Self honesty leads to wisdom.
Are professions really profitable?
From my experience no crafting is not profitable. Not to say it can’t be, but it just doesn’t seem to make me any money. (I have 5 crafts at 400 and 1 at 325)
People use crafting to level so the market is flooded with items. Crafting is not profitable.
My friend make really good money through crafting. Maybe 10-30 gold a days.
He told me the secreat. Before you start making gold, spend 100 hours making a spread sheet.
So I take that as in crafting dont’ make money. It is the spending rediculous amount of time studying the GW2 market making the money.
So many people leveled their alts with crafting everything to level 400 that any crazily profitable thing doesn’t stay for long. That said, if you want to make money with crafting, you essentially work the TP like you would with flipping, except you craft (or Mystic Forge!) between the time the mats come in and when you put the item for sale.
I’m sure there’s still nicely profitable crafting niches, but I’m wary to re-enter that market because the price for fine mats (all tiers, not just T5-6) and ecto are going all over the place this month. This month I switched to making money off impatient craftERS by flipping crafting components (e.g. silver hook, Hearty Wool Insignia, etc.)
Crafting is like many things in this game:
Its easy to do it, but hard(er?) to be really good at it.
Anyone can craft and make items, but it takes dedication and study to make good money with it.
Im happy with this scenario.
You can still save a few gold by crafting your own exotics (harvesting some mats and all)…
The “problem” with crafting and playing the TP is that in order to make money, you have to have money. And even when you get there, its basicly a matter of spending 50s to earn 51s.
If you want by far the simplest method to earn money, then do ore/omnom/sapling runs and craft simple stuff from it – or just sell the raw materials. All you need is level 80 chars (preferable specced for speed). The more character, the more potential earnings per day, since it take a while for the nodes to regen (ie a day). At most I’ve been able to earn 10g in the ~1.5 hours I spent for a run with the chars I have.