20 Days Of Gold Making - Day 4 & 5 - To Bank Alt Or Not?

This entry is part of a series of gold making posts answering the questions in the 20 Days of Gold Making Challenge started by Nev over at Auction House Addict.  If you also blog, then be sure to check out the gold blogging challenge for post topic ideas.

20 Days Of Gold Making (Days 4 & 5)

Do You Use A Banker Alt / Guild?  When Did You Start Using It & Why?

This is one major area where I differ from a lot of other World of Warcraft gold makers.  I don't use bank alts.  Sure, I have guilds that are just overflow & stockpile storage banks, but I definately do not have a dedicated banker. 

All of my characters are crafters, so they each are responsible for purchasing their own materials, crafting their products and listing them on the auction house themselves.  Why?

Why Each Alt Sells Their Own Items:

1. Inventory Management - It's much easier to see when you are low on stock when on the characters that creates and stores the items themselves instead of digging through add-on info that is only as accurate as the last time you logged every alt of yours and pulled every single item out of each mailbox.  How often is that?  Never.
2. WYSIWYG Purchasing - Everyone buys their own materials.  No need to worry about who has what, who needs what, and who to mail more stuff to.  They just buy their own supplies, use their own, and store their own.
3. Less Mailbox Jams - Each mailbox is much more manageable when broken down into 1-2 professions per character.  Glyphs are bad enough to relist alone, I wouldn't want hundreds of other items mixed into the expired auctions with them.
4. Easier Relisting On Remote AH - Much smaller expired lists per auctioneer means I have more relisting options from my multiple mailboxes, instead of everything locked behind the next 50 expired auction mails.
5. Time Saver - Less time mailing materials and finished products around, smaller mailbox back ups, and a quicker inventory assessment all speed up the time required to keep crafting and selling streamlined.

These are my own personal preferences, but many others go with a dedicated bank alt or two.  I don't see the benefit of cramming everything onto a couple of alts to do all of the ugly work.  In my opinion it's actually slower to send everything to one alt who gets stuck collecting, sorting, taking inventory, posting, and relisting all on his own. 

Day 5 Question Is:  Do You Keep The Same Banker Alt Or Do You Change Them Up & Why?

Since, I don't even use a banker alt, I'll be skipping this question.


Recommended Guides: Secret Gold Guide | Journal of Marcus Ty | WoW Secrets