The best way to make money in WoW is just like making money in real life, hard work. If you are making 1-200 gold per day then I urge you to continue reading and learn how to make more like 1000 – 5000 gold per day.
Obtain a Money Making Profession:
This is easier said than done. Right away you might think Jewel Crafting is the money maker of the expansion. This is not necessarily true because other players think the same thing and the posting competition brings gem prices below par.
Try Alchemy, Inscription, Tailoring, and Leatherworking. All professions have something to offer, so pick two main professions if you have an alternate character. Since you can now see herbs and minerals on the map at the same time, these are best utilized on an alternate character.
Alchemy Transmute Master: Yes, transmute instead of potion or elixir master. When you proc 5 gems at a time even the raw gems are worth good money. However, in Cataclysm they made it so you can transmute Volatile Life into Volatile Air (important: you must be in Uldum for this to work). Buy Life on the AH, and turn it into Air for double or triple profit depending on current AH trends. If you have an alt character with herbalism, then obtaining your own Volatile Life can take some time, on days you only have a few minutes to play just buy it, port to Uldum and you will still double your profit.
Inscription: Make cards, enough said. Really though, if you only have one character and can afford herbalism and inscription buffs on your main toon, then make the cards. Individual cards can sell over 1000 gold each, and full decks over 15000 gold (of course that will change as we get closer to the next expansion). This requires farming a couple hours each day for Twilight Jasmine or Whiptail. The payoff can be huge though, and if you make enough cards over time (usually 20+ cards) then you will get a full deck eventually worth 15-20k.
Tailoring: Every expansion there is a way to make money through tailoring a spellcaster thread needed for pants. In Cataclysm it’s called Powerful Enchanted Spellthread or Powerful Ghostly Spellthread. Making this each day is your best bet for gold. Check out cool downs on dreamweave though as this restriction will make you less gold than other professions. Also you can craft epics at the start of every expansion and make good money, but it usually requires running dungeons or partaking in raids to do so.
Leatherworking: The same for tailoring applies to leatherworking. Every expansion has a pant enchant for leatherworkers, and this time it is Charscale Leg Armor and Dragonscale Leg Armor.If you want to make great gold run a dungeon every day, roll on the chaos orb and check the auction house to see what epic items are selling for huge prices. Craft one and sell it yourself.
Play the Auction House Game: One way for a brand new character to make money is to start on the auction house. When joining a new server always get skinning and mining or herbalism in order to make money along the way. Get extra bags, you will need them to carry all the leather and minerals. Herbalism pays off later, but initially minerals and leather sell the best because not a lot of people like to be skinners.
In order to play the AH game you will have to buy low and sell high. If you see items selling for just a few copper, often you can buy and resell. One method is to buy out all the fish that help people leveling cooking and resell them for 1g each. 1G is not a lot to a level 85+ character, so you will make a good deal of money if you can find them really cheap. Good examples of this are raw brilliant smallfish. Alternately you can fish this up yourself in Stormwind.
Make Alts: If you play this game enough to have a max level character, then it might be time to make an alt to make more money. I have had up to four transmute alchemists at one time and found it to be extremely profitable. It really doesn’t take long to level an alt (about 4-6 days of /played time if you are focused). Transmute Alchemists are awesome because they require no work. You transmute Volatile Life to Volatile Air once each day and make profit. One final method is to farm motes in outlands and transmute to primal mights which are infinitely needed and sell for over 200g at times.Corner this market by buying out all primal mights and reselling 50-100g higher.
Also I will have alts with herbalism, mining, and skinning just to make life easier. Selling leather at a high level will make you tons of money. You could do that alone and make over 3000 gold each day. That takes a lot of time though, so I’m lazy and use transmuting alchemists.
Farming is Your Friend (Sometimes): Perhaps you just want to kill stuff all day, and if so then find out what drops Volatile Air and Volatile Fire, and get some. Perhaps you like to fish, and the best place to fish is in Uldum because you will get Volatile Water and excellent money making fish. Sell fathom eel raw or turn them into agility food and you can’t go wrong on pvp or pve servers.
If you have a fast mount and want to fly around all day dive bombing into herbs and minerals, then pick those two gathering skills and do so. It can be hugely profitable, but still not as much as skinning. If you don’t want to spend any money leveling a profession to max level (which can cost as much as 3-7000gold), then try mixing two gathering professions. This will be direct profit, but only if you go out farming for herbs, minerals or leather over an hour each day. Skinning is great because you can sometimes do it in dungeons (but your group will not enjoy waiting for you).
Never forget while leveling: That low level items are worth sums of gold (especially leather, gems, and silver ore/bars which can be found in chests). Some examples of low level items worth a lot of money are Moss Agate which is needed to level jewelcrafting, Aquamarine, Citrine, and all of the motes or primals (such as life, fire, air, mana, and water) found in outlands are huge sellers because they are needed to make primal might (four of which are needed to become a transmute master). Any low level blue item could be worth money depending on current auction house prices, but these have lowered significantly in price since the dungeon finder made finding groups easier. All low level epics sell around 80-100g. Once past level 60 those numbers vary greatly.
Don’t Forget Daily Quests: About 2-400 gold can be made every day by doing up to 25 daily quests. It’s a cop out, but sure way to make gold and sometimes you can skin while doing them and make extra money, or gather herbs or minerals so it might be worth your time to check them out (debatable).
