Best moneymaking profession with the lowest time investment

[Dakhath]

I have a couple alts that I don't really spend much time on, they're currently just Alchemy with Transmute spec for daily Living Steel transmutes. I'm trying to decide what the best money making profession to go with Alchemy that takes little effort to work on. I'm leaning toward Inscription or Tailoring. While the Darkmoon trinket market has died down considerably and we aren't likely to see another card this expansion, it's still a modest money maker despite me having zero interest in the glyph market on my server. The other would be tailoring which is just a simple trip to the Silk Farms each day. Long term I could make the large bags, and I know people complain about not being able to make much money off of them, but if I'm willing to accept a smaller profit margin, I think they would be a decent seller. What do you guys think? I find getting multiple minds to look at something generally gives you a new angle you didn't see before.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: To clarify the subject of the post, I'm speaking of the day to day usage of the profession, not the issues of leveling it.

[Celar]

Speaking from experience (Atleast on my realm, Argent Dawn EU)

Leatherworking. you make on average 1.6 leg enchants every day just from the farm (Spirit of Harmony), which is always selling for more than 500g, usually around 750g each.
It's expensive to level (I spendt 30k at the start of MoP, getting to lvl300, then 10k to 600 cus Im lazy and rich), but you can farm the materials as a skinner.

Secondary is Tailor (Rather cheap to level on my realm, but you may lack some materials). Same deal, except you need some Cloth instead of the farm.
You get recipes for both when you reach Revered with the Golden Lotus.

Transmuters+JC are OP at the beginning of expansions in my experience, but requires more time and I don't like it. A couple characters with LW/Tailor should make you a couple 100 K's maybie even a million gold+ just from doing those daily tasks.

Remember, sell when they are expensive, usually 1-3 days after reset, buy when they are cheap. It's the same deal every time. Prices go up and down by a lot.

In Cata I made about 300k (not sure how much I really made cus I spendt a lot aswell) just from doing the daily jc with 3 characters, and selling the JC gem. The prices skyrocketed when the Dragon Soul % nerf started hitting.

Can't do this anymore

[Dakhath]

Wasn't aware LW had that much potential but it makes sense for sure. The rep requirements are something I need to consider for sure, but that's much easier now with the double rep books and should prove even easier in 5.2 with the BoA items you can use for Rep. Thank you for this well thought out post.

[Regen]

Crafting professions are doing quite well without having to tie up 10,000 gold in crafting the highest epic, like it usually is. And it's an extremely minimal time investment. Like my BS can make me close to 1,000g in a days time with maybe 2 minutes invested.

But, I would still put my money on alchemy. Same gold potential and same mass volume market as JC/ench, but it doesn't require an prospecting. So the time is much lower. It's quite a quick process to just buy a bunch of golden lotus and herbs and craft a ton of flasks.

[Elvine]

Whatever you do stay away from JC/Enchant/Glyphs. All 3 are usually "babysit" markets with tons of competition!

[Razhklash]

hmm from reading this seems i really need to lvl up my leatherworker. blacksmithing has netted me quite a bit of gold without much effort throughout mop so far and inscription aswell but just from making cards/trinkets and off-hands wich sell well on my server

[pkm]

Crafting professions are doing quite well without having to tie up 10,000 gold in crafting the highest epic, like it usually is. And it's an extremely minimal time investment. Like my BS can make me close to 1,000g in a days time with maybe 2 minutes invested.

But, I would still put my money on alchemy. Same gold potential and same mass volume market as JC/ench, but it doesn't require an prospecting. So the time is much lower. It's quite a quick process to just buy a bunch of golden lotus and herbs and craft a ton of flasks.

Are we talking elixir master here?

[Youvegotfail]

Whatever you do stay away from JC/Enchant/Glyphs. All 3 are usually "babysit" markets with tons of competition!

I agree about the gem market. It's terrible right now, but on my server I'm the only one selling the Epic JC Mount on the AH...ever.

18k X 4 = 72k for the orbs + the 16 Living steel worth about 500g each (on my server, maybe 650 if they were turned into belt buckles) = 80k invested to make one. I've sold 5 of them so far for 115k (about 110 after AH cut). That's 150k profit right there...and that is not my only "niche market".

OP: try to find something that nobody else is selling on your server. If you're on a heavy pop server this may be hard/impossible, lol

[mjolnrir]

its probably not the best way to make gold but as a lw and tailorer i usually have 1 of each piece of the pvp set on the ah at all times. They sell quite often and its a couple 100g profit sumtimes 1000s gold depending on the price at the time

[Zulkathan]

for lower cost and no farming i recomend any alchemy spec for a lot of reasons:

for the price of materials
herbs in Ah are really cheap in some servers, so the luck on procs plus an intelligent time on put in there on AH make easy gold

by time crafting
crafting when see facebooks or whatever XD

by the need for server
even now people still raiding and needs a potion for burst or an elixir for buff

finally, if u got a loot of toons make living steel is a really nice option too

the profesion is really cheap to level so anyone can try it

[Lenarific]

herbilism/minning 2hrs of farming between 3-5k gold after auction clears

[Mefisto]

Whatever you do stay away from JC/Enchant/Glyphs. All 3 are usually "babysit" markets with tons of competition!

Unless you want to spend your time in WoW sitting at the Ah

[Dakhath]

Which is exactly what I don't want to do. I have multiple scribes and a jc on my main server and I don't even bother with them as people camp the AH all day. Great feedback though in this thread guys, thanks again.

[Regen]

herbilism/minning 2hrs of farming between 3-5k gold after auction clears

Compared to other professions, that's a terrible gold/hour. Like say alchemy, I "could" make 4,800 flasks. Even if I only made 1g per flask...you see? But making 10g per flask I can only need 480 flasks to match that. And sometimes I make 20, cutting the amount needed. 240 * 1.5s cast is only 6 minutes. For the same profit margin.

[Lilly32]

Inscription hands down.

Log in
Make one dark moon card
mail to bank alt
log out or go about dailies, raids, whatever

Takes 2 minutes. I used to try glyphs but like u said gotta have addons that cancel all and repost all with the push of a button and run them every hour.

Also Enchanting if they ever release new 5 mans. Just run those all day long, need on everything, DE the epic stuff and put it on the AH. I printed gold doing that when the Zuls first came out.

[Image]

I'd go with Inscription, the decks still sell for a fair amount. I try to mill regularly though, doing 100+ stacks can be a pain if you're sitting on a lot of scrolls.
JC was good but it's rubbish at the moment besides the metas..some of the prices on my realm are barely more than what you'd make selling it at the vendor.

[Varabently]

Whatever you do stay away from JC/Enchant/Glyphs. All 3 are usually "babysit" markets with tons of competition!

Agreed. JC especially. And glyphs seem to be flooded in most places.