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.