So you’re just starting World of Warcraft, you’ve picked your race and class and you’re at the point where you get to pick two professions. You might think to yourself, “I’m a rogue so I’ll get leatherworking so I can make my own armor!” or you may might be the “tank” type person, a warrior, and think “ I’ll get blacksmithing so I can make my own weapons.”  That’s why we’re here to give you some guidance. We’ll give you a little secret about all those cool crafting professions.

***With the exception of a handful of items per crafted profession, you won’t make money! Even more so, those few items that are profitable are pretty much unattainable at lower levels!***

This is a guide, not get rich quick scheme, but in our experience, don’t waste the limited amount of gold you earn trying to level up your crafting profession. The problem with crafting professions is that you fall into the trap that we like to call Skill Leveling Fever, where you will do whatever it takes to raise the skill of your profession. Some of you will say, ”That’s why you take a complimentary gathering profession so you can farm your own materials.”  This is true, but you will VERY quickly reach a point where the materials you require will be unattainable at your characters level. Do you have the patience/desire to farm them yourself?  Doubt it, we were all noobs once! You’re going to go run to the Auction House and start buying materials with the intent of leveling your crafting profession. This is a quick way to being broke!

So instead, pick two gathering professions. The cool thing about gathering professions is that you start making money right away.  Walk up to a mineral vein or a plant or a dead animal and grab those materials! Its 100% profit! And since you are going to be spending a LOT of time running around doing quests and killing animals it only makes sense to take advantage of gathering professions. Mining and Herbalism are the biggest moneymakers, but since they share the minimap, I usually will pick mining or herbalism and then pick up Skinning.

The one negative thing about gathering professions is you’ll find your bags fill up VERY quickly. Don’t worry, the first thing you’re going to buy are 14 slot bags. These things cost about 2g50s on most servers, which you’ll have after selling roughly 4 stacks of whatever you got. Buy 4 of these 14slot bags, you’ll need the space! At this point some people make alts that sit near the Auction House and they mail all their materials to the alt. This is a good idea for some.  I honestly think it would drive me nuts having to mail stuff all the time.

Items with grey text are vendor trash, meaning you sell them to a vendor. ALWAYS pick up the vendor trash at your level, every little bit counts. If it’s WHITE text, that means it’s used in a profession somehow. Hold onto it and see what its worth in the Auction House. If you can sell it to the vendor for 25s but sell it in the Auction House for 50s you’ve just doubled your profit
You should be making more than enough money to pay for new skills, updated armor and weapons, gryphon flights, stupid noncombat pets (they really are fun to have!) etc. But keep in mind you are working towards two things when you hit lvl 40:

1. Buying your mount; This is going to cost you about 90g

2. Preparing for your first crafting profession, which will take money to level and buy schematics/patterns/recipes/etc.
You don’t want to enter phase two until you have a mount and about 100g in savings.  This again is a an estimate.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT PHASE ONE:
Q: If you tell everyone to take up gathering, who will buy the materials we’re gathering?! If there’s no money in crafting, nobody will buy our materials!
A: It actually makes a perfect circle.  Lowbies gather the materials, while highbies buy the materials and make crafted items (well discuss highbie strategy in a bit). These highbies in turn sell their items (for a profit) to other highbies and lowbies who NOW have money to spend (because theyre not wasting all their money trying to level up crafting professions!) It works really well like this.

Q: My character is lvl XX, and Im a lvl YY Crafting Profession and a lvl ZZ Gathering Profession. And Im BROKE! Should I drop my crafting profession and take up a second gathering profession?
A: It depends on several things. If you are already close to lvl 40, you might as well keep the crafting profession UNLESS its really low level (like less than 125 or something) then ya drop it like a bad habit. If you are relatively low level but have a mid-level crafting professions, I would still drop it and take up a second gathering profession. Youll end up making much more money by the time youre 40, which is the real goal of this guide.

Q: My materials arent selling! The market is flooded with them and I keep getting them returned in the mailbox!
A: Ya thats going to happen from time to time. Some days you can sell a stack of something for 1g, the next day the entire AH is flooded with stacks selling for 20s. Its what I call the Retard Factor. The best thing you is get a general idea of how much stuff is selling for at that time, price your materials a little bit less that that, and hope for the best. Dont throw your hands up in despair when someone undercuts youits gonna happen. Just take your unsold materials and put them back on the AH someone will buy them, trust me!