A very basic principle

Browsing through official WoW forums there's something that always seem to pop up no matter how much me and others there try to say. There's this one little thing that somehow is really difficult to grasp. Here goes, in big and friendly letters:

TIME IS MONEY

Yes, it really is. So learn it now so you don't need to do silly mistakes later. A lot of players think that when they farm materials for their professions, they are free. "I mined this myself so it's free for me!" To keep it simple, that is just not true. Every minute you are farming something is a minute you could spend doing something else. I don't mean that you necessarily should, but indeed you could be doing something else. To calculate the time spent you simply need to know how much you would earn if you'd sell everything you farm in the auction house. 

There. You're time is not free. Everything you gather, has a value. That value can be cashed out by selling the raw material and thus receiving its value in gold. Other option is to craft it into something else and by that add some more value to it. Let me make an example here. Let's say we have ten stacks of elementium ore. If you mined it, you can choose if you put it in auction house or process further. Elementium ore would sell for something like 50g/stack so for ten stacks you would earn 500g - 5% ah cut = 475g. That's the value of your time mining them. But then if you don't just sell them, but prospect them instead. The value of elementium is usually about double the raw price when prospected. Prospecting will give you gems. A lot of green quality and some blue quality gems. Then you can sell the raw gems in auction house or process them further by cutting them. You sell the cut gems, the final product of jewelcrafting for nice profit. With ten stacks of elementium, you're likely to end up to something like value of 700g-900g when processed through jewelcrafting. Why is it more value then? Well, you've obviously put some more time into it and time always converts into money. And not just the time you spend by prospecting and cutting but also the time you've spent in leveling your jewelcrafting and obtaining the recipes for cutting the rare gems. It's only natural you'll end up with more value.

The trick in gold making is to learn to calculate that how to convert smallest possible amount of time to biggest possible amount of gold. Auction house pros quite often calculate their income not just as simple amount earned, but as a value of gold per hour. It's not a way to show of how awesome you are, it's a tool used to determine most effective gold making methods. Let's imagine you have two reliable ways to make 4000 gold every day. One of them takes you 2 hours each day (literally the time you spend in front of your computer performing all the actions required to have the gold in your pockets) and the other one 45 minutes. Which one would you pick for your regular daily gold making routine?

Getting started on the goldmaking

Everyone is a noob when starting something new. That also happens when you are starting WoW and dream of fortunes. Sorry, can't do it in an instant. Ok, so you begin your search in the wonderland of internet and find several ways to make gold. But when starting, do you have several maxed out characters with maxed professions and 50k spare gold? No, you don't. You need to start up somewhere and that's what todays entry is about.

Starting on a new server or being completely new to World of Warcraft? The truth is, getting your professions rolling you need some starting capital, a reasonable amount of gold. There's no way around it, some professions are expensive to level and take initial investment to get enough materials to start crafting seriously. No worries, though, there are easy enough ways to build up your wealth so you can start to play the serious gold making game. 

Even if you're an experienced player it's good to try once in a while to start a new character on a new realm without support from alts or guildies. If you know what to do, getting gold in lower levels is easy. I will give some tips first for lower levels and then for 85s who just don't have the money to start heavily in professions.

But let's imagine that you have a fresh lvl 1. Any race, any class, it doesn't matter here. First thing to do when entering the world is to have a look around the starting area if there's an another character getting names for his guild charter. Do him a favor and sign his charter, but at ask at least 5g for it. Easy gold! Then the basics you'll continue through the whole leveling process: loot everything. It's simple enough, especially if you have the auto-looting option turned on, but it's still surprising how many people don't loot the corpses. Vendor all grey items. Green quality boe items can always be sold in auction house for more than their vendor price. One thing you will run into is of course bag space. If you can, try to get four Netherweave bags to start with. They are cheap enough if you have a  higher level alt to get them for you. If that's not possible yet, luckily these days starting quests offer some 6-8 slot bags so you have something. Update to bigger bags when you can, they make life a lot easier.

At level 5 you can have learn your professions. To maximize gold when leveling, always take two gathering professions. Which two out of three you get is up to you. These days you can track both herbs and ores on minimap so you can take mining/herbalism-combination if you feel like it. Whatever you pick up, use it while leveling. I recommend mostly questing, feel free to fill in some dungeons and battlegrounds but stick mostly to questing so that you will explore the world and gather things. Everything you get from gathering professions you want to list for sale in auction house. Don't bother with the crafting professions at this stage. When leveling, keep your gathering professions in level with the zone you're in. I recommend taking dual gathering for every single new character you make. The exact point when to change profession or two to crafting ones can be tricky. On your first character I recommend you level all the way to 85 with dual gathering. By the time you reach max level you should have artisan flying skill and continue gathering until you have a comfortable amount of gold to continue to crafting. 

Most meat you pick up from mobs while leveling can be sold in auction house. If you want, you can level cooking and fishing while leveling your character, but most gold you'll get if you just sell everything you don't absolutely need yourself at that stage. And remember to kill a rare mob if you run into one while leveling. They always drop some boe gear that can be sold. 

Other thing to remind of is of course cloth, sell it. All of it. Wool cloth goes usually for insane prices. There are several maps to point good farming locations over the internet, if you're into farming. When you get into Northrend, Frostweave cloth will net you huge profits (downside of which you will of course face again when leveling tailoring...).Characters with high enough tailoring skill will loot more cloth from Northrend corpses.

What if you're already at 85? Still, gathering is the way to go if you don't have much gold. But at this point there's many possibilities. With gathering professions, you should check out which ores, herbs and leathers are most profitable to farm. Quite often these are not the endgame ones where the competition can be fierce and profits low. Usually mithril, thorium, adamantite and cobalt will net you much more than elementium. You can also solo low level instances and sell or disenchant what you loot (if you happen to have enchanting already that is). You can also farm different types of elemental materials required for crafting. Herbalists gather volatile life from all Cataclysm herb nodes and volatiles net good gold as well. Same goes with lower level elemental materials like crystallized/eternals (WotLK) or motes/primals (BC) or even Vanilla ones. 

A good option for casual gold making for level 85s are daily quests. I believe that dailies are at the moment the most common way to make gold for average players. There are dailies available at level 70, level 80 and level 85. Molten front dailies at Hyjal were released with patch 4.2 and they are still a nice way to make gold. Level 80 dailies at Argent Tournament in Icecrown give nice gold as well plus with the special currency you earn there you can buy pets that sell for good prices in Auction house. Combining gathering and daily quests is very efficient way to make a good starting capital for level 85s. Then it's time for the serious business.