“For instance, I just sold a Scarab Lord account today for $6,000.” Those are the words of Shane Jeffery, a guy who’s made a truckload of cash selling World of Warcraft accounts.
Jeffery is the owner and creator of premium account re-selling business KHAccounts, and has turned over an impressive $475,000 (£275k) of sales in less than three years.
The 29-year-old revealed his staggering success on an ‘Ask Me Anything’ Reddit thread earlier this week, detailing how he got into the business of peddling video game accounts for money.
“I originally started in the industry by trading my own World of Warcraft account (that had my actual name on it) for another one on the website MarkeeDragon.com. I got scammed and learned a valuable lesson that day,” explains Jeffery.
He continues: “It took me nearly two to three years to figure out how much money could be made by reselling accounts. I started to take the steps in and around May 2009 to build up a cash reserve (about $5,000) to start a good collection of accounts.”
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By day, Oregon, US-based Jeffery is the manager of a programming team, but KHAccounts.net has been so successful that it’s now his primary source of income.
That’s largely thanks to the impressive profit margins available through buying accounts from other users.
“I tend to buy accounts for 55 to 65 per cent of what I think I can sell them for to give me some bartering room. So, for instance, if I buy an account for $1,000, I am going to list it for $1,800 to $2,000, and now I have $800 to $1,000 of bartering room,” the young entrepreneur explains.
By this point, you’re probably wondering why anyone would want to pay such significant amounts of money for Warcraft accounts.
According to Jeffery, the accounts he sells have stuff that would take “years and years” to obtain, and that some of it “isn’t even obtainable anymore”.
A much sought-after Scarab Lord account
“The accounts that I tend to sell have 300 days played on them. So people are, in essence, buying a completely decked account with things that would take them 300 days played to achieve,” he explains.
Jeffery adds: “The people that typically buy accounts from me are people that sold their account a long time ago and want to get back into the game. The list of reasons is endless. I have had raiders from Top 100 US guilds buy accounts from me because they need a specific class for a fight.”
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Of course, there’s plenty of risk involved in the business.
That’s because World of Warcraft creator Activision Blizzard doesn’t technically permit the re-sale of game accounts.
“It is completely against the terms of service,” says Jeffery. “If Blizzard does indeed find out that an account has been sold for real world currency, they will ban the account. That being said, I have never had an account banned for being sold/resold. So I am not really sure what it takes to get an account banned in that regard anymore.”
He concludes: “If Blizzard someday comes across my website and served papers for it to be closed, then so be it. I am not breaking any laws.”
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
