Best Money Making Professions

[pimpdaddy]

So far, Ive made the most from Alchemy(truegold, elixir's, flask! hell yea), and Herb/Mining/skinning being about equal.

Actually I did make quite a bit of gold with blacksmithing though selling obsidium executioner's, and lifeforce hammers...Id say about 10-15k

[Cortenzo]

On my server:
volatile fire = 60g
air = 45g
water = 30g
pyrite = 100g pr ore, 200 for a bar.
Truegold = 900g...

If lucky, I might get 100g for a draconic flask. Mats are worth 350g. A crafted item just isn't worth the effort to sell on my current realm. Gonna try smithing/mining again, while crossing fingers for more balanced mats/crafts prices.

Jeez, crazy prices over there!
Are you playing on a dead realm or what?

Obviously, you shouldn't craft Truegold or flasks with those prices.
If you are a herbalist then go out and farm some herbs instead, I assume they are just as overpriced as the mats in your example.

If you are not, then check how much Volatile Life goes on the AH. Usually it worths 2-3 times less than fire or air. If that's the case on your realm too, then forget Truegold and use the 24CD on the Living Elements xmute instead to turn those V.lifes into fires.

Another "trick" I do on my miner is that I buy up a ton of cheap pyrite ore from the AH and turn them into bars 'cause strangely enough, the bars are selling 1.5x higher than what the ores cost.
Yeah I know, it is an old trick but still works well.
As of now, on my realm pyrite ore goes for anything between 12-15g each, so 1 bar costs 24-30g to make, yet the bars are selling for 40-45g.
Even after the 5% AH cut, I still make a good 100g profit on every stack of pyrite.

[Kalmah]

Alchemy + Enchanting, craft epic trinket, DE, profit.

[Vook]

Enchanting has been working out pretty well for me. Made 15k or so in the past couple of weeks off of 15stats to chest alone. (selling scrolls on AH)

[Deleted]

Alchemy + Enchanting, craft epic trinket, DE, profit.

This one is win, maelstrom Crystals go for 1,5k-1,8k on my server.

Dunno what the exact profit is, but having a herb alt helps alot =)

[Mang]

Making quite a bit of money from darkmoon cards.

[Deleted]

[...]
Jewelcrafting is in the same vein as Alchemy right now, i think jewelers just assume their mats are free (since many of them are miners/have a miner alts), and think the money they make by selling gems is actually from gems, whereas it is thanks to the very high price of ore.
[...]

I loled hard and I am quite happy that enough people think like you ...

Buying elementium ore for 90g a stack
prospecting into at least 4 green quality stones (worst case) netting for the lowest selling price of 15G each 4xAlicite woudl make 60g ... this case never ever happened to me and would be the only money loss I can imagine.

0.35 number of blue quality gems on each prospect
1.08 number of green quality gems
(those numbers dont include the possibility of double drops of single type stones, which would even raise this numbers)

We can assume that all those stone drop equal.

For the following equitations I will take the numbers on my AH, using prices for cut blue quality gems, that I can produce for max income (lowest prices and not the lucky times you can earn the tripple amount of gold) and for green quality uncut or used for crafting rings, weapons etc. if prices below a certain level which yield even higher margins.

Blue quality gem:
Blue 60g | Yellow 40g | Red 90g | Orange 40g | Violett 40g | Green 50g that makes an average of 53g (rounding down)
Green quality gem:
Blue 25g | Yellow 15g | Red 25g | Orange 40g | Violett 80g | Green 20g that makes an average of 34g (rounding down)

53g x 0.35 = 18.55g
34g x 1.08 = 36.72g

Makes a total of 55.27G each time I prospect 5 ores,

bought 20 pieces for 90g sold for 220g ... theoretically, lets say I sell only 70% of this makes it 154g-90g= 64g
Time invested each stack 20sec max. and now tell me you can farm more in this time it would equal farming 2 full stacks of elementium ore every minute not including any volatile or gem inside the ore deposit.

