At WoTLK peak I was turning 5-6k per day on about 2 hours of work, this does not work as well now since the expansion is around the corner but it gives some idea of how to make a lot of money for little effort. This was done on a busy raiding server so prices will probably be a bit out of line with other realms. It takes about 2 weeks for the production line to really settle, the first few days I fell short on some mats here and there.
I used 5 toons for the entire income stream,
Toon 1: JC/Enchanting (made a killing selling ulduar enchants but I excluded that from this post)
Toon 2: Herbs/Inscription
Toon 3: Alchemy/Tailoring (Tailoring not used for income)
Toon 4: Alchemy/Tailoring (Tailoring not used for income)
Toon 5: Mining/Blacksmithing
Basically the first hour would be spent farming, either herbing or mining. In 1 hour you can collect around 30 stacks of whatever and some Titanium/Frost Lotus. All ore would be prospected and all herbs milled, keep in mind that you are collecting eternals at the same time since herbing yields crystallized life and mining gives shadow,earth or water,fire,air from titanium nodes.The alchemists would both transmute once daily with specialization and the JC cut those gems into popular gems, which depending on your realm could be from 150g-200g per gem and depending on luck with procs on the transmutes it would be 3-4k a week from the gems, the mats cost 0 since the blue gems come from mining and prospecting as well as the eternals.
Now I said I prospected and milled everything which is not entirely true I would always save enough for a Titansteel and flasks according to the number of Frost Lotus gathered which varied around the 1.5-2.5k a week mark again depending on procs. I used a friendly elixir master to make the flasks.
While herbing and milling you are getting a lot of icy pigment and eternal life which means darkmoon cards, greatness cards could sell for stupid numbers on some realms. I averaged 6-8k per card and sometimes more at the beginning of the expansion, illusion cards sold for 600-1k gold and death would be up to 2k. An average month of herbing etc would get 5-7 complete decks including one nobles at least which is another 2k about per week.
Mining also brings in the titanium and with a bit of luck 5 stacks a week in 3 hours total mining is easily possible, 300g a stack means another 1.5k a week earned. And you almost always end up with extra eternals so dump on ah.
So all of this brings you to around 800g per hour of work but the real money maker is glyphs, I would make (and still make) glyphs in the upper price ranges around 50g a piece (200g now but the bubble will burst). At any given time I had 1000+ glyphs on AH which easily earned me 5k a day.
Using this strategy for 6 weeks allowed me to buy all 5 toons epic flying skill, choppers, tundra mammoths etc. Currently I make about 2k a day from 30 minutes online but a lot is residual from the busier days. I still have 300 odd blue gems and dozens of eternals for example
