I posted this to the WoW Forums. I was impressed enough with myself to want to capture it here as well:

Re: Best profession to make $$$$ ANSWERED

Which professions return the most money? That’s a bit of a loaded question actually, since for many people it involves more than just pure income.

From a pure-income point of view Gathering skills will *always* bring in more money than Crafting skills. Any given Material will *always* sell for more in the AH than the associated Craft skill item. Why, you ask? Because there is no shortage of people who think nothing of buying their mats to skill-up their Crafting skill then selling the product below-cost in the AH to recoup some of their investment. Given that, you will *always* make more money just selling the Mats.

Now, I can hear the high-level Enchanters out there, madly clicking away on their keyboards, preparing a well-reasoned response telling me I’m full of it. They’ll talk about the huge profits they make on Crusader enchants, and the like. However, if they looked at the *actual* cost of that process, they’ll find that it still a loser – perhaps not a net loss (they will yield some profit), but still not as good a money maker as just selling Materials. How can such a heresy be? The cost of skilling up Enchanting is HUGE. The cost of Enchanting recipes is HUGE. The time involved in hawking Enchantments is HUGE (and really annoying). All these things are a drag on the profits made. The same scenario exists for all the Crafting skills.

Of course, there are ways of mitigating the above. For example, if someone has Mats funneled to them from a guild, the *personal* cost will be less but the overall “cost” to the economy will be the same. A high-level alt can do something similar, but the result is the same. As long as there is a large group of people willing to sell Craft skill items at a loss, it will always be better money to just farm Materials… and there will always be a large group of people willing to sell Craft skill items at a loss.

This is not to say there is no value in a Craft skill. Quite the opposite; without skilled Crafters, we’d be in a sorry state. No bags, no Arcanite Reapers, no Tuxedos. No Savory Deviate Delight. Some of the Craft skills will give in-game benefits: Tailoring creates some nice crafter-use-only items, for example -- though I think there is a valid argument against those even, since they *aren’t* always the best-of-class item… Engineering can be used to fill in some class weaknesses, etc. Also, leveling a Crafting skill can be a fun, rewarding experience. I can imagine that hacking a swath of destruction through all that oppose you with the Arcanite Reaper *you* made for yourself is a pretty satisfying thing. Satisfying, but not the most efficient economically-speaking.

As several have mentioned before, there seem to be two “ideal” combinations for pure profit-making: Skinning/Mining and Skinning/Herbalism. Mining/Herbalism *would* be the absolutely best money-maker, except that the in-game RADAR only allows you to detect Ore Veins *or* Herbs. Perhaps if you have very sharp eyes and a very good memory for spawn locations you could make the Mining/Herbalism combo work. It’d drive me nuts, but that’s me.

Between Mining and Herbalism, I suspect that Herbalism is a better money-maker. At later levels, Mining can burst nicely with Arcane Crystals and Azerothian Diamonds but I think that is averaged out by Herbalism’s overall profitability across time. There are many more Herb spawns in most zones than there are Ore spawns, and Herb-heavy zones have *many* more spawns that Ore-heavy zones.

Whichever way one goes, it is always a good idea to keep an eye on the prices in the AH. If the price for something you want to sell drops too far, don’t be afraid to bank your stacks and sell later. Prices ebb and flow… the really fanatical can profit off they AH tides, but the Auction House Game has been covered in other threads ;-)

Okay, this has turned into a thesis… To summarize:

Skinning/Herbalism FTW.