As you know, in World of Warcraft there are a hundred different
ways to make money. We'll be introducing some of the more profitable
ones in this guide…

Step 1 - Change from Crafter to Gatherer
Change your tradeskill into two gathering
skills if you see that your tradeskill doesn't bring much profit, in
fact tradeskills mostly bring very few profit because there is just
too many high level crafters with the time progressing. Leveling
tradeskills or gathering skills in this game is really not hard, at
high level it requires maybe 2-3 days of work to max a skill. If
there was a large profit to make with
enchanting/leatherworking/smithing/tailoring, people who can spend
more time online than you each day would have already maxed those
tradeskills and flooded the market with items.

In fact they did; actually shortly after people start to hit 60 on
a new server people start to exploit all possible ways to make money
to the maximum, so you got two possibilities to make money. You can
find a niche, a little secret way of making money, which is extremely
profitable but which is not known (well) by other players. As long as
your secret stays one, you will continue to make nice money, but be
sure that you wont find such a secret on any public forums as
spoiling it would also ruin the profit from it. (As soon as people
know a way to make money, many start to provide the same sort of item
and flood the market with it=decrease of demand=decrease of price
= no profit for you)
The second way, which is the interesting
way for us, is to provide the market with items that are needed
on a large base and that are always demanded. What are those items in
general? Right! Ingredients for tradeskills.

Step 2 - Choose your Gathering Skill
Almost every
tradeskiller wont, at some point, be able to provide himself with all
the ingredients he needs. The more people there are who stick to
their tradeskills and don't want to give them up, the better the
profit will be for you. This is why you should choose two gathering
skills (cannot choose more than two).
Don't worry about making
armor - there is a simple solution: use mostly drop/quest items. If
you use items that drop instead of crafted items, you wont be much
behind (difference between items you can make and items you find at
your level while questing and hunting are mostly very small) and also
you will be able to concentrate fully on gathering ingredients which
you will sell on the AH. This way you will - in a short and fast way
- make a lot more money than any crafter and will eventually be able
to buy yourself any crafted item (if you should really want one).

Now there is only one problem, which gathering skills to
choose?
This is your choice and depends on the economy of
your server, but we have a general list of the gathering skills,
ranking them by how much profit they generate, helping you to get an
overview.

1) Mining - Mining is maybe the most
profitable gathering skill. Why? It's used for 3 different
tradeskills => Weapon/Armor Smithing + Engineering. Also some
ores/metal bars are used for potions and other tradeskills. You can
mine several ores from one mining spot and you can melt the ore
yourself to bars.
The other VERY important fact is that you get
rare gems from mining spots which are needed for tradeskills and
other things. At high levels these rare gems start to pay off a lot,
as one arcane crystal for example can be sold for a lot of money on
the AH, because it is needed for making Arcanite Bars, the most
precious and rare metal there is.

2) Skinning - Skinning is a very profitable
gathering skill as you get all your leather while hunting. You have
to kill beast type of mobs which can drop different sorts of leather.
Sometimes you get rare scales and quest items which are also
extremely precious. Skinning is profitable because you can do it
while killing mobs, that means you go into a cave with beasts and
kill them for a certain amount of time which brings you extra loot +
exp as well as loads of leather.

3) Herbalism - Herbs are a bit hard to find,
but if you know the spots it becomes actually easy if you have no
competition. Herbs sell surprisingly well on the AH and are not
offered often. If you really search good spots in high level zones,
with not too many people you can make nice money out of this.
Especially because you can get up to three herbs from one plant.

4) (Dis)Enchanting - The last and certainly
least profitable gathering skill is disenchanting items. You take
blue/green/purple drop items and disenchant them to get ingredients
for enchanters, who then can enchant armor with stats. This is by far
the most pricey skill to raise as you miss out on all the profit from
dropped items which you could sell. Enchanting ingredients can be
sold for nice money on the AH, but keep in mind that you will not be
able to sell any good item you see dropping if you take this skill
serious. Also you will have to ask and beg in groups to get not
needed armor/weapon drops in order to disenchant them, if you don't
play in a guild, you will certainly not be successful with your
requests often.

