Which are the best money making professions?

[Tim]

I was thinking, if you had 1 guy to pick professions for gold, which would you do?

I'm thinking:

Mining
Jewelcrafting

I have no idea why, I just remember reading it somewhere

Thoughts?

[Ualaa]

If you don't have gold, then dailies and or gathering (mining, herbalism, skinning) will make you gold.

Once you have your nest egg, and can just buy your mats rather than farm them, for maximum gold you would want production skills.

Alchemy/Tailoring have cooldowns, which are a strong argument towards being amongst the most profitable. You can still craft whatever, but you basically get free gold every day from the transmute too.

Jewelcrafting (prospecting + cuts), Enchanting (enchants, disenchants in instances, enchanting scrolls), Blacksmithing (if you collect the patterns) and Inscription (the glyph market is massive) all can make you a lot.

I'd go Jewelcrafting + Inscription, for pure profits.

[Tim]

Inscription is just for doing glyphs, right? Isn't that market dead by now?

What about Jewelcrafting / Mining, is that viable?

[Ualaa]

Inscription is Darkmoon Faire cards, which is a pretty good business. It is also glyphs, which aren't as popular as before but is still a steady market with the sheer number of glyphs out there and that most people will want several different glyphs for toons, so they can change the glyphs based on their play situation.

Jewelcrafting is a good money maker, especially once you have a nest egg of gold to work with.

Mining is good, if you don't have a lot of gold, as it supplies several professions and can generate you some gold.
But if you have the gold to play with Blacksmithing will make a lot more then Mining.

Enchanting, where you accept donations and use their mats... but don't charge any base amount, can make you a decent amount probably more than most gathering professions at this point. Although gathering is rather good for the first few weeks of any expansion.

[Tim]

I'm currently flying around leveling mining and jewelcrafting on my mage. The mining part seems really easy, at least so far, but I'm only up to about 140 mining. The Jewelcrafting at the moment is really a strain just to level up with mining, but so far I haven't had to spend any gold on it.

Are most if not all the high end jewels for Jewelcrafting from mining and prospecting the mined ore?

[Ualaa]

At the moment, they're from prospecting ore. But you can basically break even, or make a small profit in buying the ore rather than farming it yourself.

During the latter half of WotLK, one would prospect ore and then cut/vendor green/purple commons or create a low end recipe for other common gem colors which was then vendored, and then send the rare gems (plus Life/Fire/Water/etc) to alchemists for transmutes.

And then cut the transmuted epic gems.

A jewelcrafter without alchemists could make gold through prospecting purchased ore and cutting gems bought on the AH.

I haven't bothered with JC yet, as alchemy (volatile transmutes) is making me a 15k a day in 30 minutes, but in WotLK I'd make a lot more per hour buying ore and prospecting than mining and then prospecting my free ore. Once they bring in epic gem cuts, that will likely surpass volatile transmutes and JC will be worthwhile for my transmuters.

[Chamassa]

By far Mining/skinning or Herbalism/Skinning (depending on prices of high level herbs/ores on your server