Never paid much attention to professions myself, but I’ve decided to level them up for the sake of having something to do in this content drought.
Which professions do you recommend for someone with a bunch of alts that is only interested in making gold/don’t care about getting more character power on those alts?
Which professions “scale” the best the more characters you have due to more “daily cooldowns” and such?
I have 12+ characters that don’t have any professions/blank slate, go!
Gathering tbh
Hi, goldmaker here.
Choosing professions depends on your approach to making gold with them. Will you farm the mats? Will you have upfront raw gold to fund your enterprise? Do you want to flip? High risk, high reward? or Trickle and steady earnings?
In any case, experiences may vary as everyone can and will find niches in every servers market to make the best out of any given profession.
Personally, I haven’t gathered with a profession in any serious way for 3 expansions now. The time vs. reward is just not worth it. Leave that to the flying druid peons.
This expansion my biggest earners have been: (JC thanks to MT so take it with a grain of salt), Enchanter/Tailor combo SUPER solid. Alchemist, and Blacksmith and Cooking.
I am currently starting to ramp up production on Skinner/Leatherworker who has A LOT of potential, and requires very little setup.
If you have other activities that support your professions it makes it easier too, like running the missions table for mats.
In the end, the name of the game is DIVERSIFICATION. The more hands you got in different pockets the more steady gold you make.
I still make Bikes, and Panthers and they still sell every week. That doesn’t take away from all the gold being made on current content.
Should probably give it a try. You’ll make more.
Are you sure? Took a quick peek at the AH last night and ores sell for like 4g a piece and herbs maybe 18g at the most…
Doesn’t seem like a lot of gold unless you put in multiple hours per toon to manually farm up a bunch of it…
Yes.
I dunno, I currently produce anywhere from 40k-60K gold /per hour. And I am doing activities that I enjoy and progress my characters vs. going in circles around a zone mindlessly.
To each their own, I commend you for farming, you make MY life easier. Keep it up.
Not for time invested they won’t.
Gathering is almost never worth it once you have enough cash to front larger amounts of mats to craft. You’ll spend a lot less time running around trying to gather by just buying what you need crafting XYZ, and then putting it up for profit in a matter of minutes. I’m not talking millions, or anything, 100-200k is enough to get going in the right market or two.
Prices are low due to lack of demand. Once 9.2 drops and raid supplies are needed the demand increases.
The biggest money-makings always at the beginning of an expansion.
However I had this really weird system of making gold where I took 12 toons and did the three Callings on four of them everyday. Made a lot of money this way as well as passively gearing them and collecting herbs/ore.
But at the beginning of all that I was selling runes for $800 a pop and getting more in the mission tables. Selling things is probably the best bet now and not Gathering if you have rare recipes.
I finally hit gold cap. I’m telling you this I’ll never farm gold again
Whenever new content drops there’s a spike in demand for consumables, like flasks during Mage Tower. In between mats seem to do best. I do quite well with cloth farming. Making bags from lightless silk, selling the shaded cloth, and disenchanting the greens dropped along the way. The best way to farm cloth is to play to extremes. Either find a quiet place with a lot of humanoids you have all to yourself, or find a busy spot with a resulting crazy respawn rate. Yesterday I stood in one spot at the Locus in Bastion killing the same two respawning Forsworn Stewards every 30sec and collecting hundreds of cloth in a very short period because dozens of people doing a world quest in the area made the respawn rates go crazy. Be sure to have a character who is a tailor, for the extra cloth drops, the conduit that gives you bonus cloth and enchanting mats, and fast kill ability like a MM hunter or Destro Warlock.
The best time to make money is at the beginning of the expansion and when a new sellable resource is released by a patch.
An easy example is the materials needed for legendaries at the start of expansion were both in high quantity and demand and have dropped off considerably in value as people either no longer need them or…don’t play the game anymore.
It sounds like you want to log on each toon and do a quick cooldown, which generally means alchemy is best.
Personally, I always prefer engineering for auction house locations, mailbox, gliders, rez. Even some ports I used to use.
In reality, tailoring has probably been my best money maker in SL, but you only want one Taylor, since more would not help.
Probably one enchantment/tailor
One Skinner/Leatherwork
One herb/alchemy
One herb/inscription (I have not made money on this lately)
One miner/blacksmith
One mine jewelcrafter
The rest mine / engineer
That’s what I do, just get one of everything
If you have a ton of 60s, do your mission tables. I think if you upgrade it to level 5 (venture plan lets you know when you hit 5) you can do anima missions / gold missions and just check em every couple hours.
I need to get better at checking mine, but I think it’s level 5 on the campaign level. Level 5 seamed to be a good stopping point.
Ya, that is kinda what I had in mind.
Ideally I would log into each alt, crank out some quick “daily cooldown” item, sell it for at least 1000 gold, then log out. And rinse-repeat on each toon.
A long, drawn-out grind where I have to manually play each alt for 2-3 hours a day to make money doesn’t really interest me 
I’m mainly looking for the quick “low-hanging fruit” stuff described above. Which professions are best for that?
Making a ton with Crafter’s Mark 3, and Mark of the Chained Isle, and selling Rank 4/6 Neck/Rings with Jewelcrafting.
I hit a mailbox PB recently with this Monk selling Jewelcrafting/Old Alchemy Stuff.
My mailbox PB
https://imgur.com/a/231YWoW
Also making half a token over 2 weeks selling 9 year old gem cuts during Mage Tower
https://imgur.com/a/lvy1LJY
Herbalism is always a good choice. Potions and flasks are always in demand, no matter what the state of the game is. Very reliable gold right there 
Alchemy, enchanting and tailoring are easiest to level and make money pretty much for all of WOW.
I knew guys with all alchemists that would only do the daily cool down. I would get one tailor, since just selling bags is profitable. Enchanting is easy to level up, but you hit a wall, where you need to be active in dungeons or buy mats to make money.
Jewel crafting is probably easiest to level up to max, but not enough demand. Made quite a bit during MT, but that is over.
LW and blacksmith have always been a waste of time for me.
I like engineering for the convenience.
Inscription has had its moments, but you are usually trying to sell an item that cost 5gold to make for 4,000g only because you need to post it 4,000 times before it finally sells.
Posting crafted gear is expensive due to auction cut.
Alchemy is superior to enchanting, simply because you can click create all and craft thousands of a high demand item. Most enchanting items you have to click a vellum every time…
Pandaria Alchemy and Blacksmithing.
Making your daily Living Steel CD (Spec into Transmute Master) and your Lightning Steel Ingots daily.
Make the “Reborn” weapons.
Sell for big monies.
Later into the expansion Mote of Harmony Bots will likely start up again so than you’ll want to do Pyrium instead of Living Steel as your daily CD since it will probably be cheaper to make your Living Steel with Riddle of Steel.