Step 3 - Organized Gathering
Now you need to start gathering
items. It doesn't matter if you raise your gathering skills while
leveling or as a high level, you will always want to keep these
things in min:

1. Ingredients drop according to
   zone level. That means, the higher the level of the ingredients
   you need, the higher level the zone gets in which you have to
   search.
   
   
2. Always keep up your tracking.
   If you do mining or herbalism, make sure to ALWAYS have the
   tracking for those items switched on, after dying for example it
   turns itself off and you wont see any yellow dots anymore on the
   map.
   
   
3. Find the good zones. There
   are certainly better zones than others for gathering skills and good
   spots for finding beasts to skin, you will have to find your very
   own favorite spots which are not too crowded, but there are already
   people who found out about the good zones for gathering. On our
   forums here you can find a complete compendium of the best zones for
   each herb for example and there is more to come about this shortly.
   In the meantime you don't have to go and search through all zones,
   you can simply use www.thottbot.com
   and check where the ingredient you need can be found most
   frequently.
   
   
4. Make dots on your map. Either use the dot system (from
   cosmos or insomniax) for making dots where you find certain minings
   spots/herb locations, or use a mod that will do this for you
   automatically; you can find one in our download section.
   This
   will allow you to go directly - without losing time - to the
   possible spots for ingredients and check if they are up. The longer
   you do this and the more different paths you take through a zone,
   the more dots you will get and the faster/more efficient you will
   become while gathering.
   For skinning its slightly different; here
   you will most likely find caves with a lot of beasts (like the ape
   cave in Un'Goro or the Yeti cave in Winterspring), but make dots
   anyway so you can quickly go to another skinning spot if there is
   already someone hunting at yours.
   

Step 4 - Use all Your Options
You will have to combine your gathering skills with a few other things to
really make the biggest profit.

1. While searching ingredients or
   while waiting on the respawn of your mining/herb spots, KILL THINGS.
   Kill things as much as you can on your way. Don't kill any trash
   like Oozes for example, but kill stuff that drops cloths (humanoid
   mobs) or mobs that drop other useful stuff.
   If you really don't
   get the time to kill mobs on your way then go into instances from
   time to time. Make sure to find a rule for the loot that is
   distributed and make sure to always ask if anyone needs an item, if
   not everyone should roll on this dropped item.. Eventually you will
   win stuff and be able to sell in on the AH.
   Additionally, in
   instances you will find a lot of cloths from mobs which you can sell
   in stacks on the AH.
   
   
2. Always empty your bags before
   going to gather stuff or before going to an instance. This is
   extremely important, bag space=money. Therefore try to invest
   early in 14-16 slot bags to carry as much loot as possible.
   
   
3. When you do quests, and when you
   don't need any of the items that are offered as reward, make SURE
   to always pick the biggest Axe/Sword/Plate Armor. Those sell for a
   much nicer money than cloth items at the merchant.
   
   
4. Friends who do tradeskills can
   help. If you got friends who do tradeskills PROFIT from their
   knowledge and ask them about how the economy goes for ingredients,
   what do they need the most right now, what is the hardest item to
   find currently etc.
   
   
5. Make Mules. If you lack bank space don't buy pricey bank
   slots, just make a mule and log it in when needed, using the postbox
   system or a friend or a second computer (if mule is on second
   account) to transfer items.
   

Step 5 - Auction House is Your Friend
Now we get to one of the most important factors for money making, the Auction House in short AH. Almost all ingredients/gems/armor pieces can be sold for a bigger money at the AH than to the merchant. Even if the price difference is only 1 gold, it pays off with the time coming. And there we already get to the most important rule about the AH - PATIENCE.