Using gems for producing rings or weapons to de them can double this.

[themortalgod]

alchemy alchemy alchemy alchemy alchemy alchemy alchemy alchemy alchemy alchemy alchemy alchemy alchemy alchemy alchemy alchemy.....sorry I got carried away.

But on a serious note, as much as you can make with almost any other profession, since wotlk Alchemy is BY FAR the most profitable for the least work. Flasks will always make more money during progression than any other item. Note, that is not including the transmutes, dragon mounts, or free malestrom crystals.

Jeez, perhaps I should move to your server. Alchemy has NEVER been profitable on mine. All through wrath Flasks sold for about half the cost of their mats and right now they are selling for closer to 1/10 of the cost of their mats. And I am on a very high progression server so there should be big demand.

Same goes with transmutes. For example right now the materials for truegold on my server cost about 900g. Truegold go on AH for 600 each.

The malestrom crystal thing does make money but that is very temporary and only work when you have enchanting too.

---------- Post added 2011-01-10 at 04:06 PM ----------

Alchemy : Certainly NOT, flasks are selling under their mats prices right now on my server, and since the beginning of cata. There is only so many transmutations you can do every day... But maybe all the alchemists right here think that the herbs they gather are free. Which is the sad truth for most WoW players (and most people in the world...).
Herbalism : It's also not the most profitable tradeskill because of inscription.
Inscription : You can transform most herb stacks, even at insane prices, to a 50/80% profit margin, making it much more profitable than herbalism.

Jewelcrafting is in the same vein as Alchemy right now, i think jewelers just assume their mats are free (since many of them are miners/have a miner alts), and think the money they make by selling gems is actually from gems, whereas it is thanks to the very high price of ore.

Okay, just to give an example, Draconic Mind flasks are selling 380g on my server, 380g is AT LOSS compared to the mats it requires to make those flasks. Lol@alchemists thinking they make money out of it.

Do your milling mats actually sell? On my server the inks are always up on the auction house for what looks like good profit but whenever I put any up they will sit there as the cheapest price for 48 hours and never sell. The only people who need ink are scribes and unless they are complete idiots they might as well mill the ink themself.

[Synexlol]

To all the Alchemy haters: Transmutes isn't where the money is at, nor is it Flasks. Pots sell for insane profit (Up to 100% profit), and I move about 400+ pots per day at the very least. Imagine 20 gold profit per pot (And 150 gold on Treasure Finding pots, but I only sell 5-10/day), selling 500 pots. That's 10k gold on a good day from pots alone, then there's the 500g or so from the Volatile transmute, and the Trinket disenchant if applicable.

Alchemy is a gold mine at the moment, and it will only get better as herb prices drop, because it's so easy to control pot markets.

[shadowdemon69]

I voted for inscription because it's what I do. I have made over 280k gold since release of cataclysm doing just inscription. Everyday I collect about 10k gold without even trying. Although with all the talk about alchemist I think I shall change my guy to potion master and start selling them make eve more money.

[Hugmenot]

Jewelcrafting. I make my profit buying ore, prospecting it, and selling the high demand uncommon gems in the auction house and making jewelry of the less in the demand gems. In addition to the gems I find while prospecting, I buy another 5 to 10 rare gems a day which I cut for a profit. There is a small market for specific WotLK rare cut gems but it's worth exploring in my opinion. I buy all the Jasper uncut gems that are cheap and make rings which I send to my enchanter.

(Dis)enchating. I sell the enchanting materials resulting from my disenchanting the rings and necklaces my jewelcrafter made. Rare old world enchants are also profitable. If you also have a tailor, you may want to keep a close watch on the price of specific cloth and their resulting disenchanted materials.

Tailoring. I sell 20-30 nethweave bags a day at 7 to 9 gold profit per bag. Pocket change but it is almost no effort as the bags are crafted while I prepare breakfast for the kids.

