Making money from professions

General advice always seems to be to start with two gathering professions, i.e. mining, herbalism or skinning and then to switch about mid-level to two crafting professions. That strategy is not my strategy. I suspect I may change my mind later, but for the time being, I still prefer the combination of one gathering and one crafting profession so that materials can be mostly farmed by the same character that uses them. The only exception to this for me is tailoring and enchanting, since neither require a gathering profession to farm for the mats. I prefer the typical combinations still:

• Skinning and Leatherworking
• Herbalism and Alchemy
• Mining and Blacksmithing
• Mining and Jewelcrafting
• Mining and Engineering
  

Buying materials for crafting from the auction house can sometimes be more expensive than the items being crafted. It's difficult to skill up a profession when everything is expensive. Also true is that it can become extremely time consuming to skill up professions when solely relying on yourself for gathering mats.

I have a list of current materials and recipes that are skilling me up. I check these daily on the auction house and purchase any materials that are below market value. I also farm my own. In combination, I always have enough time and money to enjoy playing the game.

The secret so far has been not to try and collect crafting recipes. Some are cheap, some are expensive and there's hardly ever any need to have them all. I try to level up crafting with two goals: (i) levelling up and (ii) making money. The levelling up is the easy part. Simply make items that require the fewest and cheapest ingredients that is easy to come by. The making money part is now becoming easier too. For starters, blue items make better money than green. Purple better money than blue. Some blue items, particularly lower level blue items, are relatively easy to make and fetch 10 - 15 gold on the Auction House. I can comfortable make 1-2 per day, resulting in about 100 gold profit a week, since I majoratively farm my own mats.

The biggest secret so far is however to actually resist the temptation to always craft. At some point, even the best sellers grey out in terms of levelling up, making the crafting goal of levelling up on them moot. Sometimes, particularly when it comes to the best selling items, the materials may actually be worth more than the finished item. The shining silver breastplate is a good example on my server. The item sells for 10 - 12 gold, but the mats will sell for 15 - 18 gold. In this scenario, I sell the ingredients rather than the item.

Again, an exception to the rule: enchanting. Enchanting does not make money in the early days, it simply devours it. Goals should be long-term. I am still hoping beyond hope that in the end, enchanting will make money when highly skilled up, enough money to make a bigger profit than if we were to sell all the stuff we've been breaking.

Professions are my favourite part of Warcraft. It's just so much fun making money.