You will have to get to know the AH, it's prices and it's moods,
it's times and it's secrets. Don't mind studying the AH for a lot of
time, it's well worth it. There are UI mod's that write down
automatically on item windows the prices that they were seen for last
time on AH, this makes your work much much easier.

A few things that you need to work out about the AH:

1. Get to know the prices, play
   with the prices. Get to know the going prices for items that are
   offered on the AH. This will allow you to estimate the best prices
   for your own items and will allow you to even play with these. This
   means, if you know exactly how much an item is worth normally, why
   not offer it for a slightly higher price when there is no one else
   offering the same item?
   Right, this is where the actual profit
   comes from, knowledge about prices and the AH.
   
   
2. Offer all your items. Even
   if it might be a bother at the beginning and even if it might take a
   while, you will get used to it and find out eventually which items
   sell on the AH at all and which not, allowing you to sell the ones
   that don't sell well at all to the merchant immediately.
   You
   will pretty quickly get the drill and become a pro, you will be able
   to memorize prices and use them quickly to set values for your goods
   in order to move on faster to more farming.
   
   
3. Watch the AH. This will
   allow you to detect certain leaks and holes. Sometimes items like
   ores are offered in a huge amount and prices drop, you might want to
   keep your items and sell other things first while waiting for a
   moment when there is less of these items for sale.
   You might
   EVEN consider (if you find cheap merchandise on the AH) to buy up
   all of it yourself and sell it for a higher price afterwards, people
   will be forced to buy from you and forced to pay the price you set
   because there wont be any other source for this item, than yours.
   
   
4. Whatever you do, DON'T
   UNDERBID. People tend to make the prices for items lower in
   order to sell them faster and to underbid competitors, this however
   is very narrow minded. It will hurt you in the end and cause you to
   have to sell your items cheaper and cheaper, getting less and less
   money in the long run.
   Look at this example: Mostly tradeskillers
   start off selling crafted items for a big profit, then when
   competition comes they have to lower the prices and at the end they
   end up selling their stuff for slightly more than what it cost to
   make it.
   So if you can prevent a price decrease, rather be
   patient and leave your items at the same price, eventually they will
   get bought, even if it takes several tries.
   
   
5. Look at what times items sell
   the best. This sounds easy but it's actually something you
   always have to keep in mind.
   If, for example, you hunt in an
   instance and get a blue item, you will want to put it on the AH
   fast. But lets assume that you are playing at a very late time, like
   3 am. If you put the auction for your blue item now with a 24h
   duration, the auction will expire at 3 am the next night, not
   leaving many people the chance to overbid each other at the end.
   (most bids are made at the last moments) So always look what is the
   best, 8h duration or 24h, always check if you shouldnt maybe wait
   for the next day rather to offer your item for sale, etc…
   
   
6. Always put up buyout prices.
   Never make auctions for items without having a buyout price. Many
   people who want to raise crafting or want an armor piece fast don't
   want to wait 1 day in order to know if they won an auction or not.
   This is especially true for crafting ingredients. Imagine you are a
   crafter, would you want to bid on one stack of mithril bars and then
   wait like 1 day just to know if you won, although you need the bars
   now? Most likely you wouldn't, so always put a buyout. Also
   there are many people who have a lot of money and really want an
   armor piece, those will gladly pay the buyout price if they really
   desire what you sell and if your buyout price is not way too high.
   
   
7. Last point is - what to put as buyout and what to put as
   base bid? This is something you will have to find out yourself
   but a general rule that you can apply at the beginning is, don't
   ever go lower than the default base price that is given to you as
   starting bid. Also if you are not sure what to put as buyout, look
   at other auctions selling the same item, if there is none, put the
   double of the base price (+ a bit more maybe) until you get to know
   the economy. But beware, this is only a vague rule for beginners,
   getting to know the prices of your AH is OBLIGATORY.