's just a cookie cutter 56 survival 15 marks spec.
[IMG]http://i44.tinypic.com/1zvzbih.jpg[/IMG]

And now the action bar layout.
[IMG]http://i40.tinypic.com/312fclj.jpg[/IMG]

1=Mount
2=Hunters Mark
3=Combat Macro
4=Kill Shot
5=Feign Death
6=Mend Pet
7=Empty
8=Aspect of Viper
9=Aspect of the Dragonhawk
0=Eat/Drink Macro
-=Rez/Feed pet macro
= is /cleartarget macro

Now for the Macros:
[CENTER]Combat[/CENTER]
/petattack
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=target Serpent Sting(Rank 12), Explosive Shot(Rank 4), Steady Shot(Rank 4), Frost Trap, Disengage, Explosive Shot(Rank 4), Explosive Shot(Rank 4)

[COLOR="Red"]Usually I pull aggro off of my pet(a cat) by the time steady shot finishes which is why I have frost trap and two explosive shots to take advantage of Lock and Load[/COLOR]

[CENTER]Eat/Drink macro[/CENTER]
/use Mead Basted Caribou
/use Honeymint Tea


[CENTER]Rez and Feed pet[/CENTER]
[B][COLOR="Red"]**I have yet to test this macro since my pet hasn't died yet!**[/COLOR][/B]
[B][COLOR="Red"]**Do not use if you are using a mount, GT thinks your pet is dead when you mount**[/COLOR][/B]
/cast Revive Pet
/cast Feed Pet
/use Mead Basted Caribou
[B][COLOR="Red"]**Do not use if you are using a mount, GT thinks your pet is dead when you mount**[/COLOR][/B]
[B][COLOR="Red"]**I have yet to test this macro since my pet hasn't died yet!**[/COLOR][/B]

Feedback is much appreciated!