Best moneyFollow

I'd say long term, Enchanting should fetch you big bucks at the end of grinding it up to top, but then it's the hardest tradekill to undertake imo as it takes green or higher items with which to make the items needed to actually enchant anything=(

Failing that and looking for short term profits, I would guess that having two gathering skills would bring the money in(Skinning, Mining and herbilism are your choices, linked to leatherworking, engineering/blacksmithing and alchemy respectivly) as other tradeskill users will always need surplies

most professions have a way of balancing out themselves and each, but when I think of long term profit, I think of Enchanting, as when high level, who is going to pass up the oppitunity to gain +5 on a item stat here and there, long as the price is right!

Personally, I'm going to go for engineering and mining, which is very low profit but for a priest, should be very useful=)

Majria

most people who want strictly money-making tradeskills will go skinning/mining. There is a huge market for these, and they sell quickly and well. Although personally i wish there were more flowers on the ah f/ time to time...

Well since you havnt started the game yet you have nothing to buckle down to. =). My advice to you would be this, DO NOT GO INTO A TRADE SKILL THAT CREATES ITEMS! this may be letting out a secret, but hopefully nobody on my sever seees it =). leatherworking, blacksmithing, etc are all great, but you will not make large amounts of money off of them. If you want to make money you will pick up leatherworking/mining. these two skills get you the most used items by the workers who actually build the items.
Huge profit will be made through the skinning industry. Ok here goes. do no bother getting leatherworking. 1. there are better items in the act house for a cheap price, cmon 1-5 gold at higher lvls for a nice item is nothing. doing my plan over my characters life iv maxed out at 107 gold and im lvl 38. People LOVE HIDES!! DO NOT FORGET THIS. when someone buys an item from the auct house they need armor kits. people who buy new gear every 3-4 lvls are the market you will hit home with. When it comes to getting this gear then adding the +24, +32, armor bonuses to your gear you will find your hides selling like mad. For those who dont actually have the ability because they are blacksmiths, or waht not they will buy the leather for their guildmates to build these arrmor kits for them to apply to their gear. when they need this every so few lvls you will cash in. Next.
THIS GENERATION IS IMPULSE BUYERS!!! always... always... always set a buyout. this is a rule. cover your grounds too, look at what you are selling and go even 50 copper less then the lowest price. people look at the buyouts because we are interested in INSTANT GRADIFICATION!! we dont wanna wait 5 hours and possibly be outbid on the item we want, then to rn back the AH to rebid on it. IMPULSE buyers and needy buyers are the market you will hit home with.
As for mining, the same goes for it, NEVER SELL THE PLAIN ORE!!! people who dont want smelt it always go for the smelted. smelting takes a while, we al know this, you can tell it to smelt 100 ores then you can leave make dinner and come back only to smelt the other 100, then puet those 200 together to make 100 bronze... woopty doo. SMELT FOR YOUR BUYERS!
next: to make money with mining NEVER SMELT 2 TOGETHER. here is why. in AH you will see (i'll use themost basic units because some people arent as high as some) Copper and tin.
20 bars of copper will cost oh say 35s bid price, 50s buyout. some people will spam this and have 5 or six of these 20 bar auctions up. then you see Tin just under it, 45s, 65s buyout, and multiples for it. then just below it you will see Bronze (a product of the two) for 60s, 90s buyout, you have look at EVERY INSTANCE BEFORE YOU POST YOUR PRICES!! you will always loose money when you smelt 2 together, let them build what they want, the consumer is always right.
next: some people use the basic smelts (copper, tin) to get their own skills up, you will occasionally get the buyer who is buying your product for the soul purpose of getting their skill up in that area, therefore dont do ALL the work for him, some people buy the lesser items because they wish to do it themselves for their OWN benefits. THEREFORE USE VARIATY!!!
dont be discouraged if your auction doesnt sell the first 3 times, you will still make 150% profits in 95% of the cases, keep putting it up, it WILL SELL.
I hope this has helped.

agreed...

You can make close to 10 gold a night sometimes by just doing skinning/mining

The economy is pretty haywire right now at least on my server. The selling prices for the equipment are WAY underneath what the cost is to build it...hence the farmers (skinning/miners) are making a BOATLOAD of money.

Well, on Elune, the bag market is pretty much flooded and the price per bag is WELL below what the materials to make the bags would sell for individually (especially at silk+). I have 2 tailors but I don't do bags much except by request or if an alt needs them.

Your best bet for pure money making is skinning and mining. They have no overhead (production skills often require vendor bought items to create things, in addition to the gathered bits) and the producers will always need your goods. As it stands now, I have two pure gatherers (skinning/mining and skinning/herbalism) and they make enough to outstrip all my producers (except my enchanter but I don't enchant for the public much). Granted, I only have one producer over 200 skill (Muriel has 206 leatherworking) and my higher tailor doesn't pump out her best selling items at a high rate (and almost never without enchanting it before AHing) but even I can see that selling the raw materials would profit me far more than making stuff that'll only sell for 75-90% of its cost.

