Profitable tradeskills

This little screenshot tells that properly chosen tradeskills can provide insane income. Yes, you're reading it right, a single titansteel bar sold for 1200G (materials around 450G). Of course titansteel creation has a daily cooldown.

Since everyone has the same recipes, crafting itself cannot bring you serious profit. Nice tip yes, a guy with materials can toss you 10G. Don't forget, you just pressing a button and he knows that. And he also knows that if he waits 5 more minutes another guy will came along who can also press the same button.

Yes, you can rip more from noobs in the AH until someone decides to undercut you. Believe me, they will. I made around 5K G from selling death knight glyphs since everyone else were rushing to 80 and no one bothered to stop, mill herbs, create ink and craft the items. But now the AH is full of such glyphs, my kingdom is over. There can be special moments when (or forgotten items that) no one crafts but you, like being first to gain an exalted reputation recipe. But it's an exeption, and not a rule. Of course a smart businessman can find the exeptions. But if you follow the rule, nothing can save you from making a killing!

The rule is: You can make money from cooldowned crafting!

Let's see what professions can offer from the perspective of income:

• Skinning: obvious, you can skin leather, scales, chitin and many other things, so you can sell them in the AH (or don't have to buy them). As an extra I can only add that you can skin animals killed by others, so hanging around where a quest demands killing beasts is a skin-harvest.
• Herbalism: obvious, you can pick herbs, so you can sell them in the AH (or don't have to buy them)
• Mining: obvious, you can pick minerals (and gems, and motes/crystallized earth/fire/shadow/water), so you can sell them in the AH (or don't have to buy them). The big extra is Smelt Titansteel, a 20 hours cooldowned ability to create extremely overpriced metal.
• Alchemy: Transmutations. You can turn cheap items into expensive items. Transmutation specialization is a must be for every wannabe rich alchemists.
• Enchanting: The only moneymaking is disenchanting your soulbound stuff. Quest rewards and obsolate items. More than nothing but only a little. Otherwise you are just one in the million, every other enchanter knows what you know.
  
• Inscription: Minor inscription research and Northrend inscription research can give you huge gift by granting you a recipe that only a few others know. But it's only a matter of time till everyone has every recipe. On the first days you could make a killing, but if you respec now, don't expect any exclusivity.
• Engineering: You are just one in the million, every other engineer knows what you know.
• Jewelcrafting: You can buy dragon's eye for daily quest reward. Since everyone can perform 1 JC daily/day, the supply of this item is limited, therefor provides profit.
  
• Leatherworking: You are just one in the million, every other LW knows what you know.
• Tailoring: Ebonweave, Moonshroud, Spellweave are 3.8 days cooldowned recipes. Don't forget that if you are specialized, you get 2 instead of 1. You also get Northern Cloth Scavanging, a special ability to loot more cloth than others.
• Cooking: Northern Spices is a limited item, you can only get a few from a daily quests. Since limited, the price of created food will be higher (on HC raiding servers much higher) than its materials.

Of course one can select un-business tradeskills because of superior stats provided for raiding, but than don't expect serious income.

Just to clarify: obviously you can make profit from other tradeskills. Hell, you can make profit without having any tradeskills, just by standing at the AH buying cheap and selling high. The world is full of noobs who buy overpriced stuff and sell way underpriced. Having a CD-ed tradeskill means that you can product items that are "overpriced" by nature, everyone are forced to pay this price (or not have the item).