Small Competition, Big Demand
The majority of the reason to sell pets has remained the same: Not a lot of competition in most markets and a significant demand. On most servers, if you have a healthy population, you have a people selling pets. The barriers to entry limit the number of people willing to sell pets, so there's generally a niche you can fill. While it is not as lucrative as the crafting professions, with knowledge and patience you can amass your own pile of gold.
Getting started
There are several different ways to get tradable pets in the game: random drops, rare spawns, in-game merchants, professions, and holidays. Each groups of pets has it's own advantages and disadvantages.
Random drops generally have the highest profit potential, but with very low drop rates it makes them prohibitive to farm. Rare spawning pets like the Darting Hatchling have a steady market, but they aren't worth as much and you will find significant competition in farming them. In game merchants provide pets with a wide range of profit margins, but most the good ones require reputation or, in the case of the Argent Tournament, an entire daily hub you have to open.
Even if you don't have a high level character, reputation, or a lot of gold there are ways to work the pet market to your advantage. When I started selling pets, it was because I wanted gold. Sitting in Teldrasil on my first character, I learned that I could make money selling Hawk Owls and Great Horned Owls. Significantly more money than I could get off my low level professions and cooking. I heard of Lil Timmy and his White Kitten. I hunted him for weeks, buying kittens. Then I would sell them or give them to my friends.
The Profit Grind
Within my first month I was able to make over one thousand gold. Soon after that, my money doubled and tripled as I began buying up cheap pets off the Auction House and selling them at for the normal rate. Still, even in Wrath of the Lich King terms, that wasn't a lot of gold. I started looking at the pets that commanded high prices and what it took to get those.
Rare Drops
The most expensive Rare drop pets to buy in the game are the Whelplings, the Hyacinth Macaw, and the Disgusting Oozling. This does change a bit server to server, but overall it remains true. The reason is primarily that you have to kill a specific type of monster to have a chance of this pet dropping. Like the Tiny firefly, many of these pets drop rate is 1/1000. The upside is profit, the Hyacinth Macaw has gone for more than 34,000 gold on some servers and is usually seen over 20,000 gold. If you do choose to go after these pets, expect a lot of very boring grinding, killing the same mobs over and over.
Reputation pets
In most markets, the reputation pets seem to be under-represented. The majority of the pets come from the Argent Tournament. Opening up all the pets available to the Argent Tournament requires weeks of grinding, for titles, reputation, and marks to buy the pets with. Many people who played through the tournament didn't open up all the vendors, so they do not have access to all the pets. With prices from 4,000 gold to 9,000 gold, server permitting, they can be a good time investment. Be careful though, some pets, like the Shimmering Wyrmling, can be traded or sold, but require reputation to use. Reputation requirements stymie the pool of potential buyers.
Profession Pets
If you are going to craft pets from a profession, learn Engineering. Engineering and Enchanting both have craftable pets, but the most come from Enginerring. You can pick up pets with Fishing and Archeology, but they are not tradable. They are going to add two pets to Jewelcrafting in Mists of Pandaria, but if your primary concern is pets, you will find six pets in Engineering with a seventh coming in Mists. Besides, who doesn't want a miniture Fel Reaver?
Holiday Pets
Many of the pets you get during holiday events in-game are now tradable, at least since Hallow's end last year. All those Sinister Squashlings that were taking up bag space can go for up to 1000 gold each. The problem of course, is holiday events come once a year and there's no guarantee you'll get anything you can sell. Most the pets come from a currency grind for the specific holiday, like the Captured Flame, or from the bags you get on the daily holiday boss dungeon, like the Frigid Frostling. The best bet with these is do the dungeon daily, and then hold on to them until the prices go back up after the holiday is over.
Pet hunting, for Fun and Profit
While I started selling pets to make gold, I've found that I just like collecting pets. The pet market cannot stand next to the gear or gem market for profitability. It doesn't work the same way. Each character only needs each pet once, and come expansion, each battle.net account will only need each pet once. While there is gold to be had, it's a low yield market comparatively, but worthwhile if you want to put the time into it. There are changes coming and we can't predict how the market will react, but rare pets will always be in demand. The Pet Battle system will increase demand for pets right up until Mists of Pandaria hits, so the time to make your gold is now.
Attrib: The Nighttime Apparition @nighttimeapp
Copyright © Jason Dudley
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