Or is the demand on Mining items as big as the items you obtain with Skinning?

Just had to put in my vote that enchanting can be very profitable if done correctly. I'm partnered with one and we had our mount money at level 30. I'd even go so far as calling it the only tradeskill with the ability to make high end profits.


My vote for most profitable would be mining/skinning.


Not trying to brag, (though it was a tad fun) just putting in my 2 copper.

Edited, Tue Jan 11 19:14:23 2005 by slgray

slgray, you are of course correct. But what was the opportunity cost shouldered by you and your partner prior to the windfall period you experienced? I know very well that enchanting can be a money maker, but then again, I also have more than a handful of enchantments that people will pay for PLUS my materials are "free" (in that, I don't have to worry about the opportunity cost).

My Mage is level 17 right now with 150 enchanting skill (capped until she hits 20) and 150 tailoring skill. It takes no effort to make a lesser wizard's robe and add 25 health to it and sell it for 2-4 gold. Or buy a bracer from AH for 10-25s, tack on 3 stamina and resell it for 40-75s. But, it did take a great deal of effort on the part of a guild to get an enchanter to that level of skill.

For someone starting on a brand new server, enchanting is just not the way to go. While you CAN make some money off it (if I made my mage my main character and levelled her exclusively, she'd be at Artisan inside of a month given the number of disenchant items she gets per day and how much I play. And that's where the money comes in in torrents, from what I've seen), the same can be said for EVERY profession. But, as you later said, skinning/mining is the best money.

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that enchanting cannot make money. It can. But so can every other profession under the right circumstances. I have a tradeskill conglomerate of sorts (2 leatherworkers, 2 tailors, enchanter, smith, and the rest are gatherers) and I've made nice gold with them. But the cost has been slower levelling, which I'm okay with since the goal is for each of my 5 regularly played characters to have mount money in hand prior to level 40 (like your example).

Skinning and mining have NO overhead (which means it costs you nothing out of pocket to create marketable goods, before auction fees) and all the money you make is pure profit (assuming you're skinning/mining while in the process of questing/grinding). The same cannot be said for the production skills.

Its not the point of the game, does anyone above say that? Its just nice to know how you can make a nice profit, so you might enjoy the game even better, and that's the point of the game.

If you made an account to post useless things like that you are better off on the Official Blizzard boards I quess...

EDIT: typo

Edited, Thu Jan 13 17:17:31 2005 by Outlandos

i just want to have money in time for my level 40 mount but be able to have decent armour and btw can i do 3 proffesions like skinning/leatherworking/enchanting???

Thank you so much for clearing that up for me. I was trying to understand why someone would just hurry through the game gathering raw materials just so he/she could say ya i have tons of virtual cash look at me. But never developed the charater with a profession that helps create anything useful. I guess i will post elsewhere since my post are just useless anyway.

thank you for your time

Try Tayloring its one of the best because every player needs bags and taylors supply that need also it is realitively easy to get the resources to level it up. 8 slot bags sell really well and you can begin making plain ones at tayloring 95. I joined a large guild where many of my friends will send me wool cloth needed for the bags for free or what they would sell it to a vendor for. The bags almost always sell at auction. 6 slot bags can be made early but do not sale quite as well as 8's or 10's its a fast money maker!

to make red or green bags you have to be lv 110 for green i think and 115 for red runecloth bags also sell really high but it is hard to find the pattern and they take a high lv of tayloring to make

Like most things, this is totally dependent on server. On Elune, the above is not the case. I'll give you a personal example.

My Mage has 178 tailoring skill. My big money maker to date has been shirts. Stylish and Swashbuckler, mainly. On Elune, wool bags go for 15-25s each. Sure, there are folks who set their prices at 50s-1g but the bags find themselves in the seller's mailbox more often than not. Wool cloth sells for 45-60s per stack. My math tells me it's more profitable to sell the wool than to make it into bags. And let's not get into silk bags, which require a material only available to skinners (heavy leather) or from the AH (where it's absurdly priced, most of the time). Could I do silk bags? Sure! Camryn's got 200 skinning skill, Tearra's at 170ish, and my Paladin is at 140ish. But with the way the market currently stands on my server, it's not worth the trouble. I'd rather take that silk and either sell it outright or turn it into shirts which offer a ~64% profit margin.

squirreludecker is right though. People always need bags, especially when a server first opens. BUT, you have to be among the top skilled people to get top dollar (silver? gold?). Otherwise, you have to farm your own components and avoid buying parts from AH (which will be inflated due to perceived rarity, at first). When the server first opens, the people who will make the most scratch from day one are going to be the suppliers and the people at the forefront of levelling.

Which category do you see yourself falling into?