Crafting profit explained

The formula

A craft is profitable when what it sells for beats what it cost to make. AHledger writes that as one line: the median price of the result, times the yield, minus the median price of each reagent times the quantity the recipe consumes. That difference is the margin, and it is shown per craft.

The median is used on both sides on purpose. Pricing your reagents at the cheapest listing assumes you will always find that listing; pricing your result at the cheapest listing assumes you will undercut everyone. The median is what the market actually clears at, so a margin computed from medians is one you can repeat.

Where the margin shows up

• On the site, each profession page lists every recipe with its reagents; each result links to its item page, where the price on every market sits next to the Crafted by card.
• In the addon, a line under the reagents in any profession window shows total reagent cost, result value, and margin at the prices in your market's price table. The Crafting tab lists every learned recipe the same way, sortable by margin, with a shopping list of the reagents you are missing for however many crafts you plan.

A reagent with no known price is named, never counted as free. If the margin line says two reagents are unpriced, the number next to it is not a margin yet.

What the margin leaves out

1. The house cut. A faction auction house keeps five percent of every sale. On a thin margin that is the whole margin.
2. Deposits that do not sell. Each listing costs a deposit tied to the vendor price and duration, and expired listings lose it. High vendor price items that sell slowly bleed deposits.
3. Your own supply. Reagents you gathered were not free; they cost the time you could have spent selling them raw. Price them at the median even when you did not buy them.
4. Depth. A margin on an item with three units listed is a margin on three units. Check units listed and the 7 day history before you make forty.

Four ways a profitable recipe becomes a loss

• Buying reagents at the wrong time. Reagent prices peak when everyone levels the same profession. The 30 day median tells you whether today's price is the norm or the spike.
• Crafting bind on equip gear in bulk. Gear trades once per buyer. The market for a blue chest piece is the number of characters at that level this week, not the number of listings you can afford.
• Ignoring yield. Recipes that make several units per craft, or a range, change the maths. The Crafted by card and the addon both apply the yield; a spreadsheet often forgets it.
• Chasing a margin everyone can see. A recipe every crafter at that skill knows, made from reagents everyone can buy, has its margin competed to zero within a day of being visible. Durable margins come from recipes that drop or come from reputation, from reagents that need a gathering profession, or from timing.

A routine that works

1. Open the Crafting tab in the addon with your profession window up, sort by margin, and ignore anything with an unpriced reagent.
2. For the top few, open the result's item page. Check units listed and the 7 day chart on your market.
3. Set an alert on the most expensive reagent at the price that makes the craft worth it, and buy when it fires instead of when you happen to look.
4. Post with the posting helper at the median, not the minimum. Undercutting by a copper starts a race you do not need to run.