Inscription. The important thing in my opinion is to prepare a list of how specific glyphs are discovered and then refine your search if you want to narrow your playing field.

As for posting strategy, I typically use a deep undercutter strategy and I do not use addons to help me price my wares. Keep in mind I have posted well over a hundred thousand auctions and I am a mathematician working as an actuary in real-life, so numbers are quite natural to me.

[Tsudots]

Jewelcrafting is definitely very profitable right now on my server. Every few days I'll go to the AH and buy 20-30 stacks of Elementium Ore (65g/stack last night) and prospect it. Then I send all the green gems over to my rogue and xmute them into metas. Then I go and sell all the cuts that I have 2 at a time until I run out and just watch the money flow in. The 2k investment on ore easily becomes 10k+ in a few days.

The only problem I have now is all these gems piling up that I don't have cuts for >.<

[dwarven]

To all the Alchemy haters: Transmutes isn't where the money is at, nor is it Flasks. Pots sell for insane profit (Up to 100% profit), and I move about 400+ pots per day at the very least. Imagine 20 gold profit per pot (And 150 gold on Treasure Finding pots, but I only sell 5-10/day), selling 500 pots. That's 10k gold on a good day from pots alone, then there's the 500g or so from the Volatile transmute, and the Trinket disenchant if applicable.

Alchemy is a gold mine at the moment, and it will only get better as herb prices drop, because it's so easy to control pot markets.

What are you selling stacks of mythical mana pots for?

[krematoa]

why isnt tailoring viable?
leg enchants goes for around 1000g on my server

[-Atlass-]

The first month of Cataclysm skinning was the winner I'd say (if you knew where to skin that is). I made so much money selling just savage leather it was insane.

Stone bats in Deepholm?

Has since been hotfixed for anyone going to try it haha.

[themortalgod]

To all the Alchemy haters: Transmutes isn't where the money is at, nor is it Flasks. Pots sell for insane profit (Up to 100% profit), and I move about 400+ pots per day at the very least. Imagine 20 gold profit per pot (And 150 gold on Treasure Finding pots, but I only sell 5-10/day), selling 500 pots. That's 10k gold on a good day from pots alone, then there's the 500g or so from the Volatile transmute, and the Trinket disenchant if applicable.

Alchemy is a gold mine at the moment, and it will only get better as herb prices drop, because it's so easy to control pot markets.

uess that depends on the server, I haven't been able to move a single treasure finding potion and none of the other pots sell at a profit. (altho mine usually just expire when i try to sell them)

[dwarven]

Yea pots aren't so hot on my server. I can make more just selling raw mats.

[nwo]

Inscription is by far the most profitable on my server. Even with the 100s of stacks worth of herbs I recently bought, I still made 10s of thousands worth of profit. However, it is by far the most work because you are posting 100s of different glyphs and you will get undercut on at least 80% of those every hour.

[trsvanq]

enchanting has been great, selling some of the scrolls sadly i have had troubles making god on crafting for my tailoring, ended up just equiping one thing

[Tinuviel]

I loled hard and I am quite happy that enough people think like you ...

Blablabla.

If i had a jeweler i would have mathed it out you know, i don't need your help... I only math out things related to my professions (for example, i'm herborist/inscription, but i also use flasks and mana pots, so i mathed out that they sell for a loss at the AH, so i'm better off buying those of the AH, than buying/farming herbs and asking a mate to do these for me). So yes i made have said words i shouldn't, but you shouldn't assume i'm too dumb to do the simple maths you exposed. It's just useless to me since i can't make any profit out of it. I could maybe save 1k gold a month by asking a mate to prospect for me, but i can't be bothered enough to do it.

And there is more to that, you can't compare prices on your server and on mine, elementium could very well be selling for twice the price... Or even more.

I didn't talked about potions in my previous post, since last time i heard about mana pots (aka, i made 200 of them), they were selling for 30g a pop, which is almost exactly equal to the mats price (on my server).