I want to be an arbitrageur!

Well, not quite. For those unfamiliar with the term, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets. Simply put, it's a risk free profit made by buying at a low price and selling at a higher price simultaneously. In WoW, the profit isn't exactly risk-free since time does elapse between buying and reselling.

Buying low and selling high does require intimate knowledge of the goods that are bought and sold. Some items do not sell, despite what your Auctioneer software might say, whilst others will sell persistently above market price. I have been dabbling in buying low and selling high, but unless I camp the AH, there is only a limited amount of bargains to be had at one quick daily glance.

Pushing the boat out a little further, there is buying low, conversion and then selling high. Simply put, professions. Some materials sell for more than the items crafted from them, but others do make a profit. However, the profit tends to be small, if present. The most I am getting if I buy the mats from the AH, is around 30 gold per item. And of course, there is a cap on the number of items that will sell on any given day. And so I have diverse pool of patterns that sell daily for which I buy mats of the AH, craft the item, and reap in the profit. On days where I have a little grinding time, I grind the mats rather than buying and make an additional profit. This is the most profitable way of trading, but also the most time consuming. The best scenario is buying discount mats, crafting and then selling at a premium. Even so, there is only so much time I can spend trawling the AH for bargains and logging in different alts to craft can be a tedious endeavour.

I don't know what the secret of the AH is. Some days I make reasonable profits and other days nothing sells, but I seem to be at a stalemate. That should come as no surprise. If I spend the same amount of time and roughly the same amount of money a day, it's reasonable to then make a similar profit daily. I guess it may be time to make my peace with the fact that with the time and skills that I currently have no more gold is to be had without more time, money and/or effort thrown into the endeavour.