Eh, I'm with basil. Have a bunch of crafters at max level, find an imbalance on the AH in terms of what you can craft, and profit.

Difference between basil and myself (and I think many people who are more casual AH'ers) is that there is a lot of inherent risk in how he plays the AH. Buying out base materials can be a winning strat, but it is very risky inherently. On the other hand, if you are a tailor, if frostweave is super cheap, buy out all of the frostweave you can for 15s or less, and just go /afk while making a few hundred bolts of frostweave, and then vendor them.

Also, there are plenty of people who can't be bothered to have a bank alt, and this also hinders profit, because part of doing the AH this way is stockpiling things like arctic fur, flasks, gems, frozen orbs, other base mats, and then selling them when the AH prices or their crafted items inevitably net a profit. A large part of playing the AH is inventory management, which is frankly not a fun game for me. There was a mage on my realm who was telling me the other day he was netting 1k gold per day from doing nothing but buying and reselling stuff on the AH. I say good for him, but dipping my toes into that type of reselling has gotten me burned, so I'm going to stay with more conservative ways of making G - alchemy transmutes, special tailoring cloths, and selling enchanting mats when their prices go up (have been able to sell abyss crystals for over 40g at some points in the past month).

Also, if you're low on cash (after getting the Mining and Blacksmithing skills on my lvl 70 pala to 450, I was left with about 95s and shitloads of saronite, some titanium, and about a stack of Titansteel, across him AND my main) then farming is in fact free, as you simply cannot afford to just buy the stuff you'd be making anyway.

I don't even have enough money to buy recipes. I'm having to coax guidies into supplying the recipe for the thing I craft for them, and in return I'll cover all the mats.

I actually had to ask my GM for 12 gold to train the iLvl 200 shield I'd convinced him to let me make for him to help him prepare for Naxx. In that case, I just can't buy stuff. I have to supply my own mats.

In fact, I could almost craft TWO sets of Hellfrozen Bonegrinders, if I had the Primordial Saronites. If I could find someone with enough money to "sponsor" me with some saronites, I could take it out of the cost of their piece, but that doesn't appear to be how things work. It's all very sad, I've been longingly dreaming about sticking up some cutting edge epics and raking several thousand gold more than I've ever had in a single auction, but it's proving to be frustratingly hard. ;(

Im currently at 130k gold along with 8 characters with epic flyers, 2 tundra mammoths, etc, ive always found alot of different ways to make money.
to be honest right now i make boots of the living scale, and crusaders dragonscale breastplate. the boots are about 700g in mats and sell them for 1600g, the chest is 1500g in mats sell for 2100g
im making so much for so little work i can never picture farming anything again.

its funny looking back 5 years ago farming the fire elementals in arathi highlands :)

Selling BOE epics at this point in the game is a terrible, terrible way to make G. If you are a blacksmith, your best bet for consistent gold would be shield spikes and belt buckles. If you are a miner, check the mats for titansteel and make and sell titansteel if it's profitable enough. You also might be able to make something like Arcanite Rods for a profit. Alchemists transmute archanite, and sometimes sell for cheap on the AH, to level up alchemy. Arcanite rods are often pretty rarely seen on the AH however, and can be a nice source of income.

In other words, get yourself into markets where there is some volume. Endgame BOE's can be profitable when a patch just drops, but at this point they are a tough sell.

@Christopher:

/salute

Seriously, you are not the target audience of this series, but it is the people like you I enjoy most. I personally hate farming. It wears on my soul. My mining is 450 just to smelt the ore I buy (usually cheaper and faster than buying the bars). I also hate farm bots. Over 400 stacks suddenly dropping on the market at half price makes for big waves in more than a few prices. Yet those like you who enjoy farming bring enough to market for us both to profit and I have no problems with that.

This article always touts best use for your time, but it assumes there is a supply on market. Without you, there would not be. I have seen what happens when the farmers go on strike. It's not pretty.

So if you enjoy farming, and profit in ways outside of gold (like unwinding, watching tv, listening to podcasts, whatever) then by all means, continue and know that I support you for selling mats cheap to